2023 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[Henk_v]

If you can't brake and hit the apex with that barndoor. How on earth is a smaller wing going to help?

[PlatinumZealot]

We forgot how to make a fast car. The poachings from Aston Martin have hurt us.

[harty71]

Game over for Mercedes before the season has even started, the car looked shocking with fuel in the tank, especially in Hamilton's hands yesterday. The car came somewhat alive when lighter and on the softest tyre but then again they all do. I think it will be another season of hoping for the odd win.

[DiogoBrand]

I think it's good and even productive to discuss what issues may cause a team that won 8 WDC in a row to underperform, but saying things like "the issue is with their sidepods", "they should copy the concept from X team" or things like "they should add an undercut to the sidepods" to me just seems so ignorant it doesn't even belong in this forum.
You mean to say that a team as successful as Mercedes:
a)didn't give a part as big as the sidepods enough thought when designing the car;
b)should simply copy another team's design, even though the ones that did copy such design are far behind Mercedes in the pecking order; or
c)didn't have an idea that a bad armchair aerodynamicist in an f1 forum could come up with.

I think the first part of any discussion should be to not forget how ignorant we are in comparison to the people designing even the worst car on the grid, otherwise it just becomes BS.

[organic]

Won't a smaller rear wing make the balance problems worse? Seems the Merc suffered badly with the rear axle and they're bringing a slimmer rear wing to the GP

[mantikos]

Perhaps "the sidepods are not important" will turn out to be the big misunderstanding of Mercedes with these new regulations. After all, they can't explain their cars behaviour.

I don't know if the sidepods are important for their car or not, but maybe the lack of importance that Mercedes are giving the sidepod, is the reason why they are struggling.

One would almost have to take anything stated by Elliot and Shovlin with a grain of salt, given the lack of real success under the new regulations.

That makes 0 sense

[AR3-GP]

Perhaps "the sidepods are not important" will turn out to be the big misunderstanding of Mercedes with these new regulations. After all, they can't explain their cars behaviour.

I don't know if the sidepods are important for their car or not, but maybe the lack of importance that Mercedes are giving the sidepod, is the reason why they are struggling.

One would almost have to take anything stated by Elliot and Shovlin with a grain of salt, given the lack of real success under the new regulations.

That makes 0 sense

Is there something I can clarify for you?

Perhaps I can explain it more simply. The proof is in the pudding and one would be wiser to borrow a recipe from someone who knows how to make good pudding.

[Henk_v]

I'm reminded of a scary engineering manager I worked for who frequently stated "In God we trust, everyone else brings data" - so applicable here.

Nick

Well, the confusedpods concept is starting to become like religion. It's to be worshipped for its unfinite greatness, but works in mysterious ways....

[Henk_v]

Toto praising AM and RB as 1 and 2 are omens it's not that bad for MB. They may have some snags and may not be no1, but when the lights go out all midfield dreams will be just dreams. They'll pressure Ferrari more than anyone can pressure them like '22.

[stonehenge]

I think we should all take a step back and look at the facts before jumping to conclusions.

Elliott said that Mercedes is working on an updated sidepod but that it will be an evolution of their concept and not a copy of another team. So, clearly Mercedes do think that the sidepod matters--otherwise they wouldn't bring a significant upgrade to the bodywork--but Mercedes also clearly still have confidence that there is potential in their approach. None of us are qualified to evaluate whether that is true. And people who say Mercedes have lost their step and aren't on the same level as they were when they won 8 championships in a row: how on earth do you think they managed being the third strongest team all last year *despite* having an incredibly dysfunctional car?

Anyone who thought Mercedes would come back from the winter break with a car that could immediately challenge for wins was a little naive. Mercedes have consistently said that they are behind the competition (especially Red Bull) as a result of last year. That's not a controversial statement. They lost a lot of development time last season because they couldn't figure out porpoising and other issues--they obviously have a huge amount to make up if they want to challenge Red Bull. So, anyone who says that the fact they are talking about upgrades to the car in the coming weeks is evidence of them having messed up is a little ridiculous. They were *always* gonna need to bring upgrades to the car to catch up to Red Bull. You can't make up half a second over the winter unless the other team simply doesn't develop.

