How Mercedes ambition produced the fastest F1 car ever

264.362km/h. That's 164.267mph for those who like to keep it imperial. Formula 1 cars travel faster in a straight line, but that's only part of the picture: the true measure of a car's performance is how much speed it can carry through the dips, climbs and curves of a full lap.

On 5 September 2020, Lewis Hamilton's qualifying lap of Monza for the Italian Grand Prix - 1m18.887s, 264.362km/h - set pole position and established the Mercedes W11 as the fastest grand prix car of all time. All this after the FIA had tried to put the brakes on the W11's dominance by banning the use of special engine modes during qualifying - because the W11 had more tricks up its proverbial sleeves.

Since the governing body regularly acts to keep car performance in check, F1's hallowed speed record is seldom broken. Hamilton's Monza lap edged past the previous best (263.587km/h) set in 2018 by Kimi Räikkönen in a Ferrari at the same venue. Until that point Juan Pablo Montoya's record of 262.242km/h had stood since 2004, from the peak of the screaming 3-litre V10 era.

We're conditioned to expect successive generations of F1 car to get faster, but the truth is they often don't. Some innovations are outlawed. Cunning circumventions of the rules are forced back into the box.

Teams might decide a particular car concept is running out of development runway, then over-reach looking for the next big idea. A rival's performance spurt might push a pressured design team into loading their next car with untried new ideas which don't pay off. All these pitfalls await from one year to the next. Indeed, the fastest Ferrari around Monza in qualifying for the 2020 Italian GP was 1.1s slower than Räikkönen's 2018 lap time.

How Ferrari pushed Mercedes to new heights

Mercedes has won every drivers' and constructors' championship double since 2014, but maintaining that dominance has been a challenge in itself. Earlier this year team principal Toto Wolff said the pressure had grown too much for some staff and had led to departures - particularly over the final third of the previous season when Ferrari appeared to have usurped Mercedes' pre-eminence.

Given Ferrari's miserable performance since the FIA imposed new powertrain-monitoring measures this season, that eminence appears to have been fleeting and built on dubious foundations. But nobody at Mercedes could have known that for sure during the W11's gestation period.

"I don't think that many people left," says chief designer John Owen. "It's not in our way to quit.

"You can consume yourself quite quickly, worrying that something needs to be done [about other teams circumventing the regulations], when in reality it's outside your control if somebody else is doing something and getting away with it. Well, you can complain about it, but in the end it's outside your control.

"At the end of last year, and going into this season, we felt that we just had to be even better. And that is in your control - to be better. We looked at everything we could do. The W10 was already pretty good, and we tried hard on that."

"One change that's very noticeable is that we've lowered the side-impact structure for the first time. We were the only team not to have done that [until now]. Again, this was one of those discussions - it's a bit better, but is it worth it? We decided to just go ahead and do it because we needed every last bit" John Owen

"At the time the W11 was conceived," Owen continues, "it was at the height of us losing races [Ferrari won in Belgium, Italy and Singapore, and had pole position in Russia before the drivers fell to squabbling]. There were ideas we'd had sitting around for a while which were pretty radical.

"It might sound strange that teams don't do every single thing they can - but there's a balance, because if you open too many projects it's very easy to end up worse off. If you don't deliver something particularly well or things don't work out, your whole organisation is distracted trying to fight fires and problems.

"I think, at the end of that mid-2019 period, we could see the aerodynamic developments beginning to dry up a little bit. We sort of forecast that forward into 2020 and said, 'Do we think that's going to be enough to close the gap?' And the answer was we weren't sure it would be, so we then decided, 'Well, we've got nothing to lose. We've got to go for everything we can do.'

"Then in Austin the Ferrari was pegged back and we had a very comfortable end of the year - so then we thought, 'Hang on. Now we've locked all these exciting things into the W11 and we've got to deliver them.' Which at that point we hadn't done. They all came good in the end but there were some pretty big challenges in the car, and a few things were a bit worrying at times."

Lock-ins make for late nights

While Owen won't elaborate on the detail of what those "exciting things" are, the existence of the Dual Axis Steering (DAS) system and an aerodynamically optimised rear suspension layout - described by technical director James Allison as "extremely adventurous" because of its structural implications - are known. Both are examples of innovations which, once the team has committed to pursuing the concept, require many other areas of the car to change, even if the outer surfaces look similar to the previous model.

