'Everyone thinks Mercedes is screwing around'

If there is one team that has proved good at so-called "sandbagging" in recent years it is Mercedes. Regularly the championship-winning team haven't seemed to have it together during the test days, only to be there again during the first Grand Prix. Christijan Albers thinks that things will be different this year.

Lots of imbalance at the Mercedes car

Both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were moderately enthusiastic about the W13, the new Mercedes car. Now the Mercedes drivers were often that way in the past, but that often proved to be wrong. "Everyone thinks they're cheating," said Albers in the Telegraaf Formule 1 podcast, but that is not the case according to the former Formula 1 driver.

Albers sees that the Mercedes is very fast through the slow corners, but the team seems to have a lot of problems in the medium and high-speed corners. According to him, Hamilton and Russell really need to fight in the car. "That car seems to be totally unbalanced," the analyst said. According to Albers, Mercedes seems to have more downforce than Red Bull, for example, but because of the enormous imbalance you still cannot achieve a good lap time.

Albers impressed with Mercedes design

Although Mercedes doesn't seem to have it together yet, Albers is impressed with the design of the W13. "Mercedes has actually presented the most innovative car," concludes Albers. The W13 is not at all comparable with the other teams. "They actually made a kind of fake side pod at Mercedes," he says.