{"id":453986,"date":"2026-02-02T17:28:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T17:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/453986\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T17:28:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T17:28:08","slug":"what-mercedes-is-wary-of-despite-starting-f1-2026-on-the-front-foot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/453986\/","title":{"rendered":"What Mercedes is wary of despite starting F1 2026 on the front foot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Three impressively smooth shakedown days in Barcelona have done little to dispel the notion that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.autosport.com\/team\/mercedes\/36495\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Mercedes<\/a> is entering the new era of Formula 1 on the front foot. Mercedes has by far completed the most laps both as a team and as a power unit supplier, rival teams have been keen to install the Brackley-based operation to the top of the predicted pecking order, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.autosport.com\/driver\/george-russell\/840489\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">George Russell<\/a> has seen his betting odds as the 2026 world champion shorten considerably.<\/p>\n<p>It is undeniably true that Mercedes couldn&#8217;t have got off to a better pre-season start, finishing one of its Barcelona test days early simply because it had already completed its entire run plan earlier and with fewer gremlins than calculated.<\/p>\n<p>            We want to hear from you!<\/p>\n<p class=\"mt-auto\">Let us know what you would like to see from us in the future.<\/p>\n<p>            <a href=\"#\" class=\"ms-link text-link font-bold\">Take our survey<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"mt-1 text-body\">&#8211; The Autosport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three impressively smooth shakedown days in Barcelona have done little to dispel the notion that Mercedes is entering&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[12295,64,63,817,813,816,3875,945,234247,85,234301],"class_list":["post-453986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-andrea-kimi-antonelli","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-george-russell","tag-mercedes","tag-mercedes-launch","tag-sports","tag-what-mercedes-is-wary-of-despite-starting-f1-2026-on-the-front-foot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}