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Now that downforce has essentially been diminished, there appears to be a greater emphasis on the mechanical setup of the cars. I wonder, what are things that teams can do on the mechanical side to either get greater race performance, or greater qualifying performance? Is this what is fine tuned over-night in preparation for qualifying? If so whichever team has the best capabilities in this regard would most likely have the fastest car, seeing as how aero has been somewhat "normalized".

godlameroso wrote:Now that downforce has essentially been diminished, there appears to be a greater emphasis on the mechanical setup of the cars. I wonder, what are things that teams can do on the mechanical side to either get greater race performance, or greater qualifying performance? Is this what is fine tuned over-night in preparation for qualifying? If so whichever team has the best capabilities in this regard would most likely have the fastest car, seeing as how aero has been somewhat "normalized".

Um,they can change anything on the mechanical side of the car which will give them the best results....

all teams agree that difference in lap time is 90%aero related..-see friday Fia pressconference. your mechanical setup direction is dominated by the needs of the aeropackage.
As for making the mechanical setup more biased towards race or qualy,the big difference is weight(fueload)/CofG and number of laps to be completed.Additionally your laptime may be better carrying more wing but your straightline speed may suffer substantially enough to make this a no go for the race.
As for setup -reducing weight transfer will should help keep the tyre alive and also keeping the tyre as much as possible in its preferred direction ...so trying to create temperature with scrub or to or camber will inevitably have downsides when it comes to durability/performance over longer stints.

I wouldn't necessarily say that downforce has been diminished, either; there's certainly not been a crippling reduction. The cars are still making up to about 5,000 lbs of downforce according to Charlie Whiting.

My point is that the lower downforce in general places a greater emphasis on the setup of the car, and other things need to be considered. Seeing as how Merc goes for all out quali at the expense of race pace, and Williams is on the other end of the spectrum. How much compromise can be made to have a setup that works well both in quali and the race?

godlameroso wrote:My point is that the lower downforce in general places a greater emphasis on the setup of the car, and other things need to be considered. Seeing as how Merc goes for all out quali at the expense of race pace, and Williams is on the other end of the spectrum. How much compromise can be made to have a setup that works well both in quali and the race?

Your question is too broad and unquantifiable. You want an answer that has no definite answer. This is why we have race engineers and tire engineers etc. There is a reason why there isnt any kind of perfect set-up as a general case, there are just too many variables. The teams that find the best set-up are usually the ones that win the race or are on the podium.

You will not get an exact answer to your question, there isn't one.