A place to discuss the characteristics of the cars in Formula One, both current as well as historical. Laptimes, driver worshipping and team chatter do not belong here.
Cooling vents on the W15 are kinda in the same place as the W14 , tho i'm curious would they make a WIDE engine cannon outlet for hot races like what they did last year
Cooling vents on the W15 are kinda in the same place as the W14 , tho i'm curious would they make a WIDE engine cannon outlet for hot races like what they did last year
I think the Bahrain test will have daytime running so I suspect we'll see a hot weather configuration as early as tomorrow's filming day. It won't be long now.
It really seems like they are running a lot more front wing than last year.
Romain Grosjean said that Mercedes must be really confident in rear downforce if they're running more front wing. However it is common to see teams running high downforce setups during the shakedown and testing for initial data correlation.
Looks far more resolved than the two immediate predecessor from them.
Whispers about getting rear suspension into their operating requirements, may take some effort and time to fully understand in running it for real.
You can see where the push rod enters the chassis, in comparison to last years pull rod...the two points effectively at opposite ends of the internal torsion bar spring inside the gearbox casing.
Looking from the side of the chassis it sits coming up from clutch area toward the top of the case reclined a little like the driver's spine in orientation.
There looks to be higher gearing on this iteration in respect of how "closed" the geometry and angles are from the components we can see. That would ordinarily shift the spring and damping medium used to "harder" rating as the wheel assembly has effectively more leverage over this control force. Quite a shift for them to firstly specify and then fully evaluate.
This chassis (after reality of "hacking" the old one about last year) just has an air of refined detail about it.
I dont feel it'll be a surprise if it performs well against competition, but may just take a while to really understand it across all of the support staff and driver's interpretation.