Mercedes W13

[dans79]

They were specifically allowed to put a spring-damper device in the area. It is not a mass damper at all, not even close. No idea of why the "mass damper" thing was even mentioned.

What rule allows them to put a spring damper there?

[AR3-GP]

They were specifically allowed to put a spring-damper device in the area. It is not a mass damper at all, not even close. No idea of why the "mass damper" thing was even mentioned.

What rule allows them to put a spring damper there?

What rule prevents them doing so? As long as the t-tray passes the deflection test, there's no problem. Same story with the front and rear wings.

[matteosc]

They were specifically allowed to put a spring-damper device in the area. It is not a mass damper at all, not even close. No idea of why the "mass damper" thing was even mentioned.

What rule allows them to put a spring damper there?

I remember a more reliable source, but I cannot find it. In the meantime you can look here

[dans79]

They were specifically allowed to put a spring-damper device in the area. It is not a mass damper at all, not even close. No idea of why the "mass damper" thing was even mentioned.

What rule allows them to put a spring damper there?

What rule prevents them doing so? As long as the t-tray passes the deflection test, there's no problem. Same story with the front and rear wings.

The Ferrari drawing shows a hinge in the back, and a spring/damper in the front. by its very nature its a mass thats can move independently of the chassis and has the ability to dampen out motion.

Thus teams will have to be very careful about staying well clear of this rule.

10.1.5 Mass damper

A mass or system that has a degree of freedom relative to the sprung mass, which either
performs no other function, or while performing another legitimate function has a
compliance beyond what is necessary for its safe and reliable operation.

[dans79]

They were specifically allowed to put a spring-damper device in the area. It is not a mass damper at all, not even close. No idea of why the "mass damper" thing was even mentioned.

What rule allows them to put a spring damper there?

I remember a more reliable source, but I cannot find it. In the meantime you can look here

I think I found it, but it's still pretty vague. The FIA will have to watch this closely, because it for sure could be manipulated to have an aero benefit.

12.2.7 Front Floor Structure

Below the survival cell, a structure, called “Front Floor Structure” must be fitted.
The Front Floor Structure:

a. Must lie within RV-BIB and be fully enclosed by the Floor Bodywork as specified in
Article 3.5.6 such that no part of the structure is in contact with the external air flow.

b. Must be rigidly mounted to the Survival Cell using at least 4 fasteners.

c. Must only deform in the event of an impact with the ground.

Furthermore, the Front Floor Structure and Floor Auxiliary Component described in Article
3.5.7 b:

d. Must not incorporate any component, mechanism or structure whose characteristics
vary with time, velocity, acceleration or temperature. Including, but not limited to
viscous damping, hysteretic damping and hydraulic systems.

e. Must not incorporate any parts which may systematically or routinely exhibit
permanent deformation.

f. Must not be designed in such a way, or incorporate any component, mechanism or
structure that can cause it to exhibit anything other than the same load deflection
relationship measured during the test described in Article 3.15.6 whilst on the circuit
(other than minor incidental effects such as those caused by inertia).

[matteosc]

What rule allows them to put a spring damper there?

What rule prevents them doing so? As long as the t-tray passes the deflection test, there's no problem. Same story with the front and rear wings.

The Ferrari drawing shows a hinge in the back, and a spring/damper in the front. by its very nature its a mass thats can move independently of the chassis and has the ability to dampen out motion.

Thus teams will have to be very careful about staying well clear of this rule.

10.1.5 Mass damper

A mass or system that has a degree of freedom relative to the sprung mass, which either
performs no other function, or while performing another legitimate function has a
compliance beyond what is necessary for its safe and reliable operation.

Ferrari's t-tray does not have a hinge at the back (drawing may be misleading). Also let's keep in mind what was the original mass damper and what would be the function of such device. Renault's mass damper had a ~10 kg mass and the purpose was to reduce the bouncing after hitting a curb by tuning the natural frequency of the system appropriately.

[AR3-GP]

What rule allows them to put a spring damper there?

What rule prevents them doing so? As long as the t-tray passes the deflection test, there's no problem. Same story with the front and rear wings.

The Ferrari drawing shows a hinge in the back, and a spring/damper in the front. by its very nature its a mass thats can move independently of the chassis and has the ability to dampen out motion.

Thus teams will have to be very careful about staying well clear of this rule.

If it passes the deflection test, then it's not a movable aero device anymore than a rear wing or a front wing is which also must pass deflection test.

[dans79]

What rule prevents them doing so? As long as the t-tray passes the deflection test, there's no problem. Same story with the front and rear wings.

The Ferrari drawing shows a hinge in the back, and a spring/damper in the front. by its very nature its a mass thats can move independently of the chassis and has the ability to dampen out motion.

Thus teams will have to be very careful about staying well clear of this rule.

If it passes the deflection test, then it's not a movable aero device anymore than a rear wing or a front wing is which also must pass deflection test.

It's off topic for this thread, but I can already thing of a few possible ways to gaming that rule.

[AR3-GP]

The Ferrari drawing shows a hinge in the back, and a spring/damper in the front. by its very nature its a mass thats can move independently of the chassis and has the ability to dampen out motion.

Thus teams will have to be very careful about staying well clear of this rule.

If it passes the deflection test, then it's not a movable aero device anymore than a rear wing or a front wing is which also must pass deflection test.

It's off topic for this thread, but I can already thing of a few possible ways to gaming that rule.

Speaking of topics , does anyone have any photos of the Mercedes t-tray unwrapped?

[dialtone]

Don't know if somebody already posted this but its a great analysis of the speed difference between Hamilton quali lap and Leclers.

Basically, most of the difference comes from the breaking where Lewis breaks much earlier. Ferarri also has a slightly higher top speed on all straights but not by much. Mercedes is faster in every single slow corner though.

