2020 Hungarian Grand Prix - Hungaroring, July 17-19

[Laserguru]

There is no way on earth they found so much performance solely on legal grounds. If they did, that means all the other tech personell and aero guys of the rest of the field are useless and need to go home.

C'mon, what kind of rumour is that. Mercedes have the biggest budget and the most engineers -- why wouldn't they find lots of improvement?

Much of the improvement is on the power unit side rather than chassis after all, and is also benefiting Racing Point and Williams.

Their advantage appears exaggerated because Red Bull are at sea at this track while Ferrari have mostly gone backwards. Competition is relative.

Adam Cooper @adamcooperF1
17 m
A wet and grey day in Budapest, big storm this morning.
Not raining now but looks like it will come and go all day:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EdRXqVSWAAA ... name=small

This could make it exciting!

You are aware Ferrari’s budget exceeds Mercedes’ with 10 million, and Ferrari use it for suspicious engine technology? Not sure if Mercedes’ advantage is mainly due to their engine. I had the impression, certainly fp2, RBR lost most time in sector 2? And this is not supposed to be a power sensitive circuit, which explains why Ferrari is in the top 10? Also consider Mercedes innovative rear suspension which is shared by their customers, except for Williams who know better? I would say it is the chassis over the engine. I am curious to the gray smoke in righthand corners though. It is consistent, and also seen at their customers.

[El Scorchio]

Very good point about other teams going backward relative to Merc. It does make the gap look bigger than it should be. Ferrari pushed them to find time, they did, and other teams appear now to have lost time as well.

In terms of ‘cheating’ or something dodgy going on, the best indicator is the other teams. Usually if that’s the case (Ferrari last year, RP this year, DAS until it was passed as legal) then the other teams will make their suspicions known and that’s where the smoke begins. The total lack of that from inside the sport surrounding Mercedes relative performance is very telling.

[Schuttelberg]

....To add to that the relentless trolling by their boss every fortnight....

I think this gets me the most. I mean both merc drivers come out after the qualifying and say they were ‘shocked’ by the gap to RedBull. Really? We weren’t

I feel you. Trollto Wolff has already said in an interview yesterday that Racing Point will be hard to beat at some tracks. So, that narrative is already doing the spinning.

[bosyber]

DId he? I suppose it's his way to keep his team motivated to improve, but after Friday's Hamilton 'FP1 hard tyre time nothing to worry for others, they were running low engine (at RBR)' and Wolff's 'have some worries, Red Bull will be strong' the gap on Saturday made that feel a bit ridiculous indeed.

I do agree with both that I too would have hoped/thought Red Bull were not as far away as they turned out to be, and Verstappen might still come back strongly in the race, but unless Safety Car induced pegging back, I can only see the Mercedes cars in a fight of their own today and at most other tracks.

[El Scorchio]

....To add to that the relentless trolling by their boss every fortnight....

I think this gets me the most. I mean both merc drivers come out after the qualifying and say they were ‘shocked’ by the gap to RedBull. Really? We weren’t

I feel you. Trollto Wolff has already said in an interview yesterday that Racing Point will be hard to beat at some tracks. So, that narrative is already doing the spinning.

Would you prefer it if he turned up at every race claiming his team are going to annihilate all the opposition?

[HungarianRacer]

Have you guys seen Sky's analysis of Hamilton's pole lap vs Valtteri's final Q3 attempt?.... It was pretty ridiculous, they talked about how HAM picked the "better line" in basically every corner, and how it allowed him to "get on the throttle earlier" everywhere, meanwhile in reality the difference was barely perceptible in most of those cases, with BOT actually being slightly better in a few highlighted instances... And they of course completely ignored the footage when BOT quiet noticeably gained on HAM (turn 6-7 chicane)...

[bosyber]

I think that by now saying they did all their homework, they feel they should be strong and are targeting a one-two but will have to see whether Ferrari and Red Bull (or perhaps RP) have managed to find something to make that hard to do, and in the mean time are trying to eliminate everything they can put a spanners in the works from their end, would feel a bit more genuine.

[El Scorchio]

You only have to look at Germany last year to see how things can massively bite you on the arse and cause huge embarrassment without warning. I know if it were me in that position with everyone expecting me to win but hoping for me to mess up, I would want to be as grounded as possible. You’ll turn a lot more people against you a lot quicker by being arrogant or cocky.

[Juzh]

Have you guys seen Sky's analysis of Hamilton's pole lap vs Valtteri's final Q3 attempt?.... It was pretty ridiculous, they talked about how HAM picked the "better line" in basically every corner, and how it allowed him to "get on the throttle earlier" everywhere, meanwhile in reality the difference was barely perceptible in most of those cases, with BOT actually being slightly better in a few highlighted instances... And they of course completely ignored the footage when BOT quiet noticeably gained on HAM (turn 6-7 chicane)...

They're always like this and would still be if difference was 0.001s.

[nzjrs]

I would add, it was the Merc engineers who discovered what Ferrari was doing with the fuel flow sensor, and shared it with RB.

