It's a real privilege for Valtteri and myself to be the only people who get to drive this machine and I'm really looking forward to stretching its legs. I've been in constant communications with the engineers, trying to keep an eye on everything that was happening at the factory. Today is a really exciting day - finally seeing in person what this team has worked towards so hard. As a driver, you're just itching to get back into the car.
I've had the best winter training yet. Over the winter, I've really been trying to analyse where we were last year and how I can grow and improve as a driver and as a human being. Having great consistency is going to be key for all of us - not just in terms of our reliability, but also for us as drivers. This team works so hard to give us this incredible machine, but if we put a foot wrong out there, it costs all of us, so that's something I've really been trying to focus on - how can I take it to another level as a driver, how can I extract more from myself and from the team, and trying to deliver something really great this year. This is my eighth year with this team and this year's challenge is super exciting. I have no doubt every single team member will try to raise the bar within themselves and I'll be trying to do the same.

The first time I came to the factory this was quite a few weeks ago for a number of meetings with the engineers and we've been in touch since then. It's been really interesting for me to get more and more involved, learning about all the new features of our weapon for this year's fight. Developing and building a new car is never straight-forward, it's a huge effort by every single team member to deliver this year on year. Now things really kick off and I'm very excited to finally get the chance to drive the new car. I've been waiting to get back behind the wheel.
I think this has been my best winter training so far. I did a lot of different training routines in different climate zones; I'm ready and prepared and I can't wait for the new season to start. I actually did quite a bit of driving as well - from rally cars to dog sleds in the snow in Finland. This season is going to be really challenging, but I know that every single member of this team will give it everything to put us in the best possible position for the fight.

2020 will be particularly challenging because there will be teams that will put a lot of focus on 2020 and there will be teams that will start to shift their resources into 2021. Getting that balance right will very important, but that's not an easy thing to do. Our ambition is clear: we want to be competitive in both 2020 and 2021. That is a great challenge, but the greater the challenge, the more we like it.
The atmosphere this year is very calm, very focused - we all know that there's a job to do and results to be delivered in order to meet our own expectations, so we're working hard to try and prepare in the best way possible. We feel no sense of entitlement to win races or championships, we know that we need to fight extremely hard for that as we had to in every year. This has been our mindset from the beginning.
It's fantastic that the team is able to celebrate its ten-year anniversary. We made our first come-back to F1 over 25 years ago as an engine supplier and then we went all in ten years ago. It shows our long-term commitment - with our own works team and as a Power Unit supplier to valuable customers. We have been a part of Formula One with changing technical regulations, with changes in the Daimler top management, but our commitment to the sport hasn't changed. It's great that we get to celebrate our tenth anniversary with the Mercedes works team as one further milestone of this commitment.
2020 is an evolution of the current regulations and the gains will be smaller, so you need more time and effort to keep improving your car. On the other hand, the 2021 regulations are so very different that you need a lot of time to prepare for them. Every month you start later than your competitors will make it more difficult to catch up. You also have the effect of the cost cap which means that you will have fewer resources available to throw at things in 2021.
It's a massive challenge. We had a lot of regulatory changes in recent years, but this time we're effectively tackling a two-year project. Trying to get this right will make 2020 the most difficult season, but it is also an amazing opportunity. This team has shown time and again that it loves being challenged and we will face this one with the same passion and determination that has made Mercedes so strong in recent years.

The shakedown has always been important, but it is particularly precious this year. It's our last chance to make sure all is well ahead of the first official day of Winter Testing. If all goes well in the shakedown then we will be well placed to roll out the garage at nine o'clock in Barcelona and just start hitting the laps. With a shorter winter testing programme, that last ticking everything off at the shakedown is proportionally more important so we are determined to squeeze every drop of goodness from it that we can.
The regulations stayed largely the same for the new year, so for us it was all about trying to make sure that we don't run out of development steam on a package that worked pretty well for us last year. We wanted to change aspects of the concept of the car - aspects that would be completely impossible to change within a season - to give us a more fertile platform for the new season. We tried to make a few well-chosen architectural changes to keep the development slope strong even though the regulations are now a little bit longer in the tooth.
At the front we have accepted more structural complexity around the uprights and wheel rims in order to provide a higher performance assembly overall. In the middle of the car we have followed the pitlane trend by moving our upper side impact tube to the lower position and banking the aerodynamic gain that comes with this layout. At the rear of the car we have gone for an adventurous suspension layout in order to free up aerodynamic development opportunity. All three investments were improvements in their own right, but their real effect is to mobilize a raft of secondary aerodynamic gains both during the winter and, we hope, across the season to come.
We will still have upgrades for Melbourne that will come in the second week of testing, but the 'entire new car' approach of 2019 won't feature. Last year, the regulations were changed quite significantly, and they were decided quite late in the year. Under those circumstances, doing a launch car and a week two car gave us the chance to build the maximum amount of learning into our Melbourne car. With the regulations being more mature this year and with the opening stab of the 2020 development already being at the same level as the finish of last year's car, repeating last year's approach would not make sense.

We have had to develop an even wider area of the PU. We have looked at every single system. We have worked on a huge array of projects, and when summed together they will hopefully help propel the car around the track quicker and give the aerodynamics team more opportunities to improve as well.
There is no such thing as perfection, there is always the opportunity to improve and all of us have that mindset. We're always improving every detail - the materials, the hardware and ingredients, but also things like our design tools. You know there are areas where you can get better. Being self-critical and keeping an open mind is at the core of that mindset.
We are putting significant effort into making sure that all the cooling fluids on the Power Unit operate at a higher temperature. This increases the temperature difference between that coolant fluid and the ambient temperature that we are racing in, which increases the effectiveness of the cooling system. That's a tough challenge though, because large parts of the engine are made from aluminium and the temperatures that we are operating at mean the material properties are decaying quite rapidly. Managing that over an eight-race distance Power Unit cycle is a tough engineering challenge but that's what we are striving for. As Power Unit engineers we don't just focus on crankshaft power, we also focus a tremendous amount on the packaging and reducing the overheads for the aerodynamicist, so that they can mainly focus on keeping the car planted through the corner.