Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

[yener]

Because of the little data they have to compare they really dont know what they are doing.

For instance - the last update after the wintertest. Didnt work in Singapore did it?
Japan didnt suit their car.

In Japan they told Korea would suit their car more and on friday they confirmed that.

Now can somebody tell me in which way the last updates brought more speed, race pace or grip? In which way did the updates work? Or do they again need time to work some things out?

I keep repeating: they dont know what the F#### they are doing. Just like in the casino, place your bet and lets hope all the ods are with you.

[marcush.]

so we have that sorted .
They hada a Big state of the art tunnel already ,but needed to upgrade to a 60% model in 2012 after failing to use their new expensive toy since 2007 (!!!!!) for its full capability ...

All teams who changed model size have experienced issues with the upgrade -i hear one of the main reasons for changing to 60% was not only the exhaust modeling but also the quality of the windtunnel tyres su inpply.

So what are the expenses? I´d think the belt and pylon to support the model are laid out for a 100% size so this should be NO invest at all .the one difference is -you need all tooling new to produce the 60% hardware -the whole shebang each and every aero relavant component -so you have double work till you arrive at having full c apability to baseline your new model.
Sure you want to model the exhaust and possibly the radiator hot air exits with a new programme so you have to cater for the immense heat introduced into the tunnel testsection .

What else? You need a means of measuring and validating flows -one would think PIV was already state of the art in 2007?
It is a fact with REDBULLRacing where Willis went directly after his time with Honda...so maybe he went away after being denied this ?

[mep]

I don’t get why it should take 6 months to get a 60% scale wind tunnel. You just need to put a 60% model in your 1:1 tunnel –done.
You can do that very quickly.
I have the feeling this just becomes another of their poor excuses.

How can it be that easy? Lotus took ages for their windtunnel upgrade, themselves going from 50 to 60%.
The bigger the models, the higher the expense in terms of equipment and models. Everything needs recalibration. Which takes time....

The question is if you need to do changes the building of the tunnel itself or just change the size of the model. Structural work on the tunnel itself will take time but if you already have a full size tunnel you don’t need to do any of those. So you only replace the model with a different one which is built while the tunnel is running. Also are the teams able to run 50% models and 100% cars so the expertise to do a 60% model is there. You can’t tell me that they need to shut the tunnel down for 6 months just to increase the model size by 10%. They wound have comparison data in the beginning with the new scale but they will get lots of them quickly when they run the tunnel.

So, and as we are already talking about tunnels here, I don’t buy the Ferrari story either that out of a sudden their tunnel is useless. Their tunnel was good to produce a series of championship winning and contesting cars. I guess what they do is doing some modifications to their tunnel to either run hot exhaust gasses or to circumvent some “restrictions”.

[marcush.]

So the woes have to do with the detail resolution you want to achieve,If your temperature drift is say 5 or 10 K per min under full load you may have difficulty to derive any meaningful results.

[Pierce89]

Why do you people think that the wind tunnel upgrade stopped all development? They have another 50% wind tunnel and a crapload of cfd resources. They also have an army of aero engineers who didn't take a 4-6 month vacation. The wind tunnel upgrade was certainly not completely preventing them performing any aero development.

[mep]

I just have the feeling some persons here are making up some new excuses why the team is underperforming. We have heard too many of these made up stories in the past and this time I want to intervene from the beginning on. They don’t need to shut down their tunnel for half a year to increase the model size by 10%. That’s the same BS as they told last year that they were focused on tire understanding and therefore did not develop the car. Where in fact aero development and understanding of tires is done by completely different departments of the team which have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

[snoop1050]

Full size or 100% tunnels are outlawed for cost reasons. 60% tunnels are the maximum allowed.

no they are not

22.9 With the exception of the full scale testing permitted in 22.4(c)(iii) above, no wind tunnel testing may be carried out using a scale model which is greater than 60% of full size.

only using a scale model greater than 60% is banned.
you can still use a 60% model in a full scale wind tunnel

face it mercedes didnt upgrade a wind tunnel and thats not the reason theres been no developments the only thing they have changed is the scale of the model.

unless you really believe mercedes would rent there full scale tunnel to hrt and keep the half scale for there own use which makes no sense when one of the regulations is.

ii) Four one day aerodynamic tests carried out on FIA approved straight line or constant radius sites between 1 January of the current year and the start of the last Event of the Championship. Any of these days may be substituted for four hours of wind]on full scale wind tunnel testing to be carried out in a single twenty four hour period.

