Mercedes teases first images of new F1 car

2017 F1 season

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Mercedes has given fans a sneak peak at parts of its new Formula One car for the 2017 F1 season ahead of its official launch tomorrow.

The W08 is due to be formally unveiled at Silverstone tomorrow. However the world champions have presented a first look at the nose of their new machine.

The only significant detail which can be gleaned from this image is that the team hasn’t adopted the thumb-tip style nose used by many of its rivals. All three of the new cars for 2017 revealed so far – the Renault RS17, Sauber C36 and Williams FW40 – feature this style of nose.

Mercedes has also published an image of the car’s sidepod with its engine cover in the background.

The full car will be seen for the first time at 12:10pm tomorrow. Force India will be the next team to launch its car at 2:00pm today. F1 Fanatic will be attending both launches to bring you the latest from the teams ahead of the new season.

Get all the 2017 F1 race, test and launch dates on your mobile device using the F1 Fanatic Calendar

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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64 comments on “Mercedes teases first images of new F1 car”

  1. And it’s already more beautiful than their rivals’…

    1. @fixy Now you’ve said that I’m hoping it has seventeen shark fins…

      1. And a finger protruding from the airbox…

      2. Put a Star Trek Enterprise winglets on top of each of the shark fins man :) ….and a huge heart-shaped air inlet over the driver’s head.

      3. Don’t be mean @keithcollantine! :D I don’t care if it supermodel-looking, as long as it isn’t Mercedes-dominant!

      4. at least they will be silver shark fins, if we have to have them at least make them like the real thing

        1. That does have a ring to it I have to say

        2. @johnmilk Yeah, Force India has something to say about that :p

          1. @hunocsi that force india is at best a Sunfish

    2. hahaha – slightly presumptuous – but right now looks true

  2. That’s not a tease. It’s barely a toe let alone a leg. What can you tell from that image?

  3. That will look glorious in Singapore

    1. Bahrain and Abu Dhabi as well.

  4. Looks like a memory stick

  5. They sure know how to make beautiful shots of the car to tease us!

    1. they also know how to make sure we cant build a compleate ‘mindseye’ image of the car and how to destract us from the detail with coloured lights :)

      1. Surely thats paintwork, the ‘lights’ go behind the lettering on the car

        1. we shall see but where that are overlaps you cant see the ‘lines’ going the same way – only a suggestion – out here to be proved wrong :)

        2. @N, @greggriffiths, I think those are indeed lights, with the lettering being matte and thus not reflecting them; or maybe they photoshopped a bit to make it look good; as @bascb says, it looks pretty, and indeed, the lines make it hard to see the details and shapes. Apart from the nose being similar to last year, and thus, to me, probably the best looking one in the field again.

          1. Or they are painted, reflective/phosporiscent lines on a more matte silver, that’s possible too I suppose? Would make it interesting contrast between day races where the car is silver w. turqoise, and night/evening races where it is lightshow.

          2. One thing is for sure, they’ve got people talking about their car haha

          3. Hahaha…Good point…That’s the aim of the game right??

          4. Hahaha…Good point n…It’s he aim of the game I suppose

          5. I’m guessing the photoshopped the lettering: gotta keep those sponsors happy somehow… =P

            Although, if it really was reflective painting, that would look amazing, specially in night races and photoshoots!!!

        3. I am almost certain it is light on the car (maybe with some photoshopping to make the letters turn up better), but wow that would be awesome if it was actually paint!

          1. @bascb

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nfzGHajgXk

            it appears that the stripes are there to stay

          2. Wow, thanks for the video @johnmilk, maybe Mercedes will show us a really neat livery with those on it!

  6. I think this nose will show how wide the cars are this year

  7. I’m worried about that nose. It looks narrow, which would typically lead to it abruptly getting thicker mid way.

    1. The nose is the same as the W07

    2. They didn’t do that last year, I am not sure why then they’d need it this year @damon?

      1. @bosyber Why would any team make anything different from last year in the first place, huh? I dont get your question mate.

        1. Rhetorical @damon, why indeed; Last year, almost all teams had a stump nose – from the cars we’ve seen so far, that remains true; Why would Mercedes, the team being different in 2016 suddenly go to stump from what seemed to work for them, much more likely they too stick to what they had: a good looking nose.

          1. @bosyber @damon They won in 2009 but still changed their nose for 2010.

