Design of 2017 Mercedes had built-in 'flexibility', just in case

Mercedes' 2017 winning car factored in an element of compromise to account for the advent of F1's new regulations, says the team's chief designer John Owen.

The Silver Arrows squad brought home twelve wins this year and both the Constructors' and Drivers' championships for the fourth year running.

Mercedes refrained from fielding a highly optimised car however as it sought to build into its W08 a degree of development flexibility to help the manufacturer deal with any potential unknowns which could have occurred following the introduction of the new-spec rules.

"I set the objective to build a 90% car for 2017," explained Mercedes chief designer John Owen in an exclusive interview with F1 Racing.

"It might seem strange not to aim for 100%, but the problem you face in any new set of rules is that you can't be certain of the challenges you'll face along the way - how the rules evolve, whether the tyres behave differently from how you expected.

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"There's a lot of unknowns there, so you aim for a car that can cover as many different circumstances as possible, and accept that it might not be the pinnacle of optimisation.

"We built a lot of adjustment into the car, the capability to react to things we saw. Unfortunately, most of the things we had to adapt to we hadn't seen coming.

"So we carried a lot of compromise through the year for things that didn't need to be changed and we struggled a bit with those that did."

Owen typically sees optimisation and improvement after an initial year of regulation changes, and the designer says Mercedes' 2018 charger will this reflect a more aggressive approach.

"We didn't know where the aerodynamic development would take us [in 2017], to some extent - what areas of the car we'd need to find more space on for aero performance, what areas were safe zones where you don't find any aero," says the British engineer.

"If you can move things around in the car and not have to reinvent every part of it with every new development, it's quite wise.

"It was nice to have that little bit of breathing space, whereas for the next car we can afford to be a lot more aggressive."

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