[marcush.]

I just have the feeling some persons here are making up some new excuses why the team is underperforming. We have heard too many of these made up stories in the past and this time I want to intervene from the beginning on. They don’t need to shut down their tunnel for half a year to increase the model size by 10%. That’s the same BS as they told last year that they were focused on tire understanding and therefore did not develop the car. Where in fact aero development and understanding of tires is done by completely different departments of the team which have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

not completely ...in automotive development you gut the calculating people-those who actually run the simulations coming back to you with the colourful pictures..
So if you are working on modelling tyre behaviour it could well cost you some work force developping cfd tools as all this is multdisciplin simulations.

But agreed ..it should not stop all your activities.Even shutting down your tunnel for a few weeks does not equal having no upgrades.

Interestingly I read somewhere Brawn was stating the Super DRS a la lotus was a complex thing to get sorted and a bit much to tackle on Fridays FP1 -a full size aero testday straight line testing was what was required but they were not prepared to
commit to this yet.
So waiting for what? It´s just 5 races left - it does not make sense to me not to evaluate a potential performance gain when obviously you don´t have much time left to make use of ANY improvement you can find anyways..So in effect they save a few quid instead of trying to narrow the enormous gap that has developped in the last months..

[FoxHound]

Full size or 100% tunnels are outlawed for cost reasons. 60% tunnels are the maximum allowed.

no they are not

22.9 With the exception of the full scale testing permitted in 22.4(c)(iii) above, no wind tunnel testing may be carried out using a scale model which is greater than 60% of full size.

only using a scale model greater than 60% is banned.
you can still use a 60% model in a full scale wind tunnel

face it mercedes didnt upgrade a wind tunnel and thats not the reason theres been no developments the only thing they have changed is the scale of the model.

unless you really believe mercedes would rent there full scale tunnel to hrt and keep the half scale for there own use which makes no sense when one of the regulations is.

ii) Four one day aerodynamic tests carried out on FIA approved straight line or constant radius sites between 1 January of the current year and the start of the last Event of the Championship. Any of these days may be substituted for four hours of wind]on full scale wind tunnel testing to be carried out in a single twenty four hour period.

Semantics snoop.

I meant models. But thank you for the correction.

[mep]

Well, maybe double DRS is going to be banned next year and he already knows that. In that case I would understand when Mercedes is not interested in spending time with it. They can’t gain anything anymore from developing this year’s car.

BTW. A friend gave me a very interesting article about the "sacking" of Schumacher, I think it was Sport Bild. Did you read that article by any chance? Otherwise I might upload it here. It basically said that Dr. Z always planned to keep Schumacher just for 3 years to help promotion of the team. And that they hired Hamilton to please Khadem Abdulla Al Quabaisi who is administrator of Aabar, Daimler shareholder with 9,1% and Mercedes GP shareholder with 40% and a big Hamilton fan!
This failed this week as the news reported that he sold his Daimler shares. Schumacher must not have been aware of what was going on behind the scenes and let Dr.Z wait with the contract extension for 2013. Dr.Z was finally displeased by that and took Hamilton.

[Cocles]

The actual slow down in development due to the wind tunnel upgrade would have likely been between when Brawn announced they'd be focusing on tires in early April and when they announced the 60% upgrade. With the August break, that means four months, not six. Foxhound stated "4-6 months" and everyone locked onto the number six.

Even if it was only two or three months, the point remains that something happened with their development this season and the windtunnel upgrade is as likely a contributor to that as anything.

Keep in mind that in 2011, Mercedes' in season development was one of their strong suits. Lotus was the team having trouble and falling back. For all of its problems, the W02 maintained its gap with the RB7 throughout the season.

This year of course it's the opposite. Like I said, "something happened". Say what you want, but since the Mercedes take over, this has not been a team known for poor in season development.

So what is it?

Are they getting worse talent-wise? That doesn't seem logical, not with Costa, Willis, and now Elliot finally settling in. The reason then is more likely logistical. The wind tunnel upgrade would fall into that. --Is that the only reason? I don't think anyone here is saying that.

