There was pre-season speculation Mercedes had split their turbo and located the MGU-H between the blown and blowing halves. Finally having seen them with bonnets removed, Scarbs details in a recent
Autosport Plus that the two haves actually are mounted at opposite ends of the engine, connected by a shaft running between the banks of cylinders, with the dynamo also resting somewhere in the middle. This would seem a brilliant exploitation of the rules (presuming the arrangement does not adversely affect maintenance and reliability, and doesn't add undue weight), as it puts the cold turbine at the fore and the hot turbine a couple of feet to its aft. It also shortens the plumbing needed at either end, which potentially reduces turbo lag. But there's still the matter of a shaft spinning 125,000 rpms connecting all the pieces parts. Both Ferrari and Renault position their turbos low down, behind the engine.
Lauda admits Mercedes abandoned the constraints of the RRA, and the Mercedes board authorised a budget increase to €190M, but
Welt.de claims they only spent 1/10° of the rumoured €500M million on engine development. As Mercedes engine development staff are 1/3° larger than Renault's, I am given to wonder if some creating accounting might not have been applied to that figure.
RBR have exploited a loophole to be the only team on the grid running a "concealed" forward-looking camera. The TR forbid placing the camera within the crash structure of the nose, but Newey located theirs behind the vanity panel covering the crash structure's 'step,' which is fair game.
Scarbs mentions that the RB10 has an intercooler radiator in either sidepod, and they are quite large in comparison to the competitions'. Assuming he has seen the Mercedes intercooler, and the Mercedes also is air-to-air (Ferrari's is rumoured to be air-water), that could mean they had detonation problems during development, and adopted oversized intercoolers to compensate, or perhaps they have dreams of big horsepower at some future juncture.
McLaren's radiators (engine & intercooler) are mounted near vertical and in line with the chassis, whereas the custom is they be tilted forward and oriented facing into the incoming wind. The arrangement forces incoming airflow to take an S-bend to pass through the radiator cores and out the back.
