Mercedes follow Ferrari with Austria updates

With Ferrari set to introduce a new power unit and gearbox in Austria, rivals Mercedes are also ready to bring some updates to their W11 car.

Teams are putting the final touches together in preparation for the 2020 season finally getting underway at the Red Bull Ring in Austria on July 5.

Reports emerged earlier in the week that Ferrari are set to ditch the engine that, on the surface, appeared to fall flat in performance during pre-season testing the Circuit de Catalunya back in February.

It is set to bring an additional 15HP boost to the Scuderia power unit but, of course, other teams, especially their rivals, are not standing still either.

Mercedes technical director James Allison has said the team are ready to play catch up on the development of the W11.

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“If you imagine where the launch car was and the car that would have gone to Australia, that was frozen around about Christmas,” Allison said via Mercedes’ YouTube channel.

“There was the whole of January, whole of February, March, all making the car quicker in the wind tunnel and also in the design departments.

“We got quite a lot of ideas about how to make it quicker, and quite a lot of those ideas were already in process through the design office before we were forced to shut down nine weeks ago.

“Our challenge now is to make sure that quarter of a year of development can get off the drawing boards and onto the car as swiftly as possible.

“We hope to have a chunk of that for the first race in Austria, and the season that follows will of course take as much of the development as fast as we can get it onto the car in turn.”

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