The new MercedesAMG W03 made its track debut on Thursday at Silverstone, close to the Brackley factory.
Mercedes said the shakedown was for "filming" purposes, with Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher equally sharing 50 kilometres behind the wheel.
A trackside observer captured a video footage, showing the 'step' nose of the W03.
Today, the team released an official video. Interestingly, there is no footage of the car in action, but just onboard images.
Italy's Autosprint website said the car appeared "fairly conventional", despite speculation the late test debut is due to the team keeping an explosive technical innovation close to its chest.
Adrian Newey, Red Bull's car designer, admitted he and Mercedes' rivals might have a very close look at the W03 if the rumours about the technical secret are true.
"I was told by the German press, whether this is true or not, that the car was ready to run at the last test but they choose not to and why would that be? I said I've got no idea but why you might choose to do that would be if you had some feature on your car which you think is a big benefit and which is relatively easily copied. I'm not saying that is the reason, but it's a possible reason," Newey said to Reuters.
Newey revealed it would take around six weeks to evaluate properly a development on a rival car and lead it to the point where you can plug-in to your own car.
"If you were prepared to simply go out and copy it because you think it's such a blinding idea without actually evaluating it properly then you can cut a bit of time out of that," added the Briton.
Adrian Newey explained that the Mercedes W03 will be closely looked at by rivals only if the performance indicates on to something.
"If it comes out and goes three seconds quicker than anybody else, yes of course. Other than that, simply because its later doesn't mean to say you are going to suddenly show more attention at that than anybody else's. Of course you do look at other people's cars but I generally find that it this time of the year actually the main thing to do is try and understand your own car rather than worry too much about what everybody else is doing" he said.
Mercedes said the shakedown was for "filming" purposes, with Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher equally sharing 50 kilometres behind the wheel.
A trackside observer captured a video footage, showing the 'step' nose of the W03.
Today, the team released an official video. Interestingly, there is no footage of the car in action, but just onboard images.
Italy's Autosprint website said the car appeared "fairly conventional", despite speculation the late test debut is due to the team keeping an explosive technical innovation close to its chest.
Adrian Newey, Red Bull's car designer, admitted he and Mercedes' rivals might have a very close look at the W03 if the rumours about the technical secret are true.
"I was told by the German press, whether this is true or not, that the car was ready to run at the last test but they choose not to and why would that be? I said I've got no idea but why you might choose to do that would be if you had some feature on your car which you think is a big benefit and which is relatively easily copied. I'm not saying that is the reason, but it's a possible reason," Newey said to Reuters.
Newey revealed it would take around six weeks to evaluate properly a development on a rival car and lead it to the point where you can plug-in to your own car.
"If you were prepared to simply go out and copy it because you think it's such a blinding idea without actually evaluating it properly then you can cut a bit of time out of that," added the Briton.
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| The steering wheel of the new Mercedes W03. (Screen caption: Mercedes AMG) |
Adrian Newey explained that the Mercedes W03 will be closely looked at by rivals only if the performance indicates on to something.
"If it comes out and goes three seconds quicker than anybody else, yes of course. Other than that, simply because its later doesn't mean to say you are going to suddenly show more attention at that than anybody else's. Of course you do look at other people's cars but I generally find that it this time of the year actually the main thing to do is try and understand your own car rather than worry too much about what everybody else is doing" he said.