Mercedes W11

[e30ernest]

Brilliant article by The Race on the W11

https://the-race.com/formula-1/how-merc ... nk-it-had/

beyond those changes, there were also dynamic gains, particularly with unlocking what Lewis Hamilton had been calling for by making the car rotate more quickly at corner entry

So it seems driver can influence the design of a car

I'd argue that every driver on the grid would be calling for the team to make the car go faster round the corners, but sure, yeah, Hamilton is great.

True, but there are also drivers who could probably tell the engineer better what they want to feel in the car to get an overall better laptime. It's like someone in the office complaining about how inefficient processes are vs someone who'd pinpoint ways to make different processes more efficient.

[zibby43]

Brilliant article by The Race on the W11

https://the-race.com/formula-1/how-merc ... nk-it-had/

beyond those changes, there were also dynamic gains, particularly with unlocking what Lewis Hamilton had been calling for by making the car rotate more quickly at corner entry

So it seems driver can influence the design of a car

I'd argue that every driver on the grid would be calling for the team to make the car go faster round the corners, but sure, yeah, Hamilton is great.

Both James Allison and Peter Bonnington have gone on record saying that Hamilton’s willingness to push the envelope and ask for things other drivers don’t is one of the things that separates him from the pack.

And when you have a car that’s already the fastest on the grid, and feedback results in what happened with the W11 this year, I can’t see a better example of Hamilton’s influence on development.

There’s also a difference between saying “Make it faster” and “It needs to do this, because I feel it doing this right now.”

Guess which one is more difficult? Guess which one Hamilton does?

So, yeah, Hamilton is great lol.

[aMessageToCharlie]

beyond those changes, there were also dynamic gains, particularly with unlocking what Lewis Hamilton had been calling for by making the car rotate more quickly at corner entry

So it seems driver can influence the design of a car

I'd argue that every driver on the grid would be calling for the team to make the car go faster round the corners, but sure, yeah, Hamilton is great.

Both James Allison and Peter Bonnington have gone on record saying that Hamilton’s willingness to push the envelope and ask for things other drivers don’t is one of the things that separates him from the pack.

And when you have a car that’s already the fastest on the grid, and feedback results in what happened with the W11 this year, I can’t see a better example of Hamilton’s influence on development.

There’s also a difference between saying “Make it faster” and “It needs to do this, because I feel it doing this right now.”

Guess which one is more difficult? Guess which one Hamilton does?

So, yeah, Hamilton is great lol.

Truly amazing what stories Hamilton fan boys can come up with from just one single sentence in an article.

[Big Tea]

I'd argue that every driver on the grid would be calling for the team to make the car go faster round the corners, but sure, yeah, Hamilton is great.

Both James Allison and Peter Bonnington have gone on record saying that Hamilton’s willingness to push the envelope and ask for things other drivers don’t is one of the things that separates him from the pack.

And when you have a car that’s already the fastest on the grid, and feedback results in what happened with the W11 this year, I can’t see a better example of Hamilton’s influence on development.

There’s also a difference between saying “Make it faster” and “It needs to do this, because I feel it doing this right now.”

Guess which one is more difficult? Guess which one Hamilton does?

So, yeah, Hamilton is great lol.

Truly amazing what stories Hamilton fan boys can come up with from just one single sentence in an article.

If you would like to point out where I said anything about Hamilton?
I said DRIVER. any one of them

[zibby43]

I'd argue that every driver on the grid would be calling for the team to make the car go faster round the corners, but sure, yeah, Hamilton is great.

Both James Allison and Peter Bonnington have gone on record saying that Hamilton’s willingness to push the envelope and ask for things other drivers don’t is one of the things that separates him from the pack.

And when you have a car that’s already the fastest on the grid, and feedback results in what happened with the W11 this year, I can’t see a better example of Hamilton’s influence on development.

There’s also a difference between saying “Make it faster” and “It needs to do this, because I feel it doing this right now.”

Guess which one is more difficult? Guess which one Hamilton does?

So, yeah, Hamilton is great lol.

Truly amazing what stories Hamilton fan boys can come up with from just one single sentence in an article.

It's not one sentence, in one article. Here's another (not that you'll care, as evidenced by how this is going thus far).

