Excellent technical resource brings us an explainer of the narrow cartridge-style gearbox Mercedes is using this year in its utterly dominant Formula One car, the W05. No one outside the team has seen the internals, so Craig Scarborough and Peter Windsor drew out the basics based on what they know.

Many teams will likely copy this narrow, elongated layout for 2015 because of its better aerodynamics and other advantages over more conventional, wider F1 gearbox layouts. Mercedes' was outed as an advantage earlier this year, so let's take a look at how their gearbox helps them, too.

W05s technical secrets disclosed with Sky Sports F1 analyst Mark Hughes revealing that Mercedes…

Gearboxes in F1 can only be swapped out every six races, so this design also allows the team to swap all of the components outside of the gearbox without having to move the gearbox at all, thus avoiding any penalties for early swaps.

(H/T )