          2. @davidnotcoulthard 2009 and 2010 are long ago, with different nose rules, and the current Mercedes isn’t the Brawn it was anymore (though even then, the Merc 2010 nose was evolution of 2009 Brawn nose, instead of flat and high as others).

            But regardless, same argument: why would Mercedes be the only team (as far as we can judge now) to majorly change nose, when it was good enough to win the WDC and WCC, and we have already heard last year that nose isn’t a big speed-differentiator, and when the nose on the picture they posted looks exactly like what they had last year, with this years arrowed-wing?

            Let me hang on to the comforting thought that they at least will have a decent looking nose, please, until they show the car and prove me right or wrong.

      2. I agree with @bosyber on that count. Mercedes did it a bit differently in 2015 and last year they were clearly successful with their solution, probably the only short nose that looked goood (although FI’s solution was a nice one too), so there is no real need to change that for this year.

        We can see that the others are still going for the same solutions they chased last year as well, it’s not as if the regulations change the nose tip, just the wings and all the stuff that is under the nose, and therefore the profile of the rest of the nose. But that is not limited in any way by the elegant solution Mercedes has in place.

        I am quite certain that Mercedes has tried the stumps in their 3d models, maybe even in windtunnels. But they just chose to stick with their solution, so either it is better, or it is at least not worse.

    3. That’s what I thought as well when seeing it.

      @bosyber because there’s been significant rule changes to that area, and some teams may have odd interpretations of them. I.e. Renault had a uniform nose last year, but have a protruding one this year.

      1. But Renault had a stump-nose last year too @ho3n3r, just much less pronounced; they didn’t have the money to go out and have multiple tries at it, as both Willimas, and Red Bull (was that 5+ tries?) had to when they moved to that style of nose the 1st time, so it might be that that’s the only reason they didn’t go this way last year for all we know. Mercedes is a different story though, that nose looks almost exactly like what they had last year.

  8. Looks like it’s gonna be grey and they projected cool lights on top of it.

    1. petebaldwin (@)
      22nd February 2017, 10:29

      @eljueta look at the “S” in the last photo – it doesn’t reflect the light….

      1. @petebaldwin true, i stand corrected.

        1. petebaldwin (@)
          22nd February 2017, 12:01

          @eljueta – still could be just a computer generated thing. Maybe they didn’t want to obscure the Petronas logo on the launch shots…..

  9. Please tell me those light beams are just projected onto it, or I may vomit violently all season.

    1. They are either computer generated or painted bacause they go under the text.

      1. good spot

  10. Worst…..tease…..ever……

  11. I’m honestly suprised that not more teams are going with the Mercedes approach of the front wing being as far back as possible instead of using the thumb idea

    1. It’s because the Mercedes-styled nose is very hard to crash test (hard to pass). This means that huge amounts of cash are needed for a relatively little gain. (I read it from a dedicated motorsport site last year. Forgot which one.)

  12. Great shots, that due to their obscure angles and close ups, you can’t really see anything… Except for the nose (the return of the anteater?), there’s nothing more than a bit of colour… A full on tease by these pictures to the point a complete Silhouette picture would actually give better detail…

  13. The nose looks really thin and straight compared to others, looking forward to seeing it properly! So far the Renault looks the best for me, only an hour until force India unveil their car though!

    1. After having seen the FI today I now fear the thin looking nose part is the phallic part that sticks out of the wider part of the nose…..

  14. I find this quite interesting. What with the release of these images, plus the BBC doing a transmission from the Brackley factory (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08ffgp0), almost seems that MB are doing their best to take the shine off other team’s launches.

  15. Well, not really a tease, as discussed above, it is just not enough for us, all the excited fans and curious people, but we guess that it is more than enough to add fuel to our imagination and excited us even more for the upcoming. We cannot wait for what you are going to share tomorrow after the launching session.

  16. Looks like its from a computer game.

  17. Glow in the dark paint?

  18. Looks like a boat :)

  19. Nose is great looking, easilly best so far.

  20. Because the lettering isn’t reflecting the color lines, I believe this is reflective paint. Take a look at Ken Block’s latest paint job

    A lot of drift cars and some GT cars have adopted this style of paint and it’s quite cool.

    1. Also, Mercedes AMG F1 recently partnered with Axalta Coating Systems, who appear to support the painting of their cars. Read more at AMG F1’s site here

  21. Well, they don’t show the square wheels that Liberty demands they use in order to level the playing field.

  22. It’s official now, those glowing lines are paint work, i do love them though!

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