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/arti ... bjIs9.html

"[Hamilton] related earlier in the season that last year’s car did not rotate quickly enough for him into slow corners – i.e. the initial transition from straight ahead to pointing at the apex was not sharp enough. 'Because we’ve have had long cars we’ve had great downforce but been quite poor in low-speed corners,' he explained.

'The car would not rotate as well as we’d like. There’s a limitation with these tyres. The front has a limitation, the rear has a limitation, grip wise. There’s saturation, there’s thermal deg and there’s only a certain amount you can do with the mechanical balance before it affects the other end. It’s like a see-saw. The front was a lot more understeery last year; you struggled a lot more when you went over the tyre and no matter how much you changed the mechanical balance it didn’t really fix it.'

What Hamilton was chasing was the sharp direction change of a shorter car. But getting a longer car to change direction more quickly imposes greater loads on the rear tyres than would be the case with a shorter one.

The rear needed more grip to be able to withstand the sudden increase in load from a more aggressive direction change. That’s what the new rear suspension layout facilitated through greater downforce. In this way, with the W11 Hamilton was getting to have his cake and eat it."

And not all drivers are equal when it comes to the driving development of a car, or adapting to the development of a car. VET, for example, lost the plot after Ferrari's rear end weakened.

[nico5]

Both James Allison and Peter Bonnington have gone on record saying that Hamilton’s willingness to push the envelope and ask for things other drivers don’t is one of the things that separates him from the pack.

And when you have a car that’s already the fastest on the grid, and feedback results in what happened with the W11 this year, I can’t see a better example of Hamilton’s influence on development.

There’s also a difference between saying “Make it faster” and “It needs to do this, because I feel it doing this right now.”

Guess which one is more difficult? Guess which one Hamilton does?

So, yeah, Hamilton is great lol.

Truly amazing what stories Hamilton fan boys can come up with from just one single sentence in an article.

It's not one sentence, in one article. Here's another (not that you'll care, as evidenced by how this is going thus far).

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/arti ... bjIs9.html

"[Hamilton] related earlier in the season that last year’s car did not rotate quickly enough for him into slow corners – i.e. the initial transition from straight ahead to pointing at the apex was not sharp enough. 'Because we’ve have had long cars we’ve had great downforce but been quite poor in low-speed corners,' he explained.

'The car would not rotate as well as we’d like. There’s a limitation with these tyres. The front has a limitation, the rear has a limitation, grip wise. There’s saturation, there’s thermal deg and there’s only a certain amount you can do with the mechanical balance before it affects the other end. It’s like a see-saw. The front was a lot more understeery last year; you struggled a lot more when you went over the tyre and no matter how much you changed the mechanical balance it didn’t really fix it.'

What Hamilton was chasing was the sharp direction change of a shorter car. But getting a longer car to change direction more quickly imposes greater loads on the rear tyres than would be the case with a shorter one.

The rear needed more grip to be able to withstand the sudden increase in load from a more aggressive direction change. That’s what the new rear suspension layout facilitated through greater downforce. In this way, with the W11 Hamilton was getting to have his cake and eat it."

And not all drivers are equal when it comes to the driving development of a car, or adapting to the development of a car. VET, for example, lost the plot after Ferrari's rear end weakened.

It makes me laugh because the difference (EDIT: obviously in Merc's favour) in turn in (or rotation) at low speed between Merc and the rest of the grid we saw last year at tracks like Barcelona S3 or China or Monaco, not just visually but data-based, was as big as it's ever been. So either Hamilton understands nothing about car performance, which I struggle to believe for he's a great driver and a clever one, or they really can go on record and come up with whatever they wanna say and people are still gonna believe them.

[Big Tea]

Truly amazing what stories Hamilton fan boys can come up with from just one single sentence in an article.

It's not one sentence, in one article. Here's another (not that you'll care, as evidenced by how this is going thus far).

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/arti ... bjIs9.html

"[Hamilton] related earlier in the season that last year’s car did not rotate quickly enough for him into slow corners – i.e. the initial transition from straight ahead to pointing at the apex was not sharp enough. 'Because we’ve have had long cars we’ve had great downforce but been quite poor in low-speed corners,' he explained.

'The car would not rotate as well as we’d like. There’s a limitation with these tyres. The front has a limitation, the rear has a limitation, grip wise. There’s saturation, there’s thermal deg and there’s only a certain amount you can do with the mechanical balance before it affects the other end. It’s like a see-saw. The front was a lot more understeery last year; you struggled a lot more when you went over the tyre and no matter how much you changed the mechanical balance it didn’t really fix it.'

