Latest Updates Which Make the Mercedes F1 W11 Better Than Ever Before

Mercedes F1 has focused on improving the cooling package of the W11. And the update will allow the engine to deliver high performance even at high temperatures.

A year ago the car had some cooling issues that the group couldn’t completely address during the season. And it was difficult for the car to move through ‘dirty air’ due to confinement with the radiator capacity.

The problem was particularly visible at the Austrian Grand Prix when a blistering hot climate compromised the performance of the car significantly. There were a few cooling issues during other GP’s as well.

Mercedes F1 technical director James Allison said “We’ve improved the cooling package,” “it won’t cost you except a little bit of weight.”

And explained the new radiator design with more face area to increase capacity. He also said that this update wasn’t possible last year. Because changing the whole radiator design would have cost the team a lot of penalty points.

He appreciated the efforts put by HPP in his statement.

“We’ve benefitted a lot from an investment that HPP [High-Performance Powertrains, Mercedes’ engine division] made on our behalf.”

Statement From The HPP Boss

The team’s engines are manufactured by sister company HPP, High-Performance Powertrains, Mercedes’ engine division.

And in a recent interview HPP boss, Andy Cowell talked about the new developments for 2020. Cowell said that the aim is to make the engine side of the team stronger. So it could empower the chassis side as well.

He said, “As Power Unit engineers we don’t simply concentrate on crankshaft power. Additionally, we focus a tremendous amount on the packaging. And reducing the overheads for the aerodynamics team. So that they can mainly focus on keeping the car planted through the corner.”

“We are concentrating on understanding the reasons, the quality issues that we encountered and we are working hard to make sure we have got robust containment in place based on the root cause of those issues.”

Mercedes F1 in the Hybrid Era

Hybrid engines have been around for a number of years. But no one has seen as much success as Mercedes F1. The team won the driver’s championship as well as the constructor’s every year since 2014.

Mercedes F1 engines are known to be highly reliable. Last season the team did face a few minor issues. But still finished the season without any penalties.

Although this season will be a bigger challenge. As it will have twenty-two races. Which makes eight races per power unit. So, the increase in the number of cycles that all hardware needs to do. Puts an even bigger emphasis on reliability.