F1 Rumors: Max Verstappen Shockingly Reveals What He Learned About Mercedes

Red Bull star Max Verstappen has learned some vital information about Mercedes ahead of the first Formula One race of the current season.

With just days away before the Bahrain GP, Verstappen made a shocking revelation about Mercedes, having been able to see what the team has been working on during pre-testing.

According to Verstappen, based on the “data,” Mercedes is “fast” but had an underwhelming start. However, his rivals managed to improve as the test progressed.

“They are indeed fast,” Verstappen told Dutch broadcaster Ziggo Sports. “We could see what they were doing on the data. They drove their first fast lap with less power. Then they drove two quiet laps, followed by a second flying lap. In that, they won half a second on engine power.”

It can be recalled that Mercedes star Lewis Hamilton suffered a big spin in Turn 13 on the second day of testing which the seven-time world champion blamed on the wind.

For Verstappen, the wind may have been an issue, but he also thinks Mercedes didn’t manage to set things up well right away.

“The wind had turned 180 degrees from the first day, and in that corner, you always got a bit unsettled,” the 23-year-old examined. “We shouldn’t look too much into it. Maybe Mercedes was a bit off with the set-up on the first day, but the last day it looked much more stable. They also scheduled two filming days in Bahrain before the first grand prix.”

Mercedes CEO Toto Wolff has been paying attention to details since day one of pre-testing and has previously admitted that the team had been having “reliability problems.”

However, Wolff’s latest comments on Mercedes’ progress en route to the first Formula One race strongly suggest that the team was able to figure out the issues even down to the tiniest details.

“I always worry, sometimes for the right reasons, sometimes for the wrong reasons, but pre-season testing is always exciting because you always find the hair in the soup, things that are not good and we had quite some struggle in the first few days,” Wolff told Formula1.com. “It’s not a matter of complacency. There’s a reason why there are not many teams winning World Championships or doing it with consecutive championships.”

“It’s an organization that needs to stay energized and motivated at all times, and that’s not trivial,” he continued. “The shakedown, if it’s done in the right conditions, allows you to understand a little bit more, but our failures in the first days were not down to doing or not doing a shakedown.”

“On the job list is that we will crunch the data. Try to understand where we performed well and where not, where we had a good correlation to our simulations and the tunnel and where not, and just generally, it’s like sleeping overnight on an idea. The next day you wake up more intelligent.”