Mercedes saw something ‘astonishing’ from George Russell’s 2026 F1 car during Barcelona test

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Mercedes were one of the main talking points from Formula 1’s first test of the 2026 season in Barcelona.

Lewis Hamilton set the fastest lap for Ferrari, but the seven-time champion’s former team caught the attention of their rivals with the W17’s first outing.

Lewis Hamilton led the way in Barcelona but the gaps were tight!

Who impressed you most in the shakedown? ⬇️

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Many expect Mercedes to have the fastest power unit on the grid in 2026. Ahead of the Barcelona shakedown, rival teams feel that they have a significant advantage.

Mercedes have found a loophole in the new regulations that could gain them three tenths of a second through the compression ratio of the power unit. Barcelona was the first chance for teams to see where the Silver Arrows really stand.

‘Senior’ Mercedes figures hate that they’re being called the favourites for the 2026 season. But the first test of the year was certainly encouraging for the team, and they were left hugely impressed by the W17.

Toto Wolff says the ‘highlight’ of the Barcelona shakedown was Mercedes’ reliability

Mercedes were the only team to complete over 500 laps at the Circuit de Catalunya. George Russell set more laps than any other driver and was left impressed by how his car felt during the test.

Speaking during Mercedes’ 2026 launch via their official YouTube channel, team principal Toto Wolff could not pinpoint a final order of the teams after Barcelona, but he was impressed by his team’s reliability.

“I think the highlight in the Barcelona shakedown was the reliability of the power unit and the car,” he said.

George Russell topped the lap count at the Barcelona Shakedown 🔥

But is mileage everything at this stage? 🤔

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“It was about clocking miles, about making sure that all the systems would function properly, the interaction of the power unit and the chassis, fine-tuning some of the new toys that we have in boosting the engine and that was pretty successful.

“Other than that, it’s really difficult to interpret times because we haven’t seen our competitors really on low fuel runs, neither have we seen them running really well over three days.

“Obviously, they had their problems. So, we really don’t have a performance picture contrary to what many people think.”

READ MORE: Mercedes driver George Russell’s life outside F1 from net worth to height

Mercedes chief James Allison was left surprised by ‘astonishing’ reliability in Barcelona

Mercedes engineer James Allison added that he was left surprised by the team’s ‘astonishing’ reliability during the shakedown. He had expected issues throughout the test, and there were some notable ones, including Isack Hadjar’s crash for Red Bull.

But Allison felt that all the teams would have been impressed by the miles they had racked up: “I think the biggest thing that surprised us, and I’m guessing it’s true also for our competitors, has been the really quite astonishing level of reliability that we’ve seen up and down the grid.

“With everything new as it is, I think it would have been reasonable to expect this first shakedown test to have been just a symphony of red flags and smoking vehicles, but that really hasn’t happened.

“And in fact, for the most part, the reliability of these cars has been absolutely comparable and in some cases better than last year winter testing with things that were far more mature and which were very well understood. So that has definitely been a surprise to us, a welcome surprise.”