2022 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[Spoutnik]

Total guess, but the ground effect aero this year is about downforce with little drag.

Mercedes got that fundamental concept wrong and could not create enough low drag downforce from the floor. So we have seen many times they resort to using traditional wings to get the downforce which has the higher drag in return.

I agree with this view, Red Bull went for clean efficiency and won everything, Ferrari improved it's competitiveness on the average track when they sacrificed a bit of downforce for lower drag.

Mercedes performed it's best on rarefied air, where the math changes.

Merc were already too keen to have a lot of downforce in 2019 imo. I remember the W10 being very slow on the straight, ofc Ferrari had their "illegal engine" but even the high rake RB-Honda was faster on the straight on the 2nd half of the year. It costs them race win in Belgium, Italy, and Brazil that year (2019) despite being faster on race pace.

Ofc it's better to manage the tyre, but Merc are going too far with this thing imo. And they paid the price this year

Last year with the mighty W12 and the "rocket engine" we saw the benefit of having a good straight line speed.

[Tvetovnato]

Total guess, but the ground effect aero this year is about downforce with little drag.

Mercedes got that fundamental concept wrong and could not create enough low drag downforce from the floor. So we have seen many times they resort to using traditional wings to get the downforce which has the higher drag in return.

I agree with this view, Red Bull went for clean efficiency and won everything, Ferrari improved it's competitiveness on the average track when they sacrificed a bit of downforce for lower drag.

Mercedes performed it's best on rarefied air, where the math changes.

Merc were already too keen to have a lot of downforce in 2019 imo. I remember the W10 being very slow on the straight, ofc Ferrari had their "illegal engine" but even the high rake RB-Honda was faster on the straight on the 2nd half of the year. It costs them race win in Belgium, Italy, and Brazil that year (2019) despite being faster on race pace.

Ofc it's better to manage the tyre, but Merc are going too far with this thing imo. And they paid the price this year

Last year with the mighty W12 and the "rocket engine" we saw the benefit of having a good straight line speed.

Belgium and Italy were however tracks where the Ferrari cheat engine really gave them an advantage, so I don’t think the W10 was a draggy car, not close to the W13 at least. They suffered in Brazil in 2019 more due to the turbo, which they rectified for ’21 and after that, no more altitude issues.

It needs to be the main prio for next year however, if they are to have any sort of chance. Having a good top speed will help massively in races as you can go slower in the corners without giving away too much lap time, thus managing tyres better.

[AR3-GP]

Mclaren won Monza and probably had a car to win Spa and Russia as well last year. That doesn't mean anyone should go out and build a Mclaren....

The best car is the one whose strengths are consistent with the weighting of track characteristics. A car that only works at high altitude (like RB's of yesteryear, and the current W13) is pointless.

[Goblin42]

Mercedes went greedy for the most amount of downforce possible and compromised themselves with a setup that has a small operational window.

For the most part of the turbo-hybrid era mercedes enjoyed the luxery of the most powerful engine on the grid while RB was stuck with an under-powered unreliable Renault engine, so they had to innovate on the aero side and make new simulations tools and try new ideas, this helped them alot when the Honda engine became the best on the grid
on the other side Mercedes fell behind on the SIM/CFD tools and couldn't anticipate the problems of the ground effect cars

They thought that running the car as low as possible will give them the most downforce possible, that coupled with a stiff suspension to make the floor clearance stable, they forgot that the tracks are bumpy,uneven and sudden elevation change would hurt the floor & the skid plank

When the season started they found themselves in what's Merc engineers called *pealing the onion*, first they needed to work around the Porpoising issue, when they managed to fix that in spain it gave them false hope since the track is smooth there, when they arrived at Monaco & baku they found that their choice with making a stiff suspension with minimal travel distance made the ride stiff and when the car hits a bump or kerb they get what's called *bottoming* and endanger damaging the floor & the driver inside ie in baku with hamilton

All this sent them back into a never ending loop of trial and error, eventually when they figured out what went wrong with their concept, they were waaaay behind on the development curve compared to RB & Ferrari , that's why i don't think that Mercedes would be competitive in the 2023 season , RB has massive knowledge after running the RB18 with a raised floor and understanding the flow effects and drag levels they have on the car

[zibby43]

I think the gap was exaggerated by the requirement to run the big wing (point of Toto quote), and Hamilton’s mistake in T14.

I wonder why they always have to run a big wing

Car’s not efficient.

[zibby43]

Mclaren won Monza and probably had a car to win Spa and Russia as well last year. That doesn't mean anyone should go out and build a Mclaren....

The best car is the one whose strengths are consistent with the weighting of track characteristics. A car that only works at high altitude (like RB's of yesteryear, and the current W13) is pointless.

McLaren won Monza because wacky circumstances happened. Merc had a 1-2 in qualifying, Lewis had a crappy sprint race, Bottas started from the back for the actual race, etc.

Merc won Brazil 2022 with all 6 of the top 6 competing.

RBs of the past weren’t about high-altitude from a car construction standpoint. You keep conflating the hybrid era RBs with great mechanical grip with the RBs that enjoyed the Honda turbo design that afforded them a performance advantage in high altitude.

For example, Red Bull has only won once in Interlagos in the hybrid era (2019).

Merc won’t be trotting out anything resembling the W13 next year. It’s the fact that they could resolve issues, fix correlation, and then improve the dead-end concept based on the correlation that is what is meaningful for them. That means they can trust their simulations heading into next year, having been caught out by their mistake to run low and stiff this year.

