f1316 wrote: ↑Thu May 04, 2017 11:11 am
So I think Mercedes are still favourites. However we have no idea what anyone's bringing; who knows, maybe the preseason rumours are true and Ferrari really will bring a long wheelbase car! I doubt it but fascinating to find out.
I think it would be suicidal to go the Long wheelbase way for Ferrari. The very reason (as much as I have read and understood) why Mercedes wanted to go the Long wheelbase for W08 is, that architecture offers more downforce. They seems to have been struggling, because after successfully delivering beasts for 3 years, they changed their philosophy and somewhere, some correlation is missing between the older spec of wheel base and newer one. The way their rear is dancing, coming out of faster corner, I feel they haven't managed to get what they wanted from longer wheel base.
Whereas Ferrari, seems to be having great handle on their downforce levels and the mechanical grip. So far, Ferrari seems be the better balanced car than W08. Mercedes is still depending upon PU power to propel them and recover whatever time they are losing with the relative bad balance. Changing to Longer wheelbase means, changing the Wind Tunnel and CFD models and go through the same exercise that Mercedes has gone through in terms of changing the correlation between two different models and exactly extrapolate the overall car's performance metrics from older to newer model. If they miss a few things, the way Mercedes seems to have missed, they go backwards as they do not have the same PU power advantage, while Mercedes might move forward with bringing solutions to their problems. There might build up a gulf between the two. So far, they have collected a lot of real time data with the current car and if they have to take that data and put it on the Longer wheelbase design, then obviously they have to do a lot of extrapolation and that to me, could be a challenge.
May be because Ferrari were not confident until last year that they can either match or surpass the Mercedes with the regulation changes, they most likely have taken two different approaches of short and long wheelbases. Now that they are on the right track, it should be wise to move in the right direction, than to go in a direction of which they have no idea, except for virtual numbers from their simulations. I wouldn't be surprised if we never see the longer wheel base on Ferrari.