A place to discuss the characteristics of the cars in Formula One, both current as well as historical. Laptimes, driver worshipping and team chatter do not belong here.
I couldn't find a good image of the W11, but hear is one of the W10.
Those massive winglets at the bottom of the duct assembly aren't allowed anymore, They can't be as wide or as low as pictured. All they did was shoot air down between the tire and diffuser to prevent tire squirt from entering the diffuser areas.
Why not put the cut off
pieces of brake duct as floor extensions to the sides of the diffusser ? I understand you have to respect bodywork regulations but there is some
tolerance zone on top of the floor were you can do whatever you want ....I think its 50mm in height , this is effectively opening the door to all those deflectors, fins and vgs we see on top of the floor .
isnt this allowed in the tyre /diffusser area as well?
whenlooking at the sculpting of the difusser bellmouth near the tyre treatment there must be scope to seal the tyre from the difusser ...
I couldn't find a good image of the W11, but hear is one of the W10.
Those massive winglets at the bottom of the duct assembly aren't allowed anymore, They can't be as wide or as low as pictured. All they did was shoot air down between the tire and diffuser to prevent tire squirt from entering the diffuser areas.
Why not put the cut off
pieces of brake duct as floor extensions to the sides of the diffusser ? I understand you have to respect bodywork regulations but there is some
tolerance zone on top of the floor were you can do whatever you want ....I think its 50mm in height , this is effectively opening the door to all those deflectors, fins and vgs we see on top of the floor .
isnt this allowed in the tyre /diffusser area as well?
whenlooking at the sculpting of the difusser bellmouth near the tyre treatment there must be scope to seal the tyre from the difusser ...
One of the actual aerodynamicists on the forum would need to chime in. My assumption would be that the flow in that area is no longer clean enough or energized enough to be beneficial.
Sure those brakeduct mounted wings work directly on producing vertical force
whereas mounting them to the floor would make them part of the entire sprung mass and so can only live between the stepped floor surface and 50(?)mm above the stepplane ..but still they coud seal this area ?
I have been determined to get to the bottom of the Mercedes W12 token spend, so I figured I would look at the list of token items , and try a process of elimination to identify the most likely token items on the W12.
These are the general token areas that were allowed for the 2021 F1 season:
Survival Cell
Primary Roll structure
Front Floor Structure
Front Impact structure
Rear impact structure
Pedals
Plank
DRS system
Gearbox
Gear change components
Clutch
Inboard Front Suspension
Front Axles, Bearings, Nuts, Retention System
Inboard Rear Suspension
Rear Axles, bearings, nuts, and retention system
Wheel Rims
TPMS
Brake System
Fuel System
Hydraulic System
Water-Oil or Water-Water Coolers
Electrical looms
Drinks system
Driver Radio
Data Loggers
Fire extinguisher
Pitstop Equipment
Based on this video around 1:28, the following components were recycled from last season: Survival cell, Gearbox, Gear Change components, Fuel system, Hydraulic system.
Based on my estimation, the following components would have been foolish to waste tokens on in light of the new floor regulations: Drinks system, Fire Extinguisher, TPMS, Data Loggers, Driver Radio, Electrical Looms, Clutch, DRS System, Pedals
Based on my estimation, the following components simply have not been changed: Pitstop Equipment, (Front Axles, Bearings, Nuts, Retention System), (Rear Axles, bearings, nuts, and retention system), Front Impact Structure, Rear Impact Structure.
That leaves us with an absolute list of the only remaining token items available for the Mercedes W12:
Primary Roll structure (2 Tokens)
Front Floor Structure (1 Token)
Plank (1 Token)
Inboard Front Suspension (2 Tokens)
Inboard Rear Suspension (2 Tokens)
Wheel Rims (2 Tokens)
Brake System (1 Token per component)
Water-Oil or Water-Water Coolers (2 Tokens)
Both Mercedes and Aston Martin suffered gearbox issues in the Bahrain pre-season test. This could point to changes, but Allison said the transmission was the same as last season. Odd. Also, it would have been a waste considering the floor changes that most other teams targeted there token development around.
What do you people think they spent tokens on from the 8 remaining items.
Here are my main guesses
Front floor structure seems like a plausible target as it would directly relate to the floor cuts. As a single token item, it would most likely be paired with the plank as the second token item.
Water-oil and water-water coolers is plausible given the new engine intake system and the intercoolers
Wheel rims are plausible as they can be used to control tire temperature. We know that Mercedes have struggled to generate tire temperatures this season
Competitors are allowed only 2 tokens. Therefore, if a single token item was selected, then another single token item must have been used alongside to consume 2 tokens. Alternatively, one double token item can be selected.
I knew I'd be coming back to this fantastic write up, so thank you for putting this together. In the video you've linked James Allison specifically stated that there is no W11 present from 2020 to compare to when introducing and explaining the W12 as so many bits have been recycled and reused on the W12 itself.
Well lo and behold look what's turned up at the factory this week, Lewis' British GP winning W11 from 2020:
If the show car W11 has now been put together, it stands to reason that the W12 has been taken apart, right?
it's all blabla , smokescreens and whathave you .
Why on earth would you retire a car after a single event ? That's givung away the sheer abundance of resource at Mercedes to allow such things to happen , because they can....
The carryover for this team was design
not physical parts taken from last years cars .So the actual physical carry over is
spare parts they had in stock .
As Aston Martin uses a lot of those lifed parts,as well ,I doubt you will find a lot of
2020 produced bits on currently campaigned W12s..
Wasn't the scalloped floor a Mercedes invention? Weird that they've gone back to a regular floor.
Doesn't seem like a huge update package to me, but that's in line with the noises coming from Mercedes themselves.
Barge boards and floor are two of the most powerful components on the car. The third in the “big 3” being the diffuser, which we haven’t seen yet.
I'm well aware, and I can't say I understand the scalloped floor concept well enough to judge the effects of its removal. It just strikes me as being strange.
From where I'm sitting the bargeboard revisions seem fairly minor, apart from the upper "wing", but I'm also not sure what to make of those.
