2022 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[Hammerfist]

It seems the TD has helped Redbull and hurt Ferrari and Merc. That’s what I thought would happen when it was announced but rbr surprisingly was complaining, which was bizarre. They’ve had the less porpoising out of all the teams from the start of the season and were still among the fastest. Now other teams have to comply and rbr does not have to compromise at all. Merc is on the same level as Ferrari now in race trim. It’s fairly obvious who has been affected and who has not. I don’t really care who was pushing for the rule changes. Just the resulting fallout is plain to see and I don’t expect Ferrari or any team to come close to rbr pace ever again this season. The end.

[Shakeman]

The biggest problem for Merc is to get on top of their massive correlation issue between sim and car on track. The excitement of being in the mix for the last 9 races was real until last weekend, the upgrades simply failed to deliver and to cap it off the Red Bull looked unbelievable and Toto couldn't hide his feelings when he was door-stopped by PdR in Spa. I don't think 15mm change is going to save Merc next year until they fully understand why their sim numbers are so far out of sync with reality on track.

[PlatinumZealot]

It seems the TD has helped Redbull and hurt Ferrari and Merc. That’s what I thought would happen when it was announced but rbr surprisingly was complaining, which was bizarre. They’ve had the less porpoising out of all the teams from the start of the season and were still among the fastest. Now other teams have to comply and rbr does not have to compromise at all. Merc is on the same level as Ferrari now in race trim. It’s fairly obvious who has been affected and who has not. I don’t really care who was pushing for the rule changes. Just the resulting fallout is plain to see and I don’t expect Ferrari or any team to come close to rbr pace ever again this season. The end.

It's Spa more than the TD.

There is a dip in a certain part of the track (Paul DiResta, Ant Davidson) that the teams have to jack up the ride height for and this affects RedBull the least.

[CHT]

Supposed it is true that Mercedes no longer have the clear advantage in their PU the team may have fallen behind in aero development, and I think this is where RBR will shine because they have the brilliant Adrian Newey. For 2023, Merc may need to bring in new aero engineers if they are going to catch Ferrari and RBR.

[mendis]

Supposed it is true that Mercedes no longer have the clear advantage in their PU the team may have fallen behind in aero development, and I think this is where RBR will shine because they have the brilliant Adrian Newey. For 2023, Merc may need to bring in new aero engineers if they are going to catch Ferrari and RBR.

Question is, can they hire more? Mercedes were running with $500 million until 2021. They were the highest spenders until the budget caps came in. So they had to reduce staff and I am sure they haven't done a mass lay off, which means they have been restructuring their F1 workforce around differently and in some cases, probably letting go and then there was attrition. I haven't read any report on if they have managed to downsize the staffing completely to meet the new budget cap of $145 million. In such a scenario, hiring top talent might not be an option at this point, unless they let go more of the existing staff.

[Quantum]

Nobody defined the tolerance limit when teams brought it under control, including Mercedes. Question is, if they could do it without any regulation changes, why was Mercedes lobbying for it? Why did they risk driver safety?

The porpoising was happening if Mercedes raised the rear, with slightly less frequency. That was direct from Ham and Russell.

I find it bewildering that you still think this problem was specific to Mercedes, when I have given you examples of practically every teams drivers having issues, including visits to the medical centre.
And yes Mercedes were vocal.

And I find it confusing, first you accuse Mercedes of lobbying to solve the issue. Then you accuse them of risking driver safety. These are 2 polarised positions.
Because what you are saying is that Mercedes wilfully risked their drivers health in the first part of the season, despite the fact we know that raising the rear of their car was not solving the problem to eliminate porpoising.
That's a pretty big accusation to make.
Zero pods and a large surface area of exposed floor will not work exactly the same, which is why Mercedes was experimenting with 2 stays in practice. It's really not as simple as raising the rear when that will leave an even larger AoA that is then translated into more floor shimmy taken away whatever you gained from raising the rear.

At the opposite end of the spectrum we had drivers told to shut up by team bosses after this got the attention of the FIA. What's worse?

[SparkyAMG]

At this stage of the season it's quite clear which cars are working across the broadest range of tracks, and the W13 is not one of them.

