Mercedes GP MGP W01

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

It's cheaper to just accept failure .. not that their competitors are doing that .. Renault, Force India, Williams, etc are all trying to move forward. Not Merc.

Can you elaborate?
For me its a case of them going staying static this year to gain more next year.
What is the point, in developing a car that is flawed? What will you learn?
Rather start again. Mercedes are doing just that.

[BreezyRacer]

Can you elaborate?

Putting work into a "dead" chassis still teaches you much. They could be learning, developing for next year. There will be a testing ban then too.

A good but probably not unusual example is Red Bull changing the front caliper mount for Suzuka. No doubt that redesign mandated a new upright and ducting, and it was a development for the 2011 car but they decided to put it on the 2010 car to check it out.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Perhaps Mercedes already have an idea of what they want for 2010. And the W02 could be a a brand new concept.
There is no way the W01 will be evolved, and if it is, Mercedes GP will be in deep trouble.
The W01 is a flawed concept, read Scarbs F1 to give you a deeper insight into their problems. Basically Mercedes cannot transfer knowledge from W01 to the W02 because the base will be alot different.
This made the decision that much easier to can the W01 development programme and start afresh.

In addition, Red Bull have a highly evolved design, that was proven to be the quickest of the non DDD runners last year, and the quickest this with DDD.
They can afford to refine, Mercedes cannot.
They will be looking to close what is effectively a 1 second gap to Red Bull, and this requires much more than evolution of the W01.

What they learned with the W01 was in the mistakes not to make next year. I really hope they can move forward from this, although 4th place is by no means bad.

[BreezyRacer]

Perhaps Mercedes already have an idea of what they want for 2010. And the W02 could be a a brand new concept.
There is no way the W01 will be evolved, and if it is, Mercedes GP will be in deep trouble.
The W01 is a flawed concept, read Scarbs F1 to give you a deeper insight into their problems. Basically Mercedes cannot transfer knowledge from W01 to the W02 because the base will be alot different.
This made the decision that much easier to can the W01 development programme and start afresh.

In addition, Red Bull have a highly evolved design, that was proven to be the quickest of the non DDD runners last year, and the quickest this with DDD.
They can afford to refine, Mercedes cannot.
They will be looking to close what is effectively a 1 second gap to Red Bull, and this requires much more than evolution of the W01.

What they learned with the W01 was in the mistakes not to make next year. I really hope they can move forward from this, although 4th place is by no means bad.

With that attitude they will always be playing catchup to RB. Starting over every year puts you back at square one. How could you ever hope to beat RB that way?

[PlatinumZealot]

I agree it is odd.

There are 2 explanations, but only Mercedes will know for sure. Some say its a passive device, others that its driver-activated.

From the looks of it, I would say passive. If it did go up through the Endplates that a few websites have know mentioned, the air would take such a contrived path that by the time it reaches the point of blowing the wing it would merely be a puff.

I was skeptical at first, but then one day I was looking at pressure loss in plate heat exchangers on the web: what I saw was that the pressure loss was very small. This is because the cross-sectional area between the plates were many times more than the inlet pipe. The path amongst the plates are contrived, but due to sheer magnitude of the cross sectional area (remember we are taking about many plates here), each infinitesimal fluid stream has a clear path. There will be dead spots in there of course, but they are not part of the working part of the fluid. So I still consider routing of air through the end-plate a possibility.



In the case of the MGP-W01, I am still not sure where how the routing would be done if it was absolutely true. What I can say is that they need an incredible amount of hollow cross-sectional area in the two end-plates and whatever rigid duct they have running beside the engine or where ever.

I say this just to stimulate some pondering but in all honesty my common sense and evidence indicate to me also that the car is a passive system. It doesn't hurt to say that it actively controlled though.

Hey I just remembered! Schumcher was complaining about the F-duct not working at some stages in the Suzuka race. This is another shred of evidence that the system could be passive.

[NewtonMeter]

Perhaps Mercedes already have an idea of what they want for 2010. And the W02 could be a a brand new concept.
There is no way the W01 will be evolved, and if it is, Mercedes GP will be in deep trouble.
The W01 is a flawed concept, read Scarbs F1 to give you a deeper insight into their problems. Basically Mercedes cannot transfer knowledge from W01 to the W02 because the base will be alot different.
This made the decision that much easier to can the W01 development programme and start afresh.

In addition, Red Bull have a highly evolved design, that was proven to be the quickest of the non DDD runners last year, and the quickest this with DDD.
They can afford to refine, Mercedes cannot.
They will be looking to close what is effectively a 1 second gap to Red Bull, and this requires much more than evolution of the W01.

What they learned with the W01 was in the mistakes not to make next year. I really hope they can move forward from this, although 4th place is by no means bad.

With that attitude they will always be playing catchup to RB. Starting over every year puts you back at square one. How could you ever hope to beat RB that way?

I don't think starting over every year is the point. The point is starting over once, doing a good job and catching up somewhat, and then evolving that concept ala red bull. Of course, that's best case scenario. Look what McLaren did a few years back.

The went from the MP4-17 and completely changed the concept of the car when the went to the (stillborn) MP4-18, which effectively became the MP4-19A (which was ---) and later on the MP4-19B (which was better). Then went on to design the MP4-20 which was a monster (albeit a fragile one). The 21 was crap for a load of reasons, and the 22 and 23 were pretty good, etc etc. The point is they changed the concept from the 17 to the 18 and onwards and developed that with a fair amount of success. I think that's what JET is trying to explain.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Newtonmeter

+1

That is what Im trying to get at. Evolution only works with decent designs.
Somtimes a paradigm shift is what is required.