I think that video is a bit misleading in a few places, for example Leclerc missed the apex in T1 didn't just choose to run wider there.

But the more questionable side is that looking at minimum speed in a corner doesn't tell the whole story, but can just be telling the style of each driver. Here's the example from that lap:

https://i.imgur.com/xnWibgD.png

HAM is indeed quite fast in terms of minimum speed through a lot of corners, but in terms of average speed through said corners he's actually quite slow across the board.

I was curious about a couple of things related to the graph I generated from the telemetry, in particular some minimum speeds didn't match up, and I discovered that FOM uses a different telemetry to generate their videos instead of the 4Hz that they pass to us. For example, while the minimum speed in T1 is also 70kph in the telemetry, for T4 the min speed for LEC is in fact 118kph, instead for HAM it's 117 rather than the 113 that shows up in the video, and so on for the other corners.

oh well... since I was at it... those fancy minisector graphs generated by FastF1 are sadly also not the best, and to their credit they say so on their site, I've also validated that using the video. The distance/speed stuff, while inaccurate, is somewhat fine when you average stuff a bit, the 4hz resolution means that the error of those time deltas is in practice quite significant, the FastF1 library tries to interpolate points but it really ends up being only as good as the data it comes from. If they did 50hz it would be a massive file but would actually be really nice. All in all using it for small chunks of the lap isn't really practical (I was trying to measure the difference in time for a given corner only, but it gives funny results, like in T1 Verstappen being ahead only of 0.007s to LEC, while in the pole video with real time distance it looks more like VER is 0.15s ahead there).

This is certainly OT but tangentially related to the video/telemetry and how to interpret them, directionally they're fine, averaging points is fine, max/min or braking points are not super accurate.

[dans79]

This is certainly OT but tangentially related to the video/telemetry and how to interpret them, directionally they're fine, averaging points is fine, max/min or braking points are not super accurate.

Are you sure it's different telemetry, or are they just doing something dumb like only grabbing a value every 30th or 60th of a second.

[dialtone]

This is certainly OT but tangentially related to the video/telemetry and how to interpret them, directionally they're fine, averaging points is fine, max/min or braking points are not super accurate.

Are you sure it's different telemetry, or are they just doing something dumb like only grabbing a value every 30th or 60th of a second.

According to FastF1 it's 4-5Hz and jittery. I suppose they grab the source ~200Hz or so, and grab a random 3% from it and pass it off to the app, while they keep the original for their own content.

[mzivtins]

The Ferrari drawing shows a hinge in the back, and a spring/damper in the front. by its very nature its a mass thats can move independently of the chassis and has the ability to dampen out motion.

Thus teams will have to be very careful about staying well clear of this rule.

If it passes the deflection test, then it's not a movable aero device anymore than a rear wing or a front wing is which also must pass deflection test.

It's off topic for this thread, but I can already thing of a few possible ways to gaming that rule.

Absolutely agree. Are people really believing that, at speed, that spring is not allowing the floor to move as a moveable aerodynamic device?

If it doesn't, they why would a spring be used?

[PhillipM]

I think I found it, but it's still pretty vague. The FIA will have to watch this closely, because it for sure could be manipulated to have an aero benefit.

12.2.7 Front Floor Structure

Below the survival cell, a structure, called “Front Floor Structure” must be fitted.
The Front Floor Structure:

a. Must lie within RV-BIB and be fully enclosed by the Floor Bodywork as specified in
Article 3.5.6 such that no part of the structure is in contact with the external air flow.

b. Must be rigidly mounted to the Survival Cell using at least 4 fasteners.

c. Must only deform in the event of an impact with the ground.

Furthermore, the Front Floor Structure and Floor Auxiliary Component described in Article
3.5.7 b:

d. Must not incorporate any component, mechanism or structure whose characteristics
vary with time, velocity, acceleration or temperature. Including, but not limited to
viscous damping, hysteretic damping and hydraulic systems.

e. Must not incorporate any parts which may systematically or routinely exhibit
permanent deformation.

f. Must not be designed in such a way, or incorporate any component, mechanism or
structure that can cause it to exhibit anything other than the same load deflection
relationship measured during the test described in Article 3.15.6 whilst on the circuit
(other than minor incidental effects such as those caused by inertia).

Honestly just by nature of having a damper in there it must fall foul of d, e, and f already?

[bonjon1979]

I think I found it, but it's still pretty vague. The FIA will have to watch this closely, because it for sure could be manipulated to have an aero benefit.

12.2.7 Front Floor Structure

Below the survival cell, a structure, called “Front Floor Structure” must be fitted.
The Front Floor Structure:

a. Must lie within RV-BIB and be fully enclosed by the Floor Bodywork as specified in
Article 3.5.6 such that no part of the structure is in contact with the external air flow.

b. Must be rigidly mounted to the Survival Cell using at least 4 fasteners.

c. Must only deform in the event of an impact with the ground.

Furthermore, the Front Floor Structure and Floor Auxiliary Component described in Article
3.5.7 b:

d. Must not incorporate any component, mechanism or structure whose characteristics
vary with time, velocity, acceleration or temperature. Including, but not limited to
viscous damping, hysteretic damping and hydraulic systems.

e. Must not incorporate any parts which may systematically or routinely exhibit
permanent deformation.

f. Must not be designed in such a way, or incorporate any component, mechanism or
structure that can cause it to exhibit anything other than the same load deflection
relationship measured during the test described in Article 3.15.6 whilst on the circuit
(other than minor incidental effects such as those caused by inertia).

Honestly just by nature of having a damper in there it must fall foul of d, e, and f already?

Feels very odd that it's allowed, I can't quite understand how it doesn't contravene several of these basic rules. Maybe it needs it's own thread?