Mercedes predict see-saw battle with "class act" Red Bull

Mercedes is predicting "a close championship" fight with Red Bull this season after describing its rivals RB16B as "the class act" of the pre-season test.

After seven consecutive years of domination by Mercedes, F1 finally appears poised for a longed-for title fight since the introduction of the current turbo-hybrid era in 2014.

Mercedes has openly conceded to developing a car in the W12 that is "weak" at the rear and that drivers Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas had "to work pretty hard" with across the three days of testing at the Bahrain International Circuit.

In contrast, Mercedes motorsport strategy director James Vowles claims the Red Bull to be "planted" and "very stable".

There is no doubt it is advantage Red Bull going into the first race in Bahrain next weekend, although Vowles is convinced the season will be a see-saw one between the two teams.

Asked whether the fight would be a close one this year, speaking in a Mercedes Youtube debrief of the test, Vowles replied: "I'd start with, for what it's worth, every season feels close to us. None of them feel particularly easy and straightforward.

"But where we finished that test, there are a lot of unknowns. No one, up and down the paddock, will be able to pinpoint exactly where they are, but there are a few trends that have come out.

"I would say Red Bull are ahead on performance. They are the class act from the test, but it is a test, it is not a race and it is one event out of 23.

"Are we going to have a close season? I would say so. Red Bull are a fierce adversary, they've got a strong package and clearly came out of the box very, very quick.

"The result of that is across the season and across different types of track layouts, I am sure you will see us move forwards and backwards relative to them.

"But I don't believe we are going into this particularly finding all the performance that is missing or being ahead of them. So, in short, yeah, I think we are going to have a close championship this year.”

Mercedes started the test on the backfoot as it encountered a gearbox problem that necessitated a change after the first installation lap from Bottas and which confined the Finn to the garage for almost all of the pre-lunch session.

That meant Mercedes then played catch up over the remaining two and a half days, and while Vowles concedes the team did manage to recover lost ground, it was not entirely to its satisfaction.

"We obviously plan the test items before we go out to the test and then you try to work through them in broadly priority order," added Vowles.

"Missing practically all of the first half of the day was a setback, and that meant that we had to work pretty hard to recover it, but by the end of the test, we got through the majority of it.

"I think the compromise is more that we had to shorten some of the runs to be able to fit in the number of test items.

"So where we would have planned to do 10 or 12 timed laps on a long run, that was coming down to seven or eight which is a little bit short really to be assessing some of the items if you are looking at anything that might affect degradation or tyre wear.”

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