2024 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[Seanspeed]

Wasnt this the reason for the whole rule update?
Now we are are watching a fight for place 11 by 4 cars who cant overtake one car.
The formula is so messed up just slow everyone down and charge battery and they cant pass with drs gimmicks

Addressing the significance of the performance penalty while running in dirty air was certainly the aim of the '22 regs, but you cant get anywhere even near actually eliminating this effect, especially with the downforce and thus cornering speeds these cars are capable of.

This isn't anything to be upset about in this case. We saw plenty of overtaking overall. Merc were specifically setup to fare worse in this sector on top of the inherent dirty air penalty any car would face. So the level of issue that Lewis/Merc faced with this was a 'them' problem, not a regulation problem.

[Hammerfist]

Well Melbourne was one of their strongest tracks the las 2 years so I expect this car to be better there too. Same dna. Whether they can beat Ferrari there I’m not so sure.

[Luscion]

Well Melbourne was one of their strongest tracks the las 2 years so I expect this car to be better there too. Same dna. Whether they can beat Ferrari there I’m not so sure.

Melborne has a bunch of high speed corners, if they dont get their issues in high speed corners fixed like they had in Jeddah theyre going to get destroyed there

[Sevach]

Well Melbourne was one of their strongest tracks the las 2 years so I expect this car to be better there too. Same dna. Whether they can beat Ferrari there I’m not so sure.

Melborne has a bunch of high speed corners, if they dont get their issues in high speed corners fixed like they had in Jeddah theyre going to get destroyed there

It's nowhere near as intense as Jeddah S1.
The "S" at the beggining of sector 3 and and the 6th gear right hander near the end of the lap should lose Mercedes some time.
The 5th gear turn 1 might be what Hamilton calls middle speed, i'm not sure...

Still i don't expect much from Mercedes, Ferrari and Mclaren clearly made more progress since Australia 2023.

[Hammerfist]

Well Melbourne was one of their strongest tracks the las 2 years so I expect this car to be better there too. Same dna. Whether they can beat Ferrari there I’m not so sure.

Melborne has a bunch of high speed corners, if they dont get their issues in high speed corners fixed like they had in Jeddah theyre going to get destroyed there

It's nowhere near as intense as Jeddah S1.
The "S" at the beggining of sector 3 and and the 6th gear right hander near the end of the lap should lose Mercedes some time.
The 5th gear turn 1 might be what Hamilton calls middle speed, i'm not sure...

Still i don't expect much from Mercedes, Ferrari and Mclaren clearly made more progress since Australia 2023.

The main reason they’re competitive in Melbourne is because of the high downforce everyone typically runs there. We shall see. The Ferrari should be a good step ahead of course but I think I’d expect them to be ahead of Macca and Aston.

[maxxer]

Wasnt this the reason for the whole rule update?
Now we are are watching a fight for place 11 by 4 cars who cant overtake one car.
The formula is so messed up just slow everyone down and charge battery and they cant pass with drs gimmicks

Addressing the significance of the performance penalty while running in dirty air was certainly the aim of the '22 regs, but you cant get anywhere even near actually eliminating this effect, especially with the downforce and thus cornering speeds these cars are capable of.

This isn't anything to be upset about in this case. We saw plenty of overtaking overall. Merc were specifically setup to fare worse in this sector on top of the inherent dirty air penalty any car would face. So the level of issue that Lewis/Merc faced with this was a 'them' problem, not a regulation problem.

True and mclaren also did only 13kph more with drs and others did 33kph more.
So not upset about it, just the teams would need to learn to do the same as the one in front of them

[cheeRS]

I have felt that Mercedes is really an "engine team" who are just bang average with chassis (DAS was an exception). Their glory years 2014-2021 was fundamentally engine dominance, wasn't it ? The first time they were put under pressure to get their chassis right, 3 yrs on, they haven't mastered ground effect. McLaren has, Ferrari has. Aston Martin has (either they struck gold or they admitted defeat and used Fallows to create an RB18 copy). It doesn't seem to make a difference whether Elliot or Allison, they simply can't get their floor right.

