Mercedes to launch W02 on February 1st

2011 F1 season

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Mercedes W01 launch

Mercedes will have their 2011 F1 car ready for the first test session of the year.

The W02 will be launched in the pit lane at Valencia on February 1st.

They will join Williams and Toro Rosso who are launching their cars on the same day.

With the new Renault and Sauber being revealed the day before, and Ferrari’s new car appearing before that, there will be at least six new cars running in the first test of the year.

The Red Bull RB7 is also expected to appear at the first test.

McLaren, Force India and Virgin have already confirmed they will not be running their new cars in the Valencia test on February 1st-3rd.

Use the F1 Fanatic Google Calendar to keep track of all the launch, test and race dates for 2011.

View the list of 2011 F1 drivers and teams.

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    Keith Collantine
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    34 comments on “Mercedes to launch W02 on February 1st”

    1. Would love Schumacher to rack up a few wins and be competitive this year!

      1. Amen brother! Let’s hope that he will

      2. Im excited now to see him fight to the front! Go Schumi!

        1. GO SCHUMI GO>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.SHOW THEM ALL A CLEAN PAIR OF HEELS.

      3. Same here..it just gives everything another dimension. Rosberg also.

        1. How fantastic would it be for them to have an epic battle throughout the season? The old master vs the young charger…

          (Did I just say charger? Damn you Legard!!!!)

          1. Never mind Legard! What can Coulthard do? Here he comes, climbing up the hill to the commentary box, could be late. Breaks into a run, Coulthard, on a charge now!

    2. Let’s hope it is fast and oversteery.

      1. & can use it’s tyres well.

    3. I hope that they can challenge the top teams, but I doubt they can. Maybe in 2013 when there are drastic regulation changes.

    4. Seems like we won’t see too many exclusive car launches this year, teams saving money perhaps.

      1. But it will be fun having all reporters running from the one to the other and the third to take pictures and interviews.

        Luckily these new cars will have to do a lot of instalation laps, refittings, checkups etc. so there will be ample opportunity to make pictures of them in the pits, while HRT, McLaren, Force India and Virgin happily rake in testing laps with their old cars on the Pirelli tyres.

    5. I see no reason why they shouldn’t be very competitive this year.
      No idea why people thought they would be in 2010 when they had no money to develop the car. Mercedes money came far to late (the car was complete or almost) this year however is a different matter.
      But will it make enough of a difference? More than any other team I’d suggest they have the best chance of a big swing in performance. We’ll soon see.

      1. Maybe it was because Schumacher and Ross Brawn claimed that they would be fighting for the championship?

        1. Maybe they had to claim that the team would be fighting for the championship, to make DaimlerBenz look good for throwing more money into F1 at a time everybody else was pulling out?

          1. Exactly hype and words for the sponsors, which got in the way (for some, maybe I even started to believe it myself) of good judgement.
            Only have to look at the pre-session facts for 2010, (not the words which mean nothing), easy to say with hindsight but 2010 was always likely to go the way it did.
            Basically 2010 has no barring on 2011 too much has changed so there is hope they will be extremely competitive, however that’s just speculation.

    6. typical “wait for it” moment eh?

    7. Hopefully they launch with a front wing that resembles something other than a combine harvester this year.

    8. Why is it “WO” something. I can understand why other teams call their cars what they do but WO1 and WO2? should be merc or something like that

      1. It’s not WO2, it’s W 02. W being short for Wagen.

        W 2 actually makes more sense. As would BGP1, instead of BGP001

      2. The “W” is a common description used by Mercedes-Benz for a certain model range. There was a W01 back in 1926, a limousine prototype. The W01 was named that way to make the point clear that this is the first true Mercedes F1 car of the new era.
        To link to production cars, the current S-Class is named W221.

        1. aah cheers

          1. For a Dutch guy, WO 1 or 2 would be a bit, eh, unfortunate, for a German team (War = Oorlog); would look better as W1 and W2, to avoid confusion ….

    9. I’m very excited to see how Schumacher can cope next year, I hope he can beat Rosberg!

    10. Its Hammer time
      14th January 2011, 15:27

      I hope the Mercedes is competitive.

      Having ‘also-ran Schumacher’ in 2010 was the biggest disapointment for me last year.

    11. I think that Mercedes will be better than last season. I presume that after realizing their car was not competitive, they spent most of the time designing their 2011 car instead of focusing on the 2010 car. I don’t know whether they’ll win any races, but podiums are likely. I hope Rosberg out performs Schumacher again, I have never been a fan of him.

    12. With more time and money to develop, not to mention Schumacher having a hand in tailoring the car to his needs, I bet he will be quite competetive this year.

      People are quick to bash Schumacher’s current ability; however, if a car doesn’t conform to your driving style, finding tenths can be very difficult — that was part of last year’s struggle.

      1. All Schumachers fans are coming out to support him for 2011.Some of them were pretty quiet last year,but nevertheless it is getting to be like the old days again.The same solid base of fans, & the main line is >we all want SCHUMI TO WIN AGAIN.
        If anyone can do it,the Maestro can.The car will be heaps better this year,not just for the King of F1 but for Rosberg too.They will both be on the podium again,and don’t forget Brawn was working on this car long before all the other teams had started.
        GO SCHUMI>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

    13. I hope they are competitive, and hope Schumacher us competitive. I will admit that I dont really want him to be WDC but not because I hate him but because I like new WDC every year. I really hope its a close fight between Merc, Mclaren, Lotus/Renault, Ferrari, and RB

    14. ‘The Red Bull RB7 is also expected to appear at the first test.’

      Whether you like or not, hearing the name ‘RB7’ is pretty ominous, isn’t it?

    15. In addition, I think the Mercedes W02 is the car I am mostlooking forward to seeing; both in terms of livery and how it will perform. It will be interesting.

      1. Do you have any expectation of their one-year-old livery being changed already? I would like a more colorful livery, but I don’t expect to see it soon.

        1. I don’t think it will be that different to be honest. But I believe they can do a lot with what they have, with the Mercedes brand and it’s unusual contrast with the turquoise of Petronas. Silver also places emphasis on the shape of the car when in the right light too.

    16. Fingers crossed the 2011 Merc is pointy in the front end, I’m not saying Rosberg won’t like it every bit as much as MSC, but I think its then that we will see what MSC is fully capable of in a car again. A well balanced car with good front end grip would be even better for both drivers, but I think even if it is oversteery as long as the front end has the grip, MS will shine again.

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