Mercedes technical chief Paddy Lowe says the new W07 features a series of "mini revolutions" under the bodywork compared to last year's championship-winning W06.
Mercedes released images of its new car on Sunday ahead of the first day of pre-season testing on Monday. The front of the launch-spec car looks largely unchanged compared to last year's, but it has more obvious changes further back.
Notably Mercedes has opted for a much larger airbox above the driver's head, but while Lowe gave away none of the car's secrets at the launch, he hinted at major changes underneath the engine cover.
"It's difficult to have a complete revolution when the rules have stayed pretty much the same year on year," he said. "But we aim to make minor revolutions wherever we can - even within a small context. We may look at a completely new packaging solution or suspension concept, for instance. So, while the car may look very similar to its predecessor from the outside - as is inherent within stable regulations - underneath there are quite a lot of mini revolutions that make up an overall evolution for the new season.
"It's very tough to find performance under a stable set of regulations and we were particularly pleased with how the car turned out in 2015 when we had the same situation. The team did a fantastic job - digging very deep to find all sorts of innovations in areas that might have been considered static.
"2016 is another carry-over year from a regulatory point of view and potential gains inevitably become harder to find under these circumstances. This is what tests an engineering team the most and I must say that this team has been very good at that. It's far easier to find performance when you have a new set of rules, that's for sure."
Lowe said Mercedes had focused on its weaknesses, including the anomaly that was the Singapore Grand Prix where there W06 was suddenly a long way off the pace.
"After a highly successful season all round in 2015, our priority has been to identify the areas in which we were weakest and to try to improve on those. Our objective is excellence in all areas and, while we had some fantastic results last year, there are many areas in which we can still be much better.
"That's the kind of culture we try to instill throughout the whole organisation - one of constantly striving to reach something better. We had a number of races that didn't go to plan in 2015 - Singapore in particular - so there were a lot of things that needed improving for 2016. We are seeking optimisation absolutely everywhere."