"It's a cascade of changes," says Owen. "You adopt one thing which knocks on to the next thing and so on. It involves everything being redone and you think, 'Why on earth are we reinventing that bit yet again?' But you have to.

"Take DAS [illustrated below], for example. It required the steering column and power steering system to be redesigned. And that in itself caused the front of the cockpit to be laid out differently because some of the things which used to be there couldn't be there anymore. Things that were in the rear of the cockpit had to move to the sidepod, things that were in the sidepod then had to move elsewhere. It cascades everywhere across the car - even though you might look at the car and think it looks like it always did.

"One change that's very noticeable is that we've lowered the side-impact structure for the first time. We were the only team not to have done that [until now]. Again, this was one of those discussions - it's a bit better, but is it worth it? We decided to just go ahead and do it because we needed every last bit."

In 2017 Ferrari took advantage of then-new technical regulations to explore the aerodynamic benefits of mounting the uppermost spars of the side-impact structure further forwards and lower down, below rather than above the radiator inlet. This enables the whole sidepod area to be slimmed down and yields a particularly aggressive undercut, while the radiator apertures are raised out of the worst of the turbulent wake from the front wheels and suspension.

Adopting an approach proved by every other competitor in the field is relatively low risk, but other areas of the W11 broke new ground and left no margin for failure. While the front suspension geometries were carried over from the W10, albeit with a few tweaks, the rear suspension was all new and based on theoretical aerodynamic gains. The lower wishbone is swept back and the two 'legs' are shaped at such a narrow angle as to be almost parallel; each is individually aerodynamically shaped to help speed the airflow in this vital area of the car. The faster the flow through here, over the top of the floor and diffuser, the more air is pulled through the diffuser, boosting downforce.

Mercedes has been innovative in this area before: the W09 and W10 featured unusual geometries and creative interpretations of the rules governing brake ducting. Having high and stable (or at least predictable) downforce at the rear imbues drivers with confidence; that's one of the reasons Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas are so evenly matched on single-lap pace, whereas Red Bull, whose recent cars have had markedly skittish rear ends, has one driver (Max Verstappen) who can live with that vice and a rotating cast of second drivers who can't.

Realising this gain on the W11 meant the Mercedes design team needed to find new ways to engineer the structure of the wishbones themselves and the areas they mount to - the gearbox and rear crash box - without adding too much weight. It's possible the gearbox problems Mercedes encountered in the first race of 2020 might have been an unforeseen consequence of the new design: the immediate cause was a build-up of electrical 'noise' which interfered with the sensors, but this was a knock-on effect of vibrations through the structure. Hence both drivers were instructed to avoid kerbs.

"I remember one of my colleagues being very worried at one point about the whole vehicle dynamics side of it and other things, and we had to assure him we'd be fine in the end" John Owen

"Of all the challenging things in the car," says Owen, "that was probably the most challenging. The DAS system, we always had a backup. We had a standard steering rack. So there was something you could reach for if it didn't come off, whereas once you commit yourself to the rear suspension design you're a bit stuck.

"And people might say, 'Oh, but you can always run the W10 gearbox.' Well, we couldn't because it was a different length. That meant you'd be changing the whole length of the car to run a W10 gearbox. To go backwards would have been really, really difficult.

"So that was one of the things where really we jumped in with both feet and had to make it happen. I remember one of my colleagues being very worried at one point about the whole vehicle dynamics side of it and other things, and we had to assure him we'd be fine in the end."

It's not (all) about the DAS

Among the innovations on the W11, the DAS system drew most attention during pre-season testing since it was both obvious (once eagle-eyed viewers had studied the on-board footage) and intriguing. Despite what the self-appointed tech experts who populate the internet and certain TV channels might say, its true function and performance value weren't immediately clear - even to other teams.

Rivals quickly realised, though, that to copy the system would involve jumping through the same design hoops as Mercedes had months before, during the W11's gestation; but at this point, wholesale relocation of important mechanical components might involve a new front-end concept, or a new monocoque. Hence, they lobbied to have it banned.

DAS probably contributes less in terms of lap time to the W11's margin of superiority over its rivals than the new rear suspension layout, or the other below-the-skin innovations. The fact that Mercedes went to the trouble of re-engineering the complete car to accommodate it shows how much pressure the team was under to produce something special for what was supposed to be the final season of the current technical regulations. 2020 should have been a tapering phase as teams looked towards the biggest shake-up in decades.

