Technical analysis: Mercedes W07

After teasing with blurry spy shots from the car's shakedown, Mercedes finally unveiled the detail of the W07, the car which it hopes will bring a third straight Formula 1 championship to the team.

While 2015's W06 was a subtle evolution of the all-conquering 2014 car, the new W07 boasts some more adventurous design ideas - notably the rollhoop, cockpit fins and sidepod shape.

Under the skin, the power unit specification that made its debut at Monza last year gets a winter upgrade and mechanical systems such as the suspension are also revised.

Mercedes has set the bar for the new formula power units - the PU106B boasted top end power, efficiency and strong ERS. However, the pack is starting to close the gap to Mercedes and a few reliability issues mean it can't be complacent.

The Monza spec last year completed a major combustion upgrade and the winter development has been able to focus more on ERS and the turbo. Although pictures have now been released of the 2015 engine, one wonders if there have been any layout changes to the power unit to boost chassis performance.

Like the engine, the chassis was one of the best on the grid, so aside from the eye-catching updates a lot of the car's design is based on last year's W06.

Mercedes previously ran a slim nose to divert more air to the front turning vanes and the nose on the launch car suggests the tip has been smoothed, but appears to hide an S-duct, an aero device common on new cars this year. The add-on panel that forms the deep pelican chin under the nose may ultimately be replaced by an inlet to feed the S-duct. The panel over the nose already shows signs of an outlet hidden under the paint.

The area under this panel also hides the inboard suspension set-up tested in prototype form late last year. This relieves the suspension of a conventional coil spring to manage the car's movement in pitch and instead solely uses a hydraulic spring element.

Also likely to change is the front wing, an area where Mercedes has been leading the field in shape and complexity. Taking note of the extreme 3D shapes exploited elsewhere on the car, we can expect the race-spec front wing to be equally shapely.

Aside from the regulatory changes to the cockpit padding and safety camera, the cockpit area sports a new aero device in the form of a short upright fin. This sits to the side of the cockpit template and is therefore allowed to be taller than the surrounding bodywork.

The FIA has previously banned more overt fins and wings from around the cockpit, but this much shorter device doesn't present a risk to the driver in an accident. This new placement of the fin suggests Mercedes has wanted to find a means to smooth the airflow around the slightly taller cockpit padding.

Behind the cockpit is the visual trick on the car: the rollhoop inlet is a large rounded shape. While this looks extreme, it is in fact just a pair of side inlets joined to the engine's airbox inlet to make a common inlet.

The structure forming the rollhoop is visible inside the opening and serves to the split the air path between the engine and the coolers mounted behind it. Quite why such a bulbous shape was chosen is unclear. It's unlikely to be a purely aesthetic change, so perhaps the conjoined inlets work better at cooling when the engine isn't on full throttle and more air can pass into the side inlets.

In recent years these top inlets have fed the ERS water cooler and the gearbox oil cooler. Mercedes was on the limit of cooling, such that last year in Mexico the car needed a larger one-off cooling package for heat and thin air. It's most likely that these side inlets are feeding an updated cooling system.

More sculpted shaping can also be seen on the sidepod fronts - not the inlets themselves but the bodywork above them. This is waisted in towards the front, wrapping tightly around the FIA-spec side impact beam. It's a shape reminiscent of Ferrari's sidepod treatment last year.

Further along the sidepods the top half is more bulbous, the lower half more undercut, before becoming typically tight at the rear of the car.

Exiting at the rear of the car is the new triple exhaust set-up, with one main exhaust pipe and two smaller pipes for the turbocharger's wastegates. It seems to be the standard set-up to have the two wastegate pipes below the main one. As these exhausts rarely get blown by the opening of the wastegate, they are relatively benign and are not used for any exhaust blown aerodynamic trickery.

As the car now heads into testing, Mercedes has decided to run the Melbourne specification from the start, so the temporary panels and bodywork seen on the display car can be expected to change quickly for more definitive designs when the car hits the track on Monday.

A year ago, subtle design evolution belied the improved performance from the Mercedes package. Even at the end of 2015 Mercedes enjoyed a significant pace advantage over its rivals, but they are catching up and the champion team will need to improve both reliability and pace to gain this year's crown. There are likely to be some weekends when the opposition is simply faster for the conditions than Mercedes.