Mercedes W13

[SiLo]

I thought it was interesting they had their Barcelona test car (or at least one with the same body work) at Harvard a couple weeks ago. You’d think they would be at the factory working on it…

I'm with you on the 'I'll believe it when I see it' but the cost cap and limitations in number of CFD runs doesn't rule out a dramatic change in a perverse it might mean a dramatic change is more likely.

As a former engineer who worked in a cash and resource strapped organisation it did teach us to think outside the box a lot and get creative and I've seen brilliant engineers come up with great ideas in a mature project that just takes it in a completely different direction.

This.

I’d rather have less money / time with smarter / more talented engineers than try to iterate myself to a solution with a less talented group. I’ve said this all along, you cannot unlearn what you know and talent always wins. I’ve seen this play out again and again in other racing series, and even in spec series from amateur to pro, the same people / teams are at the front.

I’d argue these rule sets even favor a Mercedes or RedBull because they’ll always be more efficient with their time than a team who may have more wind tunnel time / cfd time but are struggling with correlation issues or were super far off the mark to begin with. We could have a billion dollars with every tool at our disposal, hire all the regular forum posters, and we’d be lucky to design a mid pack amateur field Formula Atlantic.

This would be true if the CFD testing was limited similarly across the board, but teams lower in the WCC get more CFD/wind tunnel time, so it should even things out. The interesting thing about this is how the testing time is allotted at various points throughout the year, so it's almost like a BoP.

[vorticism]

https://youtu.be/r-Er3H9KtHU
Has anyone else heard or know anything about this revolutionary cooling system?

"Big if true," in video form. This supposed Chemical Cooling System (coined by the same press article or not?) can't use phase change phenomenon for cooling (rules) so what other chemical processes might be used to reduce the temperature of the engine coolant and/or charge air.

[mantikos]

I had a fun thought - what if the changes to the Mercedes are actually not very small sidepods but actually a ramped type like those on the Red Bull. I remember one of the Merc team being quoted as saying that the Red Bull's side pods would be interesting for the guys back at the factory, almost as if they might consider it. Maybe they've actually independently come up with a similar, but perhaps more extreme, approach.

The mods shouldn't have killed the speculation thread so soon!

You misremember, when prodded and asked multiple times about if he (the TD) saw anything interesting on any other car, he essentially said if I MUST pick one, I'd go with the RBR sidepod but we have our own philosophy and we don't have time to be deviating from that.

“The most visually different [thing] I think are the sidepods that Red Bull Racing have come up with,” Mercedes technical director Mike Elliott said on a video released on the official Formula 1 YouTube channel.

“[It] looks interesting, so we’ll go and have a think about that.”

I guess I misremembered part of it - from the actual article:

“To be perfectly honest, I have not spent an awful lot of time looking at the other cars,” he said. “We have just been trying to fix our own issues. The guys in the factory are doing more of that.

“The most visual different thing is the sidepod that Red Bull have come up with. [It] looks interesting – we will go away and have a think about that.”

“I guess there are different concepts. In terms of what is happening with these regulations, we completely change the way of managing the wheel wake...We’ve gone for a narrower solution, and we’ve packaged the car to be able to do that. The reality is the cars will evolve a lot between now and race one and you will see different solutions come along."


If you watch the actual video on Formula 1 the quotes in the article are certainly very selectively presenting his statements to make something out of nothing.

[mantikos]

I don’t look at reddit. It has a collective IQ of like 95.

But, link?

Haha - yea, I was referring to the F1Technical sub there, its much better than the general purpose Formula1 sub

[Shakeman]

Does the change back to silver livery increase the likelihood of the side-podless car car being true? The marketing people would love a car that looked like an arrow to be silver again.

I guess a giant pocket warmer in reverse, a closed endothermic chemical soup reacting for the duration of the race. Presumably there's no issue with topping up consumables at various stages of the race weekend?

[Hoffman900]

I thought it was interesting they had their Barcelona test car (or at least one with the same body work) at Harvard a couple weeks ago. You’d think they would be at the factory working on it…

I'm with you on the 'I'll believe it when I see it' but the cost cap and limitations in number of CFD runs doesn't rule out a dramatic change in a perverse it might mean a dramatic change is more likely.

As a former engineer who worked in a cash and resource strapped organisation it did teach us to think outside the box a lot and get creative and I've seen brilliant engineers come up with great ideas in a mature project that just takes it in a completely different direction.

This.

I’d rather have less money / time with smarter / more talented engineers than try to iterate myself to a solution with a less talented group. I’ve said this all along, you cannot unlearn what you know and talent always wins. I’ve seen this play out again and again in other racing series, and even in spec series from amateur to pro, the same people / teams are at the front.

I’d argue these rule sets even favor a Mercedes or RedBull because they’ll always be more efficient with their time than a team who may have more wind tunnel time / cfd time but are struggling with correlation issues or were super far off the mark to begin with. We could have a billion dollars with every tool at our disposal, hire all the regular forum posters, and we’d be lucky to design a mid pack amateur field Formula Atlantic.

This would be true if the CFD testing was limited similarly across the board, but teams lower in the WCC get more CFD/wind tunnel time, so it should even things out. The interesting thing about this is how the testing time is allotted at various points throughout the year, so it's almost like a BoP.

This only holds true if they use the tools as effectively.

We could each be given a hammer and told “build a house”. We would all have varying levels of quality and how much time we need to do it.

Engineering teams are no different. Ever have a conversation with someone when they hit you with “well I’ve been doing it this way for 40 years” and you have to respond “well you’ve been doing it wrong for 40’years”? I have. It’s like that.

[AR3-GP]

What this thing on the halo?

[_cerber1]

What this thing on the halo?

https://i.postimg.cc/wM4zGwCy/Image-6.jpg

Fan

[dans79]

I don’t look at reddit. It has a collective IQ of like 95.

But, link?

95? You are being awfully generous!

[AR3-GP]

Has anyone else heard or know anything about this revolutionary cooling system?

That's rather ominous if true...

[Blackout]

lol "CCS" is an acronym I came up with for "centerline cooling system"... Maybe the confused guy who made this bad video got things mixed up

[dans79]

"Big if true," in video form. This supposed Chemical Cooling System (coined by the same press article or not?) can't use phase change phenomenon for cooling (rules) so what other chemical processes might be used to reduce the temperature of the engine coolant and/or charge air.

maybe graphene nanofluids, and some kind of new secondary heat exchanger. The primary heat exchangers are fairly locked down by the rules, but secondary ones are pretty wide open!

[motobaleno]

maybe graphene nanofluids, and some kind of new secondary heat exchanger. The primary heat exchangers are fairly locked down by the rules, but secondary ones are pretty wide open!

what do you mean with "secondary heat exchanger"? in addiction to an usual water radiator? (I think water as cooler for
the engine is mandatory) and how an addictional device could help to save space?

[mantikos]

lol "CCS" is an acronym I came up with for "centerline cooling system"... Maybe the confused guy who made this bad video got things mixed up

He is using Scarbs' illustration that he made as a joke as a sourced drawing, you can gauge the authenticity of this video on that alone

[vorticism]

maybe graphene nanofluids, and some kind of new secondary heat exchanger. The primary heat exchangers are fairly locked down by the rules, but secondary ones are pretty wide open!

The more limiting factor is air, so the coolant fluid thermal conductivity doesn't help much imo. Radiator design might be where its at, microtubes f.e., although it's worth noting no teams have used them in the sidepods (only in the intake post air filter) despite the tech being available for a decade or more. The 919 used them in sidepod, so its not infeasible, it just begs the question of why or why not.