They’ll still be behind RB to start the season, but the budget cap and extra resources a 3rd place finish affords will help them.

[tuj]

They thought that running the car as low as possible will give them the most downforce possible, that coupled with a stiff suspension to make the floor clearance stable, they forgot that the tracks are bumpy,uneven and sudden elevation change would hurt the floor & the skid plank

These are f1 engineers; they did not forget about bumps. The 13" wheels did offer a degree of compliance not found, but they would have *tried* to account for that change in sidewall. Everyone understands there is a benefit to running as close to the ground as possible, everyone has run super-stiff aero-based suspensions for years.

I agree that rising ride height is what 'fixed' the early Mercedes, at the loss of downforce. But it's not the ride height or springs that are different from the others. Everyone is bottoming the cars out, using rake plus the skid plate to keep any plank wear from occurring.

I have heard no definitive explanation of what they actually got wrong. The side pods seem to be the most obvious but least consequential aspect. Clearly the lack of higher-speed tunnel testing hurt and their CFD didn't catch problems but is this a failure of design systems or of a specific design aspect?

[Big Tea]

It was the first time this type of car had to be built, and they went too extreme and got it wrong. In many ways better than staying within known bounds and just failing to hit the top and wondering 'what would that car have been like? No knowledge is wasted.

All the same, good riddance unlucky 13, bring on its successor and make the front of the grid crowded. >1 second between 1 and 20 would be nice

[f1jcw]

It was the first time this type of car had to be built, and they went too extreme and got it wrong. In many ways better than staying within known bounds and just failing to hit the top and wondering 'what would that car have been like? No knowledge is wasted.

All the same, good riddance unlucky 13, bring on its successor and make the front of the grid crowded. >1 second between 1 and 20 would be nice

It’s going to be a long hard wait waiting for new development titbits

Hopefully anything we get is going to be more accurate, we heard reports the zero side pod concept was going to be faster then anything but then go to the second test and things wasn’t looking good,

I wonder what season being like with the 1st side pod design

[AR3-GP]

It was the first time this type of car had to be built, and they went too extreme and got it wrong. In many ways better than staying within known bounds and just failing to hit the top and wondering 'what would that car have been like? No knowledge is wasted.

All the same, good riddance unlucky 13, bring on its successor and make the front of the grid crowded. >1 second between 1 and 20 would be nice

It’s going to be a long hard wait waiting for new development titbits

Hopefully anything we get is going to be more accurate, we heard reports the zero side pod concept was going to be faster then anything but then go to the second test and things wasn’t looking good,

I wonder what season being like with the 1st side pod design

No need to wonder because the side pod wasn't the major problem though. It was the floor. Designed to run low, nd stiff and it choked itself and began to porpoise. this would have happened with any sidepod. As we saw, cars from the likes of Alpine, Mclaren, and ferrari with their sidepod concepts also porpoised in the beginning of the year.

[Spoutnik]

Mclaren won Monza and probably had a car to win Spa and Russia as well last year. That doesn't mean anyone should go out and build a Mclaren....

The best car is the one whose strengths are consistent with the weighting of track characteristics. A car that only works at high altitude (like RB's of yesteryear, and the current W13) is pointless.

Yes mathematically.
But the issue with the Merc is that it was not particularly good on many tracks (apart the fugazi win at Interlagos). Lewis had pace at Silverstone but his top speed cost him 2nd place against Perez, he couldn't won with a SC.
Despite their very slow top speed they were not in contention to win at Monaco, contrary to the SF-21 last year for example which had an amazing traction, and quite a good downforce but too much drag and a weak engine.

What I want to say is that Merc compromised too much top speed at a point where it's became pointless, and imo, it began in 2019.

[Big Tea]

It was the first time this type of car had to be built, and they went too extreme and got it wrong. In many ways better than staying within known bounds and just failing to hit the top and wondering 'what would that car have been like? No knowledge is wasted.

All the same, good riddance unlucky 13, bring on its successor and make the front of the grid crowded. >1 second between 1 and 20 would be nice

It’s going to be a long hard wait waiting for new development titbits

Hopefully anything we get is going to be more accurate, we heard reports the zero side pod concept was going to be faster then anything but then go to the second test and things wasn’t looking good,

I wonder what season being like with the 1st side pod design

The initial sidepod design was the same one that won in Brazil, so maybe it was OK. (same with in reason I mean)
The drag seems to come from other places, so if that can be fixed, maybe they were not so far out after all.
Better to be a long way off and have lots of improvements to come than to be almost there and out of tweaks.

I have wondered if they have to run such a big wing to trim out the proposing, or to counteract what they had to do to cure the proposing? They will have had teams on it all year you can bet, partly due to not having spare money (under the cap) this year. If they feel they made a mistake, they now have everyone else to look at when they design the new car, so it should be around where others are.

[Mansell89]

I saw both Merc last week and also Toto this week both make reference to progress of the Mercedes engine through the year.

Obviously with an engine freeze that must be limited to modes and mapping- but can anyone shed any more light on that because it did seem at a number of tracks this season that Red Bull seemed to have a little bit more power deployment.

[Stu]

I saw both Merc last week and also Toto this week both make reference to progress of the Mercedes engine through the year.

Obviously with an engine freeze that must be limited to modes and mapping- but can anyone shed any more light on that because it did seem at a number of tracks this season that Red Bull seemed to have a little bit more power deployment.

A replacement crankshaft design under the auspices of a reliability fix has helped.

[johnny comelately]

This a good insight into attitude, analysis and culture