Niki Lauda has tipped Mercedes to flirt with the top positions in 2012.<\/p>\n
After February’s winter group tests, rivals and pundits are now assessing the likely pecking-order less than two weeks before the season opener in Australia.<\/p>\n
“My feeling is that McLaren and Red Bull are almost equal,” triple world champion Lauda told Austrian television ORF’s Sport am Sonntag programme.<\/p>\n
“The big positive surprise is Mercedes.\u00a0 They have chosen a different way,” said the 63-year-old.<\/p>\n
“The nose is relatively small, making the car look quite different to the others, because they have the (front wing innovation) F-duct.<\/p>\n
“For me, it’s the most innovative car, and it also looks to me as through the (F-duct) mechanism works very well.”<\/p>\n
Lauda said a strong Mercedes will be the first real test for Michael Schumacher since the great German returned to F1 in 2010.<\/p>\n
“It’s a very important year for him,” he said, “because for the first time he and us will really know the answer to how he stands against Rosberg.<\/p>\n
“Michael needs to prove to us all how good he really is — which of course is difficult, since logically you do not get faster with age.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Lauda agrees with speculation sweeping the F1 world about Ferrari’s current pre-season crisis.<\/p>\n
“They’re behind, no doubt about it,” said the Austrian.\u00a0 “The car is pretty unstable, slipping at the front as well — I think they could be two or three tenths behind the top three.<\/p>\n
“At the beginning of this year, that’s quite a lot,” explained Lauda.<\/p>\n
“In Alonso they really have a top man, but if the car is too far behind then he can’t do anything about it, especially as he has a not-so-strong teammate in Massa who is not going to push him.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Niki Lauda has tipped Mercedes to flirt with the top positions in 2012. After February’s winter group tests, rivals and pundits are now assessing the likely pecking-order less than two weeks before the season opener in Australia. “My feeling is that McLaren and Red Bull are almost equal,” triple world champion Lauda told Austrian television …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,93,5340,5284,34,92,4,598,129],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15401"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15402,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15401\/revisions\/15402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}