Mercedes W16 uncovered: F1 2025 tweaks analysed ahead of Bahrain testing
Mercedes have released images of the W16 ahead of its first scheduled run in Bahrain, as the team look to shake down the car before really putting it through its paces during pre-season testing.
Both drivers will run through a designated programme to check all of the systems on the car during the shakedown, whilst acclimatizing themselves to their new machine, which has several new defining features.
Mercedes W16: Tying up loose ends
The W16 is the last car that Mercedes will design of this generation, with an all-new concept required for 2026, their focus this season has been on righting the wrongs of this car’s predecessors.
“Being the fourth year of these regulations on the chassis side, the cars are in the more mature phase. Big gains in lap time are harder to come by but we’ve been concentrating on making improvements in the areas that held us back last year,” explains Technical Director, James Allison.
And, whilst they clearly aren’t expecting to find big chunks of lap time from new and exciting design concepts, they have taken their time to tidy up aspects of last year’s car they weren’t happy with, whilst converging on some of the design solutions used by their rivals.
This begins at the front of the car, as the team have changed the length of the nose, with the tip now sat ahead of the second element but not drawn all the way to the leading edge of the mainplane.
The front wing is, at least at this stage, a similar specification to the one that the team closed last season out with, featuring a more evenly distributed chord height for the elements across their span, whilst the outer portion of the wing was also modified to improve its ability to generate outwash.
The suspension elements and fairings have all undergone visibly subtle adjustments when compared with the W15 but notably James Allison suggested the arrangement is new, suggesting there’s probably more changes made to the inboard elements, which are out of view.
The overall shape of the sidepods has been retained for this season, with an overbite, down sloping bodywork and a gentle waterslide all still prominent features. However, whereas Mercedes had opted for a P-shaped intake layout in 2024, the W16 features two intakes, similar to the layout preferred by Red Bull.
In this instance, Mercedes have opted for a much wider vertical inlet however, which has seemingly allowed them to reduce the height of the horizontal intake and rework the rest of the bodywork as a result.
The upshot of this is the undercut and waistline of the sidepod have both been tightened, albeit there’s now more of a pregnant underbelly, which appears to droop more in the central section of the bodywork before raising steeply again ahead of where it needs to drop down to the sloped rear portion of the sidepod.
The engine cover is also largely similar to last year’s design, albeit some of the topology has been adjusted to suit alterations that have been made to the position of the hardware.
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And, in this respect it seems Mercedes have perhaps opted for a slightly different direction to some of their competitors, with a wider and longer section behind the airbox, which gives way to a slightly shorter shark fin.
The remainder of the engine cover, including the down sloping outlet section is generally inline with what we’ve already seen from Mercedes last season, with the side saddle louvres also still intact on the high shoulder arrangement of the cover.
At the rear of the car there’s been rumours of Mercedes reducing the length of their gearbox and crash structure, with the suspension being similarly shuffled forward and all the elements being reorganised accordingly. But, with the limited shots available it’s difficult to see what a few millimetres of adjustment might look like, when compared with shots of last year’s car.
Perhaps we’ll get more answers on the this as we get more images to make those comparisons, which is a similar story when it comes to some of the other aerodynamic features, such as the floor fences, floor edge, edge wing, beam wing and rear wing, all of which are likely to change as the team looks for more performance.
All-in-all, there’s nothing ground-breaking about the changes made to the W16 but, that’s to be expected, given the troubles faced by the team with the lineage of cars they’ve produced during this regulation period. Much of the work that’s been done for 2024 appears to be in an effort to combat that, as explained by James Allison:
“Our primary focus has been on dialling out the W15’s slight reluctance to turn in slow corners, along with the imbalance in tyre temperatures that made the car inconsistent from session to session.”
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