There’s a lot of talk about how Mercedes are on the skids, but honestly I find it hard to believe. I remember last year at the end of testing everyone was talking about how Merc were struggling but by the time we got to the first race, which admittedly was a long time later, they had fixed their problems.
The cars are fundamentally the same as last year with a few downforce tweaks, and we’ve seen before that the Mercedes has a very narrow operating window, so as soon as they get on top of the setup things will be back to normal.
I also find it annoying how mainstream F1 outlets post headline testing times as though they mean anything, even the fastest times from the test were several seconds off of pole last year, you just cannot read anything into them. You have no idea what the teams are testing, the cars are not required to be legal and are not scrutineered, you don’t know different fuel loads or how much they are sandbagging/glory-hunting.
I get why the official F1 channels do it, they are a marketing tool, but the press have a responsibility to give a honest picture of what’s going on, not click-baity crap about how Tsunoda’s was second on the sheets. I guarantee that no matter how good Tsunoda is he will not be near the top of a dry timesheet this year.