Mercedes GP MGP W01

[aral]

Someone tell me, is the W01 f-duct going to be legal next year since its not like the others?

From what i can see, its still allowed as there is no driver interaction with the part. But im now of the opinion that its time to allow the F-Duct to be mechanichaly operated on saftey grounds. Basically let the drivers have 30 seconds of F-Duct usage per lap, with unlimited KERS power for 11 laps of the race, id be happy with those for the current generation of cars.

But back to topic, the Mercedes Passive F-Duct is perfectly legal to my interpritation of the rules.

The Mercedes F-duct, is NOT passive. Schumi could be seen activating it with his hand, and there was mention that the operating aperture was moved down to his knee, before the Spa race.

[marcush.]

maybe when Schumacher cannot feel the diffrence in the car asking the pitwall if its operative..then it could be called passive...

[ESPImperium]

Ive watched many onboard videos, and it appears that Schumacher is actually adjusting the Brake Balance, not avtivating a F-Duct.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Ive watched many onboard videos, and it appears that Schumacher is actually adjusting the Brake Balance, not avtivating a F-Duct.

Beat me to it +1

[marcush.]

Be it as is ...I fail to see how Brawns troops ar in a position to lift the performance of this car ,wich is baffling me .
Compared to Mclaren last year ..w01 was not even half the truck at the start of 2010 but instead of improving they could barely match the development pace in terms of results of Tororosso ....Clearly RedBull,Mclaren,Ferrari,Renault,Force india ,Sauber, Williams,Lotus ,ans Virgin have performed bigger steps not in terms of parts glued to the car biut on track improvements.

[aral]

Ive watched many onboard videos, and it appears that Schumacher is actually adjusting the Brake Balance, not avtivating a F-Duct.

Then why was it reported that Schumi asked for the control to be lowered so as to be operated by his knee?

[Raptor22]

ah the armchair aero experts are still blaming the nose. If he nose were the problem don't you think they would have changed it??!

The car faces a number of challenges. One is chassis stiffness. Its not stiff enough and they are stuck with the design for the year because the rules says so.

They are having problems with their f-duct which seems to increase and decrease drag at will. Their concept here is flawed and is hampered by the roll hoop design they chose. They cannot make changes to the rol hoop because its is homologated for 2010. They won;t change it for next year either since f-ducts are banned from 2011. Th roll hoop also gave them advantages that could have been more effective if the f-duct had not appeared. Thats called being caught flat footed!!

then we can reopen the mass distrbution problem since the car was designed for Button...
Coupe this to a less than optimally stiff chassis and you have a car that will change character throughthe corner as track camber and surface texture changes.

In short, the Merc is a sensitive east in every area.

Loic Bigois used ot work for Ligier (Prost) Minardi and Wiliams and he proved himself an innovative designer before then with the Peugeot 905 LeMans car (which he worked on at Dassault before he joined F1 in 1990). He has worked for many teams in F1. I think h is capable of delivering since he did penn the Brawn BGP001...

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

The car faces a number of challenges. One is chassis stiffness. Its not stiff enough and they are stuck with the design for the year because the rules says so.

Hi raptor,

Can you please shed some light on the chassis stiffness? I'm aware that there are things they cannot change, the nose also being one of them.
Thanks in advance.

[marcush.]

i would like to give youthe following link.


http://www.scribd.com/doc/28015575/Form ... ngineering

from Gary Savage ,who works at Mercedes lots of Brawn BGP001 chassis construction pics and insight in available technology.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Okay marcush thanks for that, Can you simplify that for the non engineers amongst us?
So am I correct in saying then that torsional stiffness(Structural rigidity) of the car is not high enough and this has an adverse effect on the balance?

[mep]

by Raptor22
The car faces a number of challenges. One is chassis stiffness. Its not stiff enough and they are stuck with the design for the year because the rules says so.

Interesting comment. Do you have anything to back this up? I can’t see a reason why they should have messed up stiffness. Last year they won the championship so why they should miss to make a stiff chassis for this year?
For me it looks like people search for major mistakes and problems everywhere.

[marcush.]

i read about this in german mag Sport auto or AMS (Interview with the Boss -RossBrawn) he mentioned the areas where they need to improve..which was coG height (!) and stiffness not sure if this was chassis stiffness or really the broad term stiffness he dropped..could well be lost in translation there would go things amiss anyways.

[mep]

....the areas where they need to improve..which was coG height (!) and stiffness...

CoG height???
Sounds strange as well.
Without question as low as possible should be the way to go.
How can you get it wrong?
They had the championship winning car so why should they rise CoG without any need?
I also can't imagine the competitors could significantly lower theirs in just 1 year.
Regarding stiffness, maybe I was talking about his wing stiffness.

Sometimes I wonder if they just tell something that is easy to understand by the normal folk.

[747heavy]

If you run a inerter, which weights ~1kg, it helps a lot to have pull rod suspension
at the rear to lower your CoG.

Lowering CoG you will find on anyones "to do" list in all forms of car racing.
It´s an universal aim.
Maybe it was his way of saying Heidfeld will be in the car next year
- just kidding.
As driver height/weight will contribute to CoG height significantly

[marcush.]

think about it:
you got a high nose layout front and that is easily coG hight everything in front of the drivers bum almost at axle height....aapart from the front wing and every thing contained in the splitter.... so for aero you sacrifice mechanical stuff.

so now combine this with your desire to move say 30 kilos of ballast to the rear and things start to get messy in terms of weight transfer .
As they had before a front heavy layout ..their development for ultralight parts in the front was not that advanced.. as the back was where they wanted to save weight.
Combine this with a wrong estimate for the desired split . and we get the message.