2024 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[Seanspeed]

Ferrari was 100 % going againts the very spirit of the rules, it wasnt a shock it was swiftly changed, they was practically cheating.

smh

You can correctly give Newey his dues without having to reframe any argument at all surrounding this in some heavily skewed way to support it.

As legendary as Newey is, it's not impossible for others to do as well or better than him on occasion.

[Sofa King]

Lewis is already regularly seeing the back of George’s rear wing — if he is lucky — so nothing new here

...

...

He's talking big game again, that's worked out pretty well for him these few years.

[Venturiation]

Lewis is already regularly seeing the back of George’s rear wing — if he is lucky — so nothing new here

...

...

He's talking big game again, that's worked out pretty well for him these few years.

George is regularly seeing the walls under pressure, mercedes needs to find a team leader for 2025

[SoulPancake13]

Ferrari was 100 % going againts the very spirit of the rules, it wasnt a shock it was swiftly changed, they was practically cheating.

McLaren last year didnt even finished top 15 first two races after swapping to Redbulls suspension, but finished the last half of the season with the clear 2nd best car. AM had started the season with the clear 2nd fastest car, yet finished 4th.

Im not one for picking the best of the rest after the first 3 races of a 24 race season, even more so, when it went to the very last race the year before.

Ferrari was cheating? Oh come on now, let's stay grounded in reality please. Merc tried to nerf the front two, it ended up only hurting Ferrari because Merc don't understand these regulations.

[SiLo]

Ferrari was 100 % going againts the very spirit of the rules, it wasnt a shock it was swiftly changed, they was practically cheating.

McLaren last year didnt even finished top 15 first two races after swapping to Redbulls suspension, but finished the last half of the season with the clear 2nd best car. AM had started the season with the clear 2nd fastest car, yet finished 4th.

Im not one for picking the best of the rest after the first 3 races of a 24 race season, even more so, when it went to the very last race the year before.

Ferrari was cheating? Oh come on now, let's stay grounded in reality please. Merc tried to nerf the front two, it ended up only hurting Ferrari because Merc don't understand these regulations.

A lot of people conflate the TD039 changes with floor flexing, but I believe it was the bouncing that killed them. They had bouncing that was beyond the new limits introduced, but it seemed the drivers were able to live with it at the time.

[proteus]

Lewis is already regularly seeing the back of George’s rear wing — if he is lucky — so nothing new here

...

...

He's talking big game again, that's worked out pretty well for him these few years.

They were a dream team as long as the music was playing, now when the music has stopped, masks have fell... Now we will have to wait who comes out of this victorious.

[Vanja #66]

Thanks for your answer, but still I don't have a clear understanding of what do you mean by peak downforce.

What I understood from peak-downforce is that, imagining a plot where on x axis I have speed (and other variables maybe like ride height, yaw conditions, temp etc), y axis is the downforce, and the maximum point of the graph (related to x axis) is the peak (the max value) and the area under the curve is available downforce. Imagining in a lap, peak value is where the maximum downforce I am obtaining during the lap, and the available downforce is the value I get on average during the lap. (you can change the lap variable with ride height, temp etc.)

So you are suggesting that they have optimised the peak value instead of the area under the curve? This sounds like a very-very foolish way to optimise performance if they did that.

Something like that. Peak downforce is usually achieved at the lowest ride height (now that there's basically no rake when cars are running), 0 yaw, 0 roll, no steering angle. Basically running on the straight. But corners aren't straights and neither are kerbs, bumps and any other running condition - and all of those mean a certain loss compared to peak downforce.

Peaky cars have high DF values in a very narrow operating window and this typically means you always have a more or less compromised setup. At worst you have a snappy car which has huge losses in certain corners/conditions, typically losing diffuser load and thus having oversteer snaps. W15 has some issues with rear end at high speed, for example, so it's still not quite well balanced, but it doesn't seem to be too peaky, just lacks some floor performance. The problem there is that W15 still had high speed bouncing in Jeddah, even in corners, which means their floor downforce is compromised if they go too low.

On the other hand, W15 treats the tyres well and doesn't look stiffer or softer than Top 3 cars, so in my view suspension is good enough and their troubles are completely aero related. They need more floor downforce and they need to find an aerodynamic solution for bouncing.

[214270]

Crofty & RUS in sync once again lol

https://imgur.com/gallery/uhwj9bD

[Mosin123]

Ferrari was 100 % going againts the very spirit of the rules, it wasnt a shock it was swiftly changed, they was practically cheating.

McLaren last year didnt even finished top 15 first two races after swapping to Redbulls suspension, but finished the last half of the season with the clear 2nd best car. AM had started the season with the clear 2nd fastest car, yet finished 4th.

