How Mercedes is pushing for perfection with W10

Given that it has won the Formula 1 constructors' and drivers championship for the past five seasons, you might think Mercedes would get a bit blase and over-confident - but that's not what I am seeing. What I see is a team pursuing perfection.

Over the past couple of seasons, Mercedes has struggled with cars it described as 'divas'. But it has managed the car more times than it didn't and will have learned a lot from doing so.

While Williams and Renault are struggling to get their cars together in time for a pre-test run, Mercedes made it out for a shakedown at Silverstone five days before the main Barcelona test begins. These few laps will put it ahead of anyone who doesn't do a shakedown, and give Mercedes the chance to check out the car's systems (and, if anything is questionable, react to it and hit the ground running in Spain).

These details make Mercedes stand out. The team understands its processes and planning, and monitors and reacts as required. If you can do that with the simple car build, you can also do it with performance work. That's what's led to Mercedes winning championships; it's not just about having a better car, but also knowing what it has to achieve and then not stopping until it's done.

Since the regulation changes for 2019 are limited to the front and rear wing, bargeboards and brake ducts, I don't think we can use the word 'aggressive' to describe this car - or any of its title-winning predecessors. Mercedes has the knowledge of what is required and how to optimise everything and make it work together.

The front suspension is typical of this. Mercedes wanted to have a raised lower wishbone with the steering trackrod in line with the forward leg of said wishbone, and to achieve that and get a sensible suspension geometry it needed to raise the top wishbone and bring it inside of the wheel and tyre. It did this very well for 2018, and for '19 has taken that concept further. If you look at the wishbone and front brake duct they leave a massive open space below them to allow maximum airflow through to the bargeboards and leading edge of the floor.

The devil is in the detail, and Mercedes looks like it has focused on this in abundance. The wing mirror mounts and the detail around the airbox intake and headrest are, including the halo, a work of art.

The front wing is the main area for regulation changes and Mercedes has the maximum allowable five elements taking up most of the allowable area.

The bargeboard area on the Mercedes has always been one of the most intricate design packages that I have ever seen

Each flap section reduces slightly in chord length, so controlling the inevitable airflow separation will be easier and more consistent. The endplates are simpler with the customary tunnelled foot, which works in conjunction with the airflow being displaced by the front tyre as it rotates onto the track surface. This helps reduce the leakage that would normally reduce the performance of the front wing.

The inboard ends of the flaps sweep downwards. This will dilute the pressure differential between the upper and lower surface of each flap, which in turn will reduce transverse airflow. It will also contain the vortices generated where the this section of the wing meets the FIA-defined central section.

Mercedes retains its narrow nose with the platypus panel underneath it. It looks like it has added more detail to it on the other front corners where it sets up vortices to work in conjunction with the bargeboards, helping to seal the sides of the underfloor.

The louvres in the floor in front of the rear tyre are retained, so that area is working similarly to last year. The vortices generated in the region are critical to diffuser performance.

The bargeboard area on the Mercedes has always been one of the most intricate design packages. It's difficult to see in detail with the images of the car we have so far, but I'm sure it is just as intricate on the W10. This is one of the areas that has been altered in the regulations for 2019, and overall it's a very powerful component for producing downforce.

The rear wing endplates are also novel in that much of the lower part of them is 'missing' or at least not in place yet. In an effort to get closer racing the rules were changed to eliminate endplates that created lower vortices, which were seen as detrimental to the performance of a following car. But the very clever engineers usually find their way round the regulations.

Another change has been an increase in allowable fuel capacity up to 110kg. For the most part Mercedes has had the best engine performance since the hybrid units were introduced in 2014, but that record is founded upon continuous improvement and Mercedes has come up with a new package to make best use of that extra fuel. This is something else to worry the likes of Ferrari and Red Bull.

In the end the stopwatch will tell all. But from what I can see, a combination of this package and a Lewis Hamilton who just seems to get better and better means it's down to the others to produce something very special to beat them.

Jake Boxall-Legge on the W10's unusual details

No disrespect meant to the other teams, of course, but this is probably the launch that most of us have been looking forward to. Over the past five years Mercedes has been absolutely relentless.

It's also been the best team at adapting to rules changes; as Brawn, the team transitioned into 2009's rules revamp and famously won. In 2014, Mercedes hit the ground running in the turbo-hybrid era, and in '17 it managed to stave off Ferrari under the new aerodynamic regulations.

