Mercedes happy with Friday results

Mercedes brought a lot of new products to Barcelona and showed the second and third time in the second training session, but they insist not to jump to conclusions…

Toto Wolff, Team leader: “Our employees have worked very hard – and today we are seeing the first results. Brixworth “really gnawed at the ground” against the background of other power plant manufacturers and made significant progress, which I am very proud of.

With the chassis we also added – Friday was pretty much Miami. Let’s see what the results will be tomorrow, if we can confirm today’s results or at least be in the top three teams.

There are fewer sway issues, but it still doesn’t make riders feel comfortable at high speed. We lost a lot of time in the third and ninth corners – we need to understand how we can do better tomorrow.

George Russell (2nd): “Don’t jump to conclusions, in Miami I showed the best time on Friday, today I was second, but we’ll see how it goes. Today the car behaved clearly differently than before, this time we have other limiting factors.

We don’t have swing anymore on the straights, but there are problems in some corners – we need to improve this and the Red Bull cars are very fast there. They are a strong opponent and we still have to analyze everything.

We may be able to get close to them in qualifying, but now it is difficult to judge the results – Ferrari and Red Bull will cut the power of their power plants on Friday. I think they will keep the advantage.

The main problem is severe tire wear. On Sunday, this factor could determine the fate of the race, so it’s on the tires we’ll be focusing on tonight.

Lewis Hamilton (3rd): “I am very happy with the progress made, I am grateful to everyone who works at our base in Brackley. The team is not giving up, continues to work hard and although we are not the fastest, I think we are already on our way to solving problems.

This is the first session of the season where the build-up is much less pronounced, although it is still palpable. But everything is much better and we are gradually starting to reveal the potential of our car.

It’s still not easy for us, there are still questions for W13, but her behavior has clearly become more normal. I am very grateful to the team for these updates, and now we have yet to find the optimal settings for the upgraded machine.

Tonight we’re going to get started with the information gathered and I think tomorrow we’ll be able to handle a faster pace, so it’s hoped we can catch up with the leaders.