2022 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[silver]

Good to see Mercedes doing a bit better. I'll take some more boring Mercedes domination over a Ferrari/Red Bull engine fail championship battle any day.

You need over 50hp to dominate and at this point Mercedes is lagging behind the other two in that regard and also suffering unreliability with their new PU. I guess we have to put up with the unreliability competition for the foreseeable future and with the frozen PUs, the power pecking order too.

[toraabe]

Asbolutely. Toto comments weren't far fetched. On a similar strategy to Perez, Hamilton would've won today. He found an incredible pace after the pits. I think Mercedes had less tyre degradation this weekend. Front tyres with the Soft compound were better than anyone. Then again, lowering the front in FP3 reintroduced porpoising.

Once they stiffen the floor even more and improve front suspension, I have no doubt it will be the fastest car out there. Suspension work over the kerbs at sector 3 left a few tenths compared to Redbull, for example.

I don't understand why they haven't pitted Russell after Max's last stop. He would've to be on Hards to stay out. He could've won that one, Perez would be a sitting duck had he stayed out to counter that move.

The floor is not only stiffened. The venturi tunnels are also redesigned with a more gradually angle towards the rear instead of the former in which had a large flat area with a sharp angle to the rear. They can also adjust the floor with movable parts to get the right amount of downforce. Seems to work as intended

[ali623]

I really don’t think Lewis or the Mercs had the pace to compete for the win. Lewis was still 54.5 seconds behind the leader who had a dodgy DRS wing.

Sainz was carrying damage from the gravel. Charles had the race sown up soon as max hit the gravel.

Be interesting to see the race pace plots with Lewis compared to Russel, Perez, max. I still bet the merc is .7 behind on race pace.

They mean if he hadn’t had the contact on lap 1. His race pace was absolutely legit. He was 50+ seconds behind on lap one and finished +54s after lifting and costing for 2-3 laps, meaning, he didn’t lose anything to the front (and had gained before the lift and coast). He probably couldn’t have challenged Charles, but Max, absolutely.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202205 ... b87cb0.png

You have to take Max's race into account too, the off into the gravel put him behind Russell for about 20 laps due to the DRS issue and lost him lots of time, also compromised his strategy. He also dropped his pace by a second after passing Perez on his final stint, so was clearly just managing to the end.

[Shakeman]

A lot of doom and gloom merchants and internet trolls are licking their wounds today. Big congrats to the engineers who've methodically worked through the problem and have been able to build some setup flexibility and future cost saving into their solution. That floor flap is probably key to giving them a much wider setup window which will also work in concert with suspension developments so they don't have to keep building new floors. So it's a cost saving device too.

There's still the issue with porpoising in fast corners probably due to either the yaw or roll (or both) but it's fairly safe bet the Merc engineers will get on top of that quickly now they have much greater understanding of the underfloor dynamics. Kyle engineers video on the subject should be required viewing as it puts into perspective how complex it is and how limited the tools are for replicating such a dynamically changing environment.

[Mr5in1]

Positive performance from the Mercedes this weekend, I was keen to know if the upgrades they brought would cement their 3rd place from the midfield or bring them closer to the top 2 and I think it has done both.

Was nice to see George keeping the slippery Red Bull behind suggesting the Mercedes engine is not so bad afterall.

Also comforting to see Lewis come back through the field, almost got 4th as well after being 2nd last after lap 1, with no safety car. I assume Lewis and the team will have learnt a lot from that performance, hope they can keep chipping away with pure performance upgrades now.

I do however suspect they could struggle in Monaco a bit more, traditionally in recent years Merc havent been amazing in Monaco and they weren't amazing in the last sector at Barcelona (slow speed traction).

Has their solution to their porpoising affected their slow speed traction?

[pursue_one's]

Hamilton was another to have opted to put more load on the front into Saturday. It didn’t really work for him in qualifying – where Russell’s more secure-looking set-up helped him to fourth-fastest time, 0.139s faster than Hamilton.

But the payback came on race day – when Hamilton had around 0.5s per lap advantage over Russell.

https://the-race.com/formula-1/mark-hug ... st-anyway/

[AMG.Tzan]

Russell's performance until now just proves that Mercedes should have brought him to the team in 2021!

The guy is fast at every single race and can overtake and defend unlike Bottas who whenever had someone (even if it was a Williams) got stuck and whenever he saw Verstapen on his mirror he just got out of the way! The only time Bottas defended hard last year was when he had to let Lewis through at the Spanish GP!

If Mercedes had Russell instead of Bottas in the car last year, the would have easily won both championships...

Anyway, I'm happy that Russell performs so good right now because otherwise we would all the say that he was overhyped! Lewis's weekends this year have all been affected by some kind of adversity! Hopefully the car continues to be that close to the front so that we can get our first win of the season sometime!

