Mercedes leave F1 testing EARLY after dominant display in Barcelona

Mercedes have been told they have 'won the shakedown', as the team got to leave F1's first pre-season test early.

F1 has been in Barcelona this week for a five-day private shakedown, the first of the 11 scheduled days of pre-season testing ahead of the 2026 season.

All teams were only allowed to run in a maximum of three of the five days, however, and Mercedes and Racing Bulls were the only two teams who managed to wrap up their running early, not even needing to be at the track on Friday.

For Mercedes, their three days were filled with positivity, with the Brackley outfit managing to complete over 400 laps with very few reported reliability issues, while George Russell topped the timesheets on Thursday.

The team have been rumoured to be best placed to master the new regulations that are hitting the sport this year, and Russell, Kimi Antonelli and Toto Wolff were all smiles in their interviews this week.

Following their very positive week in Barcelona, Sky Sports F1 pundit Ted Kravitz crowned them the 'winners' of the shakedown week.

"Well done and goodbye to Mercedes, they’ll be packing their transporters and going back to Brackley and Brixworth with the little badges of 'we won the shakedown and we could leave a day early'," Kravitz said on the Sky Sports testing highlights show.

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Are Mercedes going to dominate F1 2026?

The unofficial lap times at this week's Barcelona shakedown are unlikely to have much relevance on where each team is shaping up in the competitive order this season.

But Mercedes drove more laps than all of the teams that are expecting to be challenging them for the 2026 championships, and the reliability of their W17 was pretty flawless.

The lap times at the two three-day testing events in Bahrain in February are set to be more representative of what we might see in the early stages of the season, but even then, teams are expecting the competitive order to shake up throughout the season as all teams get used to the new regulations at different rates.

But it's definitely a good start for Mercedes, and they have only intensified the speculation suggesting that they could well be in a championship fight in 2026.

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