Is Mercedes sandbagging 2014?

[siskue2005]

The Mercedes uses the soft/medium tire better than the rest. This leads me to believe it makes superior DF at the rear, along with having a very good rear suspension set-up. The super soft seems to even the field up more. Perhaps Mercedes is able to regulate tire temps better than other teams. This team has struggled with tires for as long a I can remember. Maybe they finally figured it out?

How does superior downforce in the back only help soft sand medium but not SS tyres?

[prince]

Suzuka should be a great place to judge the difference between Red Bull and Mercedes.
See if they really have made any progress of closing the gap or not.

I seriously think it would be valiant to believe that they would come any closer. RBR's self confessed biggest hope was Singapore and that was purely based on their belief that they have either equal or slightly more downforce than Merc and in less power hungry circuit, they can beat the Merc. Wasn't it the same enthusiastic anticipation when the caravan reached Barcelona and wasn't it the same from Williams when they reached Monza? Nothing has changed, despite the ban on FRIC suspension. Unlike many super cars of late, W05 doesn't seem to have any single gizmo area which is the secret performance weapon. They have a whole car performing to optimum and in such a scenario, it would be difficult for even competitors to copy the concept and match them. From history we have seen that, once you get a head start in a new era, you generally stay ahead for a considerable amount of time.

We are almost reaching the end of the season and the advantage Merc have doesn't seem to have reduced and on their part, all of their updates have worked for them throughout the year. Due to the reliability worries, I have a feeling that they have never really operated on an aggressive best possible mode ever, which would be why I feel they are sandbagging. No major regulation change for next year means just a continuation of upgrades. Let's say, even if Renault and Ferrari upgrade their PU for next year with a major overhaul, it would still be hard to believe they can match. Imagine the reliability woes for a new architecture Vs the continuous enhancement for the existing, thoroughly tested architecture (assuming Merc isn't going for a new found architecture for their PU in search of higher performance).

We haven't seen a Merc PU reaching the allowed 15,000 RPM and as we have seen, they are not just powerful, but also have an advantage on fuel consumption. If Merc can enhance their PU slightly more on the fuel consumption advantage and fix the reliability problems, they can reach the optimum of the PU, which itself would be a major advantage.

In the best interest of the show, I genuinely hope that other teams do make up the performance deficit, so that we can see a lot of wheel to wheel racing for both championships.

[Juzh]

15k revs lol...
Seriously? This again?

[Richard]

How superior is Mercedes really, this entire season I have gotten this feeling that they often seem to struggle in practice,
then bounce back in qualification and on Sunday simply walk away with the race, unless they somehow f*ck up of course?

To address the OP, it's all relative. Is it Merc being deceptively slow, or the others being deceptively fast?

I'd say its a case of Merc having the comfort to not worry about speed in FP. They can run with more realistic fuel loads and race set up while other teams turn everything up to 11 and run on fumes to create a mirage of speed. So it's not Merc being deceptive with sand bagging, its the other teams deceiving with their illusion of speed.

[i70q7m7ghw]

I don't understand why this is a debate, Red Bull did exactly the same when they had a car advantage...

[Edax]

I think the advantage can be deceptive.

Say as an example you have a car that is running 0.5 seconds faster than the rest in similar conditions (fuel load tires etc), and you start in front.
- It means that you can fuel lighter since you don't anticipate a lot of overtakes. =>lower weight less tyre wear.
- It means that you will be able to break the DRS so you can concentrate on driving. =>lower fuel consumption, lower tyre wear
- Less tyre wear means later pitstops so you are less likely to get in traffic.=> less fuel needed, lower tyre wear
- etc

It would be interesting to set up a cause-effect plot. But my guess is that being a bit faster than the rest triggers a lot of knock on effects.

As a result your car is likely to be lower in weight and on better tyres at any stage in the race.

Therefore in the race the difference will be much more than the 0.5 sec you have on pace alone.

[Pierce89]

I'd say that Hamilton's pace after the safety car was the real speed of the Mercedes - 2.5s per lap faster than the Red Bulls. I would like to believe that Alonso could have cut that gap a bit with his fresh tires, but the comparison is pretty much on equal ground (i.e. older tires) with RB...and they didn't have a chance.

You do realize that 2 seconds of that gap was tires, right? The other teams will know if Merc is sandbagging. I think any Merc fans expecting this sort of advantage next year will be quite disappointed. The Red Bull and Ferrari chassis are already close to the Merc with Ferrari being the only team not requiring a rework of the front end for 2015. Also, Renault and Ferrari won't be caught with their pants down next year. If they had known where Merc had got to with the PUs for 2014, they would've pushed harder back then. I believe a lot of Mercs advantage simply came from catching Renault and Ferrari off guard.