[Big Tea]

What did impress me other than the race it's self was Hamilton's response being told to get on with the race.
Fair enough, when he thought the car was a no-hope he saw the long view of saving the engine.
But the team told him he had a shout and rather than just tool around until they called him in, which we have seen former champions do, he got his head down and went for broke.
Unfortunately, by the penultimate lap, broke it was, but I hope this lifts his spirits a little from hear on in as he knows he can push the car. Get back on the horse

[silver]

If Mercedes had Russell instead of Bottas in the car last year, the would have easily won both championships...

Would he not have taken points off Hamilton and made it easier for Verstappen for WDC? That is going to be the problem now too.

[SuperCNJ]

If Mercedes had Russell instead of Bottas in the car last year, the would have easily won both championships...

Would he not have taken points off Hamilton and made it easier for Verstappen for WDC? That is going to be the problem now too.

George probably would have taken some points from Lewis, but at the same time, he would have taken points off Verstappen too. Also instead of Lewis fighting 2 RBs on his own, it would have been 2 vs 2 which would have given Merc more strategic options. Anyway, we digress.

I am not a fan of George as a person, in fact, I can't stand him. But I have to confess his performance yesterday defending against the two RBs was very impressive and had it been Bottas in the Merc, I have no doubt the RBs would have got passed probably by the second attempt. The way George was able to gauge when to defend, how to position his car, and having no fear of Verstappen shows that he is a top-quality driver.

[atanatizante]

After 61 laps there were only 11.7-sec. between the Merc drivers, bearing in mind they had the same car and the same number of pitstops, mentioning HAM had a 10.2-sec first pit stop ...



So Toto saying at Sky Sports that there were different car setups after all between the drivers seems real after the above results. This adds to the theory saying HAM is setting more the care towards the race in general speaking but especially on this new 2022 f1 cars, which after the six races we could see that when you set up the car this way you get better results than the setup more towards qualy tendency of the last years.

More of that he implied that this split setup strategy would bear fruits in the near future. This way HAM said that he`ll copy RUS` car set up in the next race - Monaco ...

[214270]

After 61 laps there were only 11.7-sec. between the Merc drivers, bearing in mind they had the same car and the same number of pitstops, mentioning HAM had a 10.2-sec first pit stop ...

https://postimages.org/

So Toto saying at Sky Sports that there were different car setups after all between the drivers seems real after the above results. This adds to the theory saying HAM is setting more the care towards the race in general speaking but especially on this new 2022 f1 cars, which after the six races we could see that when you set up the car this way you get better results than the setup more towards qualy tendency of the last years.

More of that he implied that this split setup strategy would bear fruits in the near future. This way HAM said that he`ll copy RUS` car set up in the next race - Monaco ...

To add, my observation is that they’ve kinda had different assignments all year. RUS seems like he’s been given the green light to get results & gain confidence, HAM the one tasked with finding solutions to the car’s probs.

Clever bit of management if you ask me, plays to each’s most pressing needs.

[SuperCNJ]

After 61 laps there were only 11.7-sec. between the Merc drivers, bearing in mind they had the same car and the same number of pitstops, mentioning HAM had a 10.2-sec first pit stop ...

https://postimages.org/

So Toto saying at Sky Sports that there were different car setups after all between the drivers seems real after the above results. This adds to the theory saying HAM is setting more the care towards the race in general speaking but especially on this new 2022 f1 cars, which after the six races we could see that when you set up the car this way you get better results than the setup more towards qualy tendency of the last years.

More of that he implied that this split setup strategy would bear fruits in the near future. This way HAM said that he`ll copy RUS` car set up in the next race - Monaco ...

This is why I think Lewis is genuinely not bothered about being slower than George in qualifying as he knows that if he sets up his car for quali instead he would have the measure of him. I think he said on the radio during FP/Quali that he didn't want to know about his pace to George and only how he compared to Ferrari/RB which suggests to me that he is confident that he is faster than George and mainly focused on the race.

[saviour stivala]

The faster of team mates count for nothing as at the end it is the results that counts.

[PlatinumZealot]

After 61 laps there were only 11.7-sec. between the Merc drivers, bearing in mind they had the same car and the same number of pitstops, mentioning HAM had a 10.2-sec first pit stop ...

https://postimages.org/

So Toto saying at Sky Sports that there were different car setups after all between the drivers seems real after the above results. This adds to the theory saying HAM is setting more the care towards the race in general speaking but especially on this new 2022 f1 cars, which after the six races we could see that when you set up the car this way you get better results than the setup more towards qualy tendency of the last years.

More of that he implied that this split setup strategy would bear fruits in the near future. This way HAM said that he`ll copy RUS` car set up in the next race - Monaco ...

I think around 2012, after getting schooled by Button in some races was when HAM started biasing towards the race setup. He wasn't so untouchable in qualifying since then. His Q records vs team mates since then have been fairly even more or less.