24/02/2020
NEWS STORY
As if Mercedes hasn't done enough to scare the living daylights out of its rivals - best times in Barcelona... most laps... headline grabbing innovation... - in the latest video from the German team, technical director James Allison gives further insight into the W11, admitting that along with being a more aggressive car than before it is also "streaks ahead" of its predecessor in terms of downforce.
"The temptation for us was just to keep polishing that one," says of the W10, which won 15 of the season's 21 races and - other than that brief revival from Ferrari before the technical directives started flying around - looked as strong in Abu Dhabi as it had done in Melbourne, "after all it finished the season really strongly and it was developing very fast all the way through the year, so there was still lots of opportunity to make that one quicker.
"That conservative approach was very, very tempting," he admits. "But in the end, we decided that wouldn't be enough. We were feeling the breath of our opponents on our shoulders. We know their hunger and we know that if we don't do something impressive with this car, they will eat us up and leave us behind. So, we decided that we would make a car that was aggressive. Despite the fact that there is no change in the regulations, we would take every part of the car and see if we could challenge ourselves to make it better.
"You're not going to see all the detail," he teases, "but I can tell you that the rear suspension on this car is extremely adventurous. We have put into the back, specifically on the lower rear wishbone, we have put a new geometry in there, a new geometry that gives us more aerodynamic opportunity, allows us to get more downforce on the car."
Comparing it directly to the W10, he says: "We have got a car here that is streaks ahead of that one in terms of downforce. We have got a car here whose development slope has kicked up, is steeper than the one that we finished last year's with, in that very, very good car from 2019. And we've got a car here that we hope will be fertile ground to develop strongly all the way through the 2020 season."
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