Mercedes W13

[west52keep64]

How much 'testing' do you think there will be in FP1 and FP2? Testing new floors etc during FP is risky work, especially if they dont work.

With that mindset, how would teams ever bring updates to cars during the season? If they have a new floor for the Bahrain GP, they'll run it. If it's not better than what they ran at this test, they'll swap back. Seems pretty simple to me.

[proteus]

Source: The Race

"Hamilton absolutely emphatic that Mercedes is not in a good position right now. He doesn't expect Mercedes to fight for wins in its current form and says if people don't believe that, they will be surprised next weekend.

Asked if he can fight for the title this year, he says: "Obviously it’s a little bit too early to have those kinds of thoughts. At the moment I don’t think we’ll be competing for wins. But there is potential within our car to get us there. We’ve just got to extract it and fix our problems.

"That’s what we’re working on. Everyone’s doing a fantastic job, working as hard as they can.

"We have hurdles to overcome. Next week we will have a better showing of our pace. People will be surprised maybe - people think we are talking ourselves down but it’s different this year."

To me this is more like "Bono my tyres are gone" and posting 15 consecutive fastest laps afterwards kind of talk....i am willing to eat my words, but i suspect Lewis is performing his usual "underdog" presentation for public and then taking the race with one lap advantage. Didnt he say Mercedes is not making mistakes few days ago?

[ringo]

I think an improvement is square the shoulders of the sidepods. At the level of the green and white petronas logo. Its maybe too rounded. Square that midrift shoulder to reduce the randomness of the flow going towards the back of the car.

The ferrari sidepods are like big blunt wings, but it aslo prioritizes flow to the beam wing by sheilding the flow there from the deadzone trailing the front wheels.

Mercedes does not have that sheilding effect, neither does redbull, but redbull creates a nice tight vortex going to the beam wing off their new twisted lump sidepods. The beam wing load on ferrari and redbull should be giving them better rear end and floor suction.
Merceds feeds its beameing flow from the top of the floor. It's higher energy and more load than the other designs but its more exposed and maybe more random. Theyre depending heavily on the straighteners under the mirror.

What they can do is some sidepode shaping with more squared off shape and it can help.
And if possible put the redbull twisted lumps in the mini side pods they got.

But yeah i like that the car has a lot of potential and that it seems to be creating the most load. It just needs some tuning out and maybe some more advanced suspension.
It may take them some races but lets hope Ferrari and Redbull take points off each other while Merc get this car sorted out.

[west52keep64]

To me this is more like "Bono my tyres are gone" and posting 15 consecutive fastest laps afterwards kind of talk....i am willing to eat my words, but i suspect Lewis is performing his usual "underdog" presentation for public and then taking the race with one lap advantage. Didnt he say Mercedes is not making mistakes few days ago?

Go look at footage of the car on track. Ignore the press and the drive to survive interview rubbish, just go look at the cars. It's clear the Mercedes isn't working as well as the Red Bull and the Ferrari.

[Watto]

Source: The Race

"Hamilton absolutely emphatic that Mercedes is not in a good position right now. He doesn't expect Mercedes to fight for wins in its current form and says if people don't believe that, they will be surprised next weekend.

Asked if he can fight for the title this year, he says: "Obviously it’s a little bit too early to have those kinds of thoughts. At the moment I don’t think we’ll be competing for wins. But there is potential within our car to get us there. We’ve just got to extract it and fix our problems.

"That’s what we’re working on. Everyone’s doing a fantastic job, working as hard as they can.

"We have hurdles to overcome. Next week we will have a better showing of our pace. People will be surprised maybe - people think we are talking ourselves down but it’s different this year."

To me this is more like "Bono my tyres are gone" and posting 15 consecutive fastest laps afterwards kind of talk....i am willing to eat my words, but i suspect Lewis is performing his usual "underdog" presentation for public and then taking the race with one lap advantage. Didnt he say Mercedes is not making mistakes few days ago?

A bit of both, I think there are some mind games from Lewis to keep the focus off them. I think the can will be very very good once they sought out some of the issues, we saw last year as the broadcast mentioned they looked behind the ball in testing but won the first race of the year, but I think they have some work to do in the sims this week to work through that. But they are good at what they do so I am sure they will find the solutions they need, I think Lewis knows that too.

