2021 AMG Mercedes F1 Team

[nzjrs]

it means Merc can make the same "reliability" improvements Honda did, and then no one can complain about it.

AIUI any reliability improvments must be approved by rival teams and the FIA before being fitted to the car.

[dans79]

So, it's malicious because they want to hide what they are doing. The difference being that Honda made a reliablilty upgrade whereas Mercedes are putting in a performance update

Call it whatever you want, it's no different than what Honda did!

[dans79]

AIUI any reliability improvments must be approved by rival teams and the FIA before being fitted to the car.

I know that was the case during the v8 er, not sure it the same holds true now!

[Dee]

So, it's malicious because they want to hide what they are doing. The difference being that Honda made a reliablilty upgrade whereas Mercedes are putting in a performance update

Call it whatever you want, it's no different than what Honda did!

No. Honda had this performance in Bahrain. Whatever Mercedes get from when the upgrade is introduced is new

[dans79]

No. Honda had this performance in Bahrain. Whatever Mercedes get from when the upgrade is introduced is new

Then you weren't paying attention, as Mercedes had to mess with several things on the engine because of de-rating and performance issue in testing and the first race!

[dans79]

For example!

https://the-race.com/formula-1/mercedes ... r-bahrain/

[Dee]

No. Honda had this performance in Bahrain. Whatever Mercedes get from when the upgrade is introduced is new

Then you weren't paying attention, as Mercedes had to mess with several things on the engine because of de-rating and performance issue in testing and the first race!

Derating is a performance issue. https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/merc ... l/5941677/

"Team boss Toto Wolff reckoned that Mercedes was losing out to Honda in terms of its derating – which is when the engine boost that comes from its energy recovery systems runs out at the end of straights.

Speaking about where Mercedes was losing time to Red Bull, Wolff said: “I think we're losing on the high speed [corners]. We can clearly see there's a deficit.

“We're losing a little bit on the engine side in terms of derate. We are not yet in a happy place with our energy recovery, but it's not one thing we point to where we can say this is the big gap.”

Solving this issue increases performance.. thus a performance update

Mercedes have not gone from having no derating issues in Bahrain to having them and then solving them which would be a reliability update

[nzjrs]

AIUI any reliability improvments must be approved by rival teams and the FIA before being fitted to the car.

I know that was the case during the v8 er, not sure it the same holds true now!

Yeah I'm not certain either. In this article It's implied that is the case for the next regulations, but nothing either way for the current ones.

https://the-race.com/formula-1/the-full ... facturers/

[RZS10]

I think everyone should just stop interpreting whatever anyone in F1 says in the worst or best possible way depending on their own allegiance ... in this case saying that they switched to 2022 and stopped developing the car is not at odds with bringing updates since those would have been developed some time ago, before the switch.

Even before this interview with Allison it was clear that they would be bringing a few parts to the car and many articles which mentioned Wolff's statements even acknowledged this, obviously there's going to be some who will now expect some massive upgrade and loads of new parts based on what Allison said and if there are none he will be the one who shouldn't be believed ...

That covers point 1 brought up by Dee ..

Point2 is exactly the same as above, whatever they said about the engine is being interpreted as them implying that there's some cheating going on when the statements, at their very core, are simply true - there has been a (reliability) upgrade and the engine performs better. Checking the data to see if it's all legit is just them doing their due dilligence.

Edit: the full quotes in the article even contain that, and with regards to the post just above this one, assuming that reliability upgrades don't have to be approved by the other engine manufacturers then of course they will analyse all the data to see if it makes sense compared to what they'd expect from a reliability fix.

Point 3 is also just fabricated outrage and probably some poor wording - the current TD still isn't fully in effect, there's +20% tolerance so there might still be some changes in relative performance. No one can say whether any of the current wings pass the new load tests sans tolerance.

The tl:dr is: there mostly a lot of truth in statements made by those involved in F1 and the interpretation of what was said then turns them into "liars" if facts that come out or things that are said afterwards don't align with the previous interpretation.

I'm not saying that no one is playing with the media, of course they are, and it works because all those sites these days are out for clicks but you all actively decide to get mad over nullities (and for internet brownie points / approval from like minded individuals if you can point the finger at someone you don't like)

[dans79]

No. Honda had this performance in Bahrain. Whatever Mercedes get from when the upgrade is introduced is new

Then you weren't paying attention, as Mercedes had to mess with several things on the engine because of de-rating and performance issue in testing and the first race!

