Mercedes W13

[F1DataAnalysis]

I really don't understand the flawed idea that the Mercedes PU is not still the best.

The slow speeds are related to drag.

I've no doubt at all that as soon as Mercedes sort the aero issues the car will all of a sudden be really fast on the straights.

Your thoughts on this? (There are further details on the approach here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/F1DataAnal ... s-mercedes )

Hi! I’m the person who did the analysis, thank you for sharing it here! It was a very pleasant surprise to see something mine in the forum in which I spent the last years lurking

The analysis is my first one of this kind, and is still relatively rough, but still I tried to take all the reasonable steps to improve its accuracy (taking the local track slope into account, considering only straight sections in order not to have additional drag due to cornering forces, appropriately filtering the data etc…)

The points considered are relative to all the DRS open sections, with >=99% throttle, brake=0, rpm>10000 and ax>-0.5m/s^2 (to avoid clipping, but to include both signs of the noise to avoid a bias). The lap considered is the best one in qualy for that driver.

Main limitations are: power is considered constant (while it changes with the rpm, although slightly due to the fuel flow being capped above 10500rpm, and with speed due to the energy deployment strategy), and the drag coefficient too (and it too changes with speed, due to squatting etc). At least considering only the DRS=open sections reduces its variability, and with DRS open the drag reduction due to squatting is lower (less downforce to push the car down, and less drag to be removed). What I get is, we could say, the average P/m and D/m values for each car through the straights: in reality they vary with speed as I said, but after all they are the single value that best describes the straight-line performance, which is what matters! The values provided (2.0% and 1.6%) could be misleading: these are the values, rounded to the first decimal number, that I got, but this surely does not mean that the accuracy is in the order of 0.1%! I believe the accuracy to be in the low single-digits, I will try to estimate a confidence interval for the next analyses.
Thank you again!!

[AR3-GP]

That is true, but I am not sure whether it is influent in making a comparison, since both Ferrari and Mercedes change their angle of attacks in a similar way.

You mean the porpoising? lol. I don't think they porpoise the same.

Also, few cars were doing what Mercedes was doing last season. There's no knowledge that they attitude change is the same.

1) Porpoising on the straight is actually very similar between Merc and Ferrari, but even so, it does not really affect this analysis, since it is an oscillation and does not directly affect the drag.
2) What was happening last year has zero influence in this analysis.

1) The porpoising has a pitching component.
2) What happened last year does matter because it shows the variation of suspension behaviour that can occur between teams.

I'm not sure why you are determined to presume the Mercedes and the Ferrari have identical ride behaviors. They don't.

[matteosc]

You mean the porpoising? lol. I don't think they porpoise the same.

Also, few cars were doing what Mercedes was doing last season. There's no knowledge that they attitude change is the same.

1) Porpoising on the straight is actually very similar between Merc and Ferrari, but even so, it does not really affect this analysis, since it is an oscillation and does not directly affect the drag.
2) What was happening last year has zero influence in this analysis.

1) The porpoising has a pitching component.
2) What happened last year does matter because it shows the variation of suspension behaviour that can occur between teams.

I'm not sure why you are determined to presume the Mercedes and the Ferrari have identical ride behaviors. They don't.

1) Yes, but it is an oscillation around a central value and it does not affect significantly drags levels. When you hear that porpoising is affecting drag is just because to avoid porpoising they have to raise the car, losing downforce and they have to compensate by increasing wings, which cause more drag.
2) Again, what happened last year does not matter, it has no influence in this year's cars. If the point it that cars have different suspension settings than sure they do, but I highly doubt that this invalidate the analysis.

I am not presuming that Mercedes and Ferrari have identical ride behavior. The analysis posted tries to estimate PU power and overall drag, so even if they have different suspensions, porpoising, angles of attack etc... what does it matter? The point is that Merc is more draggy and with slightly less power. How it is "draggier" and how it would be if it had no porpoising and all that does not matter. If you are have more drag you have more drag. Same thing for power.

[AR3-GP]

1) Porpoising on the straight is actually very similar between Merc and Ferrari, but even so, it does not really affect this analysis, since it is an oscillation and does not directly affect the drag.
2) What was happening last year has zero influence in this analysis.

1) The porpoising has a pitching component.
2) What happened last year does matter because it shows the variation of suspension behaviour that can occur between teams.

