Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Lowe cites Mercedes' new floor as significant advance

Mercedes technical boss Paddy Lowe has told F1i that the new floor of the W07 Hybrid for 2016 could be the team's secret weapon as they bid to stay out of reach of their rivals for a third consecutive season.

"I’m particularly proud of our floor solution, the large bargeboard area, that we call ‘floor W'," said Lowe.

So far Mercedes is doing its best to keep the new floor under wraps and away from the prying eyes of their rivals, just like all the other teams in the paddock.

"One of the sports this time of year is to wait for the photos from our competitors," agreed Lowe. "We all analyse that to find something that’s new, something we can think of.

"I feel like that our aerodynamics team have come out on top in that little competition," he beamed.

"Forget the racing, forget the performance, it’s just they brought something that looks [mostly] different, which is great, because it would have been much easier for the team to just keep turning the [handle]."

During the eight days of pre-season testing at Barcelona, Mercedes appeared to have the edge on reliability - a last day glitch notwithstanding - but Ferrari looked to have closed the gap in terms of raw speed and performance.

However it won't be until next weekend in Melbourne, Australia that a true baseline for the different levels of competitiveness between Mercedes and the other teams becomes clear.

And there may also be a chance to get a glimpse of the new Mercedes 'floor W' at some point during the first race of the 2016 Formula One season.

A closer look at the Manor MRT05

Carlos Sainz interview: The most important year, again

Click here for an exclusive Q&A with Honda's Yusuke Hasegawa

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.