Merc could've easily kept that discovery to themselves and incorporated it themselves. But instead of a shortcut, they shared the information and had it clarified/rectified. Tells me all I need to know about how the team operates.

Do you have a link or citation for this? I've heard it said the other way that RB found the issue and then Mercedes chickened out of approaching the FIA.

I'm interested in hearing more about this.

[Xwang]

Sport is sport. Winning is all part of being the “best”. I dont believe in artificial handicaps to “spice up the races”. We’ve gone through these periods when Schumacher dominated, then Vettel, now Hamilton. I dont see a problem.

I wonder if you would have shared that notion if the shoe was on the other foot. I am not in on artificially handicapping the Mercedes team by having reverse grids and all that sort of nonsense. I think that's bullish!t! I want someone to do a better job and beat them.

But this comparison to the "Schumacher days" and the "Vettel days" does not float. Schumacher had two, at best three such years and Vettel two. The Mercedes juggernaut has been on for seven years and it will be eight next year. As a fan, there's nothing to watch even if Schumacher or Vettel or Hamilton or anyone is endlessly winning.

At this present moment, I have no problem with 2020 but its horrendously idiotic to call 2021 and 2020 separate championships. The cars are frozen. We will basically see Hamilton vs Bottas for two years for the championship and I don't think as a fan of the sport first, I'm interested in seeing that crap. It's this sort of thing that has pushed away so much of F1's fan following.

I will add that it was once possible to recover more easily because each team could decide how much to invest in track tests, CFDs, wind tunnels, engine development was free and so on.
All these limitations have been introduced to reduce costs, but now to do the same thing (running two cars for a year) each team spends much more and all the limitations help the team that starts on the right foot and the one that helped more to shape the rules.

[Xwang]

So you are comparing an F1 car to a tennis racket?
My point is that FIA has always regulated it in the interest of the sport. And they have to again. I’m not sure most people in here would have liked to see Ferrari win 10 WCC in a row if rules were not changed in 2004 and later

By the way. There are lots of series where drivers can compare in similar equipment, but that is anywhere else than F1.

But how? I think every reg change you throw at them will backfire as others cope even worse with it.
Maybe the budget cap with reduced windtunnel/cfd time the better you perform will do the trick.
Realistically I still see them ahead after 2022.

All good runs end. This also will. The agenda is not to bring Mercedes down. The agenda is to have a sport where there is competition and fans see some racing again. Knowing who is going to be world champion a year in advance is not sport, nor show. It's a farce.

I agree.

[Xwang]

Already any ideas what that mysterious puff of smoke coming out of Mercedes powered cars might be? Significant power advantage in party mode combined with smoke. That was enough to be highly suspicious not so long ago. I would be surprised if none of the teams would do anything to clear that up.

Nobody seems to be giving a f@ck about it. Everybody noticed the Ferraris smoking 2 years ago and we all know how that went. I guess even if Mercedes is 5 seconds ahead of everyone, nobody will raise an eyebrow because it will be ingenious and innovative.

Last year FIA took a couple of Ferrari engines (or part of them both from Ferrari and one of their client) and an Honda one, but no investigation at all was ever made since 2014 to the Mercedes engine.
It seems like Mercedes is untouchable from the FIA point of view.
Another example was this one:
https://translate.google.it/translate?h ... 3196698%2F

It's easier to win if your men wrote the rules, you start some years in advance and then when other teams do something in the gray area, the FIA steps in to stop them, but when you do the same (FRICS, oil burning) the FIA steps in only when all the other teams have started doing the same.

[nzjrs]

Tells me all I need to know about how the team operates.

Off topic point, but I do still remember during the first oil burning clampdown that Mercedes broke the gentleman's agreement and took an extra free newly illegal engine despite it was rumored agreeing with Ferarri not to do so. https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/tech ... 4/3043305/

Just one example, but everyone here is a shark.

[Xwang]

Nobody seems to be giving a f@ck about it. Everybody noticed the Ferraris smoking 2 years ago and we all know how that went. I guess even if Mercedes is 5 seconds ahead of everyone, nobody will raise an eyebrow because it will be ingenious and innovative.

It’s weird isn’t it. Today they were 1.3 seconds faster than last year and the W10 was a hell of a car already. That’s just crazy. I’m not saying their car is illegal, but it’s strange no one raises an eyebrow. At least yet.
Let’s put the PU aside, it’s almost as if there is something special going on on their car and DAS is only there to put the focus off of something else. Just can’t believe DAS making that much of a difference to overall performance.

Significant power advantage? They're roughly 20 hp ahead of the Honda this year. Even the Renault PU isn't far away. Ferrari gave the folks at Brixworth a false target to chase, and Mercedes almost completely re-designed their PU for '20.

This is the new Toto Wolf's fable.
Last year he was saying that since the engine rules were in their 5th year, all the teams had converged and was not possible to better as Ferrari did (even if everybody known that Mercedes was facing temperature issues and so had to run the engine partially detuned).
Now this year he says that they found performance just by searching them (as if F1 teams do not search for the best performances every year). But if he is true this year, then it was not true that the engines had reached pretty the maximum the year before and had converged.