Rumors of a so-called sidepod-less Mercedes have been circulating for the past week or so in the run-up to the second F1 pre-season test at Bahrain. Rumors are rumors. While Mercedes didn’t reveal a sidepod-less design they did bring a significantly upgraded car to the final pre-season test. It’s more accurate to say the sidepod design as seen on the Mercedes is ultra-slim. The whole shape resembles a tadpole-like design, with gill-like air vents on either side of the side pod.
It appears that Mercedes has mounted the radiators vertically to achieve that ultra-slim sidepod configuration. This would signal that Mercedes has a new engine cooling management system.
It also signals Mercedes’s desire to control and channel the airflow over the body in order to dissipate negative vortices and increase ground effect downforce.
The design would have been mapped in state-of-the-art computer modelling. But no computer can simulate the wild variants of the real world. Only time and testing will see if this radical approach has performance benefits on track.