Mercedes is the latest team to lift the covers off their 2025 Formula 1 challenger, which they hope will end three years of mixed results and bring them back to the top.
The team has struggled with a car that often throws up dramatic performance swings, with their drivers often complaining that the balance changes too much between a Friday and Saturday on a Grand Prix weekend.
Mercedes would often find that colder track temperatures would suit them, but as soon as they would ramp up it would create problems.
Technical director James Allison says Mercedes’ ‘primary focus’ with the W16 has been to eliminate the ‘reluctance’ of the W15 to turn in slow corners and the problem they had with tyre temperatures throughout the season.
F1 technical expert Gary Anderson has spotted another area that Mercedes has ‘gone to town’ on compared to its rivals when analysing the car for The Race.
Mercedes has ‘gone to town’ on cooling for their 2025 challenger
Mercedes has been known for its ill-fated zero sidepod concept in 2022, which took the cooling package to the extreme. Red Bull attempted to make a similar copy for 2024, although made some tweaks to it as the season progressed.
Anderson has pointed to Mercedes’ new cooling inlets on the W16 as a key development area compared to last year, in an attempt to reduce the amount of drag it generates.
“Where other teams seem to have opened up their cooling inlets, Mercedes seems to have really gone to town on minimising its sidepod inlet,” said Anderson.
“It now has a very small more or less non-existent letterbox and the now common vertical inlet bleeding off the boundary layer from the side surface of the chassis.”
One problem that was also consistent throughout the season was both Mercedes drivers complaining about how hot their seats were, something the team attributed to a consequence of its aggressive cooling package.
Whether this solves the problem with even more aggressive inlets remains to be seen, although F1 teams will be permitted to fit new cooling measures when conditions are deemed extremely hot by the FIA from 2025.
Ferrari copies part of Mercedes rear wing
Ferrari unveiled their SF-25 last week at Fiorano ahead of pre-season testing, with former Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton taking to the track with Charles Leclerc to complete the first of their two permitted filming days.
The rear wing of the SF-25 is reportedly reminiscent of what Mercedes had last year, featuring slightly more tapered edges.
Ferrari has also made a key change to their front suspension for 2025, which puts them in line with rivals McLaren and Red Bull.
Both teams will be running their cars during pre-season testing in Bahrain, with Mercedes set to complete a filming day with their drivers before the official run of three days between February 26 and 28.
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