The potential pitfalls Mercedes is working to counter in 2021

The 2020-21 Formula 1 off-season has been like no other in the championship's recent history. After pulling off the remarkable feat of holding 17 races during unprecedented global disruption in our modern, hyper-connected world, attentions quickly turned to what comes next. But the way F1 teams have been preparing for the 2021 campaign, since well before the 2020 season came to a flat finish in Abu Dhabi, is rather unusual.

The main difference is that, in the wake of the agreement between the teams, F1 and the FIA from during the initial COVID-19 lockdowns, the 2020 car designs will be largely carried over into this season. There were subsequent tweaks to the arrangement, significantly involving changes to the car floors to reduce downforce levels by 10%, and a token system allowing some limited development, but the thrust remains essentially the same. The teams will be heavily relying on the work they did producing their 2020 challengers - and many of the mechanical parts these contained - for another year.

The design rules revolution that was supposed to be introduced now is, of course, postponed until 2022. But that doesn't mean preparations for the 2021 season are the same for everyone. McLaren has switched engine suppliers to return to being a Mercedes customer. It has therefore had to significantly adapt its chassis to fit its new engine, with team production director Piers Thynne saying the process means McLaren will enter the new season with "essentially a new car".

All the teams are also now operating under F1's cost cap, which stands at $145million for 2021. Some squads, such as Williams, were already operating under that ceiling, so have not had to alter their approaches, or indeed are considering plans to spend upwards towards the cap. But the bigger teams have had to make significant operations changes to comply.

The Mercedes squad can arguably be considered the 'biggest' team operating in current F1, given its large staff (approximately 950 people), three engine deals to supply other squads and, critically, its enormous run of recent success. All told, in addition to the seven world title doubles it has secured since the start of the turbo-hybrid era, it has won 102 races.

Factoring that sustained success - and, of course, not forgetting that 2021 follows a year where at times its car design achieved performance gaps to the rest of the field that have not been witnessed since the earliest years of the current engine formula - alongside the carryover requirement inevitably makes Mercedes the favourite once again.

"At this time of year we are just full of the anxiety and excitement of waiting to find out whether all this investment that we have made into the new car will indeed pay off" James Allison

And this why it was so striking to hear Mercedes technical director James Allison recently say: "If you are looking at this new season of 2021 and you are thinking it's just going to be a carryover of what we saw in 2020, well, don't be fooled by anyone who is telling you that."

"The work we've had to do has been very wide-reaching," Allison said in a video, released by Mercedes, explaining the scope of the 2021 rule changes. "And we hope we have done enough to stay successful. But as ever at this time of year we are just full of the anxiety and excitement of waiting to find out whether all this investment that we have made into the new car will indeed pay off."

Since it reached its current position as F1's all-conquering team, Mercedes has not made the cliched mistake of resting on its laurels. And, despite the impressive performance levels the W11 produced, the team did look vulnerable on several occasions last season, which cost it points.

There are potential pitfalls that all F1 teams must consider for 2021, and Mercedes has already publicly acknowledged the challenges it faces. Here we examine exactly what the team is worried about, and how likely it is that such stumbling blocks could bring down F1's current giant.

Will the floor aero rule changes be a significant factor?

"Probably the most intense and difficult thing for us is reacting to the aerodynamic changes that come for 2021," says Allison, firmly cutting to the heart of the matter.

Plans to change the floor designs were made in reaction to the awesome speeds reached by the 2020 cars. Although the current aero rules package has been in place since 2017, chassis and engine evolution, allied to the stable tyre compounds in 2019 and 2020, meant that the cars were reaching speeds and lap times that had not been achieved for many years. But with higher speeds came problems.

The FIA has a long history of stepping in when F1 cars reach an ultra-high performance level. That's for very good reasons, as modern tracks are graded via their safety status, and it's easier to rein in the cars than rebuild every circuit. It was for this reason that 2004 held on for so long as F1's lap-time high-water mark, because the rule that required drivers to run a single set of tyres for an entire race in 2005 was introduced in a bid to curb cornering speeds.

When this was removed a year later, the V10 engines had been replaced by V8s and, three years further on, the design rules were altered drastically to slash downforce levels, creating the criss-crossed slope that has led F1 to its current speed point.

