zibby43 wrote: ↑24 Apr 2022, 21:22
SmallSoldier wrote: ↑24 Apr 2022, 20:39
zibby43 wrote: ↑24 Apr 2022, 20:19
I don’t think I’m overreacting. Time will tell whether I am. They will not compete for either championship this year. Full stop. Window is over. They still have a chance to maybe compete for a race win at some point toward the end of the year if they magically gain 1.5s.
McLaren is a perfect example of how shocking Mercedes is right now.
I would argue that McLaren is a good example of how you can turn things around this season… Everyone was calling the car a dog, that the concept was flawed because it didn’t follow Ferrari or RBR, for heads to roll (from Brown to Key) and they are showing enough pace to be at the front of the midfield with no real upgrades to talk about.
Mercedes issue is due to the porpoising, which some think is more related to a suspension problem than generated by the aero… If it is mechanical, then the concept may very well be the right one… They just can’t unlock the potential until they fix the other issues… So no, changing concepts this early in the season wouldn’t be helpful and is really early for it… They need to understand why it’s happening so they can fix it and they seem to be struggling to find those answers.
McLaren’s not challenging for the title though. They improved enough to snag a 3rd on merit. Which is a place where Merc has been this year, and has the potential to get back to.
That’s the lens I’m looking at this through - the championships. Sure, Merc can improve and maybe challenge for the odd race win later in the season on a weekend where Ferrari/RBR stumble.
Time to let go of the championship talk. The team has.
That was one of my main points. On the “concept” - they shouldn’t change just for the sake of changing.
But they can’t afford to stick with it because they’re enamored by the “theoretical” performance on paper, either. Hopefully that better summarizes my other point.
I agree that the Championship will be a very tall order for Mercedes this season… Thanks for elaborating!
Probably I should have explained mine better also… Even though I agree that the WCC may be a very hard to achieve target for Mercedes, it doesn’t mean that their concept is necessarily wrong… Yes, it is not performing as expected right now, but without knowing which is the exact cause for the lack of performance, it will be very risky and probably mistaken to go hunt for a different concept, without knowing what isn’t working or correlating on this car, it could very well happen with a different concept also.
At this point, the team (and most definitely the fans) don’t know if the concept is the right or the wrong one, is it an aero or a mechanical problem… Going for a different concept to fix what exactly? If they don’t know what is causing the extreme porpoising, how do they design a new concept that doesn’t carry over this characteristic?
An argument could be made to go an copy either Ferrari’s or Red Bull’s concept, but that would mean most probably been behind next season too, because while they are using time to copy / understand their rivals concept, their rivals are refining, improving and adding performance to those concepts (like the situation with the “pink mercedes”, Racing Point was capable of copying Mercedes concept, but they were never going to beat them with it).