Mercedes debuts new cockpit opening shape at Baku

Having not submitted any upgrades for this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, it has emerged that Mercedes introduced a new geometry for its cockpit opening.

Only three teams have submitted new upgrades for this weekend’s Baku round, with Red Bull, Aston Martin and the Visa Cash RB outfit declaring new parts for the cars.

Mercedes has not submitted any upgrades for Azerbaijan, but on-board footage has revealed that the Brackley-based outfit has made some tweaks to the geometry of the W15’s cockpit.

While the German-British team used a round shape for its cockpit opening in recent rounds, it has switched to a more rectangular shape for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

It is unclear why Mercedes changed the geometry of its cockpit opening, but it might be down to cooling issues, rather than to an aerodynamic reason.

At the recent round in Monza, George Russell and Lewis Hamilton complained about the extreme heat inside the cockpit of their W15 which did not cause a dangerous situation, but led to discomfort

Speaking via the squad’s regular post-race debrief video after the Italian Grand Prix, Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said that the Brackley-based outfit will try to find solutions for the overheating issues.

“[The drivers] do a lot of training at temperature, but the fact is once the cockpit is getting hotter than they are, getting rid of that heat is nigh on impossible.

“We are looking at ways that we can improve the situation for our drivers, within the sport as well, looking at means that we can apply, additional equipment to the car at these exceptional races that will keep the drivers a bit cooler. But as I said, it is a very challenging environment and that is why they do so much training.”

Pushed on to reveal the cause of the overheating issues, Shovlin said that the main contributing factor was the extreme heat that featured all three days of the Italian Grand Prix.

“The most significant cause was in Monza it was extremely hot. The seat and the car is always running pretty hot and there’s a lot of heat generated by the power unit that you’re trying to dissipate.

“You’ve also got a lot of electronic boxes and those are working quite hard and they generate their own temperature so you’re trying to lose that out of the cockpit.”