[dans79]

If they had known where Merc had got to with the PUs for 2014, they would've pushed harder back then. I believe a lot of Mercs advantage simply came from catching Renault and Ferrari off guard.

Merc isn't just going to stand still you know!

[FemiA]

I'd say that Hamilton's pace after the safety car was the real speed of the Mercedes - 2.5s per lap faster than the Red Bulls. I would like to believe that Alonso could have cut that gap a bit with his fresh tires, but the comparison is pretty much on equal ground (i.e. older tires) with RB...and they didn't have a chance.

You do realize that 2 seconds of that gap was tires, right? The other teams will know if Merc is sandbagging. I think any Merc fans expecting this sort of advantage next year will be quite disappointed. The Red Bull and Ferrari chassis are already close to the Merc with Ferrari being the only team not requiring a rework of the front end for 2015. Also, Renault and Ferrari won't be caught with their pants down next year. If they had known where Merc had got to with the PUs for 2014, they would've pushed harder back then. I believe a lot of Mercs advantage simply came from catching Renault and Ferrari off guard.

Why are people assuming that Lewis was going flat out? He had to make the tyres last too you know and he knew the delta to drive to. Maybe he did in the first few laps and the gap was around 3sec/lap.

[SectorOne]

I´m gonna try and do a small analysis tomorrow of the first and second stint of Vettel and Hamilton tomorrow but just looking at the numbers Vettel´s both runs start low then before the pit stop they increase quite rapidly whereas Hamilton´s two stints is basically all 53´s.

For Vettel you can see the drop off in the times but for Mercedes you can´t really point and say there´s any significant drop off.
I think they just pitted to cover themselves (might as well if everyone else already pitted)

Have a look here, i´ll try and make a visual representation tomorrow evening if i can.

http://macofan.com/en/index.php?page=ch ... 20Hamilton

Third stint is frankly, useless because we can´t possibly determine anything with two completely different compounds.
we only know it´s a big gap on low fuel between the two but not with track evolution and all that.

[Gaz.]

I´m gonna try and do a small analysis tomorrow of the first and second stint of Vettel and Hamilton tomorrow but just looking at the numbers Vettel´s both runs start low then before the pit stop they increase quite rapidly whereas Hamilton´s two stints is basically all 53´s.

For Vettel you can see the drop off in the times but for Mercedes you can´t really point and say there´s any significant drop off.
I think they just pitted to cover themselves (might as well if everyone else already pitted)

Have a look here, i´ll try and make a visual representation tomorrow evening if i can.

http://macofan.com/en/index.php?page=ch ... 20Hamilton

Third stint is frankly, useless because we can´t possibly determine anything with two completely different compounds.
we only know it´s a big gap on low fuel between the two but not with track evolution and all that.

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2014/09/22/2 ... test-laps/

[Pierce89]

I'd say that Hamilton's pace after the safety car was the real speed of the Mercedes - 2.5s per lap faster than the Red Bulls. I would like to believe that Alonso could have cut that gap a bit with his fresh tires, but the comparison is pretty much on equal ground (i.e. older tires) with RB...and they didn't have a chance.

You do realize that 2 seconds of that gap was tires, right? The other teams will know if Merc is sandbagging. I think any Merc fans expecting this sort of advantage next year will be quite disappointed. The Red Bull and Ferrari chassis are already close to the Merc with Ferrari being the only team not requiring a rework of the front end for 2015. Also, Renault and Ferrari won't be caught with their pants down next year. If they had known where Merc had got to with the PUs for 2014, they would've pushed harder back then. I believe a lot of Mercs advantage simply came from catching Renault and Ferrari off guard.

Why are people assuming that Lewis was going flat out? He had to make the tyres last too you know and he knew the delta to drive to. Maybe he did in the first few laps and the gap was around 3sec/lap.

He had to build a gap for a pitstop, but he wasn't flat out? That's makes zero sense.

[turbof1]

He had to build a gap for a pitstop, but he wasn't flat out? That's makes zero sense.

Well, he went flat out in the sence of maximizing time gain within a certain set of laps. You can't do qualy laps for 10+ laps. Rather, he drove to a certain delta time (Vettel time minus x tenths of a second).

So it's a critical compromise between flat out and saving the tyres as much as possible.

[SectorOne]

He had to build a gap for a pitstop, but he wasn't flat out? That's makes zero sense.

If he had genuinely gone "flat out" the tires would have been done on the second lap.
He´s flat out relative to all the others but not relative to let´s say a Quali lap.

[MOWOG]

That's makes zero sense.

It does in the parallel universe of Formula One where "racing" is no longer defined as "going as fast as possible for as long as possible" but rather as" managing a number of arbitrarily imposed external factors better than anyone else".

Once you wrap your head around that notion, it makes all the sense in the world.