On Thursday Mercedes launched the W09 - the car to be raced in the 2018 Formula 1 World championship by Lewis Hamilton and teammate Valtteri Bottas - with most of the new bits and pieces more under the skin than clearly visible to the naked eye.
The car got a shakedown early on during the team's promotional filming day at Silverstone with Bottas at the wheel. Afterwards, the team revealed the car online with Mercedes F1 chief Toto Wolff present along with the drivers.
Sentiment from F1 fans across the social media platforms was positive, many praising the car's good looks, with Bastian C. Atzger writing on Facebook: "If the car's performance meets its looks, the championship will stay in the hands of Mercedes-Benz."
Mercedes start the season as favourites thanks to their remarkable four-year run in which they have won eight F1 world titles. The W09 is the weapon they are counting on to bag ten titles in five season come the end of this year.
Superficial inspection reveals that the W09 has the following new aspects:
- Revised front suspension.
- Reinforced wishbones has strengthened the rear suspension
- The airbox now splits into four instead of three channels while the cooling holes on the side boxes have become narrower and slit-shaped.
- The rear wing is supported by a central stilt with a winglet attached.
The livery remains very similar to last year's edition and first impressions are that the car is an evolution of it's predecessor the W09 hence very similar in appearance.
Toto Wolff, Team Principal & CEO of Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, said ahead of the launch, “It is always a very exciting time because what has been designed is coming together and coming alive. It’s never going completely seamlessly or smoothly when you’re trying to push the boundaries. We’ve had a good winter, I would say, no real drama. But it was a lot of hard work for everyone in the team.”
“The winter is intense,” continued Technical Director James Allison. “The planners have got thousands of lines of plans to deliver on, the design group have got to deliver several hundred new designs per day in order that they can be made.”
“The test and development group and the team running the dynos have to stand ready as the pieces come in hot from the machines, to assemble them and put them on all the in-house testing kit. This allows us to be reasonably sure that everything is strong enough and has the right shape and will perform reliably.”
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