Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

[yener]

How much is the new exhaust worth when it should work? 0.2 sec? Don't tell me you will gain more, because last years EBD was around 0,5 sec a lap.

The problem of the MGP team is that they have a "lotery" approach. Every year they want to bring something which they hope will close the gap with the frontrunners. We all must admit that Brawn did a great job with that approach in 2009.
But thats having luck and you cant control luck. Especially 2011 and 2012 they really did gamble with their short wheelbase and this year with the DDRS. Most of the data of the 2011 season is useless for the w03 and the data of the w03 will be useless for next years car.

The windtunnel is not always "the" solution. Ferrari for instance told that the parts they have developed and tested in their windtunnel didnt work out well on the track so they didnt use that parts. (Fernando Alonso)

To be honest MGP came with a really good car at the start of the season. Everybody started to fear them and NR even won a race. But they just cant continue develop the car in the season. Everybody told Michael would win again this year they just had to figure somethings out. All BS.

I think Hamilton is going to regret his choice.

[FoxHound]

The windtunnel is not always "the" solution. Ferrari for instance told that the parts they have developed and tested in their windtunnel didnt work out well on the track so they didnt use that parts. (Fernando Alonso)

That was after the upgrade of their windtunnel. They found discrepancies, as with any windtunnel, initially it is a work in progress. Until you have ironed out issues, it will come up with flaws.
Once the flaws where ironed out, Ferrari have had a decent record with their aero upgrades.

But they just cant continue develop the car in the season. Everybody told Michael would win again this year they just had to figure somethings out. All BS..

Okay, I give you a team. This team has a very good base car, say like the W03. You have 2 major factors at play. Pirelli tyres, and the banning of EBD. Mercedes have a poor record with both.
So, it is inevitable they will lag behind the front running teams.

Why is this the case?

Find a reason.

Reason found.

My opinion is that this team have never really got to grapples with the aero side of things. There is a history of it, and the effect is magnified in the usage of its tyres....ie poor usage of the black stuff.
Now perhaps it took both Bell and Willis to point this out to Brawn, and Costa with his experience of the Ferrari wind tunnel will have intricate knowledge of this system.

He joins and adds his voice to the choir.

Brawn informs Mercedes who are on a high after China.

"look we need to upgrade the wind tunnel or we will be plagued by these issues annually."
Mercedes write the cheque and the W03 has gone into stasis.(frozen development).

Windtunnel upgrade took 4-6 months I'm reading and you can near enough plot a chart in the drop off MErcedes had with thier W03.

But, if it helps them over the next 7 years, and this team can then overcome its aero deficiency, which I feel translates into it's tyres then it will all be worth the sacrifice.

Had they maintained the course they set in 2010, Mercedes would be no better next year than 2011 or 2010. At the very least, it is evidence that the factory is changing it modus operandi and the influx of big names are now steering the team into being able to produce upgrades that work, and cars that dont have aero deficiencies that translate into poor tyre usage.
Apologies for the length of this, felt it required a full explanation my side.

[marcush.]

so you say it took Brawn to understand the Aero deficiencies over the past 6 years with Bigois ,Zander,Eckeleart,Clea retc etc?
And plus :They had the biggest ever aeroprogramme running in 2007/8 with all stops pulled out 3 or more tunnels running at the same time ..I´d think they should have a quite good understanding of their equipment .
Willis coming back to the team he had be a key member when the current tunnel was commisioned..
It may well be that some people got a blurred view inside MGP...

[SSS]

How much is the new exhaust worth when it should work? 0.2 sec? Don't tell me you will gain more, because last years EBD was around 0,5 sec a lap.

The problem of the MGP team is that they have a "lotery" approach. Every year they want to bring something which they hope will close the gap with the frontrunners. We all must admit that Brawn did a great job with that approach in 2009.
But thats having luck and you cant control luck. Especially 2011 and 2012 they really did gamble with their short wheelbase and this year with the DDRS. Most of the data of the 2011 season is useless for the w03 and the data of the w03 will be useless for next years car.

