Team: Bob Bell (TD), Norbert Haug (VP of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport), Nick Fry (CEO), Ross Brawn (TP), Geoff Willis (Technology Director), Also Costa (Engineering Director) Drivers: Michael Schumacher (7), Nico Rosberg (8)
A place to discuss the characteristics of the cars in Formula One, both current as well as historical. Laptimes, driver worshipping and team chatter do not belong here.
The thing that encourages me the most is their use of test/sensor equipment such as the diffuser pitot tube array, etc.
I have never seen mercedes use such equipment, which means they must make most of their airflow modelling conclusions from simulation and windtunnel, merely using testing as a means to verify the outcome (i.e. is it faster on the clock or not?).
It's clear that their "process" was wrong, which may have been more the reason for binning Bigois more than his aerodynamics knowledge/expertise. Verifying correlation between your simulation and reality is essential.
This may be the influence of Mike Elliot. I hope we will see aero paint soon.
They also took too long to upgrade their windtunnel to 60% model from 50%, I believe this may be actually a Geoff Willis initiative, as he was the driving force behind pushing BAR/Honda into building the full scale wind-tunnel, so was acutely aware of the improvements possible from upscaling the models.
Last edited by elf341 on 11 Sep 2012, 12:12, edited 1 time in total.
They still have a great deal of work to do, let's face it they are several races behind in terms of development. McLaren had their Coanda exhaust from start of season, and still they had to do huge amounts of development to get to their current position. McLaren and Red Bull both had to release new sidepods to fully get the exhaust working. Are these W03-C sidepods new?