Martin Brundle says you can't ignore Mercedes' relentless pace and reliability

That is the claim of former F1 driver and current pundit of the sport Martin Brundle, who gave his view of what happened in the private test at the Circuit de Barcelona Catalunya.

"Mercedes never really aced a ground-effect car," Brundle said. "They had porpoising; they never really got it right. They didn't understand the car's performance a lot of the time, and they didn't really know why.

"Clearly, they look like they've sort of aced this completely different set of regulations," the Briton pointed out. "But we need to see what it's like on normal track temperatures.

"It's going to be about (power) regeneration and filling their battery back up, but of course, they'll regen as well as any other Mercedes-powered car, probably Ferrari-powered car too," Brundle explained.

Indeed, the conditions in Barcelona were cold, and the warm Bahrain conditions, where F1 will officially test next week, will provide a better indicator.

Brundle added: "You might have a car that just fires its tyres up brilliantly on a cold day and then overheats them on a hot day, which is a problem we've seen Mercedes have before.

"I do think we need to stay calm on it, but you can't ignore the relentless pace and reliability that they've had. So, clearly, they've got a really good, cohesive package," he maintained.

One of the talking points after the Barcelona shakedown was Aston Martin's striking AMR26, which was late in its debut but caused intrigue from the moment it emerged from the garage.

On Adrian Newey's first green car, Brundle commented: "Adrian's cars tend to be quite homogenous in their beautiful, sweeping airflow to them; you often see that with all of his cars. There doesn't appear to be as many bits hanging off his cars as on some others.

"It's really hard undercut on the sidepod, and we've seen different interpretations, some sidepods, front wings, across the board, which is unsurprising with such new regulations.

"We've got to assume Adrian has come up with some good ideas, but does he know enough about the Aston Martin wind tunnel, and their digital wind tunnel? Will he get correlation? Has he got the right people around him to interpret his brilliance? That's a tall order straight out the box.

"Adrian was saying to me that Honda are having to play catch-up because they were leaving and then they came back in," Brundle revealed. "So, there's some question marks there, and we'll to wait and see.

"But you just know that Adrian will have a vision of how to maximize these regulations," the 66-year-old veteran of 158 grands prix concluded.