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Mercedes Technical Director Mike Elliott reveals the team did not spent all of their development tokens, so their 2021 car was not much different form their 2020 challenger.
On F1 TV’s Tech Talks, Mercedes Technical Director Mike Elliott revealed the team did not spent all of their development tokens on their 2021 car, which means the car was more similar to their 2020 challenger, than other team’s cars were to their predecessors.
“In the end, we didn’t spend our tokens,” Mike Elliott said.
“We had a plan that, potentially, we’d spend them on the nose, and elected not to in the end.
“I think the reality was, obviously, we’re in a period of COVID. We were looking at the regulations for next year which are huge.
“There are massive changes aerodynamically and so, going into this year, it was all about how do we balance the development we do for this year versus the development we do for next year.
“At the time we were making those decisions, we also had quite an advantage. If you go back to 2020, we had a very good car.
“It was more a case of saying, ‘Where are the weaknesses? What are the things that we could go in and develop and move on a bit?’
“They’re not big things, they are small things that we’re seeing in the aerodynamic concept. There’ll be things we’ve seen in the flow field, we wanted to attack and change.
“And so, if you look at the two cars, the differences are all in the details.”
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Considering the W12 was not much different to the W11, Elliott was asked what the team was able to improve on the car.
“I’ve never known a car where, when we get to the end of the year and we sit down, we go, ‘That’s perfect’, because it doesn’t exist.
“The reality is we can always make it better. I think, if you look at the position we are in the championship, we didn’t start off with a good enough car in comparison to previous years.
“We’ve had various issues through the year, in terms of getting the most out of the driveability of the power unit, the degradation has been another thing. But on the chassis side, you’d look at that and say that we’ve also struggled to develop the car as much as we’ve liked.
“What has been really good is the team sticking together and finding all of the small gains that were available to find, and bolting them on the car.
“The drivers have done a brilliant job this year, [it’s] been huge pressure to deal with and the championship has swung one way then the next and back again, and I guess that’s what the fans want to see.
“While I’d love to be in a position where we’re four-tenths up the road and it’s all easy, that’s just not the championship we’ve had,” Elliott concluded.
