2023 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[mkay]

The fact that RBR didn't push for a gardening leave suggests this engineer is not critical to their developments or is not aware of RB's "secret sauce"

[Willy]

The fact that RBR didn't push for a gardening leave suggests this engineer is not critical to their developments or is not aware of RB's "secret sauce"

Unless he is being bartered, that would be the case. Usually, there would be tight gardening leave policy in place.

[Farnborough]

"As for Merc not being able to get back on it before after 2026, I'm not so sure. I'll wait until this time next season on that one. They have no excuses for the W15. If it's a dog then they really have dropped the ball and won't get back anytime soon. If it's up there (within 0.5s of RB) then they've got the drivers to put Max under some pressure - assuming his tail-gunner isn't able to help him regularly."

I see it the same, they've every chance of getting W15 much closer to parity IF they make the right choices.

I've noted before, it's a top line decision of individuality or to get with the beat of current aero performance. One or the other, that's a clear "writing on the wall" scenario for me.

This chassis I dont feel is anywhere near competent, there's just too many compromise built into it. 4th or 5th on technical pace in reality BUT pulled way above its station by these two drivers, aided by ultimate reliable operation to outperform others that simply have more INTRINSICALLY built in pace. A good performance but clearly hitting it's very own glass ceiling more often than not, the W14.

The AM and McL and SF all contain better design deployment when viewed within the current rules constraints (that's this iteration of McL which they acknowledge is where they should have started 2023) all with operational and driver performance reservations that help MB with their concise application to racing.

They've proved to themselves and us the individual path is outside their considerable technical knowledge and ability to mould into a long term high level performing chassis concept.

Yes there's a lot they can learn from remaining races, but concept shift appears the most needed.

As above, agree that judgement will only really be possible mid term next year.

[ValeVida46]

The fact that RBR didn't push for a gardening leave suggests this engineer is not critical to their developments or is not aware of RB's "secret sauce"

Interesting perspective.
How would an aerodynamics team leader not be in the loop of what makes a concept work?

[ValeVida46]

This chassis I dont feel is anywhere near competent, there's just too many compromise built into it. 4th or 5th on technical pace

What is "technical pace"(what parameters have you set to conclude your statement?)

The chassis compromise relative to Red Bull and Ferrari's ideology does not mean it cannot get consistent results track by track.
As we see from venue to venue, Mercedes are either 2nd, 3rd or on occasion 4th fastest. But they are consistently achieving their results, despite the compromise that goes beyond the reasoning of having 2 good drivers.
As we see Aston Martin running a near RB like philosophy, Mercedes are clearly faster the last few races.
Mercedes fell behind McLaren that literally sacrificed half it's season to most likely still finish behind Mercedes this year.
Ferrari flounder in spectacularly in some races with their tyre wear and pace, on occasion they crack it but infrequently.

When you add it all up, I feel that despite the flawed design, they're making a good fist of things by consistently being better on avg. And until next year we won't know conclusively if lessons learnt have had a positive impact.
If the W15 shows up with zeropods and a W13 derived floor as the W14, I'll be the first in line to throw shade.
Unless it's quick.

[CHT]

The fact that RBR didn't push for a gardening leave suggests this engineer is not critical to their developments or is not aware of RB's "secret sauce"

Interesting perspective.
How would an aerodynamics team leader not be in the loop of what makes a concept work?

Guess 2023 R19 is already available for all to see..its 2024 evolution which may be kept secret. RBR are really ahead of the game and rest are just busy trying to copy

[Willy]

The fact that RBR didn't push for a gardening leave suggests this engineer is not critical to their developments or is not aware of RB's "secret sauce"

Interesting perspective.
How would an aerodynamics team leader not be in the loop of what makes a concept work?

It depends upon the scope and breadth of the role. If you search LinkedIn for "Aerodynamics Team Leader" and company as "Red Bull Racing & Red Bull Technology", you will find a number of profiles (only focus on "current").

This is profile of Enrico Balbo, who is the head of aerodynamics at Red Bull. This was the guy that Ferrari was chasing recently. He was an Aerodynamics Team Leader at Williams, 10 years back. It gives an impression that the "Team Leader" is quite a junior role.



https://scuderiafans.com/italian-media- ... .%E2%80%9D

[Just_a_fan]

The fact that RBR didn't push for a gardening leave suggests this engineer is not critical to their developments or is not aware of RB's "secret sauce"

Interesting perspective.
How would an aerodynamics team leader not be in the loop of what makes a concept work?

It depends upon the scope and breadth of the role. If you search LinkedIn for "Aerodynamics Team Leader" and company as "Red Bull Racing & Red Bull Technology", you will find a number of profiles (only focus on "current").

