lh13 wrote: ↑27 Mar 2022, 08:12
What I'm saying is, Mercedes chassis department has been 'saved' by their engine department often in the recent past. Mercedes always had good chassis, that much is clear, but never 'great' chassis, that is all I'm saying. They've produced cars with 'downforce at all cost' more often than not, stick whatever we can to make the aero work, and it was all possible due to their PU advantage. In short, they've been building their chassis around the capabilities of their PU, with 'dirty' downforce, hence my opinion that they've never built great chassis.
This year, Toto has admitted that they're running a lot of drag. This is not just the drag from the wings. In Saudi Arabia, they're running perhaps the shallowest wing and still nowhere on the straights, so the entire car is draggy.
Are they so incompetent that they didn't know how much drag they were running in the wind tunnel? No, I believe they knew exactly how much drag they were running, and it was a conscious decision as they were confident that their PU will get them through, once again, but now they're caught off guard because of their PU deficit, which I believe is a thing, while many others are not believing.
Popoising actually might be 'saving their face' at the moment, as they look to have problems that expand beyong the scope of popoising. Only time will tell.
Again, this is all my opinion, hence my post in the 'non-technical' thread. Please don't ask for 'data', I don't know where to get it.
Those are indeed excellent points. I made similar observation a while ago on this thread. Having ended 2016 with one of the dominant cars, Mercedes came short in 2017 when Ferrari matched them. They famously called the W08 as a diva for it's unpredictable behavior and constricted operating window, but had enough grunt to pull through.
With Honda having caught up on power with Red Bull as a chassis, it started becoming difficult for Mercedes to mask the chassis disadvantages as was evident in 2021. Let's be clear, we are not talking about a mid-field or a back marker here. Despite the challenges, Mercedes chassis still figures in the top 3. But they are held to the top most position as a reference and anything less is 'bad job'. Ferrari having slogged for 2 years to fix it's engine shortfall and having produced a 2017 like chassis, is now a strong opponent.
Looking at Mercedes customer teams and their straight line performance deficit and Mercedes' own lack of straight line speed in Jeddah, despite such a deep cut rear wing, it's apparent Mercedes engine has lost it's grunt and quite far behind. Last year, they struggled with engine reliability and to be competitive, they had to resort to using high performance modes for longer and were willing to sacrifice engines.
Purpoising is a bad excuse for lack of performance. It's an issue that most cars have on the grid which I don't think is bothering Mercedes alone. All teams have done the compromise required and so are Mercedes. Yet, they are the ones that are so far behind. I doubt solving Porpoising problems would cure their issues and to their misfortune, their engine clearly appears to be quite far behind to help them in current struggles.
The ICE is all frozen and unless they have a big performance margin inside it and are waiting for some sort of reliability upgrades to unlock it, it's going to be difficult 4 years. Whatever hybrid components they can improve till September, can only bring marginal gains. With chassis rules being so stringent, there are no loop holes that can help any team to balance the chassis performance when there is lack of engine power.
When James Allison said, a team or two would get it wrong, little did we know one of them would be Mercedes.
