cheeRS wrote: ↑16 Mar 2021, 20:46
mkay wrote: ↑16 Mar 2021, 17:48
NathanOlder wrote: ↑16 Mar 2021, 16:47
Yeah so they are hiding something and appear to be putting in a lot of effort to do this. So thats why people are still not writing Mercedes off but you seem hell bent of doing just that.
They were hiding their floor/rear design as long as they could, just like any other team.
I am not writing Merc off, I'm just not subscribing to these ludicrous ideas that Merc had a massive upgrade package waiting for today's filming, etc. I understand people are hanging on James Allison's "
it'll be apparent where we have spent our tokens" quote from launch day, but it's getting desperate in certain instances.
I've always been consistent in that Merc has 2 weeks to figure out what the hell is wrong with their car. If anyone can do it, it's them - but this year is different with budget cap, CFD/wind tunnel limitations and new regs in 2022.
Regarding the Allison "it'll become apparent" quote, maybe the massive update package for the filming day is the wrong train of thought.
Maybe it has more to do with engine/gearbox (do those use tokens? not sure). Perhaps the merc-powered teams are using a detuned version for testing and the real "evidence" will be apparent after the first race or two when the power is really on display? Just a guess really.
Not particularly. I think the Engine development is out of the token system.
Merc team as far as I know always been up-front. They never hide anything. Everything is in plain sight, because there was nothing in particular that was eye catching different (apart from DAS). They've always relied on good harmonic small details that add up to the total. They've done it for years now.
In this case, they've done small incremental changes that on paper added to a good performance, at least in theory. But something's gone awry, something's not working as expected and they're trying to fix the issue. I don't believe we'll be seeing any massive upgrade as some people are hoping to see. We'll see the same car we saw on testing. Any changes won't even be visible, they'll be trying different setups, suspension, ride height, tyre pressures, wing levels etc...
I believe what Alison was trying to say about where the tokens are spent, and lets not forget the filming was done before they've gone to testing so they weren't aware that all is not going as planned, is that, they've probably had to change the front suspension mounting for the non-DAS suspension system, and the new gearbox and its housing. Minor but they would have had to spent those tokens. What Alison (and co) assumed was that the car will most likely behave good as in theory, and all these changes where the tokens were spent will be obvious over the time. When he said "... you'll know it when you see it" - doesn't mean that it is going to be something flamboyant. It literally means that: you'll know it when you see it. But of course we didn't see (yet) the inner workings of the new front suspension changes and it's implications it had about changing the crash cell (probably) and also we didn't see (yet) the new gearbox and its cage.
It will be obvious over time with the season when somebody catches a good shot with its photograph.
I hope the fix whatever is not working.
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