MERCEDES W09

If it ain’t broke… well, it still needs fixing

“Every time we make a big change there’s always an opportunity to do things better. How can we make the flow in the exhaust pipes better? How do we make the cooling in the cylinder heads better? If we’re making changes, let’s refine all the good bits. You look and think ‘it’s only two milliseconds’, but you do it in ten places and it’s 20 milliseconds.”

This statement by Andy Cowell, chief whizz at Mercedes’ all-conquering engine department, exemplifies the attitude that has underpinned the team’s recent dominance of F1. Team boss Toto Wolff talks of the team motto: ‘See it, say it, fix it.’ Identify every area of weakness and destroy it – and while you’re at, make the good bits better too.

“What we do from a senior leadership level down is to blame the problem not the individual,” says Wolff. “Blame the individual and people clam up: you won’t see innovation, you won’t see risk-taking. We are in a risk-taking business.”

Nevertheless, chief designer John Owen says Mercedes deliberately built their 2017 car to 90 per cent of its design potential, to give the team room to react to unforeseen challenges. Last year’s W08 had the longest wheelbase on the grid, affording great stability on high-speed tracks, and offering the aerodynamicists plenty of physical space on which to place performance-enhancing parts.

Alas, too many of those parts had to be over-engineered, to prevent their disintegration. The car was thus too heavy and too hard on its tyres. Extracting performance also required engineers to “ignore a lot of what we thought were the standard ways of engineering a car and go off in the opposite direction,” according to technical director James Allison.

Despite these troublesome characteristics, which led Wolff to dub the car a “capricious diva”, it still set more poles and won more races than the rest. So the team have opted for an evolutionary approach for the W09, while working diligently to refine the concept and eliminate the inconsistencies.

The front suspension has been altered and the rear rideheight slightly raised to improve the car’s dexterity through low-speed corners. But nowhere is this process of refinement more apparent than in the incredibly tight packaging around the radiators and engine cover. This collaboration between chassis and engine departments has improved the car to the tune of 0.25 seconds per lap, according to Allison.

“Across the entire car, across every part of its surface, we’ve made it new,” he explains. “We have found improved ways of getting downforce and performance into the car. Each one of them is small in isolation, but they add up in their totality to something that is enormous.”

That’s the Mercedes way in a nutshell – endless refinement of thousands of tiny parts that adds up to one mighty whole.

F1 RACING VERDICT A MIGHTY AND RUTHLESSLY EFFICIENT WINNING MACHINE. INCREDIBLE EVEN .U WHEN CREAKING NSTOPPABLE WHEN WELL OILED.