Toto Wolff believes Mercedes have delivered a car ready to join the fight for the Formula One world championship this season as it hit the track for the first test in Bahrain.
The Mercedes team principal expressed his confidence that after an extremely disappointing season last year, this time the team had built a solid enough platform with their car to offer seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton a chance to compete for his eighth title.
Last year Mercedes were well off the pace of Red Bull and Ferrari, their car suffering extensively from porpoising and then later from a separate bouncing issue severely affecting its performance.
However on the first day of testing at the Sakhir circuit Wolff was optimistic that the car was a world away from last year’s recalcitrant ride. “You need to provide a good car for a driver that has the ambition to win races and championships and we have that,” he said. “We want to win.