Mercedes caught the attention of Red Bull with their pace during Australian Grand Prix practice on Friday.
Despite pessimistic comments ahead of the new Formula 1 season, Lewis Hamilton led both sessions in Melbourne, with the team holding an 0.8s advantage at the end.
That has certainly shaken things up in terms of making predictions for the rest of the weekend, although team boss Christian Horner doesn’t think Mercedes is as dominant as the results suggest.
“Mercedes looked quick in that second session, the times that both their drivers turned out looked pretty quick,” he told Sky Sports.
“Ferrari look like they underdelivered to what we thought they had in testing and our guys both had pretty decent runs.
“Max [Verstappen] got quite a bit of traffic on his fast laps so I think there’s quite a bit of potential there, there’s more set up changes to come and we don’t know what fuel loads people are running but [it] looks interesting.
“On the long runs we look pretty sensible and I think the one lap pace of the Mercedes in that session looked pretty impressive, but the car looks stiff and difficult to drive so whether that’s sustainable for a Grand Prix I don’t know,” he concluded.
The pace of Ferrari was particularly surprising with Sebastian Vettel only fifth fastest, albeit within a tenth of Verstappen in third.
“I don’t know, we’ll find out tomorrow, but we can only look at ourselves,” he said when asked if he thought Red Bull could be a match for the Scuderia.
“We for sure have some things to improve, but I think everyone has, it’s the first day, you start here. It’s been alright.
“The Mercedes looks very quick. We’ve got lots of work to do and for sure we’ll analyse a lot.
“I think in general the car felt alright,” he added. “From the engine side, no problems. They just went very smoothly and things were good.”
On Honda, there was a brief scare when Pierre Gasly reported a loss of power at the end of Practice 2.
However, any concerns about a problem have been eased with a check resulting in a minor issue that will not impact the remainder of the weekend.