santos wrote: ↑27 Apr 2017, 13:08
"Mercedes car: Engine and gearbox/drivetrain are heavier than last year. The car is longer"; "10cm cost between 2 and 3kg, depending on where and how you place it. Mercedes lengthened their car by 26cm"; "Mercedes at the season start is even 5kg over it"
Thoose numbers aren't very accurate. Or something isn't right. 26cm made Mercedes gain 5kg. But if the engine and gearbox are heavier, how can it be only 5kg?
2016 cars were 702 kilos (mandatory minimum weight). 2017 cars are 728 kilos (mandatory minimum weight).
When a new car is designed, a lot of lessons are learnt from it's predecessor. There would be many components that gets optimized (might be lowered in size, might be lowered in weight) and some components need to be reinforced (might be increase in size, or in weight).
So, while rebuilding the this year's car, instead of being 28 kg extra, the car is now 33 kilos extra (many components might have been modified, so it's not just the 26cm long, engine and gear box). And if you consider that Mercedes was running ballast last year (due to being slightly underweight), then without the ballast last year's car would have been under 700 kilos. So the overweight of W08 is not just 33 kilos. It would be 33+whatever the ballast that they were using last year. Because the current car itself is overweight, they can't put ballast anymore.
So, if Mercedes have to take advantage of placing ballast wherever they want, they have to now reduce the weight by more than 5 kilos.