LM10 wrote: ↑20 Mar 2022, 15:55
Vanja #66 wrote: ↑20 Mar 2022, 15:43
Andi76 wrote: ↑20 Mar 2022, 14:25
Totos explanaition that they have to run their car lower to extract aero-performance goes hand in hand with your explanaition of what might be their problem! You probably are totally right about what is Mercedes problem and i think its fair to say its probably an aerodynamical one.
Well, it was evident Mercedes is holding on to low ride height a lot more than other teams, they wanted to try whatever else they could to solve their bouncing issues. It could only mean they depend on low ride height for performance. What also comes to my mind is their suspension design, maybe they designed their suspension for low ride height and raising it too much hurts them and takes away setup margin here and there.
I’m starting to wonder if Mercedes even thought of the porpoising issue with these cars in the development phase? Or maybe heavily underestimated it? Why else would they build a concept where the car needs to have a really low riding height to exploit it‘s potential?
I think there are many teams which have not thought of the porpoising issue. From observation i think there are some teams who got ahead of the porpoising issue quickly. Alfa, Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull and Alpha Tauri. These teams have something interesting in common and i think this could explain why some teams got ahead of the porpoising issue, while others are still struggling. Ferrari has Rory Byrne as an adviser. He designed the ground effect cars in the early 80's in F1. Red Bull has Adrian Newey who gained experience with cars like that in Indy in the mid 80's. Alfa has Willem Toet, who know ground effect cars from the very beginning of his career in Australia. McLaren has Neil Oatley who also gained experience with ground effect in the early 80's in F1. Alpha Tauri has access to Newey, but also still has Sergio Rinland to advise them, who, if my memory does not trick me also has experience with cars like that. Mercedes, Williams and Renault do not have an engineer with experience in that regard.