I'm not sure why you are determined to presume the Mercedes and the Ferrari have identical ride behaviors. They don't.

I am not presuming that Mercedes and Ferrari have identical ride behavior. The analysis posted tries to estimate PU power and overall drag, so even if they have different suspensions, porpoising, angles of attack etc... what does it matter? The point is that Merc is more draggy and with slightly less power. How it is "draggier" and how it would be if it had no porpoising and all that does not matter. If you are have more drag you have more drag. Same thing for power.

It matters because the basic assumption in the analysis is that drag follows a quadratic law. The truth is we don't know that at all and we cannot say that the Mercedes and the Ferrari have similar characteristics in this regard either. Mercedes's technical solutions from last season proves this. It's not just a simple wing in an airflow.

[AA_2019]

They need to bring back Andy Cowell to sort out the PU deficiencies

[dialtone]

They need to bring back Andy Cowell to sort out the PU deficiencies

PU is done for, no changes till 2026, just ERS in September but that's too late for Andy Cowell to do anything anyway.

[georgekyr]

PUs development is frozen, but still you can run different mappings, play with the reliability of components (same as what happened with the rocket engine last year) and improve the lifetime of components under the allowed reliability upgrades. This is more than enough to make one or the other PU to appear 1-2% more powerful in any given time...

[matteosc]

1) The porpoising has a pitching component.
2) What happened last year does matter because it shows the variation of suspension behaviour that can occur between teams.

I'm not sure why you are determined to presume the Mercedes and the Ferrari have identical ride behaviors. They don't.

I am not presuming that Mercedes and Ferrari have identical ride behavior. The analysis posted tries to estimate PU power and overall drag, so even if they have different suspensions, porpoising, angles of attack etc... what does it matter? The point is that Merc is more draggy and with slightly less power. How it is "draggier" and how it would be if it had no porpoising and all that does not matter. If you are have more drag you have more drag. Same thing for power.

It matters because the basic assumption in the analysis is that drag follows a quadratic law. The truth is we don't know that at all and we cannot say that the Mercedes and the Ferrari have similar characteristics in this regard either. Mercedes's technical solutions from last season proves this. It's not just a simple wing in an airflow.

Yes, obviously the real aerodynamic force would be better represented with a varying drag coefficient. If you try to fit a quadratic curve (with constant drag coefficient) you will obtain the average drag coefficient for that portion of the track. So you can say that "on average" Mercedes is about 1.6% draggier than Ferrari. All things considered we may be looking at a drag coefficient which varies between 1.55% and 1.65%, if you really want to see it this way, but you are focusing on things that are one order of magnitude less relevant and loosing the big picture.
Everyone knows and accept that Mercedes is draggier than Ferrari (and that Ferrari is draggier than Red Bull), I am not sure why you are trying to dispute that. The analysis done in the original post is interesting and able to somehow decouple power and drag. It may not be 100% accurate, but it makes sense and it is definitely close to the truth.

[PlatinumZealot]

https://twitter.com/hotlapmode/status/1 ... jzQqx2yMRQ



If the zero pod design / lack of floor rigidity is a major contributor to their problems, why don't they add on fake side pods connecting the floor with the main body. Think an inverted L shape but nicely curved

Zero side pods already ruled out by George Russell. He said they had porpoising on the shakedown lap when they had the conventional side pods.

[silver]

I really don't understand the flawed idea that the Mercedes PU is not still the best.

The slow speeds are related to drag.

I've no doubt at all that as soon as Mercedes sort the aero issues the car will all of a sudden be really fast on the straights.

Your thoughts on this? (There are further details on the approach here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/F1DataAnal ... s-mercedes )

Hi! I’m the person who did the analysis, thank you for sharing it here! It was a very pleasant surprise to see something mine in the forum in which I spent the last years lurking

The analysis is my first one of this kind, and is still relatively rough, but still I tried to take all the reasonable steps to improve its accuracy (taking the local track slope into account, considering only straight sections in order not to have additional drag due to cornering forces, appropriately filtering the data etc…)

The points considered are relative to all the DRS open sections, with >=99% throttle, brake=0, rpm>10000 and ax>-0.5m/s^2 (to avoid clipping, but to include both signs of the noise to avoid a bias). The lap considered is the best one in qualy for that driver.

