Mercedes W14

[214270]

https://gyazo.com/677f597577858c85607a8115e4430682

if anything speaks to porpoising it's this part of the video, but it's such a short cut it's pretty speculative. Only that the car is compressing aggressively on a near perfectly flat bit of track

There’s nothing there the looks remotely rhythmic.

It's too short and it's too slowed down to see anything rhythmic, if you look at the gap between floor and road it looks to be half a 'wavelength' of a porpoise event. It's a substantial ride height change (20mm at a guess?) considering the surface being driven on. Which is why I suspect it could be porpoising

I believe a longer length has been released of that particular shot. Let me look

[organic]

Will they be able to run with that front cooling panel closed more often or not? I don’t think I remember a time last year when it was completely blocked off

With the cannon exit and louvres along the cannon I'm expecting the front cooling panel will be closed for all but the hottest of races

[hollus]

One last attempt, this time I tried to align the height of both cars from the floor to the airbox (without the T-cam it would be 95 cm if I remember correctly (?)), this should give a better comparison in the plane of symmetry

Cockpit distance looks the same to me. It's has been a Mercedes trait to use the maximum allowed length ofr front wheel to cockpit though... So I supposed they did that in 2022 and 2023..

Agree, looks the same to me. Which would mean the radiator inlets are further up (in both axes) based solely on that comparative visual.

Appears to be a evolution of the previous car, with the shoulders widening and turning into cannons (you can see the shoulder line in the W13) and the waist below the cannons become slimmer. Pods further up in both axes with a similar contour.

If you rest your mouse in the wheel axles (do in both in turn) you will see that one car is further ahead of the other, but then you can rest the mouse cursor in the air intake or in the front of the helmet or in the front of the halo, and those are perfectly aligned. It follows that the cockpit has moved relative to the axles.

[yinlad]

https://gyazo.com/677f597577858c85607a8115e4430682

if anything speaks to porpoising it's this part of the video, but it's such a short cut it's pretty speculative. Only that the car is compressing aggressively on a near perfectly flat bit of track

There’s nothing there the looks remotely rhythmic.

It's too short and it's too slowed down to see anything rhythmic, if you look at the gap between floor and road it looks to be half a 'wavelength' of a porpoise event. It's a substantial ride height change (20mm at a guess?) considering the surface being driven on. Which is why I suspect it could be porpoising

just to detail what we're observing in that isolated compression event. Whether it's porpoising or just a ride event on the track surface

The frames are flipped and aligned on top and bottom of tyre plus the top of the wake deflector.

[214270]

There’s nothing there the looks remotely rhythmic.

It's too short and it's too slowed down to see anything rhythmic, if you look at the gap between floor and road it looks to be half a 'wavelength' of a porpoise event. It's a substantial ride height change (20mm at a guess?) considering the surface being driven on. Which is why I suspect it could be porpoising

just to detail what we're observing in that isolated compression event. Whether it's porpoising or just a ride event on the track surface

The frames are flipped and aligned on top and bottom of tyre plus the top of the wake deflector.
https://i.imgur.com/v5zYHRs.png

Couldn’t find a longer clip, I might be mistaken. There are some clips on tiktok but not the exact same straight-ahead shot.

There’s a lot of side-to-side in your pic. Rear wing tilt relative to your ref plane; seems more in keeping with a bump, no?

[yinlad]

It's too short and it's too slowed down to see anything rhythmic, if you look at the gap between floor and road it looks to be half a 'wavelength' of a porpoise event. It's a substantial ride height change (20mm at a guess?) considering the surface being driven on. Which is why I suspect it could be porpoising

just to detail what we're observing in that isolated compression event. Whether it's porpoising or just a ride event on the track surface

The frames are flipped and aligned on top and bottom of tyre plus the top of the wake deflector.
https://i.imgur.com/v5zYHRs.png

Couldn’t find a longer clip, I might be mistaken. There are some clips on tiktok but not the exact same straight-ahead shot.

There’s a lot of side-to-side in your pic. Rear wing tilt relative to your ref plane; seems more in keeping with a bump, no?

they are flipped horizontally which is why they look tilted, but overlayed it's clear that it's a large sprung mass change up and down. It could be a bump but it's a pretty flat bit of track. As I say, it's a very isolated event based on the video so pure speculation as to the cause

https://gyazo.com/764ab3870c2a4dfe1e56264019136bed

[214270]

Will they be able to run with that front cooling panel closed more often or not? I don’t think I remember a time last year when it was completely blocked off

With the cannon exit and louvres along the cannon I'm expecting the front cooling panel will be closed for all but the hottest of races

Yeah I hope so, a pretty cool tech achievement given the tightest bodywork.

