Mercedes AMG F1 W04

[Adamski]

This is what im seeing,

Yep that dip is truly interesting, never seen before on any other car. It would be a tunnel and then they are controlling a very fast and clear airflow to the end of the car. This could be the answer for the fattier back-end compared to other cars.

[user001]

a snapshot of hamilton's face right after he did the first lap would be worth millions as far as i'm concerned. maybe he will cry tonight.

and regarding his driving style from now on: i suggest he will overdrive the w04 even more than schumacher did . this will be a very very interesting season.

technically i would love to know if merc has indeed solved the issues with the vast fuel consumption as mentioned in this forum few months ago.

@grizzleboy: i barely see any great difference from my smartphone here regarding the rear. it's simply a further variation of the ferrari coanda. the whole monocoque is no new design and this is what embarrases me.

does anyone see the gains through the claimed william's like gearbox? maybe the SWB?

[dren]

Maybe the three little wing vortex generators and the extended exausting body work are all to keep the exhaust gas from spilling into the central area of the car?

[GrizzleBoy]

@grizzleboy: i barely see any great difference from my smartphone here regarding the rear. it's simply a further variation of the ferrari coanda. the whole monocoque is no new design and this is what embarrases me.

does anyone see the gains through the claimed william's like gearbox? maybe the SWB?

You really see no difference between this:



and the W04s rear end?

You need a better phone :p

[Huntresa]

Possible to get above view of 2013 and compare to 2012?

[Giando]

Ok, sorry... i was mislead by the perspective...

Here we can see that the driveshaft MUST be inside the wingshaped big arm, and that the clear metal arm i believed being the driveshaft is actually the lower wishbone.



A pity, somehow, i would have loved such a radical solution!

[Ferraripilot]

But he is right. Theres nothing exciting about it.
it looks like a polished up W03 which means they either made their problems worse or they''re just where they were last year.

it looks really chunky at the back and the front really doesn't carry anything that says "we've made up the 1sec deficit".

its a polished turd.

This is Costa's baby so it's on him. I see a very vanilla car at the moment, lots of room in there to grow and that's just what Mercedes needs. And last time I checked, Costa is a mechanical genius so let's see where they go with this.

[Red Schneider]

If you look at the triangle formed by the pull rod, the lower wishbone and the brake duct, I think you can see the rear A-arm back there. Maybe.

[dren]

I cant make out a full lower wishbone either, which is weird. There appears to be a single link behind the driveshaft, but the driveshaft is exposed. I hope they aren't Trying the Lotus Europa method of the driveshaft as part of the suspension (wobbly!).

Yeah, I don't know if I'm seeing this right either. Here is what I'm thinking:

Red is upper, green lower, blue pull rod.

[dren]

If you look at the triangle formed by the pull rod, the lower wishbone and the brake duct, I think you can see the rear A-arm back there. Maybe.

Yes, it has blue sensors taped on it.

[astracrazy]

this may be a refined w03 but its got more potential than the w03 had which is important. i look forward to seeing what updates they bring to the track towards the last few days of testing

[Shakeman]

An Autosport interview with Brawn says there's a number of innovations with the W04 and expect to bring them onto the car in the next few weeks. Isn't this how it happens _every_ year? No?

Passive DRS is proving difficult to get working.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/105399

[user001]

if they won't change the whole rear before or in melbourne, they certainly won't improve rear downforce(front downforce was ok last year) levels to redbull or mclaren levels. goodbye merc.

where did you get this?

From what I know based on my study of aerodynamics and vehicle dynamics in college, and of the things I read from experts like Gascoigne and etc, since regulation chance in 2009, teams can easily gain downforce at the front, as they need it to balance the rear's.

Exactly for having low downforce at the rear, Mercedes were running a low downforce fw for most of last year.

Gary Anderson comments makes me not have much expectations with the car. Let's see how the testings unfold.

this is exactly what my post implied. if you don't have enough rear downforce you have to give up fw downforce in order to have a balanced car.

a SWB means the internals of the car have to be packed more in a "pile" manner. hence you get a higher mass center which Destroys your aerodynamically gained downforce mechanically. keeping in mind the bad (rear) aerodownforce of the w03. regarding mechanically downforce the w03 was a real BEAST (the most in monaco). laptimes in singapore where right with the top teams though rosberg had the aero disadvantage and lost a few clicks rear downforce!!.

now they dumbed the ability to vary the mass center cause there is less space(bodywork) to play with. maybe they achieved to hark to the rear tyre problem . schumacher said in his last interview in auto motor and sport it's "likely" they got to know the reason.

regarding the dip/roof: why should red bull seperate the airflow into TWO tunnels/roofs? simply cause of the vortexes generated by the red bull FW?

i don't get how newey needs the tunnel to seperate the "clean" (cold) airflow and the "dirty" (thicker butt farly hotter) exhaust
airflow and merc not.

how could you achieve that by changing the FW?

my next arguing point is the still to big sidepods. BUT i suggest due to the cooling problem they had in 2011 and that the w04 is apparently no whole new redesign maybe the where aware of that and simply had no another choice. a complete redesign would throw away the airflow data of the past three years. that's why i was amazed by lauda's saying. mclaren did such whole redesigns in i think 2005 2006 2007. please proof me wrong.


also as tombazis mentioned in a motorsport-total.com/1 interview i think in january. 2013's season will be decided in the first three races. maybe merc will dumb the car already in china.

many teams won't have barely any in-season developement at all simply cause they can't afford it. the 2014 engines will cost round 14 millions rather more.

[user001]

@grizzleboy: i barely see any great difference from my smartphone here regarding the rear. it's simply a further variation of the ferrari coanda. the whole monocoque is no new design and this is what embarrases me.

does anyone see the gains through the claimed william's like gearbox? maybe the SWB?

You really see no difference between this:


and the W04s rear end?

You need a better phone :p

i compare the 2012 car with coanda with w04.
the only real difference i see now they've simply cut off quite a bit!
my smartphone is good enough and new .

[Artur Craft]

a SWB means the internals of the car have to be packed more in a "pile" manner. hence you get a higher mass center which Destroys your aerodynamically gained downforce mechanically. keeping in mind the bad (rear) aerodownforce of the w03. regarding mechanically downforce the w03 was a real BEAST (the most in monaco). laptimes in singapore where right with the top teams though rosberg had the aero disadvantage and lost a few clicks rear downforce!!.

now they dumbed the ability to vary the mass center cause there is less space(bodywork) to play with. maybe they achieved to hark to the rear tyre problem . schumacher said in his last interview in auto motor and sport it's "likely" they got to know the reason.

I think I have a very important link to share with all of you guys, and this will help a lot all of us have more basis on our guesses and insights into some issues.

The CoG issue is often brought up but, in reality, teams are all overlooking it(to some extent). They will try to lower their CoG only if it doesn't compromise downforce in anyway.

In this interview to Peter Windsor and Scarbs, Force India's Technical Director, Andrew Green, at some point, says about the better aerodynamics of the vanity pannel: "The numbers from the tunnel are very small, but it doesn't take a very big aerodynamic gain to offset a mass, center of gravity disadvantadge. The aero number wins by quite a margin...."
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SioY0N69zk[/youtube]

This interview make a very positive effect on any further related discussion that we might have in the forum, regardless of the car in question!

Aerodynamic gains easily offset higher CoG