Mercedes has to work on longruns: "Seems very close with Verstappen"

Mercedes concluded after the first day in Barcelona that they still need to improve, especially in the long runs. Max Verstappen is not far away and trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin doesn't think so either.

"It's been pretty hot here today with the air temperature around 30°C and the track around 50°C," said Shovlin in conversation with Mercedes on Friday in Spain. "Our programme was fairly standard, mainly trying to learn about the tyres in the hot conditions."

Achieving the pole position doesn't seem to be a problem for the German world champion, but for Sunday Mercedes expects more competition. "Our single-lap pace looks promising, we seem to be getting the Soft tyre to work fairly well in particular. The long-run is more of a challenge and the area we need to work on tonight," the Brit concluded.

Mercedes keeps an eye on Red Bull

Actually, there's only one man who can make things difficult for the W11 this weekend. "The story looks similar to recent races; we're reasonable compared to all cars except Verstappen - with him it looks very close. The strategy options are fairly open here both with the number of stops and start tyre - as such it's important that we can find a bit more pace before Sunday," Shovlin concluded.