This is profile of Enrico Balbo, who is the head of aerodynamics at Red Bull. This was the guy that Ferrari was chasing recently. He was an Aerodynamics Team Leader at Williams, 10 years back. It gives an impression that the "Team Leader" is quite a junior role.

https://i.postimg.cc/qRTgr28B/linkedin.png

https://scuderiafans.com/italian-media- ... .%E2%80%9D

A team leader will be a person running a group designing a particular part of the car - the front wing, for example, or the floor.

And it is doubtful that these roles work in isolation - if you're designing the floor or the diffuser, for example, you'll need to know what the rest of the aero is doing because it feeds in to your bit too.

Will he bring "the secret sauce"? No, unlikely. Why? Because there is no single secret ingredient in the sauce - it all works as a whole. He might know all of the ingredients but maybe not how much is a "pinch of this" and a "splash of that". It's entirely possible that no one knows the exact secret sauce recipe, even Newey.

[Just_a_fan]

The fact that RBR didn't push for a gardening leave suggests this engineer is not critical to their developments or is not aware of RB's "secret sauce"

He may already have served the gardening leave. He would still technically be employed by the team until the gardening leave ended.

[Farnborough]

This chassis I dont feel is anywhere near competent, there's just too many compromise built into it. 4th or 5th on technical pace

What is "technical pace"(what parameters have you set to conclude your statement?)

The chassis compromise relative to Red Bull and Ferrari's ideology does not mean it cannot get consistent results track by track.
As we see from venue to venue, Mercedes are either 2nd, 3rd or on occasion 4th fastest. But they are consistently achieving their results, despite the compromise that goes beyond the reasoning of having 2 good drivers.
As we see Aston Martin running a near RB like philosophy, Mercedes are clearly faster the last few races.
Mercedes fell behind McLaren that literally sacrificed half it's season to most likely still finish behind Mercedes this year.
Ferrari flounder in spectacularly in some races with their tyre wear and pace, on occasion they crack it but infrequently.

When you add it all up, I feel that despite the flawed design, they're making a good fist of things by consistently being better on avg. And until next year we won't know conclusively if lessons learnt have had a positive impact.
If the W15 shows up with zeropods and a W13 derived floor as the W14, I'll be the first in line to throw shade.
Unless it's quick.

I believe your categorisation of chassis performance is through exactly what I avoid by stating "technical" pace.

To expand that, perhaps a more rounded word (no I'm not going to look at lap time history) could be "natural" or "latent" and pure performance. That not adjusted for race situation circumstance or driver skill set.

Consider a big IF for theoretical benchmarking. Would a swap of drivers Lewis with Lance likely see lewis in front of a) Lance (highly likely) and b) higher in the WDC championship? A little clunky toward the hypothetical I agree, but illustrative nonetheless.
Could we determine from that the AM possess a more inbuilt "technical pace" than the MB ? I think that's quite illustrative to consider what lays within each car. Lewus is where he is in combined (with car) pace he'll always pull it far forward.
In other words, with Lewis driving either chassis (AM or MB) in which is he most likely to be ahead, that one has better technical pace.

I specifically noted not to include the McL as early iteration by offering this significant swapping of their basic design application into this current car, it's not a comment on the respective season performance of theses two teams so far in championship results, dont use that angle for pure chassis performance evaluation, in effect its not this years team championship positions im proffering as judgement of the MB concept.

[ValeVida46]

It gives an impression that the "Team Leader" is quite a junior role.

It may very well be a junior role, but this wouldn't preclude him from knowing how a concept works.
Unless Red Bull have a segregated aerodynamic department, which firewalls data from it's own team.
Not beyond the realms of possibility, but highly unlikely.

[ValeVida46]

I believe your categorisation of chassis performance is through exactly what I avoid by stating "technical" pace.

To expand that, perhaps a more rounded word (no I'm not going to look at lap time history) could be "natural" or "latent" and pure performance. That not adjusted for race situation circumstance or driver skill set.

Consider a big IF for theoretical benchmarking. Would a swap of drivers Lewis with Lance likely see lewis in front of a) Lance (highly likely) and b) higher in the WDC championship? A little clunky toward the hypothetical I agree, but illustrative nonetheless.
Could we determine from that the AM possess a more inbuilt "technical pace" than the MB ? I think that's quite illustrative to consider what lays within each car. Lewus is where he is in combined (with car) pace he'll always pull it far forward.
In other words, with Lewis driving either chassis (AM or MB) in which is he most likely to be ahead, that one has better technical pace.

I specifically noted not to include the McL as early iteration by offering this significant swapping of their basic design application into this current car, it's not a comment on the respective season performance of theses two teams so far in championship results, dont use that angle for pure chassis performance evaluation, in effect its not this years team championship positions im proffering as judgement of the MB concept.

