Mercedes executive director (technical) Paddy Lowe says Mercedes is seeking optimisation “absolutely everywhere” with its recently-revealed W07.
Despite dominating the 2015 season, Lowe explained that Mercedes’ main priority has been to identify the “many areas” of weakness for the team.
The W07 completed its first shakedown at a filming day on Friday, which took place at the Silverstone circuit. Following Sunday’s release of studio photos, the car will be officially uncovered prior to day one of winter testing on Monday.
"After a highly successful season all round in 2015, our priority has been to identify the areas in which we were weakest and to try to improve on those,” Lowe said.
"Our objective is excellence in all areas and, while we had some fantastic results last year, there are many areas in which we can still be much better. That's the kind of culture we try to instil throughout the whole organisation – one of constantly striving to reach something better.
"We had a number of races that didn't go to plan in 2015 – Singapore in particular – so there were a lot of things that needed improving for 2016. We are seeking optimisation absolutely everywhere.”
Commenting on how difficult it is to find improvements with limited regulation changes, he added: "It's very tough to find performance under a stable set of regulations and we were particularly pleased with how the car turned out in 2015 when we had the same situation.
"The team did a fantastic job – digging very deep to find all sorts of innovations in areas that might have been considered static. 2016 is another carry-over year from a regulatory point of view and potential gains inevitably become harder to find under these circumstances.
"This is what tests an engineering team the most and I must say that this team has been very good at that. It's far easier to find performance when you have a new set of rules, that's for sure."
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