Mercedes GP MGP W01

[ArchAngel]

As for cars intentionally designed to be inherently [under|over]steery, I think it's reasonable to assume that Ross Brawn's car design philosophy (as in his days with Rory Byrne at Ferrari) is to make it as neutral as possible and responsive to a wide spectrum of setup changes required by opposing driver styles. It's unfortunate how slight miscalculations (or misjudgments) in a couple of variables have given the W01 an inherent behavior that does not respond too well to Schumacher's (and Shovlin's) attempts to set it up for his on-the-edge driving style.

I certainly hope the Barca B-spec will allow Michael to regain his confidence in the car to attack with full commitment. Ability-wise, I'd like to believe that Michael's still got a dormant 8/10ths or more from his glory years waiting to be unlocked, so long as the car setup and confidence issues are thoroughly sorted out. But the longer this takes to happen, the greater his frustrations and self-doubts will become.

[Pierce89]

Ringo

You say "I dont blame the car" then end on "It's clear the rear end has no grip, so a new floor and diffuser should be in order for Barcelona."

If Schumacher's car looked undriveable out of slow corners whereas Rosberg's did not in China, could it simply be Schumacher's prefered set up is not comaptible with the W01?
I have already written war and peace on over vs understeer and that certain cars favour certain characteristics. Can we all agree the W01 does not suit Schumacher as well as it does Rosberg, because of said Chassis characteristics?

And Barrichello was decimated by Schumacher, of course he may harbour just an ounce of resentment. Dont buy it....

No we can't all agree that the car just suits Nico better. You totally refuse to give Nico credit for just being able to get more out of the car.

[marcush.]

both Nico and Michael stated more than once that the W01 does not like to be pushed
and responds to going towards the ragged edge by loosing rearend grip.
What first looks like a paradoxon -understeer behaviour-but overheating rears on exit
is not really contradicting,as in cornering you got braking area ,cornerentry and apex and exit..
so of course you need to be on your own on track to drive the car so as to avoid killing the rears..
as soon as you are under pressure from behind ,what you really need is traction out of the corners.. poor michael..same goes if you try to overtake .have no sharp turn in and no acceleration out... where could you possibly overtake?
funny we are all talking about aero.. but when all time is lost in the slow stuff i do not really see the car lacking in aero as well..it is not 2 seconds away and cannot be hopeless everywhere.

[bugref]

my Opinion now is I have no idea and doubt if brawn can give him a car he wants. seems brawn is stuck with JB's understeer type of car. He was lucky nico likes to run like JB. Too bad for Schumacher, How I wish he could ride those Redbull RB6, its pretty stable when overtaking. that car seems to suit Michael better than his w01, if take a review in all races clearly w01 car doesnt even have an overtaking capability, like what had happen to redbull and maclaren all perform well in overtaking its like they all taking a spotlight when they are doing overtaking. the only thing that brought nico in the second spot is his consistency, but if those redbull and maclaren driver are consistent like rosberg he might not be ther for sure.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Pierce, without getting into a pointless argument. Can you agree some drivers are better at handling oversteer and others better at handling understeer?

If the W01 is an understeery car by nature, As both Nico and Micheal have gone on record to say, then the guy that can deal with said understeer better is going to have the advantage.
Micheal Schumacher DETESTS understeer, he wants a car with a "pointy" set up where the nose of the car can be hustled with a stable rear end to follow.

Nico Rosberg had understeer set ups at Williams as this is his preffered option, I havent read his biography so i cannot say exactly what his preffered set up is.
But Sam Micheals said many times that Nakajima struggled with Rosbergs understeers setups when having to copy his team mates settings.

So yes Rosberg has done a sterling job, I commend him for putting Schumacher in the shade. But there are reasons for this, and should Schumacher get the car set up he needs, you can bet your bottom dollar he wont be 0.8 behind Nico.
Dont believe media tripe that he is past it, Im off to the bookies to put a sly 20 quid on him winning a race this year at 7-1......