From the outside it has two big weaknesses that Spa exposed heavily:

1. Slow tyre warm up resulting in poor qualifying sessions relative to the cars in front and behind.

2. It gives up a lot of performance when it has to be run higher than they'd like.

On top of those two, the car is also relatively draggy but it's less of an issue at most tracks than the above.

It's not alone with regards to point 2, but is perhaps the most affected since it's been designed to run very very low. There is some hope in that the team have suggested that Spa will have been the worst of the post-summer tracks in terms of how much performance they have to sacrifice because of the ride height required through Eau Rouge to satisfy the porpoising rules, so not all is written off despite Toto's statements throughout the weekend.

With regards to point 1, they either don't understand the tyres as well as the other teams or they're so extreme with their setup in terms of protecting the tyres that qualifying well is just impossible. They might get lucky again at some tracks and qualify higher than expected but unless Max DNFs I can't see them winning a race (I can't actually see anyone else winning again this season given the RB18 performance).

[mendis]

Nobody defined the tolerance limit when teams brought it under control, including Mercedes. Question is, if they could do it without any regulation changes, why was Mercedes lobbying for it? Why did they risk driver safety?

The porpoising was happening if Mercedes raised the rear, with slightly less frequency. That was direct from Ham and Russell.

I find it bewildering that you still think this problem was specific to Mercedes, when I have given you examples of practically every teams drivers having issues, including visits to the medical centre.
And yes Mercedes were vocal.

And I find it confusing, first you accuse Mercedes of lobbying to solve the issue. Then you accuse them of risking driver safety. These are 2 polarised positions.
Because what you are saying is that Mercedes wilfully risked their drivers health in the first part of the season, despite the fact we know that raising the rear of their car was not solving the problem to eliminate porpoising.
That's a pretty big accusation to make.
Zero pods and a large surface area of exposed floor will not work exactly the same, which is why Mercedes was experimenting with 2 stays in practice. It's really not as simple as raising the rear when that will leave an even larger AoA that is then translated into more floor shimmy taken away whatever you gained from raising the rear.

At the opposite end of the spectrum we had drivers told to shut up by team bosses after this got the attention of the FIA. What's worse?

You are deviating away from answering a simple question. Why was Mercedes driving regulations change when every team could and they did, control porpoising without regulatory change. It was only Mercedes that was asking for regulations change. Why?

[TimW]

Nobody defined the tolerance limit when teams brought it under control, including Mercedes. Question is, if they could do it without any regulation changes, why was Mercedes lobbying for it? Why did they risk driver safety?

The porpoising was happening if Mercedes raised the rear, with slightly less frequency. That was direct from Ham and Russell.

I find it bewildering that you still think this problem was specific to Mercedes, when I have given you examples of practically every teams drivers having issues, including visits to the medical centre.
And yes Mercedes were vocal.

And I find it confusing, first you accuse Mercedes of lobbying to solve the issue. Then you accuse them of risking driver safety. These are 2 polarised positions.
Because what you are saying is that Mercedes wilfully risked their drivers health in the first part of the season, despite the fact we know that raising the rear of their car was not solving the problem to eliminate porpoising.
That's a pretty big accusation to make.
Zero pods and a large surface area of exposed floor will not work exactly the same, which is why Mercedes was experimenting with 2 stays in practice. It's really not as simple as raising the rear when that will leave an even larger AoA that is then translated into more floor shimmy taken away whatever you gained from raising the rear.

At the opposite end of the spectrum we had drivers told to shut up by team bosses after this got the attention of the FIA. What's worse?

You are deviating away from answering a simple question. Why was Mercedes driving regulations change when every team could and they did, control porpoising without regulatory change. It was only Mercedes that was asking for regulations change. Why?

They lobbied for mandatory changes on the floor that would solve porpoising, at the cost of downforce (Large cutouts at the floor edge as they tested in FP1 in Canada, according to Michael Schmidt https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/for ... i-porsche/). This would have hurt the downforce of all teams, also the ones without porpoising, and thus relatively have helped Mercedes. So it would have been a win-win, solve porpoising (and thus protect the drivers), while also likely to improve their competitiveness.

Instead the FIA technical directive simply put a limit to porpoising based on accelerations, which was definitely not to what they wanted. That the TD it also included a clampdown on floor flexing was a bit of a sweetener (but proved worthless).

