February 28, 2015 – After a winter of apparent ‘sandbagging’, Mercedes finally let the cat out of the bag on Friday when Nico Rosberg utterly humbled his competitors on the second day of the final winter test, leaving second-best Valtteri Bottas more than a second behind, and the German was using only the soft Pirelli, not the even quicker super-soft.
Team boss Toto Wolff, however, denies that the ultra-dominant reigning 2014 champions have been hiding the potential of the new W06 car until now.
“Our programme was planned from the beginning. Others may have done it a bit differently to us. We estimate that we should still be ahead in 2015,” Wolff acknowledged.
Williams’ Bottas was blown away: “Everyone knew they were quick,” said the Finn, “but they were very quick. But that’s how it is.”
Earlier, insiders were wondering if a grandee team like Ferrari had managed to substantially close the gap to Mercedes in just one winter. The Italian squad has always played down that prospect, but after seeing Rosberg’s pace on Friday, Sebastian Vettel said the laptime was in fact “awesome”.
And Jenson Button, despite McLaren-Honda having its best day of the winter on Friday with over 100 laps, said the Mercedes pace was “unbelievable”.