Mercedes confirmed heading to Austin that it would be bringing the final updates of the year for the W13 car to the Circuit of The Americas this weekend.
The glimpse details of the update package emerged on Thursday, when a revised front wing design for Lewis Hamilton and George Russell’s cars was spotted in the pit lane. This included a revised design in the outboard section, as well as some new flow diverters between the upper flaps.
But the full details of the update package have now been confirmed after the FIA issued its technical document ahead of Friday’s first practice session at the Circuit of The Americas.
Mercedes’ submission to the FIA confirmed the updated front wing design was intended to aid “flow conditions” by reducing the camber of the front wing tip and adding the slot gap separators.
According to Mercedes, this “reduces wing tip loading, improving onset flow to the front drum deflector, which in turn improves tyre squirt management and flow to the rear of the car.”
“The slot gap separators improve the rigidity of final two front wing elements,” the team added.
But the front wing is not the only new part that will be on the Mercedes W13 car this weekend. The rear wing has also been updated to feature a new endplate design to increase the load on the upper part of the rear wing.
Finally, Mercedes will also be running an updated floor in Austin this weekend, making changes to the floor fences and the floor edge.
The small change to the floor fence camber is intended to improve flow conditioning, increasing the aerodynamic load on the diffuser while maintaining the load from the front of the floor. The new floor edge wing will also add aerodynamic load without impacting the diffuser load.
Mercedes is one of only three teams to bring any updates to Austin, the others being Alpine and Alfa Romeo.
Alpine will look to boost its performance in the fight with McLaren for P4 in the constructors’ championship with an updated floor, adding a winglet underneath the floor edge. This will be the team’s final floor update of the season.
Alfa Romeo has also opted for a floor update, changing the geometry of the forward part of the floor as well as changing the side cutouts in a bid to increase downforce and provide more stability to drivers Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu.
