Less than a fortnight after the final round of the 2021 F1 campaign, the Brackley-based team posted a short video on Thursday revealing the fire of the new W13.
The video showed employees at his plant with a view of the event, while Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff was kept up to date on the developments via a live video connection on the mobile phone.
The images offered no further clues as to the design of the new Mercedes car that Lewis Hamilton and George Russell will race in 2022.
While the pre-Christmas heat-up of the Mercedes car shows how far the team has progressed, the teams are still waiting until February to bring their final new challengers to market.
With an entirely new set of rules coming into play, the speed at which the new ground-effect cars are evolving means teams will want to wait as long as possible before committing to their final design.
Since the teams also make sure that the rivals want to learn as much from the opponent as possible, there won’t be much incentive to post details too early in case others can copy the best ideas.
The first pre-season Formula 1 test will take place in Barcelona, Spain, from February 23-25, with teams expected to unveil their cars in the weeks leading up to it.
