Black Arrows
The 2020 season has been like no other, with the impact of coronavirus shifting the norm in every aspect of life. However, one thing feels like déjà vu, and that is Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula 1 team securing the Formula 1 constructors’ title, this one making them seven-time world champions.
That’s every year since the dawn of the hybrid car regulations in 2014, and the teams’ domination seems not to be yielding any time soon. Mercedes’ success is not thanks to one constituent part it has above the rest of the grid, it’s the combination of all the technology in the car, the drivers and the team’s gameplay all working in harmony to create an ostensibly unstoppable force when it counts.
The 2020 Mercedes Formula 1 racecar, the W11 EQ Performance (W11 for short), is built to the 2020 Formula 1 technical regulation set, which features very few changes compared to 2019. However, this didn’t stop Mercedes bringing significant developments to the W11 that see it adopt new philosophies in some areas when compared to its predecessor, the W10.
This philosophy shift, and the technical solutions that coincide with it, primarily revolve around central architectural modifications driven by the aerodynamic gains they yield. During testing at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya at the start of the year, Mercedes’ technical director, James Allison, described the development strategy: ‘For us, [W11] was all about trying to make sure we don’t run out of development steam on a package that worked pretty well for us last year.
‘If we had continued merely to add flourishes to the 2019 baseline, we would have found some gains, but in all likelihood diminishing returns would be kicking in by now.
‘We wanted to change aspects of the concept of the car – aspects that would be completely impossible to change within a season – to give us a more fertile platform for the new season [2020]. We tried to make a few well-chosen architectural changes to keep the development slope strong, even though the regulations are now a little bit longer in
