Mercedes brought its planned Imola upgrade package to Monaco and, as promised, it looks very different to the original W14 with ‘zero sidepod’, early pictures taken in pit lane ahead of the race weekend reveal.
This is the first update the team has done from the perspective of accepting that the original concept of both the W13 and W14 were simply not competitive. As a consequence, there’s a limitation on what they’ve been able to do using the W14’s existing vat, which was designed around the now-discarded concept but can’t be changed this year.
The position of the cab and that of the side impact bars remain unchanged. That seems to have limited the amount of undercut Mercedes has been able to mold into the new sidepods. They are now much wider than before, and the narrow vertical intake of the radiators has been replaced by more conventional wide horizontal openings.
The upper side impact bar is still used as a flap, with an aero shroud around it that draws air to the edges of the floor. But the wide front of the sidepod is more Ferrari-like in its lack of channel undercut than what has become the classic Red Bull-like deep undercut.
So instead of channeling as much air as possible out the underbody sides into the coke bottle (and from there to the outlet of the diffuser), instead, necessarily because of the basic architecture of the tub, will remove it from the car. at the front of the sidepod, then using the shape of the bodywork at the rear to manipulate air pressure in a way that draws that flow in once more into the coke bottle section.
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Another significant change is to the front suspension, which appears to have a higher degree of anti-dive built into its geometry. This is defined by the difference in height between the front and rear upper wishbones. The greater the angle between them, the more anti-dive you have.
So far, we haven’t seen if the rear upper wishbone has also been mounted lower. The Red Bull RB19 uses an anti-dive angle of around 45 degrees. The previous W14 front suspension was around 15 degrees.
In theory, higher car squat resistance will allow the car to have a more consistent aerodynamic balance through the various stages of the turn and will help lower the car, which will increase underbody downforce.
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There are probably a lot more details of the Mercedes update that we haven’t seen yet and you would expect, for example, the geometry of the underground tunnels to be quite different.