Mercedes could run eye-opening car design in Bahrain that could leave rivals far behind

A report from Italian outlet Corriere dello Sport is suggesting that Mercedes could run a radical new car design without any sidepods, in a potential development that could leave the rest of the pack trailing in their wake.

Testing part two begins tomorrow in Bahrain and the teams are expected to have already made some tweaks to the cars that ran in Barcelona back in February.

Indeed, we’ll probably see more indicative performances over the next few days in Sakhir as drivers prepare for the new season, which gets underway in just over a week from now.

That all said, then, we could be about to see a potentially revolutionary moment in the sport’s recent history with Mercedes, according to the report at least, plotting a potential move to run their W13 without sidepods.

To give a better idea of how it could look, check out these sketches originally from Craig Scarborough on Twitter:

I know he was just playing around, but I’d love to see something extreme like @ScarbsTech hypothesised in these drawings, with basically no sidepods at all! #F1 https://t.co/S5eazW1j68 pic.twitter.com/4B7H3oIqyZ

And, if they do take this approach and it works, there’s the potential for the performance gains it garners to leave the rest of the field as dots in the rear-view mirror.

Hopefully, from a competitive point of view, we won’t be returning to Mercedes dominance after a brilliant 2021 season but, of course, at the same time, it’s always amazing to see new interpretations of the rules, especially with 2022 bringing in new regulations.

Time will ultimately tell, though, what Mercedes do with testing beginning tomorrow.