Mercedes says it intends to be in title contention in 2025 as it officially launches the W16 that will be driven by George Russell and Kimi Antonelli.
All ten teams will be running in pre-season testing in Bahrain this week, but ahead of Wednesday’s opening day there are a number of shakedowns taking place, with Mercedes on track on Tuesday. After Mercedes finished fourth in last year’s constructors’ championship – 121 points behind Red Bull in third and 198 adrift of title-winner McLaren – team principal Toto Wolff is expecting a closer year ahead.
“It is going to be a highly competitive season,” Wolff said. “We saw last year just how close the field was. You couldn’t say race-to-race who would be at the front, and I expect this year to be even closer. We will have to be at our very best if we want to challenge for championships this season.”
Russell and Antonelli’s partnership is described by Mercedes as the next chapter following the departure of Lewis Hamilton, and technical director James Allison says the target has been to give the drivers a car that they can have more confidence in.
“Being the fourth year of these regulations on the chassis side, the cars are in the more mature phase. Big gains in lap time are harder to come by but we’ve been concentrating on making improvements in the areas that held us back last year,” Allison said.
“Our primary focus has been on dialing out the W15’s slight reluctance to turn in slow corners, along with the imbalance in tyre temperatures that made the car inconsistent from session to session.
“We are pleased with our progress over the winter and we’re looking forward to finding out where we stack up against everyone else.
“It will be a fiercely fought championship from the off. At this stage of the regulations, the cars are converging in terms of performance. There will be multiple winners, and it’s possible that we will see even more teams than the four that scored victories last year taking to the top step of the podium.”
The main mechanical changes include a new front suspension for the W16, while the team says every aerodynamic surface has been updated along with further unseen developments that beneath the bodywork.
Mercedes won four races in 2024, and power unit boss Hywel Thomas believes tiny gains can have a major impact in turning that into more consistent victories.
“We have been looking at reliability updates, and some calibration upgrades, to deliver robustness, squeeze the last little bits of performance out of the power unit and give ourselves the best opportunity this season,” Thomas said. “We’ve made good progress and hopefully that can add performance on track.
“Given where we are in this set of regulations, lap time gains are small. There is still the opportunity to find little bits and that can be the difference come Saturday and Sunday.
“You could see last year, particularly in qualifying, just how close some of the teams were at the front. Finding those 10 or 20 milliseconds is crucial; it can be the difference between pole or the second or third row. We will continue chasing those gains and hopefully be in the fight for the championships come Abu Dhabi.”
