2023 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[mendis]

I am going to miss the zero pods. It was an engineering Marvel.

[taperoo2k]

It's almost like having some way of guiding and aligning the airflow to the (upper) rear of the car (beam wing, diffuser, rear wing etc) when the car is in yaw is important...

If this sidepod bodywork helps Mercedes' issue of unpredictable downforce in yaw, that would be quite something!

But I'm sure they had good reasons to suppose the launch-spec W14 was the superior prospect to start the season.

I guess we'll probably see several upgrade packages for the W14 over the season. It might well be the test bed for the W15, with incremental performance gains. I think they need about 1 second to get near Red Bull, I don't think they'd get that with one upgrade package.

I doubt it. They'll have taken a wallop out of the budget cap with this current package that included new front suspension, floor, diffuser, sidepods and all the underlying chassis architecture that was modified to fit it.

They likely have enough budget left for a certain number of upgrades and tweaks at certain tracks. This is the baseline from which Mercedes will be working from going forward. Looks like the concept they've chased for the last few years has been well and truly ditched. I'd guess for the next few races they'll be working on different set ups to find what works and what doesn't.

[CaribouBread]

Will be interesting to see if the drivers have any comments regarding the suspension 'feel' seeing as this is a significant change in geometry mid season. Specially from Lewis. My amateur assumption would be this sort of anti-dive geometry to have less tyre feel, will this negatively impact Lewis, as he's already said he doesn't have a good feel for the front?

[mendis]

With such a big upgrade do they have money left to build any further upgrades for this year?

[AR3-GP]

With such a big upgrade do they have money left to build any further upgrades for this year?

I suspect they will be a bit smaller. I'd anticipate one more update for Silverstone, and then after the summer break not much at all (which is the same for other teams).

[KimiRai]

Will be interesting to see if the drivers have any comments regarding the suspension 'feel' seeing as this is a significant change in geometry mid season. Specially from Lewis. My amateur assumption would be this sort of anti-dive geometry to have less tyre feel, will this negatively impact Lewis, as he's already said he doesn't have a good feel for the front?

Giorgio Piola says the contrary, in that these changes should give more feeling to the drivers, especially Hamilton who has complained more than once in the old car.

[chrisc90]

So he has no complaints then…. Providing the team followed his requests to what he wanted

[AR3-GP]

It depends on who is faster in the new car

[AR3-GP]

For the linguist amongst us, I think it's time to call time of death on any ongoing "zero pod" language.

[mendis]

Has anyone heard any news about either driver's experience in the simulator with the upgraded car? What's the feel and performance like?

[Just_a_fan]

This thread is really sad
The same people ( most redbull fans) come to make wars for the drivers all because they hate hamilton

Not really. Can you not remember Hamilton being so vocal about the team not listening to his concerns over winter and he wasn’t happy with where the car was/felt?

My comment was presuming the team had listened to him and have made the changes to the cars feel at his request.

Strange way to think that there is a ‘war’ out to get him.

It's natural that the driver that is faster isn't going to complain a whole lot about the feel of the car. This is the case up and down the grid over the years. It's always the slower driver that moans. We have seen this with Daniel in McLaren against Lando, Vettel at Ferrari against Charles, Albon and Gasly at Red Bull against Max. Lewis' situation isn't as worse, but with George being ahead in qualifying and races (barring his DNF in australia), we can see the pattern continuing here. It's also psychological in case of Mercedes where Lewis drove dominant cars for most part of his career and isn't highly experienced in driving less than stellar cars whereas the same less than stellar cars are greatest things George has ever driven.

Has anyone heard any news about either driver's experience in the simulator with the upgraded car? What's the feel and performance like?

Or a driver that has always worn his heart on his sleeve is more vocal about things. Heck, Hamilton has been accused of being too vocal his entire career so it's not exactly a surprise he's saying stuff now.

[chrisc90]

Its interesting they have kept the seperate midwing and managed a curved sidepod. Especially given the midwing extends beyond the intake. Would be interesting to see how thats modelled in 3D design. Front of the midwing must be on the same plane as the sidepod intake is my only guess.

[organic]

Very impressed by the scale of the update. Hopefully it brings more than the 2 tenths hoped for. The front suspension, sidepods all shifting in this direction is bad in terms of all cars looking the same, but the zeropod ran its course.

I don't think this large update will preclude them from bringing upgrades later. My view is that they managed to spend relatively little on the first specification of the w14, knowing they were intending to change it all very quickly after

[AR3-GP]

Its interesting they have kept the seperate midwing and managed a curved sidepod. Especially given the midwing extends beyond the intake. Would be interesting to see how thats modelled in 3D design. Front of the midwing must be on the same plane as the sidepod intake is my only guess.

I think this was hinted at a few pages ago. The sidepod inlet is at the back of the regs box. The midwing remains are ahead of it. I don't know that it's worth calling a mid wing anymore either. It's not just a very short protrusion which won't be nearly as powerful as its predecessor.

[McMika98]

The mighty Merc ends up copying the work of Williams, who could have guessed that. They now have the same sidepod and the front suspension, the rear is all Merc.
Hopefully they get major gains and push the bulls