Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Mercedes reveals W07 with first studio images

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Mercedes has released the first images of its 2016 car - the W07 - 24 hours before the start of pre-season testing.

The team has been teasing aspects of the new car throughout the last week, with the exhaust configuration displayed during a video of the fire-up before releasing video of the car on track during a filming day at Silverstone on Friday.

GALLERY: Mercedes W07

Following drawings of the new car on the team's social media channels, Mercedes has now released the first studio shots of the W07, which features a large air intake above the driver's head.

Executive director (Technical) Paddy Lowe says he is confident Mercedes can make another clear step forward despite stability in the regulations.

"It's very tough to find performance under a stable set of regulations and we were particularly pleased with how the car turned out in 2015 when we had the same situation," Lowe said. "The team did a fantastic job - digging very deep to find all sorts of innovations in areas that might have been considered static.

"2016 is another carry-over year from a regulatory point of view and potential gains inevitably become harder to find under these circumstances. This is what tests an engineering team the most and I must say that this team has been very good at that. It's far easier to find performance when you have a new set of rules, that's for sure."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.