Mercedes have unveiled the car they will hope can take them to a third consecutive Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championship title in 2016.
The team have been teasing the car recently with vague videos and photos, with the W07 given its first track running on Friday at the Silverstone Circuit with both Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton, but it has finally been displayed to the public.
On first look, the team appear to have altered the air intake above the driver, with Executive Director (Technical) Paddy Lowe also confirming changes to the height of sides of the cockpit by 20mm, increasing the side impact test load from 15 to 50kN, and separating the exhaust tail pipe and the wastegate ducts.
In an interview with the team, Lowe stated his thoughts on developing the new car: “After a highly successful season all round in 2015, our priority has been to identify the areas in which we were weakest and to try and improve on those. Our objective is excellence in all areas and, while we had some fantastic results last year, there are many areas in which we can still be much better.
“That’s the kind of culture we try to instill throughout the whole organisation – one of constantly striving to reach something better. We had a number of races that didn’t go to plan in 2015 – Singapore in particular – so there were a lot of things that needed improving for 2016. We are seeking optimisation absolutely everywhere.”
Many people have criticised some early car reveals for not having much difference to 2015 designs, but Lowe simply states that is due to the nature of the regulations:
“It’s difficult to have a complete revolution when the rules have stayed pretty much the same year on year. But we aim to make minor revolutions wherever we can – even within a small context. We may look at a completely new packaging solution or suspension concept, for instance.
“So, while the car may look very similar to its predecessor from the outside – as is inherent within stable regulations – underneath there are quite a lot of mini-revolutions that make up an overall evolution for the new season.”
The car also includes some under the hood features such as new Petronas Syntium engine oil with Cooltech in the new Mercedes PU106C Hybrid Power Unit. Its predecessors had become the leader of power on the grid since its inception in 2014.
Andy Cowell, Director of Mercedes High-Performance Powertrains, has stated the development of the power unit in the new car: “It’s been more of the same. To get the performance out of this new generation of Power Units, you need to chase efficiency. That’s both combustion efficiency and efficiency in the various energy transition steps – i.e. MGU-H, MGU-K, turbocharger, power electronics and batteries.
“We’re constantly working on every single piece of the puzzle to improve performance at the crankshaft, while also seeking to ensure we don’t suffer any of the problems we had last year with reliability. So it’s about getting down to the root cause of issues and making sure that everything is robust across our whole process, as much as extracting performance.”
The Mercedes’ will be on track throughout the eight days of pre-season testing, where it will be interesting to see the first laps between the new W07 and Ferrari’s SF-16H to see where the early advantage lies this year.
Comments.
Loading comments…