{"id":449382,"date":"2026-02-02T16:07:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T16:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/449382\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T16:07:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T16:07:12","slug":"martin-brundle-identifies-which-team-has-hit-the-sweet-spot-after-private-f1-testing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/449382\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Brundle identifies which team has “hit the sweet spot” after private F1 testing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Formula 1 driver and Sky Sports analyst Martin Brundle<\/a> claimed that Mercedes<\/a> had “hit the sweet spot” with the W17 after private testing in Barcelona last week.<\/p>\n

With a new wave of regulations beginning this season with more of a focus on electrification, Mercedes has been touted as a favourite thanks to its record of success in the previous hybrid era. While team principal Toto Wolff attempted to temper expectations, claiming he was a “notorious pessimist”, Brundle felt the Silver Arrows had “aced” the new set of regulations.<\/p>\n

“Obviously, it\u2019s a completely different concept of aerodynamics,” the former driver told Sky Sports F1<\/a>. “So Mercedes never really aced the ground effect car, did they? They never got it right. Porpoising, and then they had a car they didn\u2019t understand, performing sometimes and not others, and they didn\u2019t know why.<\/p>\n

“So clearly, they look like they\u2019ve sort of aced this completely different set of regulations. But we need to see what it\u2019s like on normal track temperatures.”<\/p>\n

The new regulations feature a 50:50 split between internal combustion and electric power, among a number of other changes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Andrea <\/p>\n

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes<\/p>\n

Photo by: Mercedes AMG<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s going to be about regeneration and filling their battery back-up,” Brundle continued. “But of course, they\u2019ll regen every bit as well as any other Mercedes-powered cars, probably Ferrari-powered cars too. But it does seem as if they\u2019ve just hit the sweet spot pretty early doors on a number of things, as I was talking about earlier on.”<\/p>\n

He added: “Their concept looks good, but it\u2019s too early to say that. And you might have a car that just fires its tyres up brilliantly on a cold day and then overheats them on a hot day, which we\u2019ve seen Mercedes have that problem before.<\/p>\n

“So I do think we need to stay calm on it. But you can\u2019t ignore the relentless pace and reliability that they\u2019ve had, so clearly, they\u2019ve got a really good, cohesive package.”<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Formula 1 driver and Sky Sports analyst Martin Brundle claimed that Mercedes had “hit the sweet spot”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3032,153611,49,48,148380,576,3024,25252,185070,1881,82,4962],"class_list":{"0":"post-449382","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-andrea-kimi-antonelli","9":"tag-barcelona-catalunya-pre-season-testing","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-circuit-de-barcelona-catalunya","13":"tag-formula-1","14":"tag-george-russell","15":"tag-martin-brundle","16":"tag-martin-brundle-identifies-which-team-has-hit-the-sweet-spot-after-private-f1-testing","17":"tag-mercedes","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-trendingteam"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}