On the eve of this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix, Mercedes showed off their long-awaited upgrades for their troubled 2023 F1 car which includes new sidepods, front suspension and floor.
Yes the engineers are still undecided now that they have the results on track
ringo wrote: ↑04 Mar 2023, 19:49Agreed Andi76 hence why I used the word "lead". There are other talented people doing the work, but maybe his direction or critique is crtical in getting the best from the team.
Looking on the W14
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FqSoDtWXwAI ... ame=medium
https://cdn-1.motorsport.com/images/amp ... tail-1.jpg
I am starting to see why the Zero-pod is so different. Look on the floor treatment between the two cars.
W14 has a very steep drop off to the edge of the floor at the base of the sidepod.
RB19 relatively flat going outwards from the undercut to the edge of the floor.
W14 is heavily dependent on the mid wing, compared to RB19 that uses that whole funnel underneath the sidepod to push higher volumes of air outward. Some it jets and squirt between the undercut. And above the sidepod, at the lump behind the opening, more air is pushed outward at mid height of the car.
The squirt between the narrow point of the undercut goes to the diffuser mouse hole and also sheilds the floor and provide out wash, and the rest of the flow at mid-rift is dealing with tyre wake. Then you have above the sidepod that is doing pressure recovery.
The Zero-pod just has less surfaces to play around with. It has a low drag advantage, but it seems to not be able to enhance the floor and diffuser performance as much as the other cars. The mid-wing is left to do all of that.
Zero-pod is heavily dependent on a super effective floor and diffuser to take advantage of it's facilitation of high energy flow past the side of the car.
Another thing, why does the floor seem so thick with W14 and not the other cars? It's almost seems to be deeper and skirted.
https://the-race.com/formula-1/mercedes ... this-year/The question now is whether Mercedes has the necessary tools to choose the right path. While it has retained a similar concept to last year, it is understood to have experimented with a version that is closer to the Red Bull direction both in CFD and windtunnel simulations. But these have shown similar performance levels and not given the team reason to believe there will be significantly more development potential to be exploited.
While Mercedes could easily switch to that direction unless it has a clear understanding of why it would be more effective there’s a risk it will not be able to find the expected performance gains.
Meanwhile, it has a development pathway that it has already advanced further down with than the car that is currently on track that will deliver additional performance. So does Mercedes keep pushing in that direction, or recognise that the potential is not there to make big enough gains?
The package expected for Imola will give a performance gain, but it’s understood that this will not be big enough to close the gap to Red Bull even if the RB19 stands still in terms of development. And while there is still more to extract from the current specification, as proved by the unexpectedly big step Mercedes took from Friday to Saturday in Bahrain – in particularly in the quicker corners – the ultimately potential appears lacking.
...20 posts ware made, only 11 are still standing.hollus wrote: ↑04 Mar 2023, 19:58I know there are races and that F1 is about the races, but NOT IN THIS THREAD!
If your post contains the words "gap", "faster", "slower", "ahead" or "behind", it probably does not belong in a car thread.
Consistent offenders with too many deleted posts might attract official warnings.
Those are "Sesame Street" words. Elmo never said vortex or venturi AFAIK. Don't use Sesame Street words in the car threads. Simple.
Gazillions of posts have been deleted, they would have been just fine in the TEAM thread.
Open again.hollus wrote: ↑01 Mar 2023, 01:17A reminder to everyone but specially to the new people (welcome!).
The car threads are specially strictly moderated in this forum. Stick to this car and to hardware in the car threads.
Team politics and other team things, please in the team threads.
Lap times, happy faces, sensations and will they be faster/slower than XYZ, either in the team threads or in the race threads.
If your post is in this thread and is not centering on this car, the physical car, it might have been or might be deleted or moved.
Let's keep the awesome car threads on this forum
a) focused on the hardware and
b) awesome.
Thanks.
Your point on a rear suspension change is a good one. I can't imagine they'd be able to force Aston to use a different gearbox setup, so I would suppose they'd have to maintain two specs.Henk_v wrote: ↑05 Mar 2023, 11:36That may be part of their internal discussion. On one extreme they really abandon the concept and would have a season on bread and water to get an ill developed new platform on the track. That will probably hurt them in 24 too, so that would mean realistically they can only challenge in 25.
Or the other extreme is to keep some major parts of the W14 and frankenstein it to a different concept with some really major updates, accepting they'll sacrifice some ultimate performance.
The middle ground would be to take a stepped approach and eventually grow into a new concept by susequently redesigning the major car parts and bring them in a series of major updates. But that takes real planning and you have to be sure there's a path to do so. Alle inetmediate steps need to fit, perform and need to have as little collateral develepment as possible.
Something that might be interesting: if they decide to redevelop the rear of the car, wouldn't that mean they need to maintain 2 sets of specs as AM and some others purchases (parts of) their current spec.
I'm also curious how many "engineering pride" MB has. The "not invented here" syndrome can be really difficult to manage. Engineers are likely very skewed towards original takes on concepts.
If they embark on an "inspired" route. My guess would be that they'll follow the AM look.
Beating AM with their own concept would re-establish them as the alpha-team and AM as a development platform.
The quickest way for Merc to play catch-up is to copy Aston Martin as both cars are running the same PU and gearbox. Even then, that may not be enough to challenge Ferrari and RBR.F1NAC wrote: ↑05 Mar 2023, 11:15I seriously doubt that in budget era you can develop 2 different concepts… and fully develop those..Venturiation wrote: ↑04 Mar 2023, 22:14Yes the engineers are still undecided now that they have the results on track
Seems that the AMUS rumors were true after all before testing were they said mercedes was developing 2 parallel concepts and evaluating wich one to chose
But was the W14 made with some compromises to allow it to morph into the plan b within the budget cap
It's a combination of things. The underfloor isn't as efficient and the small pod / midwing don't help the airflow over the body and around the tyres. Lewis said with the smaller rear wing that he had no grip which just goes to show how ineffective the Mercedes underfloor is and so just replacing the small pods won't by themselves sort out all there issues.
It could be, however I dont think its the sidepods at all.. I think its a red herring, and the most visible difference so ppl point to it. Issues with the interactions from the Front Suspension (the kinematics, not necessarily the aerofoil/blade profile of the arms), Front Wing, and Floor Entrance (Strake Geometry) - Just think that the upper body work accounts for a small percentage of overall DF and Performance, in this era. I could be wrong, but this is where I think the gap to the front is.carisi2k wrote: ↑06 Mar 2023, 00:30It's a combination of things. The underfloor isn't as efficient and the small pod / midwing don't help the airflow over the body and around the tyres. Lewis said with the smaller rear wing that he had no grip which just goes to show how ineffective the Mercedes underfloor is and so just replacing the small pods won't by themselves sort out all there issues.
Ironically I think the initial W13 Barcelona test sidepods would probably work a hell of a lot better if they don't want to go full Red Bull / Ferrari.
You are wrong.shady wrote: ↑06 Mar 2023, 00:34
It could be, however I dont think its the sidepods at all.. I think its a red herring, and the most visible difference so ppl point to it. Issues with the interactions from the Front Suspension (the kinematics, not necessarily the aerofoil/blade profile of the arms), Front Wing, and Floor Entrance (Strake Geometry) - Just think that the upper body work accounts for a small percentage of overall DF and Performance, in this era. I could be wrong, but this is where I think the gap to the front is.
