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Today's unveiled Mercedes AMG F1 W09 resembles a lot its sucessful predecessor, the championship winning W08. And this is no coincidence, as team boss Toto Wolff reveals. However, there are some interesting changes to come this year with the new car.
I think what they said was that they were aiming to run more rake with W09. The car isn't that much different from W08 rake wise, I think they're about the same. Maybe they are going for more rake as the season progresses (with an upgrade or something).
Wolff confirmed the rake is the same. I guess if you can get a low rake floor to seal with good boundary layer control the benefit in efficiency is great. However, I think this is difficult to get right. Not saying that Mercedes hasn't got it right - they obviously have. There has only been one time in recent memory when the low rake floor didn't work and that was in Brazil 2017 when the floor bottomed out on Lewis in Q3. High rake floors obviously more resistant to bottoming out. It is easy to blame the floor for Mercedes' tyre temperature issues - people might think the aero is unstable or something.. but there is just no evidence of that.
No no, I was asking this completely unrelated to tyre performance, just regular aero performance.PlatinumZealot wrote: ↑23 Apr 2018, 04:56Wolff confirmed the rake is the same. I guess if you can get a low rake floor to seal with good boundary layer control the benefit in efficiency is great. However, I think this is difficult to get right. Not saying that Mercedes hasn't got it right - they obviously have. There has only been one time in recent memory when the low rake floor didn't work and that was in Brazil 2017 when the floor bottomed out on Lewis in Q3. High rake floors obviously more resistant to bottoming out. It is easy to blame the floor for Mercedes' tyre temperature issues - people might think the aero is unstable or something.. but there is just no evidence of that.
I am just wondering how fast they will raise the rear end, ie how fast will they be able to form stable floor-sealing flow structures.This year, even during testing Merc engines have had more gurgle than the Honda in off throttle events.!Technical wrote: ↑23 Apr 2018, 15:13Has anyone noticed an aural change in the engine maps for the W09EQP+ and the FI18 car? The downshifts started to sound very interesting from Bahrain onwards. It seems more noticable on the FI cars.
No, to the contrary, both Wolff and the TD confirmed that there was more rake with the W09 - they didn't say how much more, just a vague "more rake". They did mention it wasn't as much as the competitors, but more than the W08.PlatinumZealot wrote: ↑23 Apr 2018, 04:56Wolff confirmed the rake is the same. I guess if you can get a low rake floor to seal with good boundary layer control the benefit in efficiency is great. However, I think this is difficult to get right. Not saying that Mercedes hasn't got it right - they obviously have. There has only been one time in recent memory when the low rake floor didn't work and that was in Brazil 2017 when the floor bottomed out on Lewis in Q3. High rake floors obviously more resistant to bottoming out. It is easy to blame the floor for Mercedes' tyre temperature issues - people might think the aero is unstable or something.. but there is just no evidence of that.
Vanja, I read about this matter on another forum an someone said that raising the rake it`ll modify whole car`s aero stuff, but I bet you already know well about thatVanja #66 wrote: ↑23 Apr 2018, 15:04...
No no, I was asking this completely unrelated to tyre performance, just regular aero performance.
Maybe I was expecting too much from them thinking we would already see the rear slightly raised compared to winter tests.
...I've seen these confirmations re: additional rake as well.
If I remember correctly, the team said during roll out they'd raise the rake during the season gradually, or something like that. So it's gonna be interesting to see if they do that or keep it as it is.atanatizante wrote: ↑23 Apr 2018, 22:57Vanja, I read about this matter on another forum an someone said that raising the rake it`ll modify whole car`s aero stuff, but I bet you already know well about thatVanja #66 wrote: ↑23 Apr 2018, 15:04...
No no, I was asking this completely unrelated to tyre performance, just regular aero performance.
Maybe I was expecting too much from them thinking we would already see the rear slightly raised compared to winter tests.
They`d like to do that but that involves too much time and money to spend and furthermore, they don`t have the knowledge like RB, for instance, or even Ferrari in order to do that ...
From what Vowless implied in his Pure PitWall debrief, it seems that they are focused on suspension setup and the main reason to do that is widening their tyre window operation, knowing W09 has been working properly only with medium tyre, coz this tyre is having the widest operation window from all 2018 tyre spectre.
That`s why it`ll be interesting what aero stuff they`ll bring to Barca race, coz till now they didn`t put anything significant on the car, which hiders either they`re preparing a big aero upgrade or just focusing on tyres learning at the beginning of the year, hence the mechanical side of the car ...