Mercedes is happy that the new car isn’t as prone to bouncing like the W13 after the opening day of winter testing.
This time last year Mercedes was plagued by huge amounts of porpoising – which crippled their season early on – and ‘masked’ an issue relating to the rear suspension being too stiff and not having sufficient travel, making the car very harsh over bumps.
With a better understanding of these ground effect machines, the former eight-time champions feel they are in a much better position, despite winter testing having to be taken with a pinch of salt.
“It seems to be balanced in the right way,” Mercedes Team principal Toto Wolff said of the new car to Autosport.
“There’s no bouncing, which is good news apart from the big bump at the end of the straight.
“It’s a good starting point. We are gathering a lot of data because that was important to correlate obviously after last year and trying different things.”
Wolff admitted that the car had “a little bit of movement in turn 12” but reiterated it is not anywhere close to last year and is “not performance limiting.”
He added: “I think we have a solid base now to work from and try to optimise the car, which we haven’t done yet.
“It’s really just finding out ‘are there any areas that could be real performance hindrances like last year with the bouncing?’
“Now we just got to work through the programme.”
Still ‘playing catch-up’
The promising signs from the W14 are encouraging however, Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin says the team are assuming they are “playing catch-up” after still being a couple tenths off Red Bull at the end of last season.
He told Autosport: “The performance picture is always blurred after the first day so it’s impossible to say where we stand, but we’ve already identified several key areas where we can find some performance.
“We’ll work on the assumption that we’re still playing catch-up and need to pull out all the stops to find performance ahead of the first race here in one week’s time.
“The next two days are going to be just as packed as today as we’re squeezing out every bit of learning we can into our programme.
“Hopefully the car continues to run like clockwork, and we can make the most of the remaining track time.”
The W14 completed a total of 152 laps on the opening day with Russell driving in the morning and Hamilton in the afternoon.
Photo: Formula 1