Lewis and Nico on Merc's 2015 F1 car

It's snowing at Silverstone, as Lewis Hamilton fires up the new Mercedes WO6 for the first time. Topgear.com feels a small ripple of history being made, as the double world champion tiptoes out onto an icy track. Is this the car that'll deliver his third title? Could he even manage it by mid-season? Or will his teammate Nico Rosberg manage to convert his superior qualifying performances into more race wins?

Ahead of today's first official F1 test session at Jerez, TG.com is part of an exclusive media delegation that's been invited to catch up with the drivers and team bigwigs. The cars will be faster this year, although the minimum weight has crept up slightly to 702kg.

Those hugely complex hybrid powertrains should be more reliable - the teams have got to make four units last all season, rather than five. Judging by the even more tightly packaged rear end of the Mercedes - as also evidenced by its rivals, whose 2015 contenders emerged this week - there will also be more downforce, too.

Quality time with Lewis and Nico will be at a premium in the coming weeks and months, so this access is seriously special. With the snowflakes thickening outside the BRDC clubhouse windows, here's what they had to say, as the starting gun on 2015 is fired.

Lewis Hamilton: It's just cool to get back into an F1 car. When I get into it at Melbourne, that'll feel special. So far today, it felt pretty much the same as last year's car. [Pause] Hopefully it'll be a bit faster...

Do you miss driving during the winter break?
I don't. I did at the start, when the season was shorter. But now it's getting longer and the breaks get a lot shorter. Going into the break, I was obviously on a high but generally every year I have a good time, and switch off completely from F1.

Does it feel like a job now?
It doesn't feel like work. Racing isn't work. Racing is fun.

There are always things you can do better. Globally, the team did a better job than the others, but there are still things we can improve on. And there are personal things you can improve on.

You had a great race here at Silverstone last year, but it came after a difficult qualifying. Is qualifying one of those areas you think you can improve on?
Of course.

So how do you go about doing that?
I'll just drive better. A lot of the times the car wasn't set up quite right. You can go quite a long way down the wrong road before you realise the balance isn't right, so you have to decide, do I stick with the crap I have or go another way? Either way, it's going to be wrong.

When I got those pole positions, I was on the right path, I could put the car where I wanted it to go. Sometimes you have to do what you can with what you have. I always know I'll be OK in the race. But in qualifying, to really be able to push the car constantly lap after lap, you have to have a balance you can really work with. This year I'll be trying to get it right more often.

Well, on the occasions when we had car failures, and I had to start at the back, they're good fun. It's hard when you know the guy you're competing against is on the front row having an easy time. But you just have to put that out of your mind and try to catch him up.

For me, the positive side is that the gap is so big from the front to the back, and to be able to close that up, to know you've caught him up... it's a feeling almost like winning the race.

Because you're such a racer, and push the car so hard, there was a feeling going into last year that you'd be punished on fuel usage. But you turned out to be really efficient. Was that something you worked on during the season, or did it just happen?
[Emphatically] Nothing just happens in Formula One. My advice to you is to never assume anything; most of the time when people assume it's wrong. Same for everyone, I think. Every new season I go into it's, "oh he's not going to be able to look after his tyres", or "he's not going to be able to look after the fuel". I was the most eco-friendly driver out there last year, and I worked towards that.

I'm not fighting my natural instincts, I'm just adapting my driving, and putting some other techniques in. I'd learnt them through testing. Lift and coast stuff. I've always had that, you just do it more consistently. If you can lift and coast without losing any time, you're doing really, really well. And that's the target.

I don't call anyone. I do it on my own. You work off yourself, and maybe off your teammate's performance. I have a notebook that has all my race history in it, if I don't know what to do to fix a situation, I can look back through that...

You keep a notebook? A hand-written race log?
Yep. Lots of drivers do...

I didn't realise that...
[Impatiently] Because you probably don't think we do very much! We work just like you... [points at TG.com's empty notepad] I have a book just like that, I note down things I need to remember and study, before and after practice, gear ratios, gear selections for corners, braking points, tonnes of stuff.

That was the best part. That's what racing's about. Wheel-to-wheel racing, coming through from the back in a crap kart when everyone else had a good kart, and beating them. I liked the way it was last year, being able to overtake. It's always been difficult to do that in F1. I wish drivers could really explain what it feels like to be in the draft of an F1 car, having a car 10 or 20m ahead of you, losing downforce. No matter what you say it's impossible to explain.

Had you reached a point where you in the yellow helmet, presenting your car, was enough to instil fear in your rivals?
I changed the yellow helmet because it didn't go with the silver car, and I like things that go together. It needs to look cool. Now it's the white helmet you can see coming... There's definitely a language to the car. When you look in the mirror and you see someone like Fernando, you're going to do the same things but you know how critical it is to be even more precise, because the moment you slip up, he's there.

Different drivers have different characteristics, as though they have a playbook, like the NFL teams do. Once you've raced them for a while, you know things are going to happen a certain way. It's hard to find a crease in their driving when you're putting pressure on them, so it makes getting past them much harder. 

I wasn't really thinking much about it. [Pause] It was interesting to see the difference between him and Ricciardo. But it's a big mental game, and sometimes when you get on the back foot it's hard to get off it. I was less surprised [by Vettel] and more impressed by Daniel.

So what sort of season are you anticipating?
I don't think I need to change my approach too much. It worked pretty well last year. I might spend more time at the factory, or more time with my engineers, or maybe less time with them but more impactful in a shorter period. Avoid going down the wrong road in qualifying. [Pause] You have to go in quite open-minded. It's actually harder for us to improve. There's more of a step for the others to take.

Next up, we spoke to Andy Cowell, MD, Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains.