The windtunnel is not always "the" solution. Ferrari for instance told that the parts they have developed and tested in their windtunnel didnt work out well on the track so they didnt use that parts. (Fernando Alonso)

To be honest MGP came with a really good car at the start of the season. Everybody started to fear them and NR even won a race. But they just cant continue develop the car in the season. Everybody told Michael would win again this year they just had to figure somethings out. All BS.

I think Hamilton is going to regret his choice.

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.

It's 5-6 tenths maybe for an optimisez one like Mclaren & 3-4 tenths for a poor one like Mercedes. But there has been Massive In-season Development. How much did RBR's DDRS give them??3-4 tenths?? RBR have Big Brake Duct Developments,Side Pod Developments, Front Wings & a range of updates. The cars have got MUCH MUCH quicker. Mercedes GP which seemed to have good traction in Monaco-Valencia now seems to have poor traction.

In general I think with a range of developments cars have atleast got 1-1.5 or 1.5-2 seconds quicker while Mercedes have made minor improvements,like say 0.5-0.7s at best so they s*** now. They could not keep up with the Massive Development race & had lik 1 Big Upgrade every 5-6 races while Top Teams Bought Big Upgrades every 2-3 Races & had small bits in almost every race.

[SSS]

The windtunnel is not always "the" solution. Ferrari for instance told that the parts they have developed and tested in their windtunnel didnt work out well on the track so they didnt use that parts. (Fernando Alonso)

That was after the upgrade of their windtunnel. They found discrepancies, as with any windtunnel, initially it is a work in progress. Until you have ironed out issues, it will come up with flaws.
Once the flaws where ironed out, Ferrari have had a decent record with their aero upgrades.

But they just cant continue develop the car in the season. Everybody told Michael would win again this year they just had to figure somethings out. All BS..

Okay, I give you a team. This team has a very good base car, say like the W03. You have 2 major factors at play. Pirelli tyres, and the banning of EBD. Mercedes have a poor record with both.
So, it is inevitable they will lag behind the front running teams.

Why is this the case?

Find a reason.

Reason found.

My opinion is that this team have never really got to grapples with the aero side of things. There is a history of it, and the effect is magnified in the usage of its tyres....ie poor usage of the black stuff.
Now perhaps it took both Bell and Willis to point this out to Brawn, and Costa with his experience of the Ferrari wind tunnel will have intricate knowledge of this system.

He joins and adds his voice to the choir.

Brawn informs Mercedes who are on a high after China.

"look we need to upgrade the wind tunnel or we will be plagued by these issues annually."
Mercedes write the cheque and the W03 has gone into stasis.(frozen development).

Windtunnel upgrade took 4-6 months I'm reading and you can near enough plot a chart in the drop off MErcedes had with thier W03.

But, if it helps them over the next 7 years, and this team can then overcome its aero deficiency, which I feel translates into it's tyres then it will all be worth the sacrifice.

Had they maintained the course they set in 2010, Mercedes would be no better next year than 2011 or 2010. At the very least, it is evidence that the factory is changing it modus operandi and the influx of big names are now steering the team into being able to produce upgrades that work, and cars that dont have aero deficiencies that translate into poor tyre usage.
Apologies for the length of this, felt it required a full explanation my side.

This is all rubbish. WO3 is worse than W02 which is worse than W01.

W02 had a Very Poor EBD while all guys had a Brilliant EBD. Also it was fat & had a SWB & chewed its tyres. SO by natural law,it should gain quite a bit. EBD taken away from RBR/Mclaren & no Major compromise between Qualy-Race meant that the team would automatically gain 6-7 tenths at the very least to 1s. W02 trailled top cars by 1s.

So this year they should be on par. Add to it they gain 3-4 tenths via DRS they should have been getting P1 qualy after qualy & should have been fighting for the victory.

This year even Williams have won & Sauber would have if Perez would have been calm.

The car has become worse & the team is sinking every year. Next year Toro Rosso might even beat Mercedes.