"As an engineer within Formula 1, you know that you're constantly innovating, constantly bringing in new stuff, the majority of which is not seen by the fans, because it's in small details," says Mike Elliott, formerly Mercedes' head of aerodynamics, and its technology director since 2017. "And I think James [Allison] said in an interview earlier this year that actually for him, the big innovation is in the process of what goes on behind how we develop the cars.

"That's where you really put most of your effort. Because if your methodology, your processes are better, you're always going to end up with a better product. If your effort goes into one-off components, then your competitors get to see those fairly soon.

"In terms of DAS, we're not silly - we knew people would see that and it would create a reaction. So in some ways that's really nice: for people to see a new chunk of innovation; for F1 that people are excited by it; and to see some kudos for those guys who develop a system that's seen as massively innovative. Whereas I think within Mercedes and F1 in general, you know how much innovation is going into everything - that it's just one part of the package."

How the pandemic shutdown came to Mercedes' rescue

Pre-season testing rarely delivers the complete picture of a car's competitiveness, for many reasons: teams don't necessarily go with the objective of setting fast lap times, and most are running aerodynamic parts which will be superseded by components already signed off but not yet built. But one potential weakness within the Mercedes package did emerge over the course of the two tests at Barcelona in February. Both Mercedes and its customer Williams had to make unplanned engine replacements owing to a mysterious glitch in the oil system.

Under the original calendar there was to have been two weeks from the end of testing to the first race of the season. Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, that became three and a half months - and it bought time Mercedes needed to troubleshoot its problematic new powertrain.

"That engine was in a lot of trouble at race one, as it would have been [Melbourne]. There was a problem they struggled to find out - and literally needed a day longer, which they didn't have. But then the season didn't start and they immediately managed to zero in on the problem" John Owen

"The engine [this season] is another step again," says Owen. "They [Mercedes-Benz High Performance Powertrains] felt a bit wounded, a bit beaten up, when it seemed we didn't have the best engine last year. They weren't happy with that, and they tried very hard. A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into the engine and a lot of nervous energy was lost over the winter.

"That engine was in a lot of trouble at race one, as it would have been [Melbourne]. There was a problem they struggled to find out - and literally needed a day longer, which they didn't have. But then the season didn't start and they immediately managed to zero in on the problem. That would have been quite painful for us if that had been the first race, and we're quite fortunate."

As well as tracing and solving the powertrain issue, Mercedes was also able to start the season proper with an upgrade which had originally been scheduled for the Dutch Grand Prix. The Melbourne spec never ran on track; even before the Australian Grand Prix was called off, the design team was rushing ahead with the upgrade so it could be signed off before lockdown forced the factory to close.

"With a massive effort," says Owen, "we managed to get everything out and released, ready to be picked up [and go into production] the moment people came back."

The sum of those efforts has been a level of dominance even Mercedes didn't expect - or, as Owen puts it, "we've got a bit more of a healthy margin than we thought".

"Is it the best ever car? It's the fastest-ever Mercedes, I'd go as far as saying that," he says.

And, having taken the risk of pushing harder than ever for the final year of the present technical regulations, Mercedes has earned what could prove to be double dividend now the new rules have been delayed until 2022.

Or perhaps not. While many aspects of the current designs will be frozen, to save costs, the FIA has announced a set of measures through which it aims to reduce downforce and slow the cars down.

The most visible changes will be to the floors of the cars, where various tricks aerodynamicists use to increase the pressure differential between the upper and lower surfaces have been axed: there will be no more slots running the length of the floor, and the surface area will be cut back so as to taper inwards from a point 1800mm behind the front axle. Detail changes include limits to the width of the fins on rear brake ducts and the height of certain diffuser fences.

The effect of these changes across the spread of the grid remains to be seen, but it's likely that 2020 will represent the performance peak of an era - rather like 2004, in fact. Come 2022, Formula 1 will embrace an entirely new genre of car. Will the new regulations shake up the competitive order and help topple Mercedes from its position of pre-eminence? Given the systems in place at Brackley and Brixworth, don't bet on it.

"We'll endeavour to do our best again," says Owen. "We're ready to make the best of it..."