Mercedes W15

[Henk_v]

Then again, if nothing goes right, go left.

If the zeropod did work, they woud have secured two years of dominance.

To be fair, all teams took a gamble with the new regulations. The zeropod was visually very different, but there were some 5 different sidepod philosophies of which at least 3 were as bad as the zeropod.

[Vanja #66]

If the zeropod did work, they woud have secured two years of dominance.

It was never about zeropods, they went full attack on raw floor downforce and got caught out with horrible bouncing. Even with zeropods the car was a lot better since Barcelona and the newer floor, where they dropped crazy 90 downforce points to put bouncing under a bit more control. Similarly, when they dropped zeropods with W14 for more regular side on W14B there was no miracle improvement, Barcelona was an outlier mostly because AMR were bad there and Ferrari were even worse with newly arrived and out of sync bodywork and floor.

[Henk_v]

You are ofcourse right. "Zeropod" was shorthand for "their car concept", including, but not limited to visually distinct sidepods.

[Vanja #66]

Sure, just wanted to emphasise this as pundits and "experts" still point to it as the main limiting factor

[Luscion]

https://x.com/xavigazquez/status/1795417872417640606

[Goblin42]

Floor edge and floor body pics from the W15 in monaco

[PlatinumZealot]

The new front wing goes back to the tried and true method of feeding the GE floor with clean air - as clean as possible - and then having strong outwash to control wheel wake. Y250 Vortices are not bringing extra here like the old flat floor cars - it's seems the way to go is to keep the "hoover" clean and stable and let other air manages items like brake ducts and barge boards manage the vortices.

[PlatinumZealot]

While on the topic of the front wing. The W15 weakness is now the front according to George Russell. We here know that tidying up front downforce is a far easier problem that trying to fix rear downforce.

When you look at the data and you correlate it with how it feels, you understand why last year wasn’t good and nor was the year before,” said Russell, “it was all at the rear and is now all at the front.

I think the W15 should be on par with Ferrari and McLaren again in few races if Mercedes upgrades work. They might even be ahead of them if they are lucky.

[mwillems]

[mwillems]

[Owen.C93]

Still bringing both specs of wings this weekend then. Wonder if we’ll see them back to back in FP.

[Luscion]

[Luscion]

[PlatinumZealot]

That's some fine detailing there. Love seeing that! It means the aerodynamicists have finished fighting fires and "settled in" somewhat to get down to the performance development now.

[cplchanb]

Still bringing both specs of wings this weekend then. Wonder if we’ll see them back to back in FP.

Both of them used the new wings for FP3. Looks like they will use it for the race