What sort of disadvantages do customer teams face that factory teams do not?

[aaqilrr]

I want to know if Mercedes designs their PU around their car and leaves Customer teamd like Mclaren design their car around the PU? So will this put Mclarens Aero not upto par with the Mercedes?
Are customers really affected by this?

[Stu]

I think that is a great question, and one that deserves to be rolled out to include all engine manufacturers.

[_cerber1]

I believe that the motor manufacturer certainly has some advantage over its customers, but I cannot call it decisive. We saw perfectly how the same McLaren was faster with Renault engines in 2019 and 2020 than the factory team. With equal budgets and resources, it is possible to neutralize the advantage of the factory team by successful finds in the chassis.

[TimW]

I think it is not only packaging but also how they are operating their engines.
Last year Mercedes was clearly running their engines differently that their customers. IIRC Hamilton used 5 ICEs and Bottas 7, whereas all customer teams used 4. It seemed very much that Mercedes were running their ICE at higher output at cost of reliability, and that that option was not available to their customers.
Imagine if the championship fight would have been between McLaren and Mercedes. The controversy would have been huge.

Also customers are not the first in line when changing engines. Aston Martin could not replace Vettel's engine in the race they wanted (https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/for ... -mercedes/). In the mean time Mercedes gave Bottas a 5th unit for tactical reasons (https://www.gpfans.com/en/f1-news/70168 ... or-bottas/)

[bosyber]

I think it is not only packaging but also how they are operating their engines.
Last year Mercedes was clearly running their engines differently that their customers. IIRC Hamilton used 5 ICEs and Bottas 7, whereas all customer teams used 4. It seemed very much that Mercedes were running their ICE at higher output at cost of reliability, and that that option was not available to their customers.
Imagine if the championship fight would have been between McLaren and Mercedes. The controversy would have been huge.

Also customers are not the first in line when changing engines. Aston Martin could not replace Vettel's engine in the race they wanted (https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/for ... -mercedes/). In the mean time Mercedes gave Bottas a 5th unit for tactical reasons (https://www.gpfans.com/en/f1-news/70168 ... or-bottas/)

But the thing is, we do not know whether customers even wanted/asked that option (and the regulations do seem to say that if asked, it should be allowed), as it would mean more costs and penalties. For Mercedes, with their car that could use that PU to get through the field, and needing wins for Hamilton to fight the WDC the calculation on that is quite different than for a customer in a tight fight with several other teams for smaller amounts of points, for who the chances of overcoming the penalty of putting it are lower, and moreover, harder to predict.

I do think that Mercedes has to be glad no one asked, bc. they probably didn't have capacity, or much intent/will to supply that modified PU to customers, but if one of them was in a direct fight for the WDC and WCC say this year, they'd probably have to take that into account, as that direct competitor as well as the FIA would probably not take a no for a legitimate answer.

[Jolle]

My guess is time and millimeters.
For a works team, especially since Mercedes upped the antics, they are designed more or less together, with compromises in both areas and a single design philosophy. Same goes for suspension and aero. Customer teams alway have to wait what they will get so are always a few months behind. Then they have to design a car with the compromises and design philosophy the works team made. These are of course small, but F1 is about very small things.

[bosyber]

My guess is time and millimeters.
For a works team, especially since Mercedes upped the antics, they are designed more or less together, with compromises in both areas and a single design philosophy. Same goes for suspension and aero. Customer teams alway have to wait what they will get so are always a few months behind. Then they have to