[Sevach]

Agreed, Need to have a balance of the two. if you cant go fast on the straights, its no good being good in the twisty stuff as other cars will just overtake half way down the straights.

Martins just said the Merc looks the worst for porpoising.

That cornering performance might be due to running the lowest.
Mercedes still hasn't experimented with cuts to their floor that let some air "leak out", at this point it seems like they are trying to have "everything" but this compromise might be needed.

Some merc engineer told that it wasn't as easy to just cut holes in the floor to stop the purpoising.
It surprises me that Merc seems to have overlooked this effect by a large margin, hence their problems now...

Sure it doesn't solve it, Ferrari sometimes porpoises and they have plenty of cuts and slots...
But you still try as you might to minimize the thing.

How much 'testing' do you think there will be in FP1 and FP2? Testing new floors etc during FP is risky work, especially if they dont work.

A fair bit given that, teams should have extensive knowledge of expected tire behaviour for next weeks GP.

A floor is no different than any aero upgrade, if it's a total bust you just go back to your default, if the new part is even a moderate improvement it stays on... just like every other performance part.

[Watto]

That cornering performance might be due to running the lowest.
Mercedes still hasn't experimented with cuts to their floor that let some air "leak out", at this point it seems like they are trying to have "everything" but this compromise might be needed.

Some merc engineer told that it wasn't as easy to just cut holes in the floor to stop the purpoising.
It surprises me that Merc seems to have overlooked this effect by a large margin, hence their problems now...

Sure it doesn't solve it, Ferrari sometimes porpoises and they have plenty of cuts and slots...
But you still try as you might to minimize the thing.

How much 'testing' do you think there will be in FP1 and FP2? Testing new floors etc during FP is risky work, especially if they dont work.

A fair bit given that, teams should have extensive knowledge of expected tire behaviour for next weeks GP.

A floor is no different than any aero upgrade, if it's a total bust you just go back to your default, if the new part is even a moderate improvement it stays on... just like every other performance part.

I think at long as they can correlate the sim work with what happens on the track its not a big issue, teams are used to it now. As you said if thing don't work as well as they like than revert to the old parts is easy enough.

[Big Tea]

To me this is more like "Bono my tyres are gone" and posting 15 consecutive fastest laps afterwards kind of talk....i am willing to eat my words, but i suspect Lewis is performing his usual "underdog" presentation for public and then taking the race with one lap advantage. Didnt he say Mercedes is not making mistakes few days ago?

Go look at footage of the car on track. Ignore the press and the drive to survive interview rubbish, just go look at the cars. It's clear the Mercedes isn't working as well as the Red Bull and the Ferrari.

It looks what I can only describe as 'pushy*' in the corners. like the weight to high. I hope it is not due to the radical design or it will be very difficult to get around.

(*Those who have towed a trailer with poor brakes will know what I mean)

[Tvetovnato]

To me this is more like "Bono my tyres are gone" and posting 15 consecutive fastest laps afterwards kind of talk....i am willing to eat my words, but i suspect Lewis is performing his usual "underdog" presentation for public and then taking the race with one lap advantage. Didnt he say Mercedes is not making mistakes few days ago?

Go look at footage of the car on track. Ignore the press and the drive to survive interview rubbish, just go look at the cars. It's clear the Mercedes isn't working as well as the Red Bull and the Ferrari.

It looks what I can only describe as 'pushy*' in the corners. like the weight to high. I hope it is not due to the radical design or it will be very difficult to get around.

(*Those who have towed a trailer with poor brakes will know what I mean)

I agree that it looks heavy, but that can also simply be down to using more fuel. I'm dead certain things will be close next week.

[De Jokke]

Source: The Race

"Hamilton absolutely emphatic that Mercedes is not in a good position right now. He doesn't expect Mercedes to fight for wins in its current form and says if people don't believe that, they will be surprised next weekend.

Asked if he can fight for the title this year, he says: "Obviously it’s a little bit too early to have those kinds of thoughts. At the moment I don’t think we’ll be competing for wins. But there is potential within our car to get us there. We’ve just got to extract it and fix our problems.

