This forum contains threads to discuss teams themselves. Anything not technical about the cars, including restructuring, performances etc belongs here.
Couple of things to note, on this lap Lewis hits 312 kph before T1 whereas on the harder tyres (his green s1) he was doing 319. Also on the back straight before the final corner watch him hold it on the revs in 6th for longer than you'd expect, he also didn't have a green S3. Merc know they're hiding performance.
Yeah, saw that, but others did it as well, so it will kinda cancel out, at least against red bull who had the same top speed of about 310 kmh. Depends how much either team still has in their pockets.
I wonder if they had to run two separate programmes to get everything they needed, thanks to the reduced times? It was really strange seeing how all the teams went about managing a truncated session.
Still looks like it has a decent amount understeer, so it either has a decent amount of fuel onboard, or they don't have the set-up right yet. If I had to guess, I'd say a little of both.
She (the W12) definitely looked a little on the heavier side there.
it seems like the new tyres are more a problem than the regulation change. i would wait eagerly to listen from james allison some time later this year as to where they went wrong or parameter didn't click the way they expected. over 2 seconds lost on W11 is difficult to believe, despite them working on this car longer than anyone else did and with supposedly more powerful pu, whereas red bull has lost over 1.5 seconds only. so in the game of recovering performance loss, mercedes fell short.
are mercedes going to give up on this season or will they want to fight the development battle, which can compromise 2022.
Last edited by MKlaus on 27 Mar 2021, 19:09, edited 1 time in total.
I think they haven't figured out the tires yet more than anything else. Mercedes looked substantially more stable on the mediums, not to mention faster than Red Bull.
it's not really surprising to me either, given the drastic cut in the amount of preseason testing. Couple that with the fact that Mercedes, has been worse off on the softer compounds for several years now. And finally Bahrain is not one of their better tracks.
I think the more mileage they get under their belts the better they will become even without any in-season development, as they will simply learn more about the car and how to set it up.
with this year's compounds being harder, mercedes must be missing the DAS. before 2020, they always had struggle with working softest range of pirellis and with DAS, it became much easier to bring the fronts up to temps. going by what i have read, if they have induced the understeer to manage the twichy rear, it's even more of a problem at the front.
with this year's compounds being harder, mercedes must be missing the DAS. before 2020, they always had struggle with working softest range of pirellis and with DAS, it became much easier to bring the fronts up to temps. going by what i have read, if they have induced the understeer to manage the twichy rear, it's even more of a problem at the front.
If they put under steer into the car, that means the front lose grip before the rears as sliding them would put heat into them correct?
Afaik, sliding is hardly ever a good idea. It heats the surface of the tyres, not the core, possibly causing graining, which, in turn, would make sliding more likely, in a sort of vicious circle that can quickly ruin irreversibly the tyres.
