Mercedes GP MGP W01

[volarchico]

People still post about Brawn producing a championship winning car last year, so obviously they know exactly what they are doing. The difficulty with this assertion is that they only managed to win the championship by getting all the first place wins by Button very early in the season with their DDD. Look at the last half of the season. Further and further from the podium as the season went on. And now they are right about where they left off last year - getting somewhere around 5th - 8th place each race.

[marcush.]

ddd alone made neither williams nor Toyota winning or being a contender to win the championship..so there was obviously more to be brought to the table than a DDD difusser.

Brawn had a very good car last year .It is debatable if they would have won the title without the ddd activvities but they were on a par with RedBull no question ,Hamilton working wonders with the Mac was something different there.

[djones]

Still, people in a FWD car will beat a BMW with a "better" weight distribution. On some tracks is more a problem then on others, but it´s not fatal.
A chassis stiffness issue is fatal, and there is no work around for it, apart from making a stiffer chassis.

A bit off topic but I thought the RWD cars had to run extra weight all the time to cancel out their advantage?

[marcush.]

I tend to go with 747h here as the stiffness problem could well explain their lack in ultimate pace,their tyre conservation issues and more than anything else the basic unresponsiveness of the car to improvements.

[Raptor22]

sorry stepout of this one for a day or so.
747 Heavy has summed it nicely. With a suboptimally stiff (torsionally) it becoms impossible to fine tune set up.
All the factors he listed and explained are valid. Fuelload also plays a role since it has a big impact on the forces on the wheels.
It also explains the poor traction out of corners and hence why the MGP is a sitting duck if the car behind is within a car length. Nearly all the other cars are better at getting their rear tyres to grip on corner exit.

Its really not as surprising as it seems because many top teams have been caught out in the past by simple rule changes. Mercedesalso was one of the first teams to start to operate as self policed budget limited team this year. they have fewer resources than does RedBull or Ferrari or McLAren at this time. However if the FOTA agreements as respected (What chance of that) then the other teams wil start to have the same problem by 2012.

Mercedes you could say are early adopters and are using 2010 as the learning year (this would also explain why MS is there for a 3 yr contract - who better to have around through this transition phase)
Also with self imposed resourse restrictions, theres less that can be done in the time available, but again, this is a problem other teams with face next year and untimately in 2012. Mercedes jumped first and have the expereience under their belt.
I believe they will come back next year.

good job 747

[siskue2005]

People still post about Brawn producing a championship winning car last year, so obviously they know exactly what they are doing. The difficulty with this assertion is that they only managed to win the championship by getting all the first place wins by Button very early in the season with their DDD. Look at the last half of the season. Further and further from the podium as the season went on. And now they are right about where they left off last year - getting somewhere around 5th - 8th place each race.

wrong they got their WDC and WCC with more points and any other team and driver!!

people are so ignorant to that fact, as you need to get only one point more than your rival to win the Championship, no matter HOW and WHEN you get it!

Same goes for Kimi's WDC.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Good post Raptor,


I agree with all of it. Seems Mercedes strategy is to operate within the bounds of the resource restriction. It may be harmful short term, but it seems to be very forward thinking in terms of the W02 and W03 if this restriction ever gets put in place for 2011.
I see them getting better, perhaps not consistent race winners, but outsiders with the odd chance of victory.

[ringo]

Stiffness is an interesting point of view. I never thought of it being the problem.
But it is plausible that Merc somehow made the car less stiff than the BGP?
How would they get it wrong with all the engineering tools at their disposal.
It's definitely more puzzling a problem than weight balance i agree, but how could the team manage to make the car without the required rigidity?

We can only take the moncoque into consideration here as well. The engine is clearly stiff enough and the gearbox. FI ans Maclaren are content with the engine.

Somebody at merc messed up the monocoque!

[volarchico]

wrong they got their WDC and WCC with more points and any other team and driver!!

people are so ignorant to that fact, as you need to get only one point more than your rival to win the Championship, no matter HOW and WHEN you get it!

Same goes for Kimi's WDC.

Winning by one point is still winning (duh). This is obviously the case and I doubt anyone here is ignorant of that simple fact. You missed my point. I'm saying that "Mercedes" has been placing down around 5-8th ever since the middle of the 2009 season. So it is no surprise that they are still right there when they have even less manpower than last year to try and pull themselves up and improve their car.

