Technical analysis: Mercedes W06

Even at the end of its dominant 2014 Formula 1 season, the Mercedes W05 still had a huge margin over its opposition in race pace - so it's not surprising that the W06 officially revealed at Jerez on Sunday is very much an evolution of its predecessor.

So subtle are the changes that, aside from the mandatory new nose, the car is hard to differentiate from its forebear. But modifications have been made both to the chassis and the powertrain.

Last year's W05 featured several unique details on its chassis and aero design, from the car's U-shaped nose and clever conjoined front lower wishbones, to its tiny sidepods and huge 'monkey seat' winglet. The hybrid powertrain was equally unique, with its split turbo, compact exhausts and cartridge gearbox.

By mid-season the car was not only the class of the field in powertrain terms, but also on pure chassis performance, even with FRIC suspension being banned. Poor reliability was the only fly in the ointment, and brake, gearbox and ERS failures were costly.

With such a clear advantage, Mercedes has not needed to reinvent the wheel for its 2015 challenger, merely work on the details.

Some of the W06's features are simply reworked versions of the strong points of the old design.

As Paddy Lowe explained: "Every development you make has some risk - you can't move forward without some risk of potentially not getting it right. So we were very conscious of the point that we had a good car. We didn't want to throw any babies out with the bathwater, as we took steps to make developments."

The regulation changes mean differences in the nose and chassis front, as both the nose tip and sloped chassis of 2014 could not meet the new rules.

Thus a very slim and short nose has been developed, without the fully exposed fingertip of the Williams. Instead a slight point is the only clue to how the nose adheres to the revised regulations.

Mercedes' old nose used the front wing mounting pylons as part of the minimum cross section. With this not required, the front wing mounts return to a slender shape.

Atop the nose are the TV camera pods, retaining the pioneering idea from last year of mounting them high on right angled mounts to keep their obstruction clear of the rest of the car. Below the nose, the front wing remains in the late 2014 specification.

Now fully optimised for running without FRIC, the front suspension continues the other themes of last year, with the lower wishbone remaining as two legs partly blended in one profile.

For 2015 this conjoined shape has been taken to a further extreme. The narrow spread legs of the wishbone form a single profile but for a few inches near their inner mounting with the tub.

Mercedes does this in order to exploit the shape of the wishbone in controlling the front wing's upwash so it does not upset the rest of the car, in a similar manner to how Ferrari uses its front pullrod.

At the other end of the front suspension, the open inner wheel face is closed off with new brake ducts, their inner surface devoid of any inlet scoops.

Although this concept is not unique in F1, as other teams collect their brakes' cooling air from small inlets between the tyre and the front brake duct, this is a departure for Mercedes. This will greatly improve the airflow around the car.

Unlike several of its key rivals, Mercedes has not yet employed a duct hollow front axle to use as an aerodynamic aid. Instead the axle is topped with a pointed end to speed up the engagement of the wheel guns at pitstops

The other key structural change is the new rollhoop. Last year this was deeply undercut, with the roll structure supported by struts under the inlet. Now the area is less undercut and has been smoothed over.

Within this structure the inlet is now split, with the side inlets of the W05 removed. The bottom half of the inlet feeds the engine's airbox and the upper half feeds back towards the gearbox oil cooler.

Cooling improvements were a key area for development. The downsizing of both the rollhoop inlets and the sidepods show that work has gone into the power unit, lubricants and the coolers themselves.

Last year's car cooled the air from the turbocharger with a water to air intercooler, which sat in the back of the fuel tank area and its associated water radiator sat within the sidepod. This already made the sidepods smaller than they would be with a larger air to air intercooler, so this is likely to be one of the key joint developments between the chassis team in Brackley and the powertrain division in Brixworth.

Also new on the slimmed sidepods are the vanes mounted to the front shoulders. These are refined from 2014 and the horizontal vane gains its own vertical vortex generating vane.

Under the skin the Mercedes AMG power unit has been improved, by "evolution" according Andy Cowell, who added that it is a totally new engine, the 32 development tokens notwithstanding, given the breadth of what one token can encompass and due to the fact other alterations were allowed on the grounds of reliability. Major structural and layout changes can be achieved within what might be thought of as restrictive regulations.

For the Brixworth powertrain team, the focus has been on cooling and power, although the unreliability of the ERS last year will also have been attended to.

Aerodynamics at the rear appear to be more of the late 2014 season specification with the diffuser, rear wing and Y100 monkey seat winglet all being of familiar design. This is probably the area, along with the front wing, that will receive the late upgrades before the Australian Grand Prix.

Last year Mercedes was able to bring and race technical updates that performed as it predicted, so its testing schedule is likely to be centred on improving the powertrain's reliability, with the key developments yet to come.