Main limitations are: power is considered constant (while it changes with the rpm, although slightly due to the fuel flow being capped above 10500rpm, and with speed due to the energy deployment strategy), and the drag coefficient too (and it too changes with speed, due to squatting etc). At least considering only the DRS=open sections reduces its variability, and with DRS open the drag reduction due to squatting is lower (less downforce to push the car down, and less drag to be removed). What I get is, we could say, the average P/m and D/m values for each car through the straights: in reality they vary with speed as I said, but after all they are the single value that best describes the straight-line performance, which is what matters! The values provided (2.0% and 1.6%) could be misleading: these are the values, rounded to the first decimal number, that I got, but this surely does not mean that the accuracy is in the order of 0.1%! I believe the accuracy to be in the low single-digits, I will try to estimate a confidence interval for the next analyses.
Thank you again!!

Toto said Ferrari was around 14hp down last year and around 14hp up this year to Mercedes. I think your analysis is in that ball park and it appears your calculations are close to accurate. If you do the same analysis it would be very interesting for Imola, where Ferrari was speculated to have increased the power output by 5hp more and a further speculation says, their new hybrid system being introduced in Spain would add another 10hp.

[AR3-GP]

I am not presuming that Mercedes and Ferrari have identical ride behavior. The analysis posted tries to estimate PU power and overall drag, so even if they have different suspensions, porpoising, angles of attack etc... what does it matter? The point is that Merc is more draggy and with slightly less power. How it is "draggier" and how it would be if it had no porpoising and all that does not matter. If you are have more drag you have more drag. Same thing for power.

It matters because the basic assumption in the analysis is that drag follows a quadratic law. The truth is we don't know that at all and we cannot say that the Mercedes and the Ferrari have similar characteristics in this regard either. Mercedes's technical solutions from last season proves this. It's not just a simple wing in an airflow.

Yes, obviously the real aerodynamic force would be better represented with a varying drag coefficient. If you try to fit a quadratic curve (with constant drag coefficient) you will obtain the average drag coefficient for that portion of the track. So you can say that "on average" Mercedes is about 1.6% draggier than Ferrari. All things considered we may be looking at a drag coefficient which varies between 1.55% and 1.65%, if you really want to see it this way, but you are focusing on things that are one order of magnitude less relevant and loosing the big picture.
Everyone knows and accept that Mercedes is draggier than Ferrari (and that Ferrari is draggier than Red Bull), I am not sure why you are trying to dispute that. The analysis done in the original post is interesting and able to somehow decouple power and drag. It may not be 100% accurate, but it makes sense and it is definitely close to the truth.

I am not disputing that the Mercedes is draggier than the Ferrari. Mercedes have stated this themselves. I'm only pointing out limitations of a model.

[Vaexa]

Surprised to see this tweet has not yet been posted here, unless I'm absolutely blind:



DeepL translation:

Mercedes has cancelled all planned developments, which has suspended the production of new parts, but they should be able to anticipate something for Miami before the decisive package in Barcelona.

It's a difficult one to interpret and I'm not a native Italian speaker, but as I understand it the ''planned developments'' refers to the timeline of parts teams usually have at the start of a season and not to any and all developments coming to W13, although I would happily be corrected by a native speaker.

See also this tweet in the replies to the original:

[continuum16]

https://twitter.com/hotlapmode/status/1 ... jzQqx2yMRQ



If the zero pod design / lack of floor rigidity is a major contributor to their problems, why don't they add on fake side pods connecting the floor with the main body. Think an inverted L shape but nicely curved

Zero side pods already ruled out by George Russell. He said they had porpoising on the shakedown lap when they had the conventional side pods.

I'd be interesting to know what, if any, differences there are in the bouncing characteristics between the original and current spec. The fact that the level of bouncing seems to be different for every track (Imola was probably the worst so far with lifting on the straights, or at least was not any improvement on previous races) to me seems to indicate that Mercedes either does not know how to reduce the bouncing across a range of setups, or (probably closer to the truth) they know but their current hardware (be it suspension/aero/etc.) prevents them from doing so.

Every car has bouncing to some extent, the most limiting factor is arguably how early does it happen? 240 kph? 280kph? It is well known that a main component as to why Ferrari is able to cope with it is because it happens at a relatively high speed.

