Mercedes was not the first team in the paddock to reveal their car's livery design, but the teams that revealed their cars before Mercedes all had fairly large sidepods.
Mercedes is the only team whose car has flat or vertical sidepods, and the air intake of this Mercedes car is noticeably smaller than those of other teams.
As a result, after the Mercedes car launch, all the fans were discussing Mercedes' sidepod design.
Beyond the buzzing discussions within the paddock, designers and simulation departments from other teams also focused part of their attention on Mercedes' sidepod design.
They too were curious whether there was any deeper meaning behind Mercedes' design.
Of course, all they could do at this time was speculate, and at most, create a simple fluid dynamics model using the not-so-clear launch video to simulate the airflow of such a design.