What Hamilton was chasing was the sharp direction change of a shorter car. But getting a longer car to change direction more quickly imposes greater loads on the rear tyres than would be the case with a shorter one.

The rear needed more grip to be able to withstand the sudden increase in load from a more aggressive direction change. That’s what the new rear suspension layout facilitated through greater downforce. In this way, with the W11 Hamilton was getting to have his cake and eat it."

And not all drivers are equal when it comes to the driving development of a car, or adapting to the development of a car. VET, for example, lost the plot after Ferrari's rear end weakened.

It makes me laugh because the difference in turn in (or rotation) at low speed between Merc and the rest of the grid we saw last year at tracks like Barcelona S3 or China or Monaco, not just visually but data-based, was as big as it's ever been. So either Hamilton understands nothing about car performance, which I struggle to believe for he's a great driver and a clever one, or they really can go on record and come up with whatever they wanna say and people are still gonna believe them.

But, as with the other articles, what it indicates is that the good drivers instinctively know what is the biggest loss of time or continuity or confidence, call it what you like, and the engineers then have a focus to concentrate on.

The driver no doubt has little technical knowledge of how an result is achieved, but he knows what is different between what he wants and what is being delivered.

( please note to some posters I have not once said Hamilton or any other driver, just driver. I should also say that this is of course once the car is already at a very high level technically and they are looking at extras not needs )

[e30ernest]

It's not one sentence, in one article. Here's another (not that you'll care, as evidenced by how this is going thus far).

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/arti ... bjIs9.html

"[Hamilton] related earlier in the season that last year’s car did not rotate quickly enough for him into slow corners – i.e. the initial transition from straight ahead to pointing at the apex was not sharp enough. 'Because we’ve have had long cars we’ve had great downforce but been quite poor in low-speed corners,' he explained.

'The car would not rotate as well as we’d like. There’s a limitation with these tyres. The front has a limitation, the rear has a limitation, grip wise. There’s saturation, there’s thermal deg and there’s only a certain amount you can do with the mechanical balance before it affects the other end. It’s like a see-saw. The front was a lot more understeery last year; you struggled a lot more when you went over the tyre and no matter how much you changed the mechanical balance it didn’t really fix it.'

What Hamilton was chasing was the sharp direction change of a shorter car. But getting a longer car to change direction more quickly imposes greater loads on the rear tyres than would be the case with a shorter one.

The rear needed more grip to be able to withstand the sudden increase in load from a more aggressive direction change. That’s what the new rear suspension layout facilitated through greater downforce. In this way, with the W11 Hamilton was getting to have his cake and eat it."

And not all drivers are equal when it comes to the driving development of a car, or adapting to the development of a car. VET, for example, lost the plot after Ferrari's rear end weakened.

It makes me laugh because the difference in turn in (or rotation) at low speed between Merc and the rest of the grid we saw last year at tracks like Barcelona S3 or China or Monaco, not just visually but data-based, was as big as it's ever been. So either Hamilton understands nothing about car performance, which I struggle to believe for he's a great driver and a clever one, or they really can go on record and come up with whatever they wanna say and people are still gonna believe them.

But, as with the other articles, what it indicates is that the good drivers instinctively know what is the biggest loss of time or continuity or confidence, call it what you like, and the engineers then have a focus to concentrate on.

The driver no doubt has little technical knowledge of how an result is achieved, but he knows what is different between what he wants and what is being delivered.

( please note to some posters I have not once said Hamilton or any other driver, just driver. I should also say that this is of course once the car is already at a very high level technically and they are looking at extras not needs )

Yeah I agree here. It seems Hamilton was very good at giving feedback, and so was Rosberg back in the day. I was surprised to learn that Schumacher wasn't that good at giving feedback. He was pretty much the driver who was known for "developing a car".

[Hoffman900]

It makes me laugh because the difference in turn in (or rotation) at low speed between Merc and the rest of the grid we saw last year at tracks like Barcelona S3 or China or Monaco, not just visually but data-based, was as big as it's ever been. So either Hamilton understands nothing about car performance, which I struggle to believe for he's a great driver and a clever one, or they really can go on record and come up with whatever they wanna say and people are still gonna believe them.

