SECRETS OF THE ‘MONSTER DIVA’
TEAM BOSS TOTO WOLFF famously described Mercedes’ fast-but-fractious 2017 W08 car as “a diva”. Recalling that sobriquet during the 2021 world championship run-in, Lewis Hamilton went a step further when discussing the challenges of taming the W12: “This one,” he said, “is a monster of a diva.”
For all that Lewis dominated the 2020 season, repeating the feat, even with a carry-over car, was never going to be easy. A budget cap, new limits on in-season development, a resurgent Red Bull, a new technical ruleset on the horizon, along with new aero regulations announced relatively late in the day – all these factors would conspire to render 2021 a most perilous tightrope act.
It was a period of change behind the scenes, too, as Mercedes technical director James Allison ‘moved upstairs’, handing the reins to former head of aero Mike Elliott, while Hywel Thomas embarked on his first full season at the head of Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains, after taking over from Andy Cowell in 2020. Daimler welcomed new investment from Ineos into the team and stepped down its shareholding to a one-third stake. To the outside world at least, the 2021 season would provide a test of the serial championship-winning team’s strength in depth, even if those at the coal face in Brackley and Brixworth viewed it as business as usual.
2021 would prove to be more challenging than Mercedes expected. In the early phase of the pandemic, when the introduction of the all-new technical formula was kicked down the road to 2022, F1’s stakeholders also agreed to a partial freeze on development between the ’20 and ’21 seasons, to be governed by a system of tokens. Teams were given a deadline of 22 July 2020 to inform the FIA of how they planned to