Of course, there's another rule change afoot this year. So is the W10 going wield the kind of magic that turns five years of dominance into six?

Thankfully the car isn't turned out in the aquatic camouflage livery in which parts of it were teased online. The first of those teasers featured the front wing, and there's a fair bit to talk about here. The wing elements are probably the most neatly sculpted elements we've seen so far and, like Renault, Mercedes has eschewed the split mainplane design and opted for five distinct wing elements either side of the neutral section.

These elements together are distinctly spoon-shaped, curving up towards the inboard section. In conjunction with the raised section at the inboard parts of the mainplane, this ensures a tighter formation of the inboard vortex to be fired over the rest of the car.

The nose section continues from the previous two cars, using a thin nosecone with the 'cape' section underneath, which creates a further underbody vortex and helps to negate the effects of lift at this point.

Perhaps most saliently, Mercedes has decided to break with a trend prevalent in the previous series of launched cars. The trailing edge of the front wing endplates fold inwards, which almost seems counterproductive in clawing back the outwash lost in 2019's ruleset. Looking back at 2009, when the first breed of wide front wings were brought in, Renault and McLaren both emerged in testing with inwash wings, completely missing the outwash trick that the remainder of the field had picked up on.

Of course, we wouldn't expect such a gross oversight from a team as dominant as Mercedes. This could potentially be nothing more than a red herring, but could also be a different approach to directing airflow outboard; in combination with the flap adjuster on the top element, it could potentially act as a nozzle, in effect creating a jet of airflow and pushing it outboard. The team also has the temperature sensor attached to the inside of the endplate, along with a conventional footplate.

The chassis bulkhead offers a much more smooth transition from the front nose section to the flanks of the car, looking slightly wider than last year's car. The suspension geometry is a development of the W09's, retaining the raised mounting point for the top wishbone, while the S-duct remains to keep airflow attached over the bulkhead.

The innovative rear wheel hubs from last year's car make a return

Despite the lower bargeboards, the team has retained the complexity in that area. It features an array of small turning vanes and cut-out sections in the main bargeboard body in order to offer plenty of control in such a crucial area of the car, turning airflow around the face of the sidepod inlets and around the floor, which has extensive slots and cuts to develop a seal effect around it.

There's also the retention of a downwards-facing flick before the inlet, essentially managing any turbulence from the suspension components and directing it downwards.

Around the inlet, the winglets and flow conditioners are mounted at the most extreme positions allowed, and feature a number of different elements to develop greater control over the airflow in this section of the car. The mirrors, like those seen on the Haas and Toro Rosso, are twin-mounted and positioned further along the sidepods.

Again, Mercedes breaks the current trends, integrating a very tight pair of sidepods with conventional inlets; the team had experimented with the high-positioned Ferrari-style inlets, but has reverted this year.

Evidently, the team's designers have found an increased level of performance with a more conventional set-up, suggesting that the new Mercedes engine has a reduced cooling requirement too.

Bodywork continues to be tight, and Mercedes has persisted with the split airbox inlet - which feeds air to the engine but also diverts cooling to the other ancillary power unit components. There's also a pair of little T-wings at the rear - one attached to the shark fin, with the leading edges angled forward, and the other situated between the swan-neck wing mounts. This is an unusual case of a trend from elsewhere that Mercedes has actually bought in to.

The rear wing is particularly bold, and features the overhanging strakes in the endplate that the team used to great effect last year - the drivers reported greater stability at the rear after their inclusion.

The slots on the leading edge pick up airflow off the suspension components, and Mercedes has abandoned the raised mounting section from last year's design and fallen in line with Ferrari's interpretation of curving the top wishbone.

Although obscured by black paint, the innovative rear wheel hubs from last year's car make a return, featuring raised sections and spokes in order to improve the heat dissipation from the overall wheel assembly. This helps to manage rear tyre temperatures.

Unlike a couple of the previous launches, the W10 is already testing in this configuration, and we can be certain that the vast majority of the features seen will be on the car in pre-season running at the very least.

Mercedes' designers have ensured that the key features from the title-winning cars of the past couple of years have been kept in the mix. But they're not afraid to innovate and try new configurations - even if it means bucking trends.

It's a philosophy that's worked over the past five years. Will it work again?