Top Gear: How big a jump forward does the new WO6 represent over last year's car?
Andy Cowell: [Pause] I'll tell you in Abu Dhabi. We now have four power units per season instead of five, which is a challenge for all the manufacturers.

What are the major changes on the car?
Everyone has had the opportunity to do a performance update, which in this world means combustion efficiency, not losing the power you've created by pumping losses in the engine or frictional losses. As far as the hybrid system goes, turbine efficiency is better, electrical efficiency is better, all the high voltage switching is more efficient, as is the main MGU.

So just how irritated were you when the FIA permitted in-season testing?
It's the same for everybody. As long as the regulations are clear we can use that as an opportunity. [Pause] I think it's unfortunate that there is an in-season development opportunity, because that increases the costs, which is the opposite of what was originally intended. The regulation was written with the intention that, once a year, you have the opportunity to do a performance update, but then in-season, you don't. It was quite deliberate by the FIA, on advice from the manufacturers, that we should all have a big opportunity going into 2015, and then it diminishes thereafter. Purely to try to contain costs.

Isn't that a testament to the job that you've done, that the FIA has had to allow others a little more flexibility to catch up?
Yeah, you could see it that way. The FIA have looked at it, they've considered everything, and they've come up with that as an approach. We'll now work and do what we think is appropriate for this year, and next year, and the year after that.

The technical regulations are the same for all of us, so yes, it's possible for Renault, Ferrari, or Honda to overtake us. There's no magic in the power unit over there so... Have we made a big enough step? I don't know. Is it possible to come up with a power unit that's more powerful than we're going to start with in Melbourne? Yes, it is. Nothing's impossible, think wide and think clear... our main rivals all have the funding, the skills and bandwidth to do it.

How many times last season did you come across something and think, ‘oh, now that is interesting...'
Yeah. [Laughs] Half a dozen times, maybe. Half the issues we had at the circuit we'd encountered at the factory, and half we hadn't. The ignition system problem we had with Lewis at the first race last year, we'd not seen that before.

But you still wiped the floor with everyone.
[Grimaces] Three races. Three we didn't win...

Finally, Lewis's teammate - and runner-up in 2014 - Nico Rosberg.

Top Gear: Good off-season break?
Nico Rosberg: Our sport is really, really intense sometimes, but we're lucky to have proper downtime. We went to Ibiza this year.

So you went clubbing?
[Slightly impatiently] No. That's the mistake people make about Ibiza. It's not just about clubbing. It has the best beaches in the world, and great countryside for mountain biking. We got a Labrador puppy, so we've spent the last few months educating him.

No phone calls from the team?
I like to take time off and not communicate. It helps me to get fresh again. I kept up my physical training, and used the break to increase my fitness level. The sport helps to discipline myself, having that in the back of my mind. Because sometimes discipline is a bit difficult when you have a bowl of Haribo in the middle of the table. [Points at tempting selection of Haribo] That was a very tough one just now. Not to dig into that bowl.

Last year's car was all-new, and very complicated. Do you feel you're totally up to speed now?
Experience is always useful. To have been in a title battle is not going to be a negative for this year, to have that experience under my belt. We faced some tough moments, and it's during those where you learn the most and that's going to make you stronger. Also this knowledge that we are the best, we've been the best, and knowing how awesome that feels is just an extra little push to want to make it stay that way.

Who do you expect to be challenging you this year?
The usual suspects - Williams, Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren.

Would it be more fun if the championship fight was a bit closer?
[Firmly] No.

We had a talk from the ex-leader of the Red Arrows two nights ago at a team event. He said that flying the aircraft becomes sort of natural, that you don't have to think about the actual flying so much, so that you have more capacity to think about problems that could arise. That's all the same in a racecar. It's great if you make the driving fast, the natural part, so that it becomes easy, then you have capacity left to think about optimizing the lap, optimizing different things.

But should you be able to drive the car with spare capacity? There's talk of increasing the power outputs to 1000bhp.
Driving an F1 car is a massive challenge. There's not one car that's easier to drive than another when you're on the limit. When you're on the limit, every car is a huge challenge. To be dancing on that limit, going over it sometimes, bringing it back, never staying too far under, that's the biggest challenge. Mario Andretti once said that if everything feels under control, you're not going fast enough. 1000bhp is not going to make it more difficult to drive. It's just going to make it faster on the straights.

You don't want it to be faster on the straights, because we're close to record speeds anyway and that's not going to make the show any better or make it more challenging. What I can agree with is the sound. That we need to keep on working on the sound because that's part of the show, and unfortunately the sound is not so good.

How often were you guys really letting rip last season?
I was racing Lewis. To race Lewis you need to go flat-out so there's not a moment where you're just chilling out, except maybe when he wasn't in my close vicinity. In racing, when you're comfortable you need to start protecting things because you just want to win. You don't care if you win with 15 or 20 seconds margin or whatever. But it was always flat-out. As for tyre management... you're still driving flat-out and tyre-management is just part of the art of driving flat-out.

I think the cars are great at the moment. But I would say that, wouldn't I, because our car's the best.

You talked about the importance of experience, and that extra capacity you learn to find. How do you think Max Verstappen is going to do?
He's a great talent and I'm sure he's going to do well, but he's not going to be the best driver in F1 in his first year, no.

What sort of advantage do you expect to have this year?
We've been a step ahead, so it's more difficult to develop [the car] and it's more likely that the others are going to catch up. By how much we don't know. We've also moved ahead a little bit. We have a great engine facility, and they're working so hard. In fact, the work ethic in this sport is unbelievable. The car and the engine, it's really special to see. It's a tangible thing, that we're the best and everybody involved knows how awesome it is to be the best. It gives a little bit of extra boost.