Mercedes should arrive with developments in Austria

The scarecrow of recent seasons often has more than one trick up its sleeve. For the record, in addition to the traditional winter developments between the W10 and the W11, the technical managers and engineers of Mercedes-AMG F1 had pulled off quite a find at the Barcelona tests last February, with the famous Two-Axis Steering, quickly banned by the FIA.

Proof that the Germans are not resting on their laurels, to maintain that little extra, both in terms of engine and aerodynamics, which has allowed the star brand to make an unprecedented mark in F1 with six consecutive coronations.

And the great momentum does not seem ready to stop, despite the period of pause in motorsport resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.

“We haven't had any races yet, but some time has passed since the car was presented, detailed James Allison, Mercedes technical director in a video posted on the team's social networks.

If you imagine this launch and the car that should have been sent to Australia, all of this had been frozen around Christmas. Then there was the whole month of January, February, March, a whole period to make the car faster in the wind tunnel and within the design departments.

So we had lots of ideas on how to make it faster, and several of these ideas were already being worked on in the design offices before the shutdown nine weeks ago.

The challenge now is to be sure that this quarter of development can move from drawing to production. car as quickly as possible. We hope a good part of it will be available for Austria and, during the season, put as much development as possible, and as quickly as possible, on the car. »

Remember that Mercedes had set the best lap times during the last winter tests in Catalonia with Valtteri Bottas. Five months later, will the hierarchy, always difficult to understand, be the same when it comes time to return to the track in Austria?