[Andi76]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FpFqthqXgAA ... =4096x4096

vs

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FL4ql36WQAU ... =4096x4096

Better contours on vertecies no?

It does look like there is better outwash managing the front tire wake now.

looks the same
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FpFwsVPWYAE ... name=large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FpFqthqXgAA ... =4096x4096

Not really. Outwash and Vortices look stronger. But of course this Doesn't have to mean anything, as circumstances can be completely different. However, I have not seen a picture in the wet last year where this looked so good, even if you have to be careful here.

[214270]

just to detail what we're observing in that isolated compression event. Whether it's porpoising or just a ride event on the track surface

The frames are flipped and aligned on top and bottom of tyre plus the top of the wake deflector.
https://i.imgur.com/v5zYHRs.png

Couldn’t find a longer clip, I might be mistaken. There are some clips on tiktok but not the exact same straight-ahead shot.

There’s a lot of side-to-side in your pic. Rear wing tilt relative to your ref plane; seems more in keeping with a bump, no?

they are flipped horizontally which is why they look tilted, but overlayed it's clear that it's a large sprung mass change up and down. It could be a bump but it's a pretty flat bit of track. As I say, it's a very isolated event based on the video so pure speculation as to the cause

https://gyazo.com/764ab3870c2a4dfe1e56264019136bed

Yup, I hear you. I’m just saying it looks like a disproportionate amount of movement coming from that rear corner relative to the rest of the chassis; hence the large amount or rear wing tilt; indicates to me something local. We’ll see soon enough

[Spoutnik]

[Andi76]

Another tweet about W14 porpoising, but it's disputable for me:

Has the nightmare of Mercedes engineers called porpoising returned? This may be indicated by the recordings from the W14 cockpit shared by the team after yesterday's film day: #F1pl #EchaPadoku

This definetely is not porpoising. This is a hard-sprung F1 ground effect car - that's what it looks like when it goes over bumps and the like! But that has nothing to do with porpoising.I also don't think any car will have a problem with porpoising.

[icantride]

Another tweet about W14 porpoising, but it's disputable for me:

Has the nightmare of Mercedes engineers called porpoising returned? This may be indicated by the recordings from the W14 cockpit shared by the team after yesterday's film day: #F1pl #EchaPadoku

This definetely is not porpoising. This is a hard-sprung F1 ground effect car - that's what it looks like when it goes over bumps and the like! But that has nothing to do with porpoising.I also don't think any car will have a problem with porpoising.

Agreed, looks to happen in the same place for both drivers. Just after they pass the grandstand and before the bridge. To me that just indicates a bump in the track on that straight

[PlatinumZealot]

Cockpit distance looks the same to me. It's has been a Mercedes trait to use the maximum allowed length ofr front wheel to cockpit though... So I supposed they did that in 2022 and 2023..

You sure? Mercedes had the cockpit most forward of all teams last years and had the smallest distance between the front axle and the cockpit. RB the exact oposite.

Check this:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FMRdw3xakAQ ... name=small

Look were the helmet is relative to the front wheels at the Merc and RB.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if that stayed the same for 2023. I have seen images were it looks like the mercedes tub is even more forwards, but pretty sure that has all to do with the perspective of those pictures. In most it looks (nearly) identical to last year. The RB is still a question mark of course, but they might even use the same tub as last year (only the never introduced lighter variant of it).

Those photos are different perspectives. Use the opposite front wind endplates and you see how the Mercedes car is rotated towards the camera. So not an accurate comparison.

[hollus]

Usual reminder:
Will-they-win or will-they-not-win?
Will-they-be-fast?

NOT in the car threads. I wonder if there is a team thread somewhere for such stuff?

Let's keep the car threads information rich and chatter poor.

[Stu]

W13 had the sidepod radiators placed quite forward, leaving them a very small amount of room for a complete sidepod redesign - on top of bouncing and correlation issues. Bottom SIS was also sticking out a lot.

W14 has its radiators placed quite more to the rear and seems to leave a lot of room to implement either RB or Ferrari or a completely different style of sidepods without the need for massive change to internals. Bottom SIS looks to be in the floor now.

I don't expect any issues with bouncing like last year, so maybe after they have their true pace reference a few races in, they might want to have the room to change their approach and have placed those radiators accordingly.

As things stand right now, even Ferrari could make a switch to RB sides and vice versa, Williams seems to have placed the radiators in the most extreme position...

This is along the lines of something that I was saying last year; their radiator position had the bottom edge very low (significantly below the lower SIS structure), this held back some of the potential to ‘fix’ a big driver of their floor issue (height and location of the throat section). Something that would require a fairly significant chassis change (difficult to achieve in the BC era).

At this point in the season nobody knows who has hit the sweet-spot, but the teams will all think that have something good to work with!!