Mercedes technical director James Allison says the team’s new W11 has adopted some design elements seen on rival cars but also features “adventurous” innovations.

The team has worked on “every square millimetre of the car” in pursuit of improvements, said Allison, and made major changes in three areas.

“At the front we have accepted more structural complexity around the uprights and wheel rims in order to provide a higher performance assembly overall,” he said.

“In the middle of the car we have followed the pit lane trend by moving our upper side impact tube to the lower position and banking the aerodynamic gain that comes with this layout.

“At the rear of the car we have gone for an adventurous suspension layout in order to free up aerodynamic development opportunity. All three investments were improvements in their own right, but their real effect is to mobilise a raft of secondary aerodynamic gains both during the winter and, we hope, across the season to come.”

Last year Mercedes ran their new car in a basic aerodynamic configuration at the start of testing, then introduced a raft of new parts in the final week of running before the first race. Allison said the team does not intend to do the same this year.

“We will be more conventional this year,” he confirmed. “We will still have upgrades for Melbourne that will come in the second week of testing, but the entire new car approach of 2019 won’t feature.

“Last year, the regulations were changed quite significantly, and they were decided quite late in the year. Under those circumstances, doing a launch car and a week two car gave us the chance to build the maximum amount of learning into our Melbourne car.

“With the regulations being more mature this year and with the opening stab of the 2020 development already being at the same level as the finish of last year’s car, repeating last year’s approach would not make sense.”

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2020 F1 season