Mercedes AMG F1 W03

[tsakonos]

Because F-Duct is easy to copy the W03 had late presented.
But i think that will take three or four races to work good to other teams.

[skgoa]

Actually, even though it generated quite a fuss, it wouldn't yield that much lap time. IMHO the mini-DDD should be worth more and I would have expected it to be much more controversial. edit: then again, the other temas might know they have no chance to contest it.

[hardingfv32]

To be fair every other team managed to get air to exit their chassis.

How did they do it without adding a new hole to the chassis? Everyone was trying to copy McLaren after their chassis were finalized.

Brian

[Owen.C93]

To be fair every other team managed to get air to exit their chassis.

How did they do it without adding a new hole to the chassis? Everyone was trying to copy McLaren after their chassis were finalized.

Brian

Through the cockpit presumably. Sauber had their activation duct on the sidepod before routing it into the cockpit for the driver to activate and then back out again to above the airbox.

[marekk]

I'm with pup on this one - this drs hole thing has to be expansion valve, sort of.
Simple reasoning is that this place has (by far) highest static pressure on the whole car.
Doubt it gets routed to the FW, can't see any beam wing blowing either.
But simply by relieving this high pressure (you can have exits anywhere, hollow bottom of end plates being the simpliest solution) one can reduce RW's trailing edge vortexes and drag, and make RW more efficient.
Think of it as extra end plate slit, activated with DRS in open position.

[ArchAngel]

Won't be long now 'til we find out. If the tyre degradation isn't half as bad as had been deduced by many during testing and the W03 doesn't lose top end speed during the race, then the much-speculated RW/FW innovation by Merc might turn out to be not just an exclusive qualifying/overtaking solution.

[SchumiSutil]

Extremely disapointed. The car is just as bad as I feared.
They manage to do an as worse Oz' GP as last year.
The car is not reliable, the car is a tyre killer, as last year, and on race pace they are behind Mclaren/Red Bull/Lotus/williams and even Ferrari and Sauber.

So 7th in the pecking order. It's a shocker. And Sepang is a tyre nightmare, so repeat of last year again when they were 9th and 12th...

[Joie de vivre]

they have problems with tires just like last year. next few races will be difficult for them

[skgoa]

[quote="flickster"]
[...]
. Let's start talking about other feature on the car again.

E.g. the mini-DDD that is on the car. In the last shot (I believe it was a couple of pages back) it looked like it was fed from above the floor.

[mahesh248f1]

Extremely disapointed. The car is just as bad as I feared.
They manage to do an as worse Oz' GP as last year.
The car is not reliable, the car is a tyre killer, as last year, and on race pace they are behind Mclaren/Red Bull/Lotus/williams and even Ferrari and Sauber.

So 7th in the pecking order. It's a shocker. And Sepang is a tyre nightmare, so repeat of last year again when they were 9th and 12th...

Car looked good with MSC in 3rd position, if not for the gear box problem I am sure he would have been in top 5

[Cocles]

When the car speeds up, a larger than average gap appears between the closed DRS plank and the rear wing. It's especially visible from the back. Could that be the F-Duct working? It doesn't remove drag off the wing when the DRS plank is open, it removes drag when it's closed. That's why it's completely passive and there's zero driver input. That magic is happening when the driver *isn't* hitting the button.

I'll leave it up to the armchair engineers to figure out how the DRS plank could be flexing when it's closed. Could it be hollow and bend when the air inside is pressurized? Is that possible?

[Mestrades]

Probably, without the DRS device, Schumy has not been classified 4th and would not have created so much excitement. Ferrari admiting that they are bad are in front of Mercedes, Mercedes admiting that they have made a step forward are back of Ferrari. I think that there are a problem in that team if they can't recognize their problems

[i70q7m7ghw]

Okay, pictures of the car with the nose cone off, who's go them?

[hollus]

I'm with pup on this one - this drs hole thing has to be expansion valve, sort of.
Simple reasoning is that this place has (by far) highest static pressure on the whole car.
Doubt it gets routed to the FW, can't see any beam wing blowing either.
But simply by relieving this high pressure (you can have exits anywhere, hollow bottom of end plates being the simpliest solution) one can reduce RW's trailing edge vortexes and drag, and make RW more efficient.
Think of it as extra end plate slit, activated with DRS in open position.

You might have a good point there. My first reaction was that if it were just to remove high pressure air, it would be larger, as big as possible. On closest inspection, it is closer to the main element than to the DRS element of the wing (hell, it touches the main element), and regarding size... it is! It is as large as possible (as large as the "lid") forwards from the end of the main element, but then, backwards it ends immediately after the main element ends, that is, they avoid going into the area where the high and low pressure regions mix.
Is there something in the rules limiting the size of the "lid" that forms a mini end plate for the DRS element?

[i70q7m7ghw]

Okay, but the two pipes coming out of the beam wing and running back under the engine cover do suggest it's ducted towards the front of the car, and the two slots on the underside of the front wing suggest they have a fw-fduct. All we need to see now is the nose cone off to see if there are any visible ducts in the front of the chassis.