The hidden floor on Mercedes’ 2021 Formula 1 car has been sighted for the first time at the start of pre-season testing in Bahrain.
Mercedes launched its W12 over a week ago but admitted it was not revealing the real floor until testing.
It wanted to keep the design a secret to stop rivals getting an early look at it and rapidly replicating it for testing.
On the first morning of testing in Bahrain, Mercedes’ W12 was pictured with its real floor – featuring an undulating edge from where the floor sits beneath the turning vanes to roughly halfway to the rear.
The rear of the floor curves upwards, with a small flick down again at its outside edge, and features an aggressive assembly of extra elements.
The new floor is important because it relates directly to a series of rule changes towards the back of the car for 2021.
At the back of the floor, a triangular section has been cut out. At the front, the slots that became commonplace have been removed. Diffuser fences have been shortened and rear brake duct winglets banned.
The combined impact is a significant loss of downforce that in its rawest form put the cars back to roughly 2019 levels of performance.
This is something every team has admitted has been the main challenge in developing their carry-over cars, as they bid to recapture as much of that lost performance as possible.
“The bit we’re not showing you is down along the edge of the floor,” said Mercedes technical director James Allison at the W12’s unveiling.
“There’s a bunch of aerodynamic detail that we are not quite ready to release to the world – not because it’s not there, but because we don’t want our competitors to see it, we don’t want them trying to put similar things into their windtunnels.
“It just buys us a couple of weeks extra.
“We all look very closely at what our competitors do, so we know our competitors will be looking.
“We don’t have to show it yet, so we’re not.”