For equivalence sake then, if Hamilton and Fernando were to swap positions I don't really see much difference.
I get what you're saying but then if we follow the trend, Aston have fallen by the wayside.
If today, a layman had to see a compromised Merc with less windtunnel time faster than the "better" Red Bull inspired Aston Martin with more windtunnel time, the assumption would be that Aston utilised the wind tunnel time advantageously.
Initially at least. And since June when the wind tunnel time reset, Aston would have had to have been more judicious relative its allowance the previous 6 months, given their placing of 3rd in the constructors championship compared to 7th's entitlements.

As you can see, this murkies the water.

Because if Aston were the second fastest car for 6 or 7 races, and then 5th fastest for the next 4 or 5, it's average relative pace in it's best drivers hands suffered relatively. Which is my point. My metric would be race pace.
At some races Mercedes are 2nd fastest, and others third, and on occasion they will be 4th. But the drop off on those odd occasions is rare than those of Aston Martin or Ferrari.
So you would get Merc ahead of both, sandwiched between both, but less often behind both. However, with McLaren's stunning resurgence, it shuffled things(which you touched on).
And to outline that point, McLaren are for the most part the second fastest team right now, but on balance of the season would need to still perform to that level if they will be regarded as such over the season.

So time will tell but I'd definitely think Mercedes on average would be no lower than 3rd fastest team over the course of the season we have seen thus far.

[Willy]

A team leader will be a person running a group designing a particular part of the car - the front wing, for example, or the floor.

And it is doubtful that these roles work in isolation - if you're designing the floor or the diffuser, for example, you'll need to know what the rest of the aero is doing because it feeds in to your bit too.

Will he bring "the secret sauce"? No, unlikely. Why? Because there is no single secret ingredient in the sauce - it all works as a whole. He might know all of the ingredients but maybe not how much is a "pinch of this" and a "splash of that". It's entirely possible that no one knows the exact secret sauce recipe, even Newey.

It gives an impression that the "Team Leader" is quite a junior role.

It may very well be a junior role, but this wouldn't preclude him from knowing how a concept works.
Unless Red Bull have a segregated aerodynamic department, which firewalls data from it's own team.
Not beyond the realms of possibility, but highly unlikely.

I have not worked for any F1 team and I also believe more than 99% folks here haven't either. So how different the working procedures are for the designers, engineers and production folks, we can only take our wild imaginations there.

I work in Software and despite having things intertwined to work as a whole in the end, different scrum teams still work via a published integration specification from different modules. We work with mocking the data that flows between different modules and systems. It all comes together in the integration testing and whatever issues that come up, would then be fixed to ensure the whole thing works seamlessly. Is this something F1 teams also do? May be, may be not. Assuming there are 40 to 50 aero engineers (I guess that would be maximum as an F1 team of 500 people would be constituted of aero engineers, vehicle dynamics/mechanical engineers, performance engineers, software engineers, data analysts, racing operations engineers, production specialists, race mechanics, HR, finance, facilities etc.,) designing different pieces, I wouldn't expect them to be integrating all pieces on an everyday basis. So I hazard a guess that there is a possibility of different sets of engineers working in silos and may not be ones that have the visibility of fully integrated concept of the car. Head of aero or chief designer type of person would have a full view of how the entire concept is working along with the mechanical side of things. They are intertwined and they have to work has one in the end.

Same might apply for vehicle dynamics engineers like the front suspension specialists, rear suspension engineers, load distribution engineers, floor, chassis and engine integration teams. There is a definite potential for these teams to work in isolation for most part. It's really difficult to imagine an engineer at a team lead level would ever have a full view and understanding of how the entire concept works, aero and mechanical.

If someone has worked in the designing of F1 car in the modern era for any of the current teams, please enlighten.

[ringo]

It gives an impression that the "Team Leader" is quite a junior role.

It may very well be a junior role, but this wouldn't preclude him from knowing how a concept works.
Unless Red Bull have a segregated aerodynamic department, which firewalls data from it's own team.
Not beyond the realms of possibility, but highly unlikely.

He will make a difference if he takes a leading role. There must be some comparison with systems, tools and culture that he can make that will help mercedes. In fact they need to hire more RB people.

[Big Tea]

It gives an impression that the "Team Leader" is quite a junior role.

It may very well be a junior role, but this wouldn't preclude him from knowing how a concept works.
Unless Red Bull have a segregated aerodynamic department, which firewalls data from it's own team.
Not beyond the realms of possibility, but highly unlikely.

He will make a difference if he takes a leading role. There must be some comparison with systems, tools and culture that he can make that will help mercedes. In fact they need to hire more RB people.

He would also know who else would be useful to Merc, and probably have an idea of those willing to move to him