Mercedes officially fired up W02 for the first time

Surprised I missed this, but the W02-01 was fired up at the Brackley headquarters 11/26 for the first time. Shakedown at Rockingham will take place probably in the coming 4-6 weeks. Brawn has hinted at some very exciting stuff but this could all be smoke. W02-02 will probably be another testing chassis for Brackley while W02-03 and W02-04 will go racing.

I would be very surprised if the chassis were not a 100% new design rather than a 3rd update of the original Brawn car. Renault is doing the same with the R31, ditching the R29/30 platform they have used the past couple years.

What's definitely not smoke is the Mercedes KERS powertrain which has undergone dyno testing as of 12/1 and it is rumored to be far superior to their previous KERS powertrain of '09 which was already the best unit on the field.

 

Actually I don't think so. I know Mclaren is using the MB engine but some other KERS unit or the like and from what I am seeing, their KERS unit is just theirs and no one else. Still searching for a more difinitive answer

 

Correction: It appears the complete Mercedes KERS unit will be available to Mclaren. The KERS unit is manufactured by Zytec in Britain who specialises in this sort of thing and originally came out with the system years ago. Their system will be good for 80bhp as opposed to the previous '09 units which were good for closer to 50-60bhp. The new units are also 60% lighter. Unknown who the battery back manufacturer might be.......

 

Update on W02. Toyota's former developement enginner, Toshi Iguchi, who was in charge of the car which was used to test Pirelli tires all season, was hired by MB as their senior suspension engineer. He should bring some interesting info to the table regarding the new tires, but I have doubts on how useful the testing information might be as I am sure the Pirelli's changed quite a bit through the testing phase.