Mercedes W15

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.
AR3-GP
AR3-GP
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Re: Mercedes W15

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stewie325 wrote:
14 Feb 2024, 20:30
Mercedes have had the most "innovations" around the front wing in the last two years. And yet, I can't think of many from Red Bull. The latter's front wing has been very minimal in comparison. Makes me wonder if all these tricks aren't worth the hassle in the current regs compared to before, if they would create negative effects for air entering the floor/sidepod area. In these regs, most of the downforce should be produced by the floor - and the front wing should facilitate that with little drag as possible? Red Bull always spoke of efficiency being important - can anyone speculate how such vortex generators on the new Merc might impact "aero efficiency"?
Teams have different amounts of windtunnel time. They won't all have the luxury to explore every area.
A lion must kill its prey.

PhF1x
PhF1x
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Re: Mercedes W15

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Sidiamal wrote:
14 Feb 2024, 20:15
I'm fascinated by the P-inlet. Every other team has settled on underbite or overbite and Mercedes seem to have looked for a way to combine the two.
It still seems to me to be an underbite, they are just maximizing the intake area without compromising on the intake height. They still want enough air to feed the undercut.

Henk_v
Henk_v
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Re: Mercedes W15

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At least the renders show an interisting floor strake config. Looks lik what the RB18 had on the outer two strakes when launched, but then Mercedes did it with the inboard ones..

Luscion
Luscion
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Joined: 13 Feb 2023, 01:37

Re: Mercedes W15

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Podcast with dr.obbs and Molly Marissa, both engineers, talking about the front wing and the legality of it, Molly goes into the rules pertaining to front wings and from how the rules are written its entirely legal (45mins in)


AR3-GP
AR3-GP
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Re: Mercedes W15

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Luscion wrote:
14 Feb 2024, 21:17
Podcast with dr.obbs and Molly Marissa, both engineers, talking about the front wing and the legality of it, Molly goes into the rules pertaining to front wings and from how the rules are written its entirely legal (45mins in)

Of course it's legal (or close to it). No team would invest in something like this without bulletproof legality. Front wings are very expensive and you can't make conceptual changes to your front wing without throwing your season away (see Aston last year).
A lion must kill its prey.

OnEcRiTiCaL
OnEcRiTiCaL
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Re: Mercedes W15

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AR3-GP wrote:
14 Feb 2024, 21:35
Luscion wrote:
14 Feb 2024, 21:17
Podcast with dr.obbs and Molly Marissa, both engineers, talking about the front wing and the legality of it, Molly goes into the rules pertaining to front wings and from how the rules are written its entirely legal (45mins in)

Of course it's legal (or close to it). No team would invest in something like this without bulletproof legality. Front wings are very expensive and you can't make conceptual changes to your front wing without throwing your season away (see Aston last year).
You mean like DAS?:)

AR3-GP
AR3-GP
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Re: Mercedes W15

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OnEcRiTiCaL wrote:
14 Feb 2024, 21:40
AR3-GP wrote:
14 Feb 2024, 21:35
Luscion wrote:
14 Feb 2024, 21:17
Podcast with dr.obbs and Molly Marissa, both engineers, talking about the front wing and the legality of it, Molly goes into the rules pertaining to front wings and from how the rules are written its entirely legal (45mins in)

Of course it's legal (or close to it). No team would invest in something like this without bulletproof legality. Front wings are very expensive and you can't make conceptual changes to your front wing without throwing your season away (see Aston last year).
You mean like DAS?:)
They are at least assured that it will survive a full season.
A lion must kill its prey.

Luscion
Luscion
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Re: Mercedes W15

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LM10
LM10
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Joined: 07 Mar 2018, 00:07

Re: Mercedes W15

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That’s a nice looking car! Is what Mercedes and Alpine trying to do with their sidepod inlet shape along the lines of what Ferrari does with the S duct?

Mercedes again with quite a significant, yet legal (but against the spirit of the rules) trickery. But this time, if it gets not banned in-season, it will be copied by all the other cars, unlike DAS which was almost impossible to copy during the season.

KimiRai
KimiRai
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Re: Mercedes W15

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LM10 wrote:
14 Feb 2024, 22:13
That’s a nice looking car! Is what Mercedes and Alpine trying to do with their sidepod inlet shape along the lines of what Ferrari does with the S duct?