But, as with the other articles, what it indicates is that the good drivers instinctively know what is the biggest loss of time or continuity or confidence, call it what you like, and the engineers then have a focus to concentrate on.

The driver no doubt has little technical knowledge of how an result is achieved, but he knows what is different between what he wants and what is being delivered.

( please note to some posters I have not once said Hamilton or any other driver, just driver. I should also say that this is of course once the car is already at a very high level technically and they are looking at extras not needs )

Yeah I agree here. It seems Hamilton was very good at giving feedback, and so was Rosberg back in the day. I was surprised to learn that Schumacher wasn't that good at giving feedback. He was pretty much the driver who was known for "developing a car".

My guess is Schumacher's knowledge was dated. Patrick Head said as such about Prost when he drove the Williams.

[e30ernest]

But, as with the other articles, what it indicates is that the good drivers instinctively know what is the biggest loss of time or continuity or confidence, call it what you like, and the engineers then have a focus to concentrate on.

The driver no doubt has little technical knowledge of how an result is achieved, but he knows what is different between what he wants and what is being delivered.

( please note to some posters I have not once said Hamilton or any other driver, just driver. I should also say that this is of course once the car is already at a very high level technically and they are looking at extras not needs )

Yeah I agree here. It seems Hamilton was very good at giving feedback, and so was Rosberg back in the day. I was surprised to learn that Schumacher wasn't that good at giving feedback. He was pretty much the driver who was known for "developing a car".

My guess is Schumacher's knowledge was dated. Patrick Head said as such about Prost when he drove the Williams.

This was from Binotto though so this was on Schumi's Ferrari days. Basically, he was just so consistently fast, that if they made a change and he went faster, then it was positive. So that sort of thing would have worked when unlimited testing was a thing and was probably why the Ferrari eventually became so dominant in the early 2000's.

Everything I've read about Hamilton was that he was eager to learn more about how the car works than other drivers were (he'd ask a lot of questions about details in the car that other drivers just don't care about). Maybe this is giving him some additional knowledge that allows him to communicate his wants better to the engineers.

[sosic2121]

Yeah I agree here. It seems Hamilton was very good at giving feedback, and so was Rosberg back in the day. I was surprised to learn that Schumacher wasn't that good at giving feedback. He was pretty much the driver who was known for "developing a car".

My guess is Schumacher's knowledge was dated. Patrick Head said as such about Prost when he drove the Williams.

This was from Binotto though so this was on Schumi's Ferrari days. Basically, he was just so consistently fast, that if they made a change and he went faster, then it was positive. So that sort of thing would have worked when unlimited testing was a thing and was probably why the Ferrari eventually became so dominant in the early 2000's.

Everything I've read about Hamilton was that he was eager to learn more about how the car works than other drivers were (he'd ask a lot of questions about details in the car that other drivers just don't care about). Maybe this is giving him some additional knowledge that allows him to communicate his wants better to the engineers.

I guess that's why he got the nickname professor.

[PlatinumZealot]

Patrick Head said Prost only was "tickling the surface" of engineering, but he knew the rules of thumb about setting up a car. It was thrown out the window with the suspension on Williams in '93 and Prost basically had to learn again.

Hamilton has been said to be very good at set-up. Button and Rosberg used to steal his setups. Those were the two "Dossier gates" at McLaren and Mercedes respectively. Granted Roseberg was also very good at set-up, probably the best in his time, he was regarded the best at engineering of any driver, but because of the level of competition, he had to peek at what Hamilton was doing and use Hamiton's own set up tricks and learn to drive Hamilton's set up sometimes. The two had very similar driving styles. However there were times when Rosberg took it too far with copying setups and paid the price.

Barichello was the set-up king before Rosberg came onto the grid. He was so good he would sometimes run without the rear bar and compensate for it through the springs.

[Sharnlarry]

Truly amazing what stories Hamilton fan boys can come up with from just one single sentence in an article.

It's not one sentence, in one article. Here's another (not that you'll care, as evidenced by how this is going thus far).

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/arti ... bjIs9.html

"[Hamilton] related earlier in the season that last year’s car did not rotate quickly enough for him into slow corners – i.e. the initial transition from straight ahead to pointing at the apex was not sharp enough. 'Because we’ve have had long cars we’ve had great downforce but been quite poor in low-speed corners,' he explained.

