Small upgrades, big gains? Mercedes introduce a handful of new components at Imola
Mercedes have arrived at Imola with a batch of parts that they’ll install on the W16 as they look to tidy up some of the inefficiencies of their package and hunt down those ahead of them in the championship standings.
This is the first time this season that the Brackley-based outfit have declared multiple new parts too, with the team happy to use the parts first seen during pre-season testing almost exclusively throughout the first six races of the season, with the only exception being a new rear wing upper flap last time out in Miami.
Front end focused
The most far-reaching of the changes listed by Mercedes in the car presentation document is to the structure of the front wing and how it interacts with the nose, with the latter having been reshaped around the tip section to alter how it mates with the second flap element.
The tip section of the nose now reaches forward, ahead of the second flap and sits atop the mainplane, rather than helping to form the leading edge of the second element and thereby removing the slot that previously existed between the elements.
Meanwhile, the inboard portion of that second flap now has a much more pronounced leading edge, which has led to the proportion of the static section of the two upper flap elements behind also being adjusted.
The alterations made to the flaps have also resulted in a change of location for all of the front wing support brackets, such is the change in load path across the entire assembly.
The angle of this image also gives us a great view of how the outwash winglet array inside of the endplate and above the rearmost flaps has been designed to create outwash in conjunction with the lower endplate cut out.
The team have also modified the inboard section of their front suspension fairings, taking inspiration from their rivals, of which we’ve already seen numerous similar solutions already appear up and down the grid.
The upswept geometry of these fairings, both of which are the rearmost legs, will clearly have an impact on the flow conditions locally, which will not only have been influenced by the aforementioned alterations made to the front wing ahead of them but also improve the passage of the flow downstream.
This not only helps in terms of improving how the front tyre wake is dealt with but also helps with cooling and airflow performance around the sidepods and the leading edge of the floor.
In terms of cooling, there’s also some changes to the engine cover’s rear outlet, as they look for the right trade off between rejecting the heat being generated by the powerunit and associated ancillaries and the aerodynamic impact of increasing the size of the outlet.
It also provides the team with further options when it comes to the size and frequency of louvres used in the panel ahead of the rear outlet.
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