Perhaps the bouncing is onset at a higher speed with the original configuration, but the track to track variation means they can probably not be sure if it is down to the inherent car characteristics or the track/setup. Barcelona will be the real test, and Mercedes themselves have stated that they will be looking at the differences between the current car and the one from testing. Absolute worst case scenario for the team would be a 2019-Haas like reversion to the original spec. I'm sure that would probably be the nuclear option, and would require them to see that the original car from testing would be much better. Chances of this happening are likely very low, albeit non-zero.

[AR3-GP]

https://twitter.com/hotlapmode/status/1 ... jzQqx2yMRQ



If the zero pod design / lack of floor rigidity is a major contributor to their problems, why don't they add on fake side pods connecting the floor with the main body. Think an inverted L shape but nicely curved

Zero side pods already ruled out by George Russell. He said they had porpoising on the shakedown lap when they had the conventional side pods.

I'd be interesting to know what, if any, differences there are in the bouncing characteristics between the original and current spec. The fact that the level of bouncing seems to be different for every track (Imola was probably the worst so far with lifting on the straights, or at least was not any improvement on previous races) to me seems to indicate that Mercedes either does not know how to reduce the bouncing across a range of setups, or (probably closer to the truth) they know but their current hardware (be it suspension/aero/etc.) prevents them from doing so.

Every car has bouncing to some extent, the most limiting factor is arguably how early does it happen? 240 kph? 280kph? It is well known that a main component as to why Ferrari is able to cope with it is because it happens at a relatively high speed.

Perhaps the bouncing is onset at a higher speed with the original configuration, but the track to track variation means they can probably not be sure if it is down to the inherent car characteristics or the track/setup. Barcelona will be the real test, and Mercedes themselves have stated that they will be looking at the differences between the current car and the one from testing. Absolute worst case scenario for the team would be a 2019-Haas like reversion to the original spec. I'm sure that would probably be the nuclear option, and would require them to see that the original car from testing would be much better. Chances of this happening are likely very low, albeit non-zero.

In Imola they only had 1 practice session for setup so that could explain why the porpoising seemed less refined, and rather wild.

[PlatinumZealot]

https://twitter.com/hotlapmode/status/1 ... jzQqx2yMRQ



If the zero pod design / lack of floor rigidity is a major contributor to their problems, why don't they add on fake side pods connecting the floor with the main body. Think an inverted L shape but nicely curved

Zero side pods already ruled out by George Russell. He said they had porpoising on the shakedown lap when they had the conventional side pods.

I'd be interesting to know what, if any, differences there are in the bouncing characteristics between the original and current spec. The fact that the level of bouncing seems to be different for every track (Imola was probably the worst so far with lifting on the straights, or at least was not any improvement on previous races) to me seems to indicate that Mercedes either does not know how to reduce the bouncing across a range of setups, or (probably closer to the truth) they know but their current hardware (be it suspension/aero/etc.) prevents them from doing so.

Every car has bouncing to some extent, the most limiting factor is arguably how early does it happen? 240 kph? 280kph? It is well known that a main component as to why Ferrari is able to cope with it is because it happens at a relatively high speed.

Perhaps the bouncing is onset at a higher speed with the original configuration, but the track to track variation means they can probably not be sure if it is down to the inherent car characteristics or the track/setup. Barcelona will be the real test, and Mercedes themselves have stated that they will be looking at the differences between the current car and the one from testing. Absolute worst case scenario for the team would be a 2019-Haas like reversion to the original spec. I'm sure that would probably be the nuclear option, and would require them to see that the original car from testing would be much better. Chances of this happening are likely very low, albeit non-zero.

The only way the side pod can influence bouncing is how it influences the pressure at the entrance, side and rear of the floor right, whether through the air dam at the front, the outwash at the sides the downwash and wake at the back.

The resepctive differences of these between the different type of side pod are relatively small or even negligble when you compare the effect of flow structures around like sealing vortices, the strakes, and the shape of the floor itself.

It's like someone telling you that if you use a bigger umbrella you wont get wet in a hurricane basically. Which is just incorrect because the magnitude of the sheltering is nothing compared to the amount of rain and force of wind.

I am not an aero guy but the magnitudes of the different effects (side pod wake and the floor devices) are orders different in size to aero effecta that happen near the floor (if the area underneath the floor if what we are focusing on).

So in my own deduction I will say the side pod hypothesis is not it. I expect Mercedes to have a new floor in Miami maybe some front wing tweaks. I would be fun to be proven wrong though.