Mercedes: Benefit of new front wing will be clear in Hungary

Mercedes technical director James Allison believes the benefit of the new front wing introduced by the team at Silverstone will become more apparent in next week's Hungarian Grand Prix.

Mercedes modified the front wing on its W14 black arrow, changing the chord distribution of the wing's elements and the profile of the component's endplate to achieve a cleaner air flow to the car's bodywork and floor.

But Lewis Hamilton admitted at Silverstone that he expected bigger gains from the update.

"We were all very hopeful of the step that we were going to hopefully take," he said. "To our disappointment it didn’t take us that step, unfortunately."

In Mercedes' post-race video on YouTube, Allison elaborated on Hamilton's comments and explained why the revised wing will prove more of a benefit next week in Hungary.

"The new front wing, of course it’s designed to make us go faster, that’s why we do all our things," Allison said.

"But the specific characteristics of this new front wing that we’re excited about is it should improve the balance and performance of the car through the slower range of the corners.

"Now, Silverstone is famous for lots of things, but lots and lots of slow corners is not one of them. So what we took as a comfort from Silverstone is that in the slower parts of the track we were looking pretty decently competitive.

"So that’s a tick in the box for this new front wing.

"I guess it will only be when we get to Hungary, which is a track made up almost entirely of slower stuff, that we’ll get to know for sure.

"But early signs are promising, the new front wing seems to do what we expected, and hopefully it will bring us more at tracks which have a wider range of slow corners."

• Read also: Mercedes keen to closely analyse McLaren upgrades

One might question the merits of extending a development programme for a car that can lo longer bridge the gap with Red Bull.

Yet more updates are in the pipeline at Mercedes, and Allison explained why the Brackley squad isn't "throwing good money after bad".

"There’s still plenty more development to come in these cars," he said.

"All of the teams will, of course, be turning their attention to next year and that will sort of de-fang all of us a little bit in terms of the rate at which we can improve our cars.

"But for each of us, and for us absolutely, there are improvements that we would like to make on the current car that we know we’ll also carry into next year.

"So it doesn’t feel like sort of throwing good money after bad. It feels like you’re investing in both seasons with those upgrades."

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