(i) Toto gleefully jumped into the boxing ring and armtwisted FIA into bringing in TD039, upon the advice of his engineers. What happened next ? Redbull got around it straightaway, Ferrari took some time, AstonMartin struggled, McLaren incorporated it into their mega update. Mercedes gained nothing.
(ii) they got tricked into thinking Brazil 2022 was their confirmation compass that told them they were on the right track, and wasted an additional year. Brazil 2022 was RedBull getting it wrong (like singapore 2023) rather than Merc getting it right. Anyway, had they 'understood' it like Mclaren did, they would've simply fielded the 2022 car until 2023 summer break and come up with a mega update in the middle of 2023, like Mclaren did.
Both of the above, stem from lack of depth in understanding about 'ground effect downforce', today they have to resort to previous-era like push-pull choices with wings alone, in deciding how to optimize the opposing requirements of downforce and top speed. My guess is they are in the zone where the task is to measure 235ml, but they have only containers with 1000, 500, 250 and 100 ml capacities.

Only RedBull, McLaren and Ferrari seem to have 'understood' ground effect, Redbull being the most clever of them, who has understood it to such detail that that not a single change they are making to the car is having drawbacks. It's surgical.

This has been proven false time and time again. There are dozens of examples of the best engine (whether it was Ferrari/Merc/Honda) not making much difference to team. Merc's chassis were absolutely top notch many of those years - remember when they had to ban FRIC? Merc was the only team to run a long wheelbase with any measure of success, too.

It is true that this era is aero dominated, and Merc are having trouble figuring it out. It's a correlation issue. They have to go off their data, and the sad truth is that their data aren't reflecting the real world and vice versa. IF (and I'm not sure they will) they figure out what's going on, they'll but right up there with Ferrari and ostensibly up there with RBR.

The point is, all that chassis/suspension/aero expertise didn't just go up in smoke in 2022. Merc has always chased innovative and unique solutions that are superior - just look at what RB copied this year. Sometimes though, it bites hard.

[toyracer]

Well color (or colour if you prefer) me confused. Aston uses the Mercedes gearbox and rear suspension and don't seem to have the same issues of an unstable rear end, so it's not that part of the car that's the problem. Looks like the floor is the issue as shown by the constant sparks from running so low, as well as the bouncing.

Wasn't W15 at the top of the standings when they ran it low with the constant sparks?

[Vanja #66]

This has been proven false time and time again. There are dozens of examples of the best engine (whether it was Ferrari/Merc/Honda) not making much difference to team. Merc's chassis were absolutely top notch many of those years - remember when they had to ban FRIC? Merc was the only team to run a long wheelbase with any measure of success, too.

It's easy to have the best chassis when you can load the car with downforce and don't have to think about drag penalty as much as others do. Just look at the difference in wing levels between Merc and Ferrari (front too, but especially rear wing) in Monza 2018 and still Hamilton had higher Top Speed in Q

[basti313]

Well color (or colour if you prefer) me confused. Aston uses the Mercedes gearbox and rear suspension and don't seem to have the same issues of an unstable rear end, so it's not that part of the car that's the problem. Looks like the floor is the issue as shown by the constant sparks from running so low, as well as the bouncing.

Wasn't W15 at the top of the standings when they ran it low with the constant sparks?

Well...testing...but it seems like the performance issue is not 100% coupled to height. Saudi is a flat as flat can be track...still no good performance. Same goes last year with Sing....bumpy as hell and no issue for Merc.
Maybe the floor is quite good on height change, but, thus, does not react with more performance once they can run it low. So it is stable, but mediocre.

This has been proven false time and time again. There are dozens of examples of the best engine (whether it was Ferrari/Merc/Honda) not making much difference to team. Merc's chassis were absolutely top notch many of those years - remember when they had to ban FRIC? Merc was the only team to run a long wheelbase with any measure of success, too.

It's easy to have the best chassis when you can load the car with downforce and don't have to think about drag penalty as much as others do. Just look at the difference in wing levels between Merc and Ferrari (front too, but especially rear wing) in Monza 2018 and still Hamilton had higher Top Speed in Q

True, but only for some seasons. And I think this is one of the problems now and was even already in 2021. In some seasons they could bolt on whatever they wanted. I think that was also the 2021 issue to some degree, with the cut floor. Once they got Ham the super engines, they looked good in every sense, for example the dominant car in Brazil.

