- Login or Register
No account yet? Sign up
Team: Toto Wolff (Executive Director), James Allison (Technical Director), Andy Cowell (Executive Director of Mercedes AMG Powertrains), Aldo Costa (Technical advisor), Mike Elliot (Technology Director), Mark Ellis (PD), Geoffrey Willis (Director of Digital Engineering Transformation), Ron Meadows (SD), Andrew Shovlin (Trackside Engineering Director), Simon Cole (CTE), Matthew Deane (CM), Loic Serra (HVD), John Owen (CD), Ashley Way (DCD), Rob Thomas (COO), Loic Serra (Performance Director), Jarrod Murphy (HA), Eric Blandin (CA)
Drivers: Lewis Hamilton (44), Valtteri Bottas (77), Stoffel Vandoorne (reserve), Esteban Gutierrez (reserve)
Team name: Mercedes AMG F1 Petronas
Major partners: Petronas, Ineos, UBS, Epson, Bose, Tommy Hilfiger, IWS Schaffhausen, Hewlet Packard, Pure Storage, Crowdstrike, Tibco, AMD
Morteza wrote: ↑14 Feb 2020, 13:11James Allison on W11James Allison wrote:“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,” said James. “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.” The sidepods do look insane i have to say
In addition to many detail changes and smaller improvements, the team has introduced three larger changes – one at the front, one at the middle and one at the back of the car.
“At the front we have accepted more structural complexity around the uprights and wheel rims in order to provide a higher performance assembly overall,” said James. “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.”
In 2019, the team brought a significant upgrade to the car after the first week of testing that changed the look of the Melbourne car quite significantly compared to the launch car. This year, the race trim will be much closer to the car that is running at Silverstone today.
“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,” said James. “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.”
Don't you think that he then should have designed the next Mercedes like that as well? In fact, it took them 2 more seasons to finally introduce that sidepod concept.
You're right of course. I mixed something up there. It would have not been possible at all to do a radical change like that in mid-season anyway. Forget that part of my post.
No, not necessarily. If they already had a concept that worked.
Enrico Cardile, not Allison nor Resta, designed the high sidepod in Ferrari.
As usual making perfect sense. And just as it looks, it's been refinement, refinement, refinement. Going to be a lot faster in a straight line I'm betting.“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,” said James. “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.”
