How Mercedes went around the corner with its razor-sharp W12

It had to face the reality that new regulations seemed to be more of a hindrance to low-rake runners than their high-rake counterparts.

While compatriot Aston Martin continues to struggle to maximize its package, Mercedes has made significant strides with its car.

Because although Lewis Hamilton’s W12 was still referred to as a “knife edge”, the car has become noticeably more stable over time – and that has brought it closer to Red Bull.

The team’s development and setup focus was clearly on the rear of the car. The team evaluated two options for the rear wing during Imola’s Friday free practice sessions.

Both had slightly different levels of downforce, but perhaps more importantly, they had different support column designs.

This is not a new tactic for Mercedes as it has spent a good part of last season running similar tests to understand what tradeoff fits their qualifying and race requirements, which affects DRS.

Another area where the team wanted to improve their stability issues was a revamped strake design for the diffuser.

The layout of the strakes has largely been adopted from last year’s design, but with a lower 50mm cut to comply with the new regulations.

For Imola, however, a change was made to the secondary strakes line, swapping out the L-shaped design used in Bahrain for a full version (highlighted in green below).

Mercedes W12 diffuser comparison

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

In the meantime, the surface coating of the diffuser transition also appears to have been modified for the second race of the season, possibly to maintain flow and stabilize the performance of the central section of the diffuser.

PLUS: How the midfielders of 2021 learned lessons from F1’s top teams

Red Bull 2021 nose optimization

Red Bull spent a significant amount of its time battling a correlation problem early last season when it found its real-world performance mismatched with information from its simulation tools.

One of the key changes the team experienced during this phase was a change in the philosophy of the nose design, where the team switched to the almost universally adopted Cape solution.

The team alternated between a narrow and wide pillar mounting position during this time, but the rest of the assembly remained relatively unchanged.

After issuing its development tokens on the back of the RB16B, you’d be mistaken to think that the nose saw no action, but a sizable portion of the body was put on the cloak behind the nose box.

Once that section of the cloak is placed on the car, it slides in to meet the chassis. The new body fills part of the gap that the airflow would have filled quickly before.