'The car would not rotate as well as we’d like. There’s a limitation with these tyres. The front has a limitation, the rear has a limitation, grip wise. There’s saturation, there’s thermal deg and there’s only a certain amount you can do with the mechanical balance before it affects the other end. It’s like a see-saw. The front was a lot more understeery last year; you struggled a lot more when you went over the tyre and no matter how much you changed the mechanical balance it didn’t really fix it.'

What Hamilton was chasing was the sharp direction change of a shorter car. But getting a longer car to change direction more quickly imposes greater loads on the rear tyres than would be the case with a shorter one.

The rear needed more grip to be able to withstand the sudden increase in load from a more aggressive direction change. That’s what the new rear suspension layout facilitated through greater downforce. In this way, with the W11 Hamilton was getting to have his cake and eat it."

And not all drivers are equal when it comes to the driving development of a car, or adapting to the development of a car. VET, for example, lost the plot after Ferrari's rear end weakened.

It makes me laugh because the difference (EDIT: obviously in Merc's favour) in turn in (or rotation) at low speed between Merc and the rest of the grid we saw last year at tracks like Barcelona S3 or China or Monaco, not just visually but data-based, was as big as it's ever been. So either Hamilton understands nothing about car performance, which I struggle to believe for he's a great driver and a clever one, or they really can go on record and come up with whatever they wanna say and people are still gonna believe them.

If you look at turn 1 in Hungary 2019 for example the car didn’t rotate as well as the red bull as the front was lazy in qualifying trim. Looking at this years pole lap in Hungary the car gets to the apex way quicker that it did last year. Hamilton very much understands car performance and even though the car was good in low speed corners relative to the rest of the field it still had weaknesses so I don’t find anything in the article inaccurate.

[nico5]

It's not one sentence, in one article. Here's another (not that you'll care, as evidenced by how this is going thus far).

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/arti ... bjIs9.html

"[Hamilton] related earlier in the season that last year’s car did not rotate quickly enough for him into slow corners – i.e. the initial transition from straight ahead to pointing at the apex was not sharp enough. 'Because we’ve have had long cars we’ve had great downforce but been quite poor in low-speed corners,' he explained.

'The car would not rotate as well as we’d like. There’s a limitation with these tyres. The front has a limitation, the rear has a limitation, grip wise. There’s saturation, there’s thermal deg and there’s only a certain amount you can do with the mechanical balance before it affects the other end. It’s like a see-saw. The front was a lot more understeery last year; you struggled a lot more when you went over the tyre and no matter how much you changed the mechanical balance it didn’t really fix it.'

What Hamilton was chasing was the sharp direction change of a shorter car. But getting a longer car to change direction more quickly imposes greater loads on the rear tyres than would be the case with a shorter one.

The rear needed more grip to be able to withstand the sudden increase in load from a more aggressive direction change. That’s what the new rear suspension layout facilitated through greater downforce. In this way, with the W11 Hamilton was getting to have his cake and eat it."

And not all drivers are equal when it comes to the driving development of a car, or adapting to the development of a car. VET, for example, lost the plot after Ferrari's rear end weakened.

It makes me laugh because the difference (EDIT: obviously in Merc's favour) in turn in (or rotation) at low speed between Merc and the rest of the grid we saw last year at tracks like Barcelona S3 or China or Monaco, not just visually but data-based, was as big as it's ever been. So either Hamilton understands nothing about car performance, which I struggle to believe for he's a great driver and a clever one, or they really can go on record and come up with whatever they wanna say and people are still gonna believe them.

If you look at turn 1 in Hungary 2019 for example the car didn’t rotate as well as the red bull as the front was lazy in qualifying trim. Looking at this years pole lap in Hungary the car gets to the apex way quicker that it did last year. Hamilton very much understands car performance and even though the car was good in low speed corners relative to the rest of the field it still had weaknesses so I don’t find anything in the article inaccurate.

Hungary 2019 is a tricky one. I think they set up the car to protect the rears in the race, so Merc ended up having more pace than RB in race trim than in qualy, something that hardly ever happened throughout 2019 and 2020. Of course, going in that direction means loading the rear and having an undesteery car with new tires, hence the less rotation. Might not be the only reason and for sure they might have made steps forward in that department as well, but I was just pointing out that certainly wasn't Merc's weakness in comparison to the other frontrunners in 2019. And that's how you measure what is one's weakness in F1, where everything is relative.

[zibby43]

Evolution of the nose.