Mercedes’ esteemed technical director, James Allison, the true advantages of the recently introduced front wing will become more pronounced during the upcoming Hungarian Grand Prix.
The Mercedes team made significant modifications to the front wing of their W14 black arrow, altering the distribution of chord elements and refining the endplate profile.
These adjustments were aimed at optimizing the airflow around the car’s bodywork and floor, leading to improved performance.
Despite an impressive podium finish at the British Grand Prix, the debut of the new front wing did not deliver the anticipated level of performance as initially expected.
In a video shared on Mercedes’ official YouTube channel, Technical Director James Allison delved deeper into Lewis Hamilton’s insightful comments, shedding light on the strategic significance of the revised wing and its anticipated advantages in the upcoming race in Hungary.
“The new front wing, of course it’s designed to make us go faster, that’s why we do all our things,” Allison said.
“But the specific characteristics of this new front wing that we’re excited about is it should improve the balance and performance of the car through the slower range of the corners.
“Now, Silverstone is famous for lots of things, but lots and lots of slow corners is not one of them. So what we took as a comfort from Silverstone is that in the slower parts of the track we were looking pretty decently competitive.
“So that’s a tick in the box for this new front wing.
“I guess it will only be when we get to Hungary, which is a track made up almost entirely of slower stuff, that we’ll get to know for sure.
“But early signs are promising, the new front wing seems to do what we expected, and hopefully it will bring us more at tracks which have a wider range of slow corners.”
In the face of a widening performance gap with Red Bull, some may raise doubts about the rationale behind extending the development program for a car that struggles to keep up.
However, Mercedes remains committed to implementing further updates, and James Allison shed light on why the Brackley team is not simply wasting their resources.
“There’s still plenty more development to come in these cars,” he said.
“All of the teams will, of course, be turning their attention to next year and that will sort of de-fang all of us a little bit in terms of the rate at which we can improve our cars.
“But for each of us, and for us absolutely, there are improvements that we would like to make on the current car that we know we’ll also carry into next year.
“So it doesn’t feel like sort of throwing good money after bad. It feels like you’re investing in both seasons with those upgrades.”