Mercedes again with quite a significant, yet legal (but against the spirit of the rules) trickery. But this time, if it gets not banned in-season, it will be copied by all the other cars, unlike DAS which was almost impossible to copy during the season.
It likely depends on whether the FIA ban it for 2025 or not. A similar thing was said about the 2022 AMR armchair rear wing, that the other teams would copy it quick but in the end no one brought anything similar. Though it is true that this has been revealed at the start of the season compared to the Hungarian GP so maybe there is a bigger chance.
Last edited by KimiRai on 14 Feb 2024, 22:22, edited 2 times in total.

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Vanja #66
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Re: Mercedes W15

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Image

Since Mercedes previously introduced some front suspension changes to W14 and W14B, front wing is discussed already in detail, rear wing is old spec and we haven't seen beam wing and diffuser - I will briefly focus on a couple of bodywork details. Overall, I see nothing but clear and unquestionable improvements of sidepods and engine cover!

The undercut g-line is quite clean, undercut throat is about the same as AMR, McLaren and Ferrari. On the other hand, the bottom side of the inlet is a really lovely solution in my view. For a team that can afford slightly smaller side inlets this might be the best solution overall. Basically, the "vertical" area near the chassis is part of the inlet and so you "take away" the inlet surface from elsewhere. This allowed them to narrow the inlet overall, reduce the local drag on the outboard section of the sidepod and potentially improve the flow behaviour in yaw in this area, ie prevent separation in adverse conditions.

At the same time, if you have a straight horizontal inlet this same inboard area would feature the most pressurisation, ie drag, so they've said - ok, we have drag there anyway, let's use it as inlet. Another thing is - they do a bit of boundary layer clean up at the same time. I'd say this solution is inspired by their launch-spec W14 inlets and some advantages it offered. Finally, they combined the horizontal and the vertical part with an arch which has a natural curvature to propagate a bit of outwash as well as provide just enough pressurisation to deal with the front wheel wake. AMR, McLaren and RB are now committed to different solutions, but I think Ferrari will definitely want to thoroughly examine this kind of geometry.

I love to finally see again the coke-bottle shape of their airbox, must be some nice pressure recovery there. The engine cover shelf outlet looks so much better and less obstructive than W14 B solution and I am very grateful to Mercedes we won't have to see that abomination any more! The rest of the engine cover in the rear seems as narrow as last year, so no complaints there.

Mercedes has now taken out any bodywork that might be too clever for their own good out of the equation and replaced it with refined and beautiful solutions. The car is pleasing to watch no doubt and the top side bodywork should do its job well and shed a decent amount of drag. I expect their performance to now fully depend on floor performance and how well the suspension is working with the floor itself. The same will likely apply to all Top 5 cars, if not all 20 cars on the grid.
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vorticism
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Re: Mercedes W15

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Vanja #66 wrote:
14 Feb 2024, 14:59
vorticism wrote:
14 Feb 2024, 14:52
I recall the AMR22 RWEP being banned, but detached RW flaps and FW outwash footplates and FW VG slot gap separators were used all last season.
"detached RW flaps" were never illegal, "FW VG slot gap separators" were allowed with rewording between 22 and 23. Neither of those 3 are anything close to the impact a huge vortex shed from the middle of front wing would have.
The AMR22 endplates were legal, in fact all of those and this FW flap are legal in the sense of fulfilling the wording of the regulations. It's a spirit of the rules question.

In fact, I'm not sure if the AMR22 endplates were officially outlawed or not, and by what means (directive? change of regs?), or if they just weren't advantageous.

Ultimately it's a small % of the wing shedding a vortex (only one flap), yes fed by the rest of the wing, but prev aero regs had all or most of the flaps truncated in this way. So the stewards might see it as a relatively minimal influence. That said it is a rather obvious contravention of the spirit of the rules.
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matteosc
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Re: Mercedes W15

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LM10 wrote:
14 Feb 2024, 22:13
That’s a nice looking car! Is what Mercedes and Alpine trying to do with their sidepod inlet shape along the lines of what Ferrari does with the S duct?
...
I think Ferrari does it to:
1) Clean the boundary layer with the inlet.
2) Modify the flow over the sides with the outlet.

For Mercedes and Alpine I think the main purpose is cooling, with some additional advantages aerodynamically.

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Goblin42
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Location: LA

Re: Mercedes W15

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there's something funny going on with the two middle fences on the W15, its like they're opposite to each other


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zeroday
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Re: Mercedes W15

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The B-Sport engineer breaks down the new stuff...