Mercedes: 'Aggressive' W11 car streaks ahead on downforce compared to 2019 model

Mercedes team principal James Allison says Mercedes' 2020 car is streaks ahead on downforce in comparison to its 2019 challenger.

The W11 impressed at pre-season testing last week, unveiling an innovative steering system named DAS, which changes the car's toe angle with pulls and pushes of the steering wheel.

The Silver Arrows has taken every constructors' and drivers' championship in the hybrid era, and with regulations remaining stable from 2019 to 2020 before a major change next year, Mercedes opted to aggressively design its current car in order to stay ahead of the competition.

“The temptation for us was just to keep polishing that one, after all it finished the season really strongly and it was developing very fast all the way through the year, so there was still lots of opportunity to make that one quicker," Alisson said. 

“That conservative approach was very, very tempting. But in the end, we decided that wouldn’t be enough. We were feeling the breath of our opponents on our shoulders.

“We know their hunger and we know that if we don’t do something impressive with this car, they will eat us up and leave us behind.

“So, we decided that we would make a car that was aggressive. Despite the fact that there is no change in the regulations, we would take every part of the car and see if we could challenge ourselves to make it better."

“We have got a car here that is streaks ahead of that one in terms of downforce. We have got a car here whose development slope has kicked up, is steeper than the one that we finished last year’s with, in that very, very good car from 2019.

“And we’ve got a car here that we hope will be fertile ground to develop strongly all the way through the 2020 season.”

Mercedes will return to the track this week for the second week of testing. Most teams are expected to arrive back on the track with upgraded packages ahead of the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.