We simply don't know yet where exactly Mercedes will be next weekend. There are some reasons to think they will be substantially behind Red Bull, but there are other reasons to think they haven't shown their true pace yet. Elliott said they weren't adjusting downforce levels in Bahrain and they didn't run the wing they will have next week. Mercedes was clearly very focused on trying to understand their car and correlating it with what the data they had from last year--they were not trying to optimize the car for next week. So, let's wait and see where they are come qualifying before making conclusions.

[Mansell89]

I think the issue is that a lot of fans can look at testing as absolutely definitive. Things will evolve of course but the budget cap does limit some scope for progress. From what I can see of Mercedes, they appear to have spent the test correlating - they didn’t ever really appear to turn up the wick as such and therefore for me, I’m guessing on the back of last season they want to be sure of what they are building on, before committing to their development schedule. They don’t seem panicked and seem quite assured in their direction and timescales.


QQ for the forum- how different is “mechanical grip” in these new regs compared to the Mercs of 2014-2021? I always felt that was a major strength of them previously whereas we haven’t seen that assured, compliant nature of the Merc cars thus far in 22 and 23?

Fascinated to watch what Merc come up with through the season though.

[AR3-GP]

I think the issue is that a lot of fans can look at testing as absolutely definitive. Things will evolve of course but the budget cap does limit some scope for progress. From what I can see of Mercedes, they appear to have spent the test correlating - they didn’t ever really appear to turn up the wick as such and therefore for me, I’m guessing on the back of last season they want to be sure of what they are building on, before committing to their development schedule. They don’t seem panicked and seem quite assured in their direction and timescales.


QQ for the forum- how different is “mechanical grip” in these new regs compared to the Mercs of 2014-2021? I always felt that was a major strength of them previously whereas we haven’t seen that assured, compliant nature of the Merc cars thus far in 22 and 23?

Fascinated to watch what Merc come up with through the season though.

Mechanical grip died (relatively) with the stiffer 18" tire construction and the higher pressures mandated by pirelli/F1.

Those huge flexing sidewalls of the 13" tire allowed the tire to conform to the track surface much better.

[chrisc90]

Out of interest, how long does it take to correlate with the findings of the wind tunnel/CFD without changing any parts? Surely they should be able to get to the results fairly quickly out on track compared to the computer.

Im sure the models on computer and physical smaller scale stuff will be fairly well detailed in both instances so it cant be that hard to run the car on track in the configuration set on the computer and compare the differences/similarities.

We arent talking changing hundreds of different aero parts to try and get the car to match a simulation here.

[organic]

I guess but switching to a RB philosophy at the end of year 1 also doesn't have much promise. You will be a year behind RB's development and have to tackle problems that they already have. All Merc and Ferrari can do is hope that their concepts will develop well and offer more performance down the line, unless they really hit a wall and have to abandon it (like the w13's original floor concept but luckily they could ditch that early)

I think winning 1-2 titles in a 4 year regulation set starting off with losing 6 months development time like Merc did would be positive and show success of choosing to stick with their own concept

It's why RB stuck with the high rake, despite Merc having a lot of success with their ideas.

[AR3-GP]

I guess but switching to a RB philosophy at the end of year 1 also doesn't have much promise. You will be a year behind RB's development and have to tackle problems that they already have. All Merc and Ferrari can do is hope that their concepts will develop well and offer more performance down the line, unless they really hit a wall and have to abandon it (like the w13's original floor concept but luckily they could ditch that early)

I by no means think "switching to a RB car" is a solution for them. They'll be a year behind as you say. I think it's the nature of F1 whereby a year 1 screw up may take years to remedy. Ferrari is probably a bit different. We know they had the performance from the beginning on a traditional circuit. The W13 never showed that pace at a traditional circuit. It only looked promising at high altitude but there are not enough of those circuits to be worth it.

Caveats apply since we don't really know if this is an extremely elaborate sandbagging scheme of course...