[CHT]

I have felt that Mercedes is really an "engine team" who are just bang average with chassis (DAS was an exception). Their glory years 2014-2021 was fundamentally engine dominance, wasn't it ? The first time they were put under pressure to get their chassis right, 3 yrs on, they haven't mastered ground effect. McLaren has, Ferrari has. Aston Martin has (either they struck gold or they admitted defeat and used Fallows to create an RB18 copy). It doesn't seem to make a difference whether Elliot or Allison, they simply can't get their floor right.

(i) Toto gleefully jumped into the boxing ring and armtwisted FIA into bringing in TD039, upon the advice of his engineers. What happened next ? Redbull got around it straightaway, Ferrari took some time, AstonMartin struggled, McLaren incorporated it into their mega update. Mercedes gained nothing.
(ii) they got tricked into thinking Brazil 2022 was their confirmation compass that told them they were on the right track, and wasted an additional year. Brazil 2022 was RedBull getting it wrong (like singapore 2023) rather than Merc getting it right. Anyway, had they 'understood' it like Mclaren did, they would've simply fielded the 2022 car until 2023 summer break and come up with a mega update in the middle of 2023, like Mclaren did.
Both of the above, stem from lack of depth in understanding about 'ground effect downforce', today they have to resort to previous-era like push-pull choices with wings alone, in deciding how to optimize the opposing requirements of downforce and top speed. My guess is they are in the zone where the task is to measure 235ml, but they have only containers with 1000, 500, 250 and 100 ml capacities.

Only RedBull, McLaren and Ferrari seem to have 'understood' ground effect, Redbull being the most clever of them, who has understood it to such detail that that not a single change they are making to the car is having drawbacks. It's surgical.

This has been proven false time and time again. There are dozens of examples of the best engine (whether it was Ferrari/Merc/Honda) not making much difference to team. Merc's chassis were absolutely top notch many of those years - remember when they had to ban FRIC? Merc was the only team to run a long wheelbase with any measure of success, too.

It is true that this era is aero dominated, and Merc are having trouble figuring it out. It's a correlation issue. They have to go off their data, and the sad truth is that their data aren't reflecting the real world and vice versa. IF (and I'm not sure they will) they figure out what's going on, they'll but right up there with Ferrari and ostensibly up there with RBR.

The point is, all that chassis/suspension/aero expertise didn't just go up in smoke in 2022. Merc has always chased innovative and unique solutions that are superior - just look at what RB copied this year. Sometimes though, it bites hard.

What exactly is the correlation issue here?

[Gr1ff]

There was an interview with a Mercedes Engineer I forget who it was, they were talking about their Qualy and Race engine performance and how they would lower it from max to whatever it needed to be that weekend. During that interview they stated they also had the best chassis when equaling the engine performance. Of course got to take everything with a pinch of salt.

[Sevach]

The main reason they’re competitive in Melbourne is because of the high downforce everyone typically runs there. We shall see. The Ferrari should be a good step ahead of course but I think I’d expect them to be ahead of Macca and Aston.

Ferrari has been solidly ahead on both races, cooling problems that get "hyped" up notwitstanding, it would be one hell of a jump in performance.

They were (easily)better than Aston in Bahrain and Russell was right on Alonso's tail the entire race in Jeddah, in a track that plays more to Merc strengths they should be ahead...

Mclaren i expect another fight, both teams were around in each other on both races so far... In Jeddah with a Mclaren advantage, in Bahrain with a Merc advantage.

[214270]

Surely, if you want to minimise pressure for your young star you limit exposure?

https://www.crash.net/f1/news/1045585/1 ... -antonelli

Netflix, really?? Lol.

[DGP123]

Surely, if you want to minimise pressure for your young star you limit exposure?

https://www.crash.net/f1/news/1045585/1 ... -antonelli

Netflix, really?? Lol.

I’d imagine, Antonelli to Merc for 25’, is all but done.