marvin78 wrote: ↑14 Sep 2017, 12:24
The PU gives them the advantage not to have to make compromises in different areas. With a PU that is much better, than the others it is much "easier" to have an excellent package. So you could say: The PU is the central factor.
Not really, that is neither here nor there, they didn't know there engine was better or worse than others. You're mixing up separate things and linking them.
When you design a car you can design any kind of car you want but the two more normal designs are higher downforce that struggles for low drag and high top speed such as RBR for well, since 2009 at least. The other more normal design is lower downforce, lower drag, higher top speed but often struggle at higher downforce tracks and Williams is a fairly extreme example of that end of the spectrum. Then you have the Mercedes style design, one of versatility, trying to get as optimal airflow as possible to have a car able to run efficient downforce, maybe unable to get the very highest downforce levels but able to bolt on downforce dramatically better than a William's style design and able to run lower drag far better than a RBR style design.
That is unrelated to the engine, that is just how you want to attack your car's philosophy. ALl three styles of cars have weaknesses and strengths and the engine usually hurts one side while helping the other. Weaker engine, higher downforce lets you be more competitive at Hungary/Singapore, strong engine, lower drag style will do even better at low downforce tracks.
A good or bad engine means that regardless of which type of car you have, you make specific decisions per race on how you set up the car. Weak engine then RBR take off more downforce than they'd like at Monza, strong engine and they'd take off less downforce than normal. Williams can tack on a little more downforce or have even higher top speed depending on strong or weak engine.
Mercedes simply has an amazing versatile design and it has nothing to do with the engine, if the engine was worse they would just have to set up with less/more downforce at various tracks. The reason most teams tend to go more for the low drag or high downforce designs is making a car equally good at both is simply more difficult but if you can make one as such, you have the best of everything with very few weak tracks in the year. Mercedes has far fewer weak tracks than RBR, Ferrari or Williams have.
Mercedes for me have easily the best chassis on the grid, others have a bit more downforce but are far less able to run well at lower downforce tracks and others have lower drag, but not much lower and those cars are very much weaker at higher downforce tracks. Mercedes would be right up there with a Ferrari engine and though this year the fight would likely be closer if they were running Ferrari engines, in the past 3 years with a Ferrari engine they would still imo have dominated as Ferrari has been making weak chassis's before this season.
