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Mercedes has unveiled a number of new updates for its home Formula 1 race at Hockenheim, including a new turning vane assembly, front wing and bodywork   With the bargeboards and turning vanes next to the sidepods increasing in complexity over the course of the season, Mercedes has worked its way through numerous aerodynamic packages in this area so far this season. For the German Grand Prix this development has continued, and Mercedes has seemingly come up with a completely different design compared to the previous turning vane assemblies. Throughout the season, the team has run with four distinct turning vanes, all interlinked and ending at the final turning vane which loops around the top of the sidepod. Mercedes has now switched to something...

Mercedes has made no secret of the fact that one of the biggest gains it has made with its car this year has been in its low-speed corner performance.   Valtteri Bottas admitted as much in Montreal on Thursday when he said that the car’s rotation in such turns was a huge performance and confidence boost. “It feels like it rotates well,” said the Finn about the W10. “It is clearly a big improvement since last year or the year before. We saw in some of the slow-speed corners we were not the best but now we have made huge steps and definitely, the front end of the car is a lot better on the entry. “It means you can...

The fight for the 2018 Formula 1 championship, which resumes in Belgium this weekend, is perhaps one of the most intense we have had for a decade. There has been little to separate Mercedes and Ferrari as each has seized the initiative at various points of the campaign, with neither able to pull itself clear at the front. What has perhaps been really fascinating is that the teams, with very different car philosophies, have been split by such small margins each weekend. Here, ahead of the title battle getting going again, we look back with the help of Giorgio Piola's exclusive illustrations to reflect on their development progress and look at what could be the key factors that make the...

Formula 1 mirror designs will be under the spotlight next week when technical chiefs meet with the FIA to discuss potential changes to help improve driver visibility.   As revealed by Motorsport.com, the FIA wants to move the mirrors so that a drivers' view is not obstructed by the top edge of the sidepods and wider wings, as has been increasingly happening. Although an attempt by the FIA to stipulate a new location on safety grounds was redacted for procedural matters, the proposal does show what the governing body is trying to achieve. As Giorgio Piola's exclusive drawings show, the location that was originally put forward by the FIA is higher and further out than mirrors currently are.    Mercedes...

Red Bull's long-standing power deficit to rivals Mercedes and Ferrari has often forced it to be aggressive with its wing settings in a bid to ensure it does not lose too much time on the straights. The team has often tried to trim out its wings, and it has not been unknown for Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo to experiment with wildly different wing levels to try to discover the best performance. The high-speed characteristics of Silverstone, with the flat-out corners effectively being treated as straights, meant that Red Bull had to go pretty extreme last weekend through. Both Mercedes and Ferrari ran with the low-drag style wings that were used in Baku, which forced Red Bull to try to go with an even smaller angle....