The huge leap forward that McLaren has made with its Austrian and British GP package, which was inspired by both Red Bull and Aston Martin sidepod ideas, has left rivals pondering if they too need to make a dramatic change of direction.
And while Mercedes has long insisted that sidepod and bodywork tweaks are not a key performance differentiator, rivals are clearly seeing good gains coming from changes in this area.
Mercedes did move towards a more Red Bull-style downwash sidepod solution at this year’s Monaco Grand Prix but has not yet gone as far down the route as some other squads.
And, according to team principal Toto Wolff, that is because when it tried out a Red Bull design in its wind tunnel early on it did not find any benefit – and in fact made its car worse.
However, he thinks that the way that McLaren has so obviously exploited the idea and put it to good use could well prompt a bit of a rethink and trigger another attempt to look at it.
Asked by Autosport why Mercedes has not followed the Red Bull idea while others believe it delivers good gains, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said: “We had the sidepod concept and the bodywork in the tunnel very early on already, to see which avenues you could open up and how much it would add to performance.
“And the relative loss of downforce, the way we measure it, was substantial. So, it's not something that we wanted to follow up early in the year.
Source: Autosport