Will the Mercedes be without the bellies? In reality it seems not, because it will have sides but very, very small, indeed minimal. Tomorrow we will see the W13 which is so much discussed in the Bahrain paddock, but the revolutionary silver arrow is the result of an extreme design work that comes from afar and which perhaps had an “accomplice” team in Williams.
Doubt is more than legitimate because ours Giorgio Piola already in the Barcelona tests he had had the opportunity to underline that the Grove car adopted very thorough and at the same time refined technical solutions that were difficult to see on a car of a team that certainly does not have a top team budget.
It is true that Williams wants to leave the third band of the starting grid, aiming again for positions more in keeping with the team’s blazon and history, but it was difficult to think that it could be Brackley’s technological outpost, taking on the role that over the years last had the Racing Point and that seems to have lost when it became Aston Martin.
The team headed by Jost Capito must have benefited from the collaboration with Mercedes in the study and development of the FW44: the ground-effect single-seater curated by François-Xavier Demaison has already anticipated the ideas that we will also see on the new Mercedes in the Spanish tests.
In reality, the W13 that ran in Spain already had a layout of the cooling system similar to the one that will be unveiled tomorrow, but it was cleverly hidden by a less extreme and aerodynamically efficient body.
The Mercedes, therefore, will not have the two sloping roof radiators above the engine, as Williams showed us on the FW44, but has arranged them at the end of the frame, drawing a hole in the frame, so that it will be able to show two small radiant packs. on the sides of the passenger compartment enclosed in two very minimal sides, so much so that the upper anti-intrusion cone will remain uncovered and will be faired by a specific aerodynamic profile.
Mercedes W13
Photo by: Giorgio Piola
According to the indiscretions collected in Sakhir, Mercedes has enjoyed the excellent data collected by Williams to give the go-ahead to the extreme W13: the mechanics do not change much compared to the car that Lewis Hamilton and George Russell drove in Barcelona, but to be revised is the aerodynamic look that also required a review of the rear suspension.
Williams, therefore, has opened a path that has been taken to the extreme by Mercedes in a concept that cannot easily be copied from the competition and that could give the constructors world champion team a great advantage…
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