djones wrote: ↑01 Feb 2020, 23:21
I suspect they could turn up with last years car and still probably win the championship. The biggest threat was Ferrari when they were running the special engine settings/setup. It looks like that will have gone with the regulation changes, so Mercedes has been given a net gain for free.
I truly believe that to be the case and it would mean it would be silly for Mercedes to pump huge resource into 2020 as its all about 2021. To that end, I call huge doubt that the 2020 car is somehow going to be an ultra weapon.
yes it'll be hard for any team to have an ultra weapon this year, with the regulations staying the same. They all had things to fix from last year and they'll all have fixed them, so they'll be pretty close now won't they. And on the engines as you say things have been tightened up, and Honda seem to have caught up, 7 years of convergence on them, so i'm not expecting any huge differences there either
Rear wheel steering could be a thing this year, might be more in the open? Mercedes have a bit of a head start with it, and operationally they're pretty hot and the car might be more consistent with setup and across the different tracks