After tyre failures rocked the British GP, as well as additional puncture problems at Mugello and Imola, the FIA stepped in. The decision was made with F1 to enforce alterations to the floors, as well as introduce reinforced tyre compounds for 2021.

The floor changes essentially scale back the intricate designs that had become prevalent in this area, with a triangular exclusion zone added here, where no bodywork can be placed between the back of the driver cell and a car's rear axle. The outlawed slots and perforated edges had a knock-on effect in helping diffusers (which have also been trimmed by 50mm for 2021 in a concurrent required change) generate downforce, because they prevented distorted air getting in.

Judging by the designs trialled by Ferrari, Renault and Haas late in 2020, small tapering curls could be introduced to try to replicate what the various slots and cut-outs were previously doing.

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"When you see it, you'll think, 'That doesn't look that big', but on its own in its rawest form if you just chop that area off your car it'll take about a second a lap away," Allison explains, regarding the triangular area of floor restriction.

There have been additional small rule changes regarding aero-generating parts that are more along the lines of what has been cut from the diffuser, as what Allison describes as "the little fins and flicks that were on the rear brake duct" must be smaller.

The toothy strakes applied to the bargeboards further towards the front of the car are also now banned. But it remains possible for the teams to make considerable changes to nose bodywork and associated fairings without needing to spend their critical development tokens.

The W11, on which the W12 will be mostly based, was without doubt the class of 2020 and can be considered the best F1 car Mercedes has ever produced

"The combination of those four effects [floor triangle, diffuser cut, brake ducts fin reduction and bargeboard alteration] in their rawest form - just cut-off and trimmed back in a way that the rules require - brings the performance of the car way back to sort of somewhere near 2019 levels," says Allison.

The challenge to recover the downforce loss is one of arguably the two biggest potential stumbling blocks that Mercedes (and everyone else) is navigating ahead of the 2021 season. Any team that can claw back the approximately one-second deficit, or 10% overall downforce loss, by developing the few areas of the cars that remain unrestricted by the token system will have an enormous advantage.

Mercedes remains in a very strong position approaching this design obstacle. For a start, the W11, on which the W12 will be mostly based, was without doubt the class of 2020 and can be considered the best F1 car Mercedes has ever produced. This is mainly because the team found a way to make such massive gains despite the rules remaining stable going into 2020.

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The main thrust of those stems from the good job Mercedes has done with its chassis designs as the turbo-hybrid era has progressed - it has been the case for several seasons (mainly since it traversed the 2017 rule changes so well) that the team's power prowess is not just the sole factor behind its success.

Will the new tyres remove old advantages?

As part of Autosport's 70th anniversary special edition, Mercedes chief designer John Owen said: "Most of the vices that we've ever had [in terms of car design] are about tyres." And it's worth revisiting this comment once again in the context of the new rubber being introduced for 2021.

The teams got to sample the new compounds Pirelli is producing - the first new tyres since 2019, after the teams rejected the ones that had been set for use last year - at the Portuguese, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi grands prix.

They are around 3kg heavier to incorporate the additional strength the rubber design now requires to cope with the higher speeds, although this is building on an existing approach rather than being all-new. Last year Lewis Hamilton estimated the new tyres would perform "like a second worse per lap".

It has long been recognised that the world champion holds a distinct advantage when it comes to in-race tyre management over his rivals, particularly team-mate Valtteri Bottas. This perhaps explains his initial pessimism regarding what were then prototype tyres, although his negative assessments were shared by many others, as it would be natural for Hamilton to seek to protect that advantage. After all, the negative driver feedback played a major part in the 2020 tyres being abandoned.

But it's the danger the tyre change represents for Mercedes overall that is the second of the two potentially most cumbersome stumbling blocks. And this is why we again refer back to Owen's point: failing to make the tyres work best is simply one of the biggest mistakes a modern F1 team can make.

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Mercedes even has a loud warning from the most recent F1 event - that defeat to Max Verstappen in Abu Dhabi, where a problem getting the best out of the soft tyres cost Mercedes in qualifying at a venue where track position is so crucial.

"These tyres will affect the way that the car performs and they affect the way that you have to design the aerodynamic platform and the way that you have to set up the car," says Allison.

