Wolff: Team boss radio chat with F1 race control should be banned.What could Mercedes Plan B look like if Hamilton quits F1.“All we know is by the time we'd done our work over the winter and turned up at the tracks, the sort of the advantage we had in the season, certainly advantages we had mid-season, had disappeared.” Read Also:
MERCEDES F1 2021 FULL
Mercedes was instead locked in with its original plan to spend tokens on its nose, which it had opted for when it was not aware of the full implications of changes to the 2021 rules. So it was too late to go down that route. However, this was not possible because the homologation restrictions had already forced teams to commit to any gearbox changes just five days after the end of the 2020 shutdown in June. This included greater restrictions on the floor dimensions, plus changes to the lower bargeboard area – which would especially hurt Mercedes.Īware of the implication of the changes, and how they would hurt the low rake cars more than the high rake models, the most obvious solution then would have been for Mercedes to alter its gearbox to help it raise the rear ride height to overcome the consequences. However, in the wake of the British Grand Prix tyre failures in August, the FIA wrote to teams after the race to inform them that it wanted to make a further step in aero regulation changes for 2021 to cut back on downforce even more.