So why now?

They had no choice if they wanted 60% for developing the W04; they were running out of time. W03 development began in May 2011. Mercedes began "focusing on tires" in April of 2012. It fits and makes sense.

The conclusion...

Development of the W03 took a hit, so the W04 could be developed with a 60% windtunnel.

It's a good trade-off in the long run, but still obnoxious for us fans in the meantime.

[FoxHound]

When the flag drops the BS stops, so the saying goes. And I'm in full agreement the team have not performed to Mercedes standard. The expectations are enormous, and sadly they haven't hit targets.
But there is plenty of change happening, it's not going to take a week or 2. Sure 3 years have passed and we have seen no dramatic improvements, but I still see changes being made in the hope things turn around.

Year one was blamed on the wrong weight distribution, Mercedes saw no case for alarm as this was held as a valid reason. With the weight/mass distribution fixed in 2010 there was no way to prove otherwise. So forward they went on to the W02.

Year 2 was blamed on tyres, and a short wheel base that didnt suit the EBD concept. Mercedes had cause for concern given 2 years running, flaws hampered their cars. Bell and Willis recruited to stem the faults. Costa was available at the end of the year, and with big question marks over Bigois' ability, Costa could readily see and improve on what was being done.
Allied to this, a new simulator and more staff where recruited(some axed too), taking Mercedes up to the 550 allowable under RRA guidlines.

Year 3 was the W03, the culmination of Bigois low drag philosophy complete with DDRS. It proved competitive initially, but was still not the class of the field and suffered dramatic loss of form from Spain onwards. Again the car wasn't as good as it's target competition for Tyre usage and aerodynamically. With Bell, Willis and Costa present I feel they could then pinpoint exactly where problems where occurring. Actions where taken, Bigois out, John Owen moved to sideways positon of no real importance and the windtunnel was upgraded to handle 60% models.
What the W03 does now matters little, as Costa will have his own ideas.

Year 4 and I think everything appears in place for Mercedes to at least move forward. Progress is what needs to happen before they can start thinking of winning regularly. It could be a disaster, anything is possible. But I'll make a bet that Mercedes make an improvement on their 1 victory this year in 2013.

[SSS]

Costa,Willis & Bell have already failed & have proved Mercedes have 0 Future.

Bell was involved 100% with W03 & this was his baby. The Car was Slow.

Costa-Willis did 0. Willis is working from Oct last year year,Costa from Dec last year. Both of them should had an impact on W03 & should have made of good in-Season Development. That is what we were saying right????


W03 has completely failed in IN-Season Development with Costa-Willis-Bell(THE REJECTS TRIO).

If someone is so stupid that they on the middle of an F1 Title bid is stopping their in-season development for Updating a Tunnel & stopping all activities while it then he should be fired & that team has no place in F1. I refuse to believe Mercedes will be this un-professional as this is beyond stupid.

I think Brawn should be kicked out or the person who took the decision to stop all In-Season Development to understand Tyres while all teams were putting Huge Resources on Developement + Tyes, Brawn was chasing a mirage. Year after year there has been pathetic decisions from the management. Brawn has to take responsibility and quit.

[SSS]

Says who?? EBD was atleast worth 1.5-2s a lap with ease & nobody would debut a Coanda not optimised which can cause tyre wears for only 2 tenths gain at best. Coanda is a big test,reason why Merc & Lotus developed it through 1 FULL SEASON.

I am not the best in english neither a technicus but you are really full of IT.

1.5 seconds for EBD only, seriously?

Absolutely. Probably MUCH MORE. Look at the time difference of last year & now. Pirelli have all tyres,bad SS quicker around o.7-0.8s quicker & softer.

And all Q3 times are down around 1.5-2 second compare to last year.

Its obvious. EBD?? 0.5??? What a stupid assumption

[user001]

I think Brawn should be kicked out or the person who took the decision to stop all In-Season Development to understand Tyres while all teams were putting Huge Resources on Developement + Tyes, Brawn was chasing a mirage. Year after year there has been pathetic decisions from the management. Brawn has to take responsibility and quit.

Maybe Lauda is now there in position to be brawn's successor if next year will be the same?