Mercedes F1 to take significant updates to Austria

Lewis Hamilton in the superior Mercedes

Can we just say it now – Lewis Hamilton will be 2020 F1 champion. His superior Mercedes F1 car was unbeatable before, and now Mercedes hopes to have significant updates ready for its cars when the Formula 1 season commences with next month’s Austrian Grand Prix.

“If you imagine where the launch car was and the car that would have gone to Australia, that was frozen around about Christmas," said Mercedes Technical Director Allison in a team social media video.

“There was the whole of January, whole of February, March, all making the car quicker in the wind tunnel and also in the design departments.

“We got quite a lot of ideas about how to make it quicker, and quite a lot of those ideas were already in process through the design office before we were forced to shut down nine weeks ago.

“Our challenge now is to make sure that quarter of a year of development can get off the drawing boards and onto the car as swiftly as possible.

“We hope to have a chunk of that for the first race in Austria, and the season that follows will of course take as much of the development as fast as we can get it onto the car in turn."

Mercedes has won the last six drivers’ and constructors’ championships, and Valtteri Bottas was fastest in both pre-season tests in February of this year.

“Although it might feel distant to all the fans of the sport who are hungry for that on-track action, the first race in Austria feels desperately close to us," he explained.

“So we’re utterly paranoid now, to use the few weeks we have ahead of us to make sure that the interruption doesn’t throw us off our normal balance and poise, and that we do get everything back up to the sort of ramming speed that we had at the end of winter testing and prior to the first race of the normal season.

“So, all of our efforts are around ramping that back up, turning all the systems back on and making sure we’ve blown away all the cobwebs and that we’re fighting fit and good to go by the time we hit Austria."