Im not one for picking the best of the rest after the first 3 races of a 24 race season, even more so, when it went to the very last race the year before.

Ferrari was cheating? Oh come on now, let's stay grounded in reality please. Merc tried to nerf the front two, it ended up only hurting Ferrari because Merc don't understand these regulations.

I didnt say they was, i said they practically was, they was in a gray area that was quickly shut.

Ferrari was 100 % going againts the very spirit of the rules, it wasnt a shock it was swiftly changed, they was practically cheating.

McLaren last year didnt even finished top 15 first two races after swapping to Redbulls suspension, but finished the last half of the season with the clear 2nd best car. AM had started the season with the clear 2nd fastest car, yet finished 4th.

Im not one for picking the best of the rest after the first 3 races of a 24 race season, even more so, when it went to the very last race the year before.

Ferrari was cheating? Oh come on now, let's stay grounded in reality please. Merc tried to nerf the front two, it ended up only hurting Ferrari because Merc don't understand these regulations.

A lot of people conflate the TD039 changes with floor flexing, but I believe it was the bouncing that killed them. They had bouncing that was beyond the new limits introduced, but it seemed the drivers were able to live with it at the time.

A flexing floor would generate quite a bit of free downforce, not only that, but it help obsorb some of that impact from the bouncing, and also allow the car to be run lower. The change in regulations hit Ferrari the most, because they was gaining the most from it.

[Mosin123]

Ferrari was 100 % going againts the very spirit of the rules, it wasnt a shock it was swiftly changed, they was practically cheating.

smh

You can correctly give Newey his dues without having to reframe any argument at all surrounding this in some heavily skewed way to support it.

As legendary as Newey is, it's not impossible for others to do as well or better than him on occasion.

No, but its harder to catch some one who already has exp in f1 racing with ground effects, and 3 years at indycar, he has known since then how to solve the bouncing problem, then spent hundreds of millions researching it for the Rb001, Even Neway him self says his exp with ground effects gave him in a very advantageous understanding of the rules.

How long do you think it would take some one completely new to ground effects, to then match Neways exp while Neway him self is still gaining more and more knowledge on said subject..... Your not likely to catch his knowledge up any time soon.

[Rootsap]

http://www.silverarrows.net/news/alllis ... 5s-issues/

Let's hope they figure it out this time...

[venkyhere]

Thanks for your answer, but still I don't have a clear understanding of what do you mean by peak downforce.

What I understood from peak-downforce is that, imagining a plot where on x axis I have speed (and other variables maybe like ride height, yaw conditions, temp etc), y axis is the downforce, and the maximum point of the graph (related to x axis) is the peak (the max value) and the area under the curve is available downforce. Imagining in a lap, peak value is where the maximum downforce I am obtaining during the lap, and the available downforce is the value I get on average during the lap. (you can change the lap variable with ride height, temp etc.)

So you are suggesting that they have optimised the peak value instead of the area under the curve? This sounds like a very-very foolish way to optimise performance if they did that.

I will take a stab at answering, but at a very crude level.

I have represented my understanding in this pic :

The plot is an overall representation of downforce generated from - floor + front and rear wings + body

The 'sharpness of curvature' of each of the curves - the sharper (slope of curve) it is, the 'peakier' the downforce of the car. Ideally, we want really gradual slopes of the curves in there, even if the 'heights' to which the curves reach are lower (sacrificing peak downforce for usable downforce).

Also, the red curve - the two sets of dotted lines - they are undesirable - they represent drag penalty in straight/almost-straight bits of the track. Downforce peak w.r.t yaw is most desirable when there is some actual yaw angle involved (medium speed, high speed) and the flatter the "peak" of the red curve is, the better the car will perform on all kinds of tracks.
My guess is that this red curve is the 'difficult to achieve' aspect of the floor is, and that's what RedBull Ferrari and McLaren are getting right, whilst Mercedes is struggling.

[dia6olo]

Lewis is already regularly seeing the back of George’s rear wing — if he is lucky — so nothing new here

...

...

He's talking big game again, that's worked out pretty well for him these few years.

He probably means when Ferrari are coming from behind to lap Mercedes

[Tomsky]

[TimW]

“I think we’ve lost our way at the beginning of ’22 because all our tools and systems [previously] gave us cars that were winning championships every single year,”

I think they actually lost their way before '22, and had some element missing in their understanding without knowing it. In '21, with the cutouts in the floor, the initially lost ground to Red Bull. At the end of '21 they arguably had the fastest car again, with hardly any updates. So they seemed to have something missing in the understanding /simulation of their car and the setup already then.