Mark Hughes on the new Mercedes W14

Mercedes faces a difficult task this year as the team will try to bounce back from a poor last season and hope the new car will make it possible. The technical expert of the official site of the championship Mark Hughes analyzed what he saw today at the presentation of the W14.

Mercedes hopes the new W14 will inherit the virtues of the troubled W13, namely its ability to generate ample downforce at high speeds, but be spared from last year’s shortcomings that made it quite difficult for drivers to deal with , and they could not open her potential.

In the W14, many of the characteristic features of its predecessor are clearly visible: narrow vertical air intakes in front of the radiator, widely protruding lower edges on the sides of the car, as well as such an unusual solution as the protruding upper part of the structure protecting the car the driver in side impacts: at Mercedes it is used to direct the airflow over the side pontoons.

But the contours of the pontoons have become lower, their profile has been smoothed and flattened at the front, while their top surface has been extended towards the rear of the machine. If last year the connection of the side pontoons and the engine housing was invisible, then on the W14 these two areas are separated by a high air duct of the cooling system, which in some new generation machines resembles a gun barrel. This “cannon” sucks hot air away from the radiators and exits at the rear of the car on either side of the exhaust.

With this solution there is no need to have large slats on top of the side pontoons, which also serve for cooling, although these slats could probably be added for racing in hot climates.

Mercedes’ narrow side pontoons were dubbed “zero” last year and on the W14 they’ve gotten a bit bigger and extended to the rear of the car. At the same time, the route along which warm air is discharged from the radiators has changed significantly: for this purpose, the aforementioned “cannon”, which is located between the side pontoon and the engine housing, serves.

According to Mercedes technical director Mike Elliott, the team’s engineers wondered more than once last year if the concept of “zero” pontoons was wrong? Do I need to make significant changes to the design? But since such a move would have thrown the team far back, it was decided to make every effort to refine the existing chassis, especially since, as it turned out, such a problem as longitudinal build-up was not related to geometry.

Mercedes therefore did not follow the example of Red Bull Racing and Ferrari, but rather improved the car’s aerodynamics by making changes to the design of the underbody.

But the chassis has been significantly revised, which should help the team break out of the impasse it found itself in due to the characteristics of last year’s car. The most notable changes were made to the rear suspension, the design was completely changed, although traction remains the core of this unit.

While it was difficult to see this part of the car at today’s presentation, it was already possible during the first run-in at Silverstone. The purpose of the adjustments is to increase rear suspension travel, eliminating the need for unnecessarily harsh settings. Last year the team had to do just that to stabilize the work of the aerodynamic body kit, which was the main reason for the build problem.

If Mercedes was right in identifying the source of the earlier problems and managed to overcome them, then we can finally see the real potential of their unusual aerodynamic concept.