Mercedes W13

[AeroDynamic]

I doubt Mercedes are showing anywhere near the real pace of the car yet, especially if their gains are as massive as reported. The teams don't want to draw attention in terms of performance yet.

[Sevach]

[ENGINE TUNER]

I doubt Mercedes are showing anywhere near the real pace of the car yet, especially if their gains are as massive as reported. The teams don't want to draw attention in terms of performance yet.

They can't hide the severe porpoising

[bonjon1979]

Does bringing the side pods in tighter mean that there’s more volume under the floor for the Venturi tunnels or is that mandated?

[Shakeman]

Porpoising doesn’t look any different to bumpy braking zones so drivers probably aren’t as sensitive to it as the press pack are.

Merc might’ve said, we can fix the porpoising but we’re leaving 5 tenths on the table, can you live with it? Drivers say, hell yeah.

[NathanOlder]

Has anyone posted this video of the W13's unstable behaviour at speed yet?

https://streamable.com/mil5tm

Apparently this behaviour is even somewhat visible in the pitlane but haven't verified myself

Seems even worse than Barcelona. Also W13 is the only car that still suffers from porpoising so far.

All the new cars suffered from it, this W13 is almost a new car, so I guess they will fix it like they did in SPain.

[dans79]

Porpoising doesn’t look any different to bumpy braking zones so drivers probably aren’t as sensitive to it as the press pack are.

Merc might’ve said, we can fix the porpoising but we’re leaving 5 tenths on the table, can you live with it? Drivers say, hell yeah.

I think it has a lot more to do with the fact That it was the 1st few laps on the track, on hards with an aero rake.

They showed the car in the garage a few minutes ago and It looked like they were making tweaks to the front suspension.

[AeroDynamic]

so, a double inlet concept


and a floor comparison form Albert Fabrega

[ENGINE TUNER]

Tiny sidepods lead to less drag, less drag leads to higher acceleration and higher terminal speed, high speed leads to porpoising. Merc has some work to do with this concept in order to maximize it's effectiveness

[organic]

They now have a fixing on the rear of the floor, similar to the one seen in Barcelona, which is presumably there to add stiffness to this area; Lewis is doing a run on C2s now and the porpoising situation seems to have improved (though it is not absent)

Lewis probably just getting to grips but car looked like it had terrible traction on the brief glimpse we saw

[PlatinumZealot]

She is an ugly girl that's for sure.
She's either extremely dominant or an absolute dog!

I think what they achieved here is to reduce the impact of the upper wake as Kyle engineers would say ans also that side pod lift should be elimianted.

The side pod at it's widest is not all that narrow. You can still see the lower crash structure is not protruding. But you can bet that the draggiest parts of the side pod are no more.

She should rely fly down the straights that's for sure. I'm worried about reliability and balance.

[GrizzleBoy]

Car looks soooo unstable.

Just watched Lewis do a lap. Out of low speed corners the rear is going from side to side.

On the straights the car is jumping from side to side.

To be fair though at the beginning of the last aero regs I remember the merc being an absolute rocket but also seeing Ham actually having to "steer" the car while going down the main straight in Australia.

[NathanOlder]

Looked like the porpoising has been fixed, just saw the car on straight and didnt seem to be doing it with the small rod attatched to the edge of the floor

[RZS10]

I don't believe the car is any fatter down the middle than it was before, at least towards the rear ... (left new, right old)

[AeroDynamic]