[mike]

i think its got to do with entry vs exit
yes schumacher does like oversteer but only in the entry so front bias in the aero and front bias at the front will give it the exit understeer, the difficult thing about this driving style is that the car has to have good front aero grip and the drive has to be accurate with the steering wheel

the reverse theory is that you have entry under and exit oversteer where the rear is heavy and alot of aero force is at the rear. the drive have more degrees of error to play with at the entry but the throttle control needs to be accurate

what it comes down really is how much downforce the car and offer and adjust the weight accordingly.

there are theories in which to see which driving style is faster but schumacher/raikkonen/hamilton styles do get better chance of overtaking since when the car is following the corner exits tend to work better at low speed and allow them to drive up and go for a dive on the inside at the next corner

the problem with MGP W01 i could see is that in response to the narrower front tires, they have move weight to the back and almost done if too much and they didnt have enough rear low speed grip to make schumacher's driving style work on the car

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Mike

Brawn said as much recently by saying bridgestone didnt go as far with the front tyre as they anticipated, hence why the W01 has "balance issues".
Somthing to do with the strength of the sidewall.....

[marcush.]

we do not know how they try to compensate for the understeer like a dog with their setups.
to me it looks like they have decided to stiffen up the rear ,and this is costing them dearly in terms of traction..and tyre life at the rear.so they do a classic
tradeoff in killing rear end grip for the sake of balance.Unfortunatelly this keeps them from letting the rears survive...just my 2 cents
this approach will :make the car twitchy over uneven grounds in cornering but not slow in the fast bits .It will inevitably hurt wet weather performance.
So maybe Michael had to put in some stiffer rear springs compared to nico and this would nicely explain just why things go bad for him.
with no changes allowed from Q to race you are basically stuck and have to make do with what you had.so one cackhanded decision could ruin your whole weekend..

[ggajic]

Have to agree with everything said. However, I don't get why they simply don't increase front downforce? Too me it looks like easiest change..

[raymondu999]

Frontal downforce would do it for the fast turns. But then you go to the slower ones and its an understeery dog again.

[marcush.]

aero gains force with speed ...so add front downforce and the thing gains front grip as you go faster ...till you have a high speed oversteer condition...We can assume the car is quite good at high speed ,as we have seen deficiencies at lower speeds the W01 just has to be good somewhere ,as it is not as slow as The sauber for example..the solution has to start on the mechancal side and they have not much choice to gain front end mechanical bite.

[Yups]

so far rosberg has been fast..but AFAIK, i havent seen rosberg overtake anybody since the first race( not including the start). even in china he did not overtake anybody..hamilton is the one who passed him.

i reckon that the W01 is --- at overtaking compared to the other cars.

No that's wrong. Hamilton didn't pass him. He tried but Rosberg immediately overtook him back. Hamilton passed him on the box. Rosberg is most of the time behind faster cars in all these races yet, it's no wonder that he can't pass someone and keep in mind the Mercedes doesn't have a topspeed like McLaren. They have a really bad topspeed for a Mercedes engine.

Nico Rosberg had understeer set ups at Williams as this is his preffered option, I havent read his biography so i cannot say exactly what his preffered set up is.
But Sam Micheals said many times that Nakajima struggled with Rosbergs understeers setups when having to copy his team mates settings.

Rosberg prefers an oversteer car as well. He explained it twice this year. As for China, according to Ross Brawn and Michael Schumacher both were using an almost identical setup in China.

[Just_a_fan]

Of course, the "elephant in the room" is that Nico might actually be just plain faster than Michael...

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

That elephant is trumpeting loudly too.

But and its a big BUT, this is Schuey here not another F1 driver.

If Barrichello can live with Button 2009 and we can see what Button is doing to Hamilton, Well I think old age has no real part to play.
Wait for Schuey to say he is happy with his set ups and we will see if the elephant is indeed tolling Schueys bell.

[outer_bongolia]

The one question that I will have is: what will it take to change the car to Schumi's liking?

In other words will it be something as simple as adjusting the rear suspension or pulling the front wheel a little further back? Or do you think it will be a full rethinking of the car itself?

I believe any car can be adjusted to match the driver's style in a few races (within its capability of course). I don't claim any car can be turned into a winner - that's a totally different thing. Schumi's case is tougher, though. He is coming to a new team and a new F1 (no refueling, small front tires, much less aero downforce) after a long separation. So, he might not be able to understand and relay everything he needs perfectly, but he drove hundreds of laps during the preseason tests and he should at least have developed something by now.

I hope to see him close the gap to Nico within the next two or three races or he might as well throw in the towel.