This year’s Formula One season should bring fans a lot of excitement thanks to all the rule changes meant to make cars faster and even out the playing field.
Of course, we’ve already heard all about the winder tires, wider wings, and we’ve seen lots of renderings, plus even the real thing from Williams. However, here’s your chance to hear more details from Mercedes themselves.
Aside from the wider tires, track, front and rear wings, the changes open up whole new possibilities for engineers to extract even more aerodynamic performance from the cars.
Sure, the front wings for example will feature a somewhat pointy design just for aesthetic purposes, however the link between the wings and the tires will lead to an increase in bodywork width, improving downforce.
Then you’ve got the rear wing which is being repositioned further backwards and also lower, closer to the diffuser – which will also grow in size, from 125 mm (4.9 in) to 175 mm (6.9 in) high.
Also, for 2017, the area in front of the side pods will be “all freed up”, which means teams will be able to extract even more aero performance by coming up with new bodywork solutions for that particular region.