Mercedes W08 breaks cover at Silverstone

The Mercedes W08 has broken cover at Silverstone, with Lewis Hamilton driving the new car for the first time.

Ahead of a planned unveiling on Thursday afternoon, Hamilton carried out some initial running in the new car as part of a filming day. Despite extremely strong winds, Hamilton carried out a number of short runs in the W08 on wet Pirelli tires at the home of the British Grand Prix.

.@LewisHamiltonout on slicks pushing a little bit more now#F1#W08pic.twitter.com/mjxOW6YXCA— Chris Medland (@ChrisMedlandF1)February 23, 2017

Hamilton later returned to the circuit on slick Pirelli tires, pushing harder for a number of laps before pitting for the official launch.

The W08 initially ran without a shark fin on the rear of the car, with Mercedes telling RACER it plans on testing one later in the day. Valtteri Bottas also drove the car on Thursday, giving him his first taste of Mercedes machinery since his move from Williams.

Following on from Sauber, Renault and Force India, Mercedes is the fourth team to launch its new car this week. The W08 is a more conventional design without the shark fin and with a similar thin nose installation to the one used in 2016.

"It felt incredible," Hamilton said. "Firstly, very proud to continue with this team. Yesterday was the first time seeing the car coming together, it's the most detailed piece of machinery I've seen so far in Formula 1. Today I got to drive, it felt pretty awesome! It's pretty gusty here.

"Driving today, the car feels wider, the front tires feel huge, there's quite a lot of grip already in the cold conditions here. This is not a test, the laps I did were behind a vehicle to get some filming in, it's just a shakedown of a few slow laps to see if the car can do laps. It's so gusty here and its wet.

"The car feels almost identical to last year in terms of ergonomics, there's just a bigger, more powerful beast behind it.

"Finding the limits of the car is the big question mark; it's where is the limit of the car, the tires? What time is the car going to oversteer or understeer or lock up? You need to walk as fast as you can before you can run."

Mercedes will complete further filming on Thursday before the start of pre-season testing on Monday. McLaren and Ferrari will both launch on Friday, with the latter carrying out a filming day at Fiorano at the same time.