A place to discuss the characteristics of the cars in Formula One, both current as well as historical. Laptimes, driver worshipping and team chatter do not belong here.
A car has to be well balanced to be fast, but it needs more than this. Maybe the HRT was well balanced... Maybe the 2013 tyres will solve the tyre problem at Mercedes. Maybe it was a budget problem. Mercedes did not pay that much. Maybe it was a wind tunnel problem...
What i expect for the new season:
They have to invent a new tyre saving suspension. The W03 rolled much in the corners maybe that was the problem.
McMrocks wrote:A car has to be well balanced to be fast, but it needs more than this. Maybe the HRT was well balanced... Maybe the 2013 tyres will solve the tyre problem at Mercedes. Maybe it was a budget problem. Mercedes did not pay that much. Maybe it was a wind tunnel problem...
What i expect for the new season:
They have to invent a new tyre saving suspension. The W03 rolled much in the corners maybe that was the problem.
Wasn't the roll part of an attempt at a solution for tire degredation? The Mercedes was likely overly complicated and hard to set-up. It was quick initially.
The drivers both said in preseason testing that the car was more balanced and better to drive compared to the W02.
To memory, a bugbear often mentioned with the W01 was that it would have inconsistent handling through a corner. It would have one ailment on entry, another mid-corner, and another on exit. For example entry understeer, apex oversteer, and a neutral exit. Then if you tried to fix the entry the apex got worse, and the exits would then have oversteer.
Perhaps given the delay in front wing air reattaching (as the DDRS effect has the lag of going through the signal piping and to the front wing) it has exacerbated this?
But that would have only been when using the DDRS. During a race it is rarely used. Wasn't the front wing DDRS supposed to help with balance? Maybe they were having reattachment issues with it.
I remember the team having issues with the W02 DRS rear wing reattaching. That car also had the 2 element front wing; more downforce if you could keep the flow attached. Maybe the upgrade in the wind tunnel will help with better areo design and prediction?
yes, in qualifying the car was fast simply cause they could use ddrs. and then in the race when ddrs wasn't allowed all the time the pace was almost always worse.
also the ddrs usage had a delay till the aero difference/advantage was on the one hand in action and then till it was disactivated at corner exit.
It's a good idea to look at the corner speeds in high speed corners to gauge how much downforce the car had compared to a Mclaren or Redbull.
That's a way to eliminate high speed down-force from the problems list...
Another thing to check is the low speed down force.. we know it was good in Monaco.
n smikle wrote:
Another thing to check is the low speed down force.. we know it was good in Monaco.
Indeed. Maybe the Monaco pace was due to mechanical grip which is more worth in slow corners. I wonder why they were in China that fast. The track in China has some fast corners...
n smikle wrote:
Another thing to check is the low speed down force.. we know it was good in Monaco.
Indeed. Maybe the Monaco pace was due to mechanical grip which is more worth in slow corners. I wonder why they were in China that fast. The track in China has some fast corners...
watched that race 10 times, all i can say is "tyres operating window" or as Ross put it "sweet spot"
n smikle wrote:
Another thing to check is the low speed down force.. we know it was good in Monaco.
Indeed. Maybe the Monaco pace was due to mechanical grip which is more worth in slow corners. I wonder why they were in China that fast. The track in China has some fast corners...
Maybe. But when looking at a car's ability to post a laptime, it doesn't matter whether the grip came mechanically or aerodynamically - it either had that grip (at a set speed) or it didn't. In terms of posting a single laptime, anyways.
As I understand China is one of the few races where front tyre wear is a real issue .The Car simply fitted to this track .interestingly MGPs cars were always good or less bad on that track at least for Rosberg .
Ross brawn talked about the performance difference of RB8 to W03 recently:(GP international mag 7december 2012 why lewis really joined Mercedes):
It´s difficult.We have all those GPS traces,you can look at all those corners and try to quantify it.Look at RedBull in korea:they are not particularly good iun high speed corners because they have focused on getting their car working in the medium and low speed corners.You need a car that´s good over the whole range and that you can set upto suit the requirements of each track....
Brawn openly admits they are uncompetitive in todays multidimensional understanding of the cars parameters in relation to track performance.They seem to lag behind especially in understanding what their car needs to perform at it´s best in the time available.
I´m sure RedBull is the leading team in terms of multiphysics /cosimulation in all areas be it stress/flex over aero or Tyre modeling .Obviously MGP still tried to separate tyre /suspension understanding from aero but it simply does not work like this .
You could get away with that approach years ago with endless testing maybe but these days you need to chain everything up to be competitive at the sharp end.
Intriguingly all teams seem to gain confidence with their sims over the year and end the season with well sorted packages they can extract everything from.
This year-Mercedes GP seemed to fail doing this.they never understood the coanda or could not make it work for whatever reason .
Good point.
The skill of the team in using multiphyics is totally dependent on the cheif aerodynamicsist. If one guy knows it but the chief doesn't you can forget it! If everybody knows how to use it and the chief doesn't, forget it! Though if the chief alone knows it, that is enough to have a fighting chance. It's all because multiphysics is about having an all encompassing view on how different physical systems relate to each other. RB8 as you said, was the perfect example.
marcush. wrote:Ross brawn talked about the performance difference of RB8 to W03 recently:(GP international mag 7december 2012 why lewis really joined Mercedes):
If so, the chances MGP build very competitive car in 2013 and 2014, is zero
Agreed. When you look at Red Bull, they have every aspect of the car designed around a specific performance set - corners. The car aero, set-up and engine, including the engine maps, plus driver style - all worked towards making the RB8 the best car in the corners - to devastating effect.
Mercedes had a very different approach - top speed. They have always stated how their engine was the best and with the DDRS included, was all about getting that top speed. That's perhaps the biggest mistake the team has made over the last 3 years as they've then had to 'patch' different parts of the car to gain performance in other areas - and as a whole it hasn't worked.
Telling Mercedes that they need to go slower to go faster - might be hard to hear and it might be impossible for the established team members to get their head around. 2014 might have played to their strengths, before the regs got reverted back to 2012, so now they definitely need a new approach and I'm not so sure the 'old dogs' can easily learn new tricks.
I'm going to guess they had barn door front and rear wings at Monaco...on which they qualified fastest and came second.
What the story is about is beyond normal aerodynamics in the traditional sense. "aero elasticity, coanda exhausts" not your average AoA now is it?
This is about new areas of development, and not the aerodynamics in the traditional sense.
Mercedes are lagging here for sure.
