Mercedes claims the new sidepod design on its W09 is worth around a quarter of a second alone and therefore, along with many other changes, it would wipe the floor in a race against last year's title-winning W08.
The new car, designed under the leadership of technical director James Allison, is favourite to head the field once again given its dominance last year and Allison is expecting a huge step forward from an aerodynamic standpoint alone, regardless of any power unit developments.
"We’ve done an awful lot of work down there [around the sidepods] to try to make that car really, really slender," said the Briton when comparing the W09 to the 12-time race winning W08.
“If you compare it to [the 2017] car, you can just see the difference. You can see that the bodywork bulges out around about where the engine and exhaust pack is."
Although on the face of it the change appears to be small, Allison says their data shows it should provide a quarter of a second in laptime.
“On the new car this is a much, much more slender thing. It doesn’t look like much of a difference but actually when you add it all up it is something like 0.25 seconds just there.
“It doesn’t look like much of a difference but it was actually a huge amount of work. A lot of hair got lost in that project, but the end result is something that is pretty to look at but also much more importantly is an awful lot quicker."
It's one of many improvements and Allison predicts in a race featuring the W09 vs W08, the 2018 car would easily win.
"Across the entire car, across every part of its surface, we’ve made it new. We’ve found different ways of doing it," he said.
“We have found improved way of getting downforce and performance into the car. Each one of them is small in isolation but they add up in their totality to something that is enormous.
“Last year’s car was the quickest one out there. It won more races than any other and it was of course the championship winner.
“But last year’s car would be utterly hopeless, it would be blown away by this one because of all that work by all those people over an entire year making modifications at every level.
“All of them are small but all of them are accumulating to a huge end result and a car that is just much, much faster."
