THIS is the car Mercedes hope will win Lewis Hamilton a record eighth Formula One world title.
The W12 has been designed as an evolution of last year’s model, which won Hamilton 11 of the 16 races he entered in 2021, taking 10 poles and 14 podiums.
However, this year, there have been attempts from the sport’s rulemakers to slow him down and strip him of downforce.
Here, James Allison, the Technical Director of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, takes us through the changes.
What are the biggest challenges for the upcoming season?
“Without a doubt, the biggest difference is the introduction of the cost cap. This new rule requires us to manage our resources very judiciously through the year.
“We won’t be able to fly through the season introducing update after update any more, but instead will have to bring a more limited number through the year, making sure that we spend our cost cap dollar as wisely as possible on our upgrades.
“We also have some significant modifications to the aerodynamic regulations for this year, plus new tyres and changes to how much we’re permitted to use the wind tunnel.
“All these things stack up to be quite a big change, very far from the carryover year that it was expected to be.”
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What can you tell us about the new car? What has been the main focus of development for W12?
“By far and away the biggest area of technical development has been adapting to the new aerodynamic rules.
“2021 brings a profound set of changes that affect the performance of the floor. If you’re looking to slow a car down, which is effectively what the regulation changes were intended to do, modifying the floor is by far the easiest and cheapest way of achieving your objective.
“The floor is such an important aerodynamic component that small geometrical changes bring large reductions in performance.
“Once the rules had been established, our task was to figure out how to recover the losses brought by the changes.
“The rest of the aerodynamic work has been the normal fare of seeking out aerodynamic opportunity across every square centimetre of the car with particular attention to finding places where we can invest extra weight into fancier aerodynamic geometry.”
There are four major aerodynamic changes. What’s the first key aero change?
“I’ll explain the triangular cut-out on the edge of the floor first. This is located just in front of the rear wheels, reducing the area and shape of the floor.
“It may not look like a big change, but the way the floor and the rear wheels interact is critically important to the performance of the car. So, removing this part of the floor has a big impact on downforce.”
