Mercedes spotlights ‘less draggy’, ‘reassuring’ traits of W15

Mercedes technical director James Allison say that the aim of the team's 2024 challenger is to provide the drivers with much more 'reassuring' rear handling as well as a boost to the car's straight-line speed.

Last season both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell found it difficult to get to grips with what had been dubbed a "spiteful" rear end on the W14 and an overall lack of race pace making them easy prey for their rivals to pick off.

The team embarked on a major chassis redesign to address the problems. The results were unveiled at Silverstone on Wednesday and the extent of the "root-and-branch" changes was clear, with an all-new chassis and a number of aerodynamic changes on display.

"It stretches back to last year," Allison reported. "A new car enables the team to make bigger alterations that are not possible during the season. These are decisions that are taken during the preceding summer."

“A big focus has been on improving the previous car’s unpredictable rear axle, which the drivers often referred to as spiteful,” Allison said. “We have worked on that to try and create a car that is reassuring to the drivers.

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“At the beginning of a corner when you're hard on the brakes and turning in, the rear needs to feel rock solid," he explained. "As you get towards the apex, the car needs to feel progressively more nimble and eager to turn. We've been trying to build that into the car.

"With this current generation of cars, so much of the performance comes from how the floor interacts with the road. Whether or not a car is effective is down to how well that floor is permitted to behave aerodynamically."

Among the changes on display, Mercedes now has its own version of a push-rod rear suspension based around a new gearbox design which should help improve the handling characteristics of the W15.

“We’ve also worked hard to create a less draggy car, and to add performance in the corners,” he continued. “There’s also been some housekeeping on areas in which we had room for improvement including the DRS effect."

All this work has had a direct knock-on effect in terms of budget, with team having to ensure it doesn't breach the annual cost cap.

"The cost cap does force you to pick and choose your battles," Allison admitted. “A new chassis and a gearbox were standard for every year, pre-cost cap, and there'll be several other teams who have done both things in a single year.

"There's no doubt that having a new outer casing as well as at the same time as having a new chassis are two big projects that are going to take a chunk of our available firepower.

“It does mean that in other parts of the car we have not tried to reinvent the wheel, but it's allowed us to undertake a couple of big projects without breaking the bank.

"We believe that this is a good and important use of our efforts [so] that is what we have done this year."

Elsewhere, pitstop performance has also been sharpened up. “We were always very good at delivering a pitstop in a repeatable time, which is the key thing for a pitstop," Allison said.

"The repeatable time that we could do our pitstops in was still three to four tenths slower than the best teams though, so hopefully we will have moved in the right direction there.”

Whether the overall package will allow Mercedes to get back in contention with Red Bull and stay ahead of Ferrari remains to be seen, with official pre-season testing in Bahrain next week the first chance to compare and contrast.

"We feel like we have had a good winter, but F1 is a relative game and only time will tell how big a step we've made.

"We're focused on getting the most from the car we launch, but we are excited by the development race that will follow as the regulations are still young and opportunities abound."

I believe the previous two years were necessary for us to readjust, recalibrate and reinvent ourselves in certain areas," contributed mercedes team principal Toto Wolff.

"We've made progress and look forward to taking the next step with the W15. It won't be a linear path, but when we stumble we will get back up and keep climbing."

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