[adrianjordan]

Newtonmeter

+1

That is what Im trying to get at. Evolution only works with decent designs.
Somtimes a paradigm shift is what is required.

Worked pretty well for Ferrari this year too!!

[Confused_Andy]

The R29 was a terrible car, the R30 is challenging podiums every now and then... Evolution

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

ConfusedAndy and adrianjordan,

I dont think both the cars had aerodynamic and weight distribution flaws? As I said guys read ScarbsF1's analysis of the W01.
With too much weight over the front end(aero and mass), anything learnt this year from the W01 will be binned as the W02 will resort to a more rearward biased concept.
In addition to the single diffuser ruling
In addition to the moveable rear wing
In addition to KERS
In addition to the Mandatory weight distribution
In addition to new tyre manufacturers
Each are pretty big in their own right, but taken together? Its a massive change.

That Ferari and Renault followed their initial concepts was because they may have been sound, but without the DDD they lost out. Optimising a car for a DDD takes more than just grafting it on. And if you look closely Both cars are more than just evolutions of their predecesors, especially towards the rear(again to do with air flow over/around the diffuser).

Thats not to say Mercedes will not evolve, as they might. But if they do, I see problems ahead.

[NewtonMeter]

Basically, there's no point in evolving a flawed concept.

If you agree that the W01 is based on a flawed concept than you HAVE to agree there's no point in evolving it. What, exactly, will the point be to evolve it as you won't be able to use the bulk of your research on next year's car?

Contrary to what most suspect, the mercedes staff are not idiots. Even HRT will agree that, at this point in the season, there's no use in developing a technology that you won't be able to use next year unless you're in the title hunt. Which Merc clearly isn't.

I don't get what's so difficult to understand about this.

Personally, I don't think the concept is flawed. It's development potential is just depleted. There's no where left to go and it reached it's development plateau. But the same argument applies, then you need a new concept and for the most part any further research on this concept is very short sighted.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

It's development potential is just depleted. There's no where left to go and it reached it's development plateau. But the same argument applies, then you need a new concept and for the most part any further research on this concept is very short sighted.

Exactly my view. Unless they can make changes to this years chassis(which they cant under homologation) What is the point?

[adrianjordan]

ConfusedAndy and adrianjordan,

I dont think both the cars had aerodynamic and weight distribution flaws? As I said guys read ScarbsF1's analysis of the W01.
With too much weight over the front end(aero and mass), anything learnt this year from the W01 will be binned as the W02 will resort to a more rearward biased concept.
In addition to the single diffuser ruling
In addition to the moveable rear wing
In addition to KERS
In addition to the Mandatory weight distribution
In addition to new tyre manufacturers
Each are pretty big in their own right, but taken together? Its a massive change.

That Ferari and Renault followed their initial concepts was because they may have been sound, but without the DDD they lost out. Optimising a car for a DDD takes more than just grafting it on. And if you look closely Both cars are more than just evolutions of their predecesors, especially towards the rear(again to do with air flow over/around the diffuser).

Thats not to say Mercedes will not evolve, as they might. But if they do, I see problems ahead.

Actually I was agreeing with you. I was under the impression that this year's F10 was a "clean sheet" design after the F60 proved so difficult...I am willing to stand corrected though if I'm wrong.

But I do agree with you. There's little point in developing the W01 any further, though surely we can agree that if there are any parts they want to test the durability rather than outright performance of then there may be some benefit to running those.

Maybe what they should be doing is working to fine tune their data collection methods with a known if troublesome quantity (the W01) so that they can be sure of what they're testing in the windtunnel for the W02...

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Adrian,

I just read this which goes with alot of what you are saying:

A few days to enjoy and disappear with the family will be good. We'll have a nice week and then I'll reappear fresh and relaxed at the race in South Korea. There we hopefully will make another step forward because in Japan it ran quite well. Naturally we want to gather as many data and information as possible to be prepared better next year. I have said it often: I want to build up something here together with Mercedes and I am confident that we'll manage that as the support and the opportunities of Mercedes are really strong. Sometimes not everything comes together as planned from the technical point of view however our link is strong enough to allow things being criticised if they don't run as expected - and this refers to all of us. Important is that we stay united within the team. And I am very confident about this."

There will be some things the team can learn. I don't know exactly what that will be, but certainly going by what Schumi is saying. Perhaps diagnostics, Data retrieval and set up implementation as these things will always be there.

[marcush.]

Hmmm guys I do not follow completely here.
we have heard about the weight distribution issue but in the end it seems very unlikely that they were unable to shift enough weight -the only sound explanation would be ballast part of the homologated structure and not movable...seems not very likely .
So we come back to aero issues or a stiffness issue in their chassis .With them
being so quick on the straigt in Monza ..my guess is they underestimated the required stiffness for their chassis.
That in itself would not require to scrap the whole car concept.
Also we have to see that with kers the rearward weight bias might be inevitrable so any weight you might have had in excess at the front might be an advantage in 2011...After all Mercedes has the best starting point in their KERS ,where only Macs is in a better situation with actually having packaging and running experience with this very unit from 2009...RedBull has to hope for Renault having improved their system to the Mercedes level.And Ferraris unit (similar to Renault )was not really the hot ticket.
And of course you learn every time you go out .The point for Schumacher is:Not to go out with risky parts ,better make the most out of what you have in terms of proven components.And introduce new bits on friday and campaign them in the race when you are on top of them in terms of speed and reliability.
I feel the teams do not the best job with new parts,sending out both cars with the same parts.To me Friday FP has to be car 1 baseline normal programme ,car two development parts.This way around one of the two heros will work on optimisation ,the other is working on the future.and still has Saturday to adapt to the proper race car.