Ever wondered, how an F1 car defies our understanding of basic physics, how it can take a turn flat out without shredding its own tires off, or how it can go from 0 to 60 mph in less than 3 seconds? That is what most ask themselves but what many don’t think about is, can it go any faster? Well, this is it, the 2020 Mercedes W11. A car so capable, so astonishingly quick, so breathtakingly historic, I have to dive deeper into this, so strap yourselves in and let’s go.
To begin this journey we have to go back 4 years, it is 2019, the Mercedes F1 team has secured a 6th consecutive constructors championship and Lewis Hamilton has won his 6th world championship. All seems well and good, right? Well, a certain scarlet team from Maranello is lurking in the background ready to take the fight to the Silver Arrows in 2020. At the time the 2019 W10 was the performance benchmark, it destroyed lap records standing from as late as the early 1990s, broke the record for the fastest car around the famous streets of Monte Carlo, and has a wealth of achievements to its name but it was not perfect. For one it produced too much rear downforce so much so that over a long distance it would cause its Pirelli tires to degrade too quickly, and compared to that year’s Ferrari controversial SF90 was down on horsepower and straight-line speed, some 11 mph slower along Spa’s Kemmel Straight.
During the winter months from December to February, the Mercedes team knew this and tirelessly worked to make the W11’s engine faster and even more reliable than it already was. They achieved this by achieving 50% thermal efficiency, thermal efficiency to put it simply, is the ratio of horsepower produced to heat produced, given that the engines F1 car used from 2014–2021(V6 Turbo Hybrids) these engines produced a lot of heat and before 2020 most engines ran at best 30% thermal efficiency, so to have that amount increase by 20% more was an already extraordinary achievement by the people over at Brackley. Not only did this mean that Mercedes could run its engines for longer, it meant it did not need to sacrifice pure engine power to have better reliability.
But engine power and efficiency alone won’t help you win 7 consecutive drivers’ and constructors’ championships. Besides engine power was not what the W11 was known for, instead, it was known for its insane cornering ability. I recommend watching this video. Now that you have watched that lap, surely you are asking, how did that car and that driver do that, here is the explanation. Formula 1 cars are known to produce enough downforce that theoretically they are capable of driving in a tunnel upside down, but the W11 is different, for one it is incredibly grippy. The car on its own has a unique rear suspension that keeps the car planted in slow to medium-speed corners and for high-speed corners, the car itself runs a very low rake(overall ride height of the car front and rear) sucking the car and the tires into the tarmac generating more grip and downforce, also it has a clever floor design with slots, curves and edges near the rear giving extra rear downforce without sacrificing tire life, which as mentioned it’s predecessor the W10 suffered from.
The statistics from the shortened 2020 season speak for themselves, out of the 17 races from that year’s calendar, the W11 took 13 pole positions and won 13 of the races that season, equating to a staggering 76% win rate, which ranks among one of the most dominant cars in the 70-year history of Formula 1. But the biggest reason it was just so fast from an engineering and scientific perspective was Mercedes’ revolutionary new system to aid tire warm-up called DAS(Dual Axis Steering) In February 2020 at Barcelona for pre-season testing, when it was introduced it raised many eyebrows throughout the paddock but it was legal and frighteningly effective at generating heat into the tires and providing tow or slipstreaming when following another car, this system definitely helped during one lap runs in qualifying and as the 76% pole rate suggests this was a huge game changer.
Now while it has been 3 years since we last saw this machine in action, it definitely made its mark on the sport and became the new performance benchmark of not only the sport as a whole but is a symbol of automotive, engineering and scientific excellence. So much so that it is regarded above the Ferrari F2004: The car so good it shocked Ferrari. It somehow became even more dominant than the car from the year previous.To think that Mercedes switched development to their 2021 car in early October 2020 even when there were still 2 months to go in the season, makes you wonder if it can go any faster.
So let’s go back to the billion-dollar question, Can it go any faster, or more so will anything go faster? Well for a car that produces 5.2 G, takes some of the fastest corners on the F1 calendar flat, or breaks every track record from 20–30 years ago, many think it will remain the fastest most breathtaking machine ever and I agree. In 2020 Formula 1 cars and the automotive engineering field had reached a peak in engineering and scientific research.
The thing about this car is that it was made during a significant year and was built with a different purpose. You may remember me mentioning that in 2019 a certain red team from Maranello was waiting in the shadows ready to take on the Silver Arrows in 2020, Mercedes built this W11 with the assumption that Ferrari would have a car even faster than in 2019, unfortunately for the Scuderia, they were penalized for housing an illegal engine in 2019 and had to use a weaker engine which is why Ferrari finished 6th that season: it’s worst showing in 40 years and Mercedes was nearly half a second faster than the next fastest car; the Red Bull Honda RB16. That gap in performance from car to car makes me believe that it was built by science and designed by physics. Such is the scientific and engineering significance of the W11.
