Mercedes is counting on a more consistent W10 with Pirelli tires

With W08 and W09 where the drivers sometimes had some difficulty finding the necessary consistency, Mercedes tried to work on this point to offer a W10 as easy as possible on all the calendar routes.

James allison, technical director of the world champion team, explains in detail, on the sidelines of the presentation of the 2019 single-seater this Wednesday, the work carried out during the winter.

“The handling of the W09 was a big improvement over the W08, which was rather unusual. We have managed to be competitive on the complicated tracks for us in recent years.

However, despite this improvement, we were still not as good as some of our competitors at preserving rear tire performance. We worked hard on the suspension characteristics and aerodynamics to achieve a car that was more consistent with its tires.

Enough, we hope, to allow us to be competitive in all phases of the race and on every track on the calendar. Although the minimum weight limit has been increased by 10 kg for 2019, weight reduction remains a real challenge for the current generation of passenger cars. F1.

Components that we believe were optimized to the extreme in 2018 were taken one by one and subjected to aggressive re-analysis to reduce their mass. Some components have been reduced by half a kilo, a giant step, others by a few grams.

But together, all these small successes accumulate a few kilos, the loss of which was then transformed into gains in terms of aerodynamics, suspension and the Power Unit. »

The W10 will retain the same wheelbase as its predecessor, and features aerodynamics which have been designed according to the technical regulations revised for 2019, and which include redefined front and rear wings.

The engine also revised

A basic element of Mercedes' success in recent years, the German V6 turbo/hybrid Power Unit has also undergone several modifications this winter, in order to maintain the benefits seen in recent years, but also to counter the offensives of Ferrari, whose bloc has made significant progress.

“We have made changes to the cooling architecture of the block, which will hopefully provide an aerodynamic advantage to the car and also an efficiency advantage, explains Andy Cowell, general manager of powertrains.

We have worked on combustion efficiency and the ERS system. The marriage of the turbocharger and MGU-H, the inverter, the batteries and the MGU-K: this entire system is now able to operate more efficiently and help deploy energy during a race. »