So Mercedes simply lobbied for something that would help them, like all teams do. But the current TD is definitely not what they had in mind.

[basti313]

The porpoising was happening if Mercedes raised the rear, with slightly less frequency. That was direct from Ham and Russell.

I find it bewildering that you still think this problem was specific to Mercedes, when I have given you examples of practically every teams drivers having issues, including visits to the medical centre.
And yes Mercedes were vocal.

And I find it confusing, first you accuse Mercedes of lobbying to solve the issue. Then you accuse them of risking driver safety. These are 2 polarised positions.
Because what you are saying is that Mercedes wilfully risked their drivers health in the first part of the season, despite the fact we know that raising the rear of their car was not solving the problem to eliminate porpoising.
That's a pretty big accusation to make.
Zero pods and a large surface area of exposed floor will not work exactly the same, which is why Mercedes was experimenting with 2 stays in practice. It's really not as simple as raising the rear when that will leave an even larger AoA that is then translated into more floor shimmy taken away whatever you gained from raising the rear.

At the opposite end of the spectrum we had drivers told to shut up by team bosses after this got the attention of the FIA. What's worse?

You are deviating away from answering a simple question. Why was Mercedes driving regulations change when every team could and they did, control porpoising without regulatory change. It was only Mercedes that was asking for regulations change. Why?

They lobbied for mandatory changes on the floor that would solve porpoising, at the cost of downforce (Large cutouts at the floor edge as they tested in FP1 in Canada, according to Michael Schmidt https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/for ... i-porsche/). This would have hurt the downforce of all teams, also the ones without porpoising, and thus relatively have helped Mercedes. So it would have been a win-win, solve porpoising (and thus protect the drivers), while also likely to improve their competitiveness.

Instead the FIA technical directive simply put a limit to porpoising based on accelerations, which was definitely not to what they wanted. That the TD it also included a clampdown on floor flexing was a bit of a sweetener (but proved worthless).

So Mercedes simply lobbied for something that would help them, like all teams do. But the current TD is definitely not what they had in mind.

But the big question is if the TD is really that useless for them. Spa was the worst track to judge this in hindsight as the ride height for all cars needed to be raised. That affected Merc the most of the front runners.
So I am very curious on this weekend. The track should be nice and flat, so we may see a complete shift of the performance now.

[organic]

You are deviating away from answering a simple question. Why was Mercedes driving regulations change when every team could and they did, control porpoising without regulatory change. It was only Mercedes that was asking for regulations change. Why?

They lobbied for mandatory changes on the floor that would solve porpoising, at the cost of downforce (Large cutouts at the floor edge as they tested in FP1 in Canada, according to Michael Schmidt https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/for ... i-porsche/). This would have hurt the downforce of all teams, also the ones without porpoising, and thus relatively have helped Mercedes. So it would have been a win-win, solve porpoising (and thus protect the drivers), while also likely to improve their competitiveness.

Instead the FIA technical directive simply put a limit to porpoising based on accelerations, which was definitely not to what they wanted. That the TD it also included a clampdown on floor flexing was a bit of a sweetener (but proved worthless).

So Mercedes simply lobbied for something that would help them, like all teams do. But the current TD is definitely not what they had in mind.

But the big question is if the TD is really that useless for them. Spa was the worst track to judge this in hindsight as the ride height for all cars needed to be raised. That affected Merc the most of the front runners.
So I am very curious on this weekend. The track should be nice and flat, so we may see a complete shift of the performance now.

Zandvoort is far from "flat". On top of the banking which will throw up some suspension curveballs, the track surface is quite bumpy eg through turn 3 and especially on the exit

https://www.givemesport.com/88054250-du ... dvoort/amp

“We have cars which are a lot more mechanical, and at tracks like Baku and others they’re a bit harder than we’d like it to be, and I guess Zandvoort is going to be one of those tracks as well. We have banked corners where cars are getting quite low, and we saw this year that once we get low, things turn out to be very bumpy.”

The banking also exaggerates the bumps, as in the banking the cars will be compressed down onto the suspension by centripetal force. Far from nice and flat.

