Kimi and George Conclude Barcelona Shakedown

The team completed its third and final day at the Barcelona Shakedown on Thursday (29January), aptly finishing our first proper running within these innovative new regulations on the day we celebrate the 140^th anniversary of Carl Benz registering the trademark for the very first motor car.

The team focused on building mileage with the W17 once again, mainly on the C3 Soft compound tyre.

Kimi finished his work in the morning adding 90 more laps to his total for the week. That took him to 237 laps across the three days.

George took over for the afternoon and completed 78 laps, the Brit logging 265 laps this week in Barcelona.

Combined, the team completed 500 laps across the three days, just over 2,325km of total mileage.

The team will now head back to Brackley and Brixworth to continue analysing our learnings and data before heading to the first official test in Bahrain (11-13 February).

Kimi Antonelli

Overall it has been a good shakedown for us. We’ve had our own issues but that hasn’t hindered our running too much. We’ve completed a lot of laps and today, I was able to drive for 90 more in the morning session. That is useful mileage to help build our learning about the W17 and gather plenty of data. We focused on the C3 tyre today but still on longer runs rather than anything performance related. We were able to understand a little more about how the car and the Power Unit reacts to a few different set-up options.

I am now looking forward to having a few days to work with the team and digest everything from Barcelona. I am already looking forward to being back in the car in Bahrain for the first official test though and continuing the journey towards the start of the season. We will go there with a good understanding of the car and hopefully we can hit the ground running once again.

It’s very cool to be part of the incredible history of Mercedes innovation, particularly as we put this new car through its paces on the 140^th anniversary of Carl Benz registering the patent for the motor car. We are all proud to represent the three-pointed star and I cannot wait to see how we continue to innovate under these new regulations in the months and years ahead.

George Russell

It’s been another decent day and overall, a positive shakedown for us here in Barcelona. The car feels nice to drive but more importantly, we’ve completed plenty of mileage and had no major issues. The minor issues we’ve come across we’ve been able to resolve which is the purpose of such running.

The car is working well but we know that it is not about the car working well, it’s about how fast it can go. We don’t have any indication of that yet so we will have to wait until Bahrain until we get any indications of the relative pecking order. It’s very early days but we can be pleased with this initial foundation we have put in place.

It’s an exciting time for our sport with possibly one of the most impactful regulations changes we’ve seen. It’s an honour to be representing Mercedes, particularly as we mark the 140^th anniversary of Carl Benz’s invention of the motor car today. It’s quite apt to be behind-the-wheel of such an innovative machine today; I am excited to continue our journey towards the season and look ahead to going racing.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

From a reliability perspective, it’s been a good week for us. The car has enabled us to run the programme exactly as we wanted each of the three days and that’s what we hoped for coming here to Barcelona. It is a huge testament to the hard work of everyone at Brackley and Brixworth in bringing this car to life. We’ve also made good progress with some of the challenges we saw on days one and two and that is pleasing.

That said, in Barcelona we have only really been focused on proving out the W17. In Bahrain, we will switch to set-up exploration which you can’t do here when it is so cold. That will give us a much better idea of the car’s relative abilities as we progress towards the 2026 season.