"That’s what we’re working on. Everyone’s doing a fantastic job, working as hard as they can.

"We have hurdles to overcome. Next week we will have a better showing of our pace. People will be surprised maybe - people think we are talking ourselves down but it’s different this year."

To me this is more like "Bono my tyres are gone" and posting 15 consecutive fastest laps afterwards kind of talk....i am willing to eat my words, but i suspect Lewis is performing his usual "underdog" presentation for public and then taking the race with one lap advantage. Didnt he say Mercedes is not making mistakes few days ago?

A bit of both, I think there are some mind games from Lewis to keep the focus off them. I think the can will be very very good once they sought out some of the issues, we saw last year as the broadcast mentioned they looked behind the ball in testing but won the first race of the year, but I think they have some work to do in the sims this week to work through that. But they are good at what they do so I am sure they will find the solutions they need, I think Lewis knows that too.

They won that race thanks to Lewis. He judged it perfectly to fend of the much faster RBR of crazy ramboy.

[De Jokke]

Go look at footage of the car on track. Ignore the press and the drive to survive interview rubbish, just go look at the cars. It's clear the Mercedes isn't working as well as the Red Bull and the Ferrari.

It looks what I can only describe as 'pushy*' in the corners. like the weight to high. I hope it is not due to the radical design or it will be very difficult to get around.

(*Those who have towed a trailer with poor brakes will know what I mean)

I agree that it looks heavy, but that can also simply be down to using more fuel. I'm dead certain things will be close next week.

It might be closer but they are behind anyway. The handling of the car is telling compared to the smooth RBR cruising to an easy laptime. Have to say that I'm a bit disappointed in merc as they dropped the w12 for the w13 development and look now... perhaps they went too radical with the sidepods and all the restructuring it needed?

[Big Tea]

Go look at footage of the car on track. Ignore the press and the drive to survive interview rubbish, just go look at the cars. It's clear the Mercedes isn't working as well as the Red Bull and the Ferrari.

It looks what I can only describe as 'pushy*' in the corners. like the weight to high. I hope it is not due to the radical design or it will be very difficult to get around.

(*Those who have towed a trailer with poor brakes will know what I mean)

I agree that it looks heavy, but that can also simply be down to using more fuel. I'm dead certain things will be close next week.

I thought at first it was due to the inside front tyre wall being soft, but seen from the side this does not seem to be the case

[chrisc90]

I think an improvement is square the shoulders of the sidepods. At the level of the green and white petronas logo. Its maybe too rounded. Square that midrift shoulder to reduce the randomness of the flow going towards the back of the car.

The ferrari sidepods are like big blunt wings, but it aslo prioritizes flow to the beam wing by sheilding the flow there from the deadzone trailing the front wheels.

Mercedes does not have that sheilding effect, neither does redbull, but redbull creates a nice tight vortex going to the beam wing off their new twisted lump sidepods. The beam wing load on ferrari and redbull should be giving them better rear end and floor suction.
Merceds feeds its beameing flow from the top of the floor. It's higher energy and more load than the other designs but its more exposed and maybe more random. Theyre depending heavily on the straighteners under the mirror.

What they can do is some sidepode shaping with more squared off shape and it can help.
And if possible put the redbull twisted lumps in the mini side pods they got.

But yeah i like that the car has a lot of potential and that it seems to be creating the most load. It just needs some tuning out and maybe some more advanced suspension.
It may take them some races but lets hope Ferrari and Redbull take points off each other while Merc get this car sorted out.

Regarding the sidepods.....I dont think they can alter them any more than the already have, due to only having 2 radius on a axis (as explained on the Kyle Engineers Video other day) - as thats the reason they go straight down to the floor rather than have a curve in them.(or something to that effect)

maybe they'll go back to the Barcelona sidepods?

[Tvetovnato]

[ringo]

I said this in the ferrari thread but this w13 is running heavy fuel most of the time.
The porpoising occurs more with a heavier car as it has more inertai and responds poorer to damping.
It may well tie back into as another poster said the pushiness in the corners.
This car has a lower cog than the others as well as possibly a smaller radius of gyration. Its not top heavy by any means, much of the body work up top is for cooling space and lighter equipment.
They may be running very very heavy fuel load with ballast. lol