"So it's been a big challenge for us to try and stretch out that testing data that we had at the tracks last year and to try and make as much as we can out of the tyre data supplied to us by Pirelli, so that we would be ready to really optimise the car around the characteristics of these new tyres."

During FP2 at the 2020 Bahrain GP, the team ran the prototype tyres for longer than any of its rivals, as it sacrificed its usual race preparation programme to gain additional understanding about the new rubber

Just as with the challenge to overcome the downforce loss, nailing the understanding of new Pirelli tyres is not a task to be underestimated. But, although its risk of messing up critical calculations is as high as other teams' - see its shocking underperformance in the early parts of the 2020 Turkish GP - Mercedes does have a major advantage it can rely upon here.

During FP2 at the 2020 Bahrain GP, the team ran the prototype tyres for longer than any of its rivals, as it sacrificed its usual race preparation programme to gain additional understanding about the new rubber. Again, this emphasises how big an advantage Mercedes still had at the end of last year, with the opening Bahrain race being eight rounds since the W11's last performance upgrades were added.

Mercedes also completed additional running that other teams did not in second practice in Abu Dhabi. In short, the team managed to make an early start on the critical work to make sure it nails the switch to new, stronger rubber.

Could smaller new challenges combine into a major obstacle?

Although the floor-design tweaks and the new tyres are the headline (of limited) changes for the 2021 cars, there are a few other areas where things will be different to 2020, even with the carryover requirements.

The first is that Mercedes' innovative dual-axis steering system has been banned, with the team's agreement, and will not feature on the W12. Mercedes even removed DAS from its cars during Friday practice at several of the late 2020 races, as it focused on preparing for life without it in 2021. When George Russell replaced Hamilton for the Sakhir GP, DAS was left on to allow the younger Briton the chance to get familiar with what Allison calls "an old friend".

Engine manufacturers are now only permitted to make one performance upgrade in 2021, which "really ramps up the pressure on the PU organisation to make sure that we get as much as possible from that single opportunity", says Allison.

Again, Mercedes has strong past form to call upon in this particular area, but it should be noted that Ferrari has overhauled its engine after its 2020 disaster, and Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff expects that "Honda will really step on the gas to compete for the championship in their last year as a manufacturer" with Red Bull.

Plus, the car minimum weight has been raised by 6kg compared to 2020 and now sits at 752kg. The heavier new tyres account for some of this, while the minimum weight of the power unit has also been raised by 5kg to 150kg, with some suggestions that this was in response to teams trying to find small, but expensive, weight gains by using innovative materials.

Mercedes, alongside the rest of the teams, has also had to work hard to ensure it is now in line with F1's new cost-cap regulations. In theory, this would be expected to have a minimal impact on car performance for 2021 given the carryover requirements, and because the cost cap only applied from 1 January this year, long after the teams started planning the adaptations of their 2020 cars.

But it's a critically important rule, and Mercedes, as one of F1's largest teams, has had to alter the way it deploys its staff to stay within the confines of the cost cap, which includes using its personnel in its recently created Applied Science division and considering entering additional motorsport categories in the future.

The team does not want to lose the staff that have created its stunning success. "That has been a huge body of work that has kept us really on our toes for a long, long time," says Allison.

Allison suggests Mercedes is viewing the clampdown on resources as a further chance to improve, by making it so that "the methodology and approach to those CFD calculations [and windtunnel work] are as valuable as possible"

The cost cap runs alongside F1's first handicap system for aero development, which, as the 2020 winner, impacts Mercedes most. For the first half of 2021 - there is a reset based on the constructors' championship order after 30 June - Mercedes is permitted to use 90% of the 2020 windtunnel allowance, while Williams can go up to 112.5% after finishing 10th last year. CFD tool usage, already heavily governed, is now restricted in a similar way.

For the same reasons as the cost cap, the impact this new rule could have on the 2021 competitive order should be minimal. But the sliding handicap scale alters rather dramatically from the start of next year, with the 2021 winner down to 70% windtunnel allowance and the squad finishing last up to 115%.

Allison suggests Mercedes is viewing the clampdown on resources as a further chance to improve, by making it so that "the methodology and approach to those CFD calculations [and windtunnel work] are as valuable as possible".