Derating is a performance issue. https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/merc ... l/5941677/

"Team boss Toto Wolff reckoned that Mercedes was losing out to Honda in terms of its derating – which is when the engine boost that comes from its energy recovery systems runs out at the end of straights.

Speaking about where Mercedes was losing time to Red Bull, Wolff said: “I think we're losing on the high speed [corners]. We can clearly see there's a deficit.

“We're losing a little bit on the engine side in terms of derate. We are not yet in a happy place with our energy recovery, but it's not one thing we point to where we can say this is the big gap.”

Solving this issue increases performance.. thus a performance update

Mercedes have not gone from having no derating issues in Bahrain to having them and then solving them which would be a reliability update

Sigh, An F1 PU isn't a honda civic motor, they are infinitely more complex, and derates can happen for several reasons, that aren't necessarily performance reasons.

For example they can be an intentional trade off. If a PU component needs to be de-tuned for reliability reasons, or a given map can't be used for reliability reasons, then A team can modify their deployment methodology, to make up for or minimize the damage because of the reliability concern!

If you shift your deployment to lower in the power band, you are going to get derates in the higher region of the power band!

[Just_a_fan]

It'll be how the electrical energy is deployed. So some fine tuning of that which is perfectly legal. Only the petrol burning bits are banned from performance upgrades.

Off-topic, but I think almost every pre-race press release from Honda says something like 'This circuit <something about deployment is hard> so we will be working with the team to optimize the PU deployment to extract the most from the engine'.

Or in other words, aren't MB already doing per-circuit optimisation of how electrical energy is deployed?

Absolutely, so an increase in performance relative to what they have been doing is a performance increase, which is banned

Or they are changing the tools they use or the assumptions they use when making the decision on how to tune the deployment. Which isn't banned.

Nice try to suggest Mercedes are breaking the rules. As mentioned by someone else, they'd hardly tell one of the best well known news organisations in the world if they were doing something illegal, would they.

[Just_a_fan]

Why are Mercedes doing this?

One, it's mide games with its competitors It's easy to see its working to, as Horner is becoming increasingly hostile/belligerent in the press. Two, it means Merc can make the same "reliability" improvements Honda did, and then no one can complain about it.

So, it's malicious because they want to hide what they are doing. The difference being that Honda made a reliablilty upgrade whereas Mercedes are putting in a performance update

Yeah, that'll be it. Mercedes are making an illegal performance upgrade and telling everyone that they're doing it.

[Just_a_fan]

No. Honda had this performance in Bahrain. Whatever Mercedes get from when the upgrade is introduced is new

Then you weren't paying attention, as Mercedes had to mess with several things on the engine because of de-rating and performance issue in testing and the first race!

Derating is a performance issue. https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/merc ... l/5941677/

"Team boss Toto Wolff reckoned that Mercedes was losing out to Honda in terms of its derating – which is when the engine boost that comes from its energy recovery systems runs out at the end of straights.

Speaking about where Mercedes was losing time to Red Bull, Wolff said: “I think we're losing on the high speed [corners]. We can clearly see there's a deficit.

“We're losing a little bit on the engine side in terms of derate. We are not yet in a happy place with our energy recovery, but it's not one thing we point to where we can say this is the big gap.”

Solving this issue increases performance.. thus a performance update

Mercedes have not gone from having no derating issues in Bahrain to having them and then solving them which would be a reliability update

The ERS is not covered by the ban on upgrades. So if they can improve the way it does its thing then that is perfectly legal.

Derating also occurs if the system isn't happy about something e.g. temperature. So solving that issue would be a reliability fix and, again, legal.

[SiLo]

Why are Mercedes doing this?

One, it's mide games with its competitors It's easy to see its working to, as Horner is becoming increasingly hostile/belligerent in the press. Two, it means Merc can make the same "reliability" improvements Honda did, and then no one can complain about it.

So, it's malicious because they want to hide what they are doing. The difference being that Honda made a reliablilty upgrade whereas Mercedes are putting in a performance update

Malicious? It's literally just F1 politics of the top teams.

[Stormblessed]

I feel the sliding scale reset on June 30 could be advantageous for Merc. There are more number of races in the second half of the year, so more race impact per tunnel run, if they use the extra time to bring minor updates later this year. RB will have lesser tunnel time in the second half. On the other hand, they have extra wind tunnel time for next year's development compared to their nearest rival at the moment.