[FoxHound]

so you say it took Brawn to understand the Aero deficiencies over the past 6 years with Bigois ,Zander,Eckeleart,Clea retc etc?.

Where are these people now?

And plus :They had the biggest ever aeroprogramme running in 2007/8 with all stops pulled out 3 or more tunnels running at the same time

Why the 50% tunnel then? And you know the rules Marcush, only 1 windtunnel may be used per season.
The way you have written the above seems to suggest they have the mother of all windtunnels, and we know this is very far from the case.
All the top teams have a 60% wind tunnel, and they can all produce working upgrades in 1-2 GP. Mercedes had a 50% windtunnel and have a poor ratio of success with upgrades. Why not change it, take the hit at the earliest possible opportunity, and match the guys upfront?
Costa coming in from Ferrari is a god send in my view, because he knows exactly how to determine the figures from the wind tunnel. He knew what worked at Ferrari, and he can also see what isnt working at Mercedes now.
He may not be a genius like Newey, but he is competant. And he would see within a few weeks of aero work what would be needed to match the big boys.
Bottom line here, Mercedes bit the bullet and changed where we know they are lagging....aerodynamics. It may not be the magic bullet Mercedes have bitten, but at least that one less excuse for anyone to hide behind

[marcush.]

Mercedes got two tunnels .
Their old tunnel is now rented to HRT the new one is a state of the art item and was put into service already in 2007.So in effect it is together with the Toyota facility the newest in formula 1.

Maybe there are problems with correlation-but look around :all teams moan about correlation sissues - especially with modelling the exhaust situation-
No wonder -you will add huge amounts of hot air into the system when adding a realistic hot air supply to the exhaust model.This will put an immense load on the AC unit that has to try and cool down the air before reantering the test section without introducing too many losses...So in effect you either get into a control issue or your runs are influenced by rising ambient air temps...as a constant air temperature is one of the cornerstones to obtain reliable data you may be forced to put correction factors and there you might already face the problems of when which temperature was to be applied to your force measurement ´which is a highly dynamic thing going on...more calibration needed.
When looking for improvements in a microscopic level + having to scale it as well due to model size it´s rather obvious things can easily slip away from you .
Nobody said this was easy .But they claim to be the best .They just have to be the best .....but it seems they are happy to fool themselves until next weekend for another reality check -the main differnce to the automotive world- there is no real
gage of performance -somehow things finally end with going into production and the customer has top live with the results.

[FoxHound]

I know they have 2 tunnels, but what use are 2 tunnels when you can only use 1?

And what is the infatuation with this being a new windtunnel? Lotus have a newer tunnel.
Point is this was a 50% windtunnel that has now been upgraded to 60%.

Do you a) agree that this is a good thing and b) agree that the upgrade took time to implement?

If you do, and I suspect you do... .....then you know why the W03 hasnt been upgraded as well as it could have been.
No wind tunnel, and you rely solely on CFD. To go ahead and push through a Coanda exhaust with just CFD you need to be either stupid or very brave.
The W03 is showing the exact symptoms of what you would expect a car to have with circa 4-6 months lack of a wind tunnel.
I was surprised as anyone when Mercedes turned round a month or so ago and said, "we now have a 60% windtunnel".

They hid behind the "understanding tyres" PR spiel, we all accepted that.

It could pay dividends for them next year and in 2014.

[snoop1050]

wait so lets get this right.

mercedes rented out there state of the art full scale wind tunnel built in 2007 to HRT.

kept the old half scale anient wind tunnel for themselves and just upgraded it to 60%?

makes no sense

the odds are the only thing that changed from 50% to 60% is the actual model they use which isnt really alot of work is it.

surely they have always been using the full size wind tunnel

[FoxHound]

the odds are the only thing that changed from 50% to 60% is the actual model they use which isnt really alot of work is it.l

Ok so how much work is it exactly?

surely they have always been using the full size wind tunnel

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

[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.

[SSS]

so you say it took Brawn to understand the Aero deficiencies over the past 6 years with Bigois ,Zander,Eckeleart,Clea retc etc?.

Where are these people now?