"We've tried to adapt our approach to this," he adds. "So, we mitigate and maybe even completely offset the effect of this reduction in the amount that we are allowed to use these fundamental tools."

Will the switch of focus to the 2022 rules reset impact Mercedes' 2021 chances?

The delayed major rules reset will be an important factor in how the teams approach their 2021 development campaigns. The carryover requirements make things easier but, given the remaining unrestricted aero development areas and the allowances within the token system, there are still gains to be found heading into 2021 and during the season's opening stages.

There will come a point, as is the case in every normal season, when resource allocation shifts towards the new design, and the 2022 cars are set to be so vastly different with their venturi tunnels and slashed overall downforce that it will be a key focus for every team. Even at the back of the grid, Williams is committed to continuing development for its 2021 machine, but wary that it must already plan backwards from the expected initial test dates in 2022 to make sure it does not miss any track running with the all-new chassis concepts.

The cost cap is an additional consideration in this area, because the decision to push the introduction of the new cars back means that much of the design development must now be done within 2021's limit. Had the new cars been brought through for this year, the teams would have had unrestricted budgets to design them alongside developing their 2020 challengers.

In theory, again, the cost cap limits the possibilities of bigger teams such as Mercedes gaining a significant advantage. That's really for this time next year, but it should be noted that the teams were not allowed to start aero testing their 2022 designs until 1 January 2021.

The danger for any team now is that it spends too much time and resources upon 2021, and not looking enough at the rules reset. This hurt McLaren and Ferrari as they fought for the 2008 championship with the 2009 reset looming. The team that gained most - Brawn GP from Honda's ashes - is of course now all-conquering Mercedes. Plus, the carryover requirements and token development restrictions act as natural limits to how much the teams can focus on 2021 in any case.

Could driver line-up uncertainty destabilise Mercedes?

Here we enter the realm of speculation, but it is worthy of consideration for one key reason: the Red Bull/Verstappen combination. On several occasions in 2020, Mercedes was hamstrung by Verstappen clinging to the front of races it was dominating, while the rest of the pack fell far behind. This serves to highlight what is at stake for Mercedes if it was to drop the ball towards Red Bull. Wolff also says that "Red Bull, with [Alex Albon replaced by Sergio] Perez, will be a much stronger opponent in terms of the constructors' championship".

The potential distraction that talks about another contract extension could create represents exactly the same circumstances that tracked Hamilton last season

On Monday it was announced that Hamilton had signed a fresh, one-year contract with the team for which he has raced since 2013. This ended plenty of wild theories regarding his immediate future, but the length of the new deal still stood out. Effectively, what Mercedes and Hamilton have done is agreed to kick talks about a longer-term deal down the road.

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Given the state of the world right now (and as was proved in 2020), alternative line-ups for unexpected reasons must be acknowledged as a consideration for Mercedes. It always remains possible that an unfortunate and shocking outside incident could prevent Hamilton's return even now his new deal is announced. But the potential distraction that talks about another contract extension could create represents exactly the same circumstances that tracked him last season.

So, there are real (if slim) risks that the driver line-up harmony that Mercedes has worked so hard to preserve since Nico Rosberg's departure could be jeopardised. If that unlikely scenario were to happen, expect Verstappen to pounce on any resulting weakness.

Why is Mercedes raising the risks to its dominance so publicly?

Mercedes' regularly repeated mantras are that after every win it resets to focus on the next race, and that it learns most from its defeats. There is a relentless focus on self-improvement and fostering team spirit. Its 'no-blame' culture is rightly lauded in the context of the staggering success it has achieved, and how a lack of this approach has cost other teams in F1's history.

Mercedes is also one of the most open and inviting teams in the F1 paddock, which explains why it produced Allison's video. It's simply a part of the winning formula - being open gives it further chances to learn when things go wrong.

By pointing out the potential pitfalls it faces even after yet another year of dominance, Mercedes manages to further cement its strong foundations. While it will be galling to some to hear talk of 'challenges' that will almost inevitably be overcome by what is a superb organisation, this diminishes the respect due to F1's greatest current team.

While its complex culture cannot be copied like a car development design, the lessons Mercedes provides with its attitude and approach should not be dismissed lightly.