Mercedes
Interestingly, updates are still making its way to the championship winning Mercedes W06 Hybrid, which tells us they are looking into 2016 ideas already.
For Brazil, Mercedes brought along a new vanity panel, which joins the front nose cone structure to the bulkhead. This cover hides and protects the role and heave springs and elements for the front suspension.
Where the old design was flat, the new one has a shaped square fitted to the top of it. A picture was seen of the mechanics taking it off, which showed the heave spring was the exact same as before.
This tells us that Mercedes were investigating aerodynamic possibilities with the cars nose cone trailing edge. Flow Viz paint was plastered on top of the scoope-like structure to test flow patterns and detect where the air flow was going.
This certainly is an interesting idea, where Mercedes could be onto something here.
Williams
The FW37 saw simple updates to help the cars aerodynamic department. The rear of the car saw developments in the diffuser and rear wing end plates. Four louvres were used to help reduce drag and wingtip vortices of the rear wing. This allows pressure to escape. While it’s a great idea, downforce is therefore compromised.
For the diffuser, the structure roof was changed to a much smoother profile, which blended out a lot more than before. This aggressive design could be helping flick up airflow for the rear wing to benefit from, or by helping the air flow management, as it exists underneath the car.