And plus :They had the biggest ever aeroprogramme running in 2007/8 with all stops pulled out 3 or more tunnels running at the same time

Why the 50% tunnel then? And you know the rules Marcush, only 1 windtunnel may be used per season.
The way you have written the above seems to suggest they have the mother of all windtunnels, and we know this is very far from the case.
All the top teams have a 60% wind tunnel, and they can all produce working upgrades in 1-2 GP. Mercedes had a 50% windtunnel and have a poor ratio of success with upgrades. Why not change it, take the hit at the earliest possible opportunity, and match the guys upfront?
Costa coming in from Ferrari is a god send in my view, because he knows exactly how to determine the figures from the wind tunnel. He knew what worked at Ferrari, and he can also see what isnt working at Mercedes now.
He may not be a genius like Newey, but he is competant. And he would see within a few weeks of aero work what would be needed to match the big boys.
Bottom line here, Mercedes bit the bullet and changed where we know they are lagging....aerodynamics. It may not be the magic bullet Mercedes have bitten, but at least that one less excuse for anyone to hide behind

[...] Lotus were updating their 50% model to 60% and produced a great car & developed it really well.

Ferrari have a POOR Wind-Tunnel which they have apparently shut. They had a disaster of a car to start with. So I doubt Costa is bringing Massive Windtunnel knowledge unknown to Mercedes. None the less if Ferrari with their poor windtunnel that they have stopped using can DEVELOP a crap car to beat Mercedes time & again every race then that shows how piss poor Mercedes are.

Given Marussia's having no KERS, a Poor Cosworth engine having bad HP,no driveability & gulfs fuel & is difficult to package I cant 100% say that if they were given half of Mercedes' resource they will beat Mercedes 10 out of 10 times. Look at Marussia's car & its improvement from last year.

If you compare the basic car structure of Mercedes & Marussia then you dont see any major downside for Marussia.

[yener]

But they just cant continue develop the car in the season. Everybody told Michael would win again this year they just had to figure somethings out. All BS..

Okay, I give you a team. This team has a very good base car, say like the W03. You have 2 major factors at play. Pirelli tyres, and the banning of EBD. Mercedes have a poor record with both.
So, it is inevitable they will lag behind the front running teams.

Why is this the case?

Find a reason.

Reason found.

My opinion is that this team have never really got to grapples with the aero side of things. There is a history of it, and the effect is magnified in the usage of its tyres....ie poor usage of the black stuff.
Now perhaps it took both Bell and Willis to point this out to Brawn, and Costa with his experience of the Ferrari wind tunnel will have intricate knowledge of this system.

He joins and adds his voice to the choir.

Brawn informs Mercedes who are on a high after China.

"look we need to upgrade the wind tunnel or we will be plagued by these issues annually."
Mercedes write the cheque and the W03 has gone into stasis.(frozen development).

Windtunnel upgrade took 4-6 months I'm reading and you can near enough plot a chart in the drop off MErcedes had with thier W03.

But, if it helps them over the next 7 years, and this team can then overcome its aero deficiency, which I feel translates into it's tyres then it will all be worth the sacrifice.

Had they maintained the course they set in 2010, Mercedes would be no better next year than 2011 or 2010. At the very least, it is evidence that the factory is changing it modus operandi and the influx of big names are now steering the team into being able to produce upgrades that work, and cars that dont have aero deficiencies that translate into poor tyre usage.
Apologies for the length of this, felt it required a full explanation my side.

With all respect but common! Do you really think they need a first win to convince the top of Daimler? Dont you think that at least Norbert Haug knows how the game goes and they already knew that it was a priority?

What MGP is doing year in year out: they are building a sandcastle, 3 hours later they see that other kids on the beach made a way higher and bigger one. While MGP ruines the sandcastle the other kids keep building on their wich is increasing in size.

That's what happening. They can ask for more or maybe better sand but you wont reach anything.

The only thing the w03 has in common with the w02 is (almost) the same front wing and their tyre issues.

Correct me if im wrong

[FoxHound]

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....

[yener]

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?