The German car company, Mercedes, needs to change their plans for the W14 car because it won’t work out as they hoped. They have done some tests with CFD and wind tunnels which showed good results, so they think that these tests can be used in the start of the European season.
Mercedes is making some big changes for the upcoming season, which will focus a lot on the sidepods of their car. But it won’t just stop there- they’ll also be changing how their car is set up and how high it rides off the ground. Most teams are “copying” Red Bull’s style, so Mercedes might do the same soon too.
In the past, Mercedes wanted to be the fastest in F1 by designing their own concepts. Now though, they are considering just going with whatever works best. If that means committing to the Red Bull design, then they will do it – even if it means putting a rival’s sticker on their car as a sign of respect!
Toto Wolff, Team Principal and CEO at Mercedes-AMG, said that he doesn’t have any strict rules about how the race car should look like. The only important thing is that it needs to go fast! So if the race car looks like a Red Bull or SpaceX but it can go fast, then that’s okay too. “We’ll just stick a little bull on there with a sticker to show what it looks like”, said Wolff.
Wolff believes that Aston Martin proved it’s possible to make huge improvements if you decide to shift directions. Just six or seven months after changing direction, Aston Martin had gained enough speed to be among the front-runners.
“It’s great news that we can still make progress this season, even if it looks like it won’t be a good year!”
The main change to the car isn’t only the sidepods, but also looking at where the car will run best and how it should be set up.
“The biggest thing we did was think about where we wanted our car to be best,” Wolff said.
Last year, we were too low, and this year we are too high. We think that now we can find the right balance. With this balanced position, other things like flooring and decorations will be easy to decide on. Even though I don’t want to sound very hopeful, I’m encouraged by the outcome of our efforts so far!