And from AMuS on the topic of bumpiness:

According to the engineers, there is only one of the next three locations where Mercedes can come up trumps again. Ironically, in the Ferrari stronghold of Monza. "Zandvoort and Singapore are bumpy tracks. That could mean that everyone has to go up with the ground clearance." If that were the case, directive 039 would still catch up with Mercedes.

[Quantum]

You are deviating away from answering a simple question. Why was Mercedes driving regulations change when every team could and they did, control porpoising without regulatory change. It was only Mercedes that was asking for regulations change. Why?

The bottom line here is you are intentionally ignoring the fact that most the grid had a problem with this.

You ignore this, to level criticism of Mercedes calling for the FIA to do something about it.

So for the record:
Drivers from most teams complained about porpoising.
We visibly saw many cars other than Mercedes porpoising.
FIA medical examiners finding most cars were 3 times over the 1-2hz frequency sustained over a few minutes(limit to long term brain damage) to 6+hz over a couple of hours.

You take no issue with any of the above, only that it was Mercedes that complained.
I find this incomprehensible.

You also make a false assertion (probably based on Horner's comments), that all the above could simply be fixed without regulatory change.
Spa being an example, every single team raised their rear ride height more than they would otherwise have done to comply with the new Directive. That in and of itself should be telling.
The races previous to Spa where not as conducive to porpoising as Baku and Monaco. Yet you attribute the phenomena as gone totally disregarding the nature of the tracks after Baku.

The TD is here, and it's there for a purpose. If it helps or hinders Mercedes it is a moot point that has no bearing to the actual purpose of the TD. That Mercedes found themselves further behind after the TD is irrelevant.
You'll call it "just deserts" or some such, but if it means less injury to ALL the drivers, are you still going to harp on about this being all about Mercedes?

[mendis]

You are deviating away from answering a simple question. Why was Mercedes driving regulations change when every team could and they did, control porpoising without regulatory change. It was only Mercedes that was asking for regulations change. Why?

The bottom line here is you are intentionally ignoring the fact that most the grid had a problem with this.

You ignore this, to level criticism of Mercedes calling for the FIA to do something about it.

So for the record:
Drivers from most teams complained about porpoising.
We visibly saw many cars other than Mercedes porpoising.
FIA medical examiners finding most cars were 3 times over the 1-2hz frequency sustained over a few minutes(limit to long term brain damage) to 6+hz over a couple of hours.

You take no issue with any of the above, only that it was Mercedes that complained.
I find this incomprehensible.

Some teams could have contorlled the porpoising, but they chose not to and hence, endangered the drivers. Once FIA threatened with a non-favorable TD, those teams behaved well and porpoising was gone. Team's fault.

You also make a false assertion (probably based on Horner's comments), that all the above could simply be fixed without regulatory change.

Teams already solved the porpoising problems. Cars now barely porpoise. Nothing to do with Horner, but he was right too. Porpoising was solved without any regulatory change.

[EJ22B]

I don't agree that all teams fixed their porpoising before the FIA introduced the new technical directive. There were teams like Williams whose cars were porpoising very badly in Hungary and even in the races before that.

In Spa qualifying and race there was very little porpoising because of the new technical directive. Only in practice they had really bad porpoising.

Robson also revealed that, following the technical directive brought in by the FIA to address porpoising, the team initially encountered it on Albon’s car on Friday. “There were a couple of laps that exceeded the FIA’s limit,” he said. That was resolved by Saturday, giving Williams confidence in the changes it made for and during the weekend. 

[Quantum]

Some teams could have contorlled the porpoising, but they chose not to and hence, endangered the drivers. Once FIA threatened with a non-favorable TD, those teams behaved well and porpoising was gone. Team's fault.

No, how is Baku the same as Silverstone/Austria/France/Hungary?


I'll repeat, every single team had to raise their rear ride height above their expectational level for Spa to meet the TD. That would never have happened had the TD not been implemented.
So your selective bias is dispelled immediately, specifically with accusations that only some teams were endangering drivers and the rest complied to ....what exactly? There was no figure.

Teams already solved the porpoising problems. Cars now barely porpoise. Nothing to do with Horner, but he was right too. Porpoising was solved without any regulatory change.

Did you even watch any race after Baku or are you just making it up?