They had probably reached what they thought were the limits. The point of R&D is that you are constantly discovering new limits and expanding on what you previously thought was possible. The Ferrari engine probably spurred them on harder than they would have to try and find new ways to improve.Xwang wrote: ↑19 Jul 2020, 12:09This is the new Toto Wolf's fable.zibby43 wrote: ↑19 Jul 2020, 09:10Significant 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.LM10 wrote: ↑19 Jul 2020, 00:07
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.
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.
The best teams just remain one step ahead of the competition- just like the Ferrari teams of Brawn and Todt, or the McLaren and Honda (first time round) partnership.