Btw.. Today I had a chance to sit with an insider from Mercedes who explained to me about the FRIC for next year's car. As well as Rake angles, and why Lewis has been struggling with "braking issues"
As we know Mercedes started playing with the idea at the end of 2011, then in 2012 they had full FRIC and wasn't perfected until this year where it still a bit volatile.
this is as he explained it down to the way its laid out and no, no Mercury involved..
the concept behind the FRIC mainly to aid high speed cornering mechanical grip and to complement the lowspeed cornering with tradition anti-roll bars.. yes they use both methods. the fundamental issue this year was that because its hydraulic fluids that are adjusted, i.e taken out or put in depending on how soft you want the suspension, aren't always of the same "viscosity/pressure" at the time of adjustments, usually done in FP1 and locked for FP2 they can't get it 100% all the time between both cars. simple matter being that one car maybe hotter than the other or vise-versa when making the changes on setup as its only one guy doing it, so by the time he's finished on one car, the "pressure/viscosity" has changed.
But from what he's told me they're almost got the "balance" correct on that, and when it works, like at silverstone it works brilliantly. they should have it honed over the next few weeks for the w05 he told me.
the other thing with relation to FRIC and Lewis hamilton's braking ability.. it's not that there is anything wrong with the brakes per-sey, but more over that he's not used to the FRIC system keeping the car pitched up underbraking, where like in his mclaren days you'd see that his car DIVES massively as he wants it which gives him the confidence..
Also RAKE angle..
The trick with RAKE is that RB are able to keep a higher Rake angle compared to others yet somehow reduce drag, high rake angles give massive downforce, but at the same time, increase the drag, and Mercedes did indeed take a look at this properly and just don't know how Newey and his Eggheads at RB were able to get away with such high angles.. so much so that when the cars go on the weighbridge for scrutineering, the height of the RB at the back isn't level with the front of the car, so doing the floor plan wear test they have to drop the rear of the car to get the measurement.
Engine/powerunit wise -
Mercedes have indeed been working longer and harder on the new units than anyone else, basically since they were first announced.. the major components have exceeded the reliability tests and in terms of HP its still very much unknown but KERS/ERS is going to be very important, and unlike the current generation of KERS where if it fails, you just lose a bit of laptime, you basically won't be able to finish the race as a good chunk of the overall power will be coming from the KERS/ERS and with the fuel limit to 100KG the car will simply run out of fuel if KERS fails.
Torque Maps - he didn't tell me about that.
and thats all i got.
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