Mercedes has worked on every aspect of its engine and energy recovery system to try to boost its power output as much as possible ahead of the new season.
The team's new car was launched on Sunday with technical boss Paddy Lowe saying there had been significant changes under the bodywork. Earlier this year the head of Mercedes engine project Andy Cowell revealed the power unit is now producing in excess of 900bhp and ahead of the first day of pre-season testing said his engineers have not held back in attempting to increase that figure and have not been limited by the engine token system.
"32 tokens is quite a lot, so we haven't had to restrict any of our development activity to a specific area," he said. "Anything which could yield a decent efficiency improvement - and therefore a decent performance improvement - has been explored and we're now working to make sure our package is sufficiently durable in time for Melbourne."
Cowell said every aspect of the V6 turbo engine and its energy recovery system had been analysed to find more efficiency and therefore more power.
"It's been more of the same. To get the performance out of this new generation of Power Units, you need to chase efficiency. That's both combustion efficiency and efficiency in the various energy transition steps - i.e. MGU-H, MGU-K, turbocharger, power electronics and batteries. We're constantly working on every single piece of the puzzle to improve performance at the crankshaft, while also seeking to ensure we don't suffer any of the problems we had last year with reliability. So, it's about getting down to the root cause of issues and making sure that everything is robust across our whole process, as much as extracting performance.
"These Power Units really are incredible feats of engineering. We're now running at more than 47% thermal efficiency and producing historic highs of power - and all with an ICE restricted to consuming fuel at a rate of just 100kg/hr. The old-fashioned, naturally aspirated engines peaked at 29% thermal efficiency during the V8 era - while the last time we saw these levels of power in Formula One was back in 2005, with a V10 that guzzled fuel at a whopping 194kg/hr. To halve the fuel flow rate for the same amount of power is quite something."
Mercedes actually started the on-track development of its 2016 power unit at the Italian Grand Prix last year with an update that ran on the two works Mercedes cars. Cowell said the information gleaned from running that engine specification is now paying off for Mercedes' engine customers, which includes Williams, Force India and Manor.
"The upgrade that we introduced in Monza last year took a huge amount of effort from the factory at Brixworth and we only had enough resource to supply the works team with the latest spec at that time. However, that is now paying off for every team with Mercedes power, as we've managed to build on that development work through the autumn and winter period. Now, all our customers are getting an improved package that is exactly the same specification as the works team. All eight Mercedes powered cars will have exactly the same hardware and performance potential come Melbourne - which is a good step for everyone."