Adrian Newey questions why Mercedes has elected to launch its 2012 F1 challenger later than the rest
Red Bull technical director Adrian Newey says he feels Mercedes could have something to hide after the team elected to launch its 2012 challenger later than its rivals.
While the likes of Red Bull,
McLaren and
Ferrari all debuted their new cars in the opening test of the season last week at Jerez, Mercedes has instead elected to wait until the second pre-season test in Barcelona to take the wraps off the W03 that will be driven by Michael Schumacher and
Nico Rosberg during the year ahead.
Although the team has always insisted that the decision has been taken to allow for extra development time back at its Brackley base, Newey said he felt the decision could well mean that Mercedes is attempting to hide something from rival teams, and has delayed the launch to give them less time to copy elements of the W03.
"I assume that they want to hide something from the competition," he told
Sport Bild. "It must be something that can be copied quite quickly; otherwise they wouldn't try so hard to keep it secret."
Aside from Mercedes, Marussia and HRT are the only teams still to launch their 2012 cars.
