Mercedes believe they are in a “much better position than 12 months ago” after successfully addressing some of the flaws that plagued their previous F1 cars.

Following two challenging and🥂 frustrating season♌s with the troubled W13 and W14 cars, Mercedes are confident their revamped W15 challenger is a significant improvement on its predecessors.

168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Lewis Hamilton and 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:George Russell both lacked ꦍconfiden༺ce in the rear-end of the W14 but they are already more comfortable in Mercedes’ latest model after three days of pre-season testing in Bahrain.

“We'v🔴e had three useful days here in Bahrain and managed to make good progress undeܫrstanding the W15,” said Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin.

"Compared to last year’s🐷 car, the feedback from the drivers is very different an⛦d more positive, which is encouraging.

“The team has worked hard to iron out the handling flaws that were൲ integral to the W14, and it's great that we seem to have put a number of those probl♒ems behind us.

"Over the course of the test we've made good steps on our understanding of the car. The task of the next few days is to pick through tཧhe results and put to🍸gether the best package to take into the race weekend.

“It’s never ea🐓sy to make predictions on ♌pace from testing, as all teams are quite effective at hiding their pace when they want to.

“It's cl💃ear thꩲat we are in a much better position than 12 months ago though.”

Despite admitting Red Bull “clearly ar𝓀e out in🃏 the distance”, Hamilton, who is leaving Mercedes to join Ferrari in 2025, says the team have definitely improved their car for the 2024 season.

"It felt much more enjoyable tﷺo drive. We still have 🙈time to find,” added the seven-time world champion.

"It's a good platfor⛦m to work from, a much better car to start the se💯ason with.”

Russell, who rounded out the Bahrain test with the second-quickest time behind Ferrari’s 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Charles Leclerc, says he and Hamilton now have the confidence to attack medium and highℱ-speed corners.

"The car last year was really challenging to drive," Russell explained. “Lewis a🌞nd I had no confidence in it, it felt like it was going to bite us every single corner.

"We can attack the medium and high-sp𓄧eed corners without the rear end snapping out. And we feel like we've made a really good s🐻tep in terms of the consistency of the car. We can really lean on it better than we've been able to in the past.

"And this was a huge focus throughout last year. Wꦓe saw many flaws with the W14, which the team have done a really great job to rectify.

"And we've now got a car mechanically wh🧔ere the aero guys can go in focus on just building downforce upon that, whereas in the past, whatever we did aerodynamically there were underlying issues with the race car that took a while to understand, and so on🐠."