[marcush.]

Stiffness is an interesting point of view. I never thought of it being the problem.
But it is plausible that Merc somehow made the car less stiff than the BGP?
How would they get it wrong with all the engineering tools at their disposal.
It's definitely more puzzling a problem than weight balance i agree, but how could the team manage to make the car without the required rigidity?

We can only take the moncoque into consideration here as well. The engine is clearly stiff enough and the gearbox. FI ans Maclaren are content with the engine.

Somebody at merc messed up the monocoque!

I´m baffled about the two potential reasons that have emerged ,as both seem to be most basic with weight distribution and chassis installation stiffness it should not have ben a big issue to cater for enough adjustability (enough not molded in ballast)and chassistructure layout stiff enough...

[dren]

wrong they got their WDC and WCC with more points and any other team and driver!!

people are so ignorant to that fact, as you need to get only one point more than your rival to win the Championship, no matter HOW and WHEN you get it!

Same goes for Kimi's WDC.

Winning by one point is still winning (duh). This is obviously the case and I doubt anyone here is ignorant of that simple fact. You missed my point. I'm saying that "Mercedes" has been placing down around 5-8th ever since the middle of the 2009 season. So it is no surprise that they are still right there when they have even less manpower than last year to try and pull themselves up and improve their car.

Rubens won twice in the second part of the season. Button had qualifying issues most of the second part of the season. They placed 3 and 4 in the last race. I think the car was still good, the development wasn't as great towards the end. I expected the team to be better this year, to compete for the occasional win. I didn't expect them to show up with a "bad" car from the start.

[Raptor22]

Chassis torsional rigidity is something thats easy to get wrong when you have a change of driver. In Merc's case, two driver changes!

If one driver prefers a softer car, one that rides the bumps better, then th designer would be more focused on suspension geometry, damper action nd weight distribution.

now you have two driver changes both of whom prefer a more neutral car or in the case of Schumacher a very stiff and rigid front suspension (which transfers loads to the chassis more directly and therefore different laod points and you have a problem when the car designed to be softly sprung is now stiffly sprung. It changes the load distrobution throughout the structure.

Jenson said it himself, "i like a very understeery car" and that also implies that the the forward chassis need not be as absolutely rigid as possible. Remember we are talking about cars that have less suspension travel than my Mountain bike.
Tyre behaviour and load distribution through the chassis are important considerations when you are designing to a weight limit.

The homologation of the chassis starts when the finaldesign is submitted and the production race car is moulded. The chassis cannot be changed from that point forward.
Fitting the F-Ducts has not required a redesign since they used holes and cavities already in place, hence the Fduct performance is severely compromised.

What I believe happened in the Brawn team last year was the negotiations with Jenson certainly destabilised the design team since they did not know who hey were designing a car for until it was too late to go back. The design was cast and the parts were in production when Schumacher entered the fray. Rosberg is a driver who can cope with an understeering car so the team would have designed the car for he and Jenson with a skew toward jenson as WDC.

All this serves to emforce is th importance of EVERY element in the team and the car and the design process behind it. Its frankly fascinating.

Oh and yeah, the tools are fantastic an certainlyhelp to limit errors but if the error's start at the assumption level, then those errors are compounded througout the design process.
This also serves to illustrate just how good Adrian Newey really is. He is unquestionably the best F1 designer of the last 20years. The man deserves a bi bronze statue of himself outside FIA headquarters

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

There is alot of reason to your post Raptor.

It also dispels quite a few myths. Namely that Mercedes were hovering around midyear to put 2 german drivers into the team.
If this was the case, the engineers would have gone for a neutral base in the knowledge that they would have had different drivers.

It also dispels the myth that Jenson was booted. Somthing Jenson himself has denied, but a few still seem to want to get mileage out of.

And thanks for clearing up when the design becomes "homologated".
On that subject, if a flaw is detected by a team that can hamper performance, could they bleat "safety issues" and get a change sanctioned?

[timbo]

The man deserves a bi bronze statue of himself outside FIA headquarters

What the hell is "bi bronze" statue???

[747heavy]

On that subject, if a flaw is detected by a team that can hamper performance, could they bleat "safety issues" and get a change sanctioned?

Not really, the chassis has (needs) to pass all the FIA crash/safety tests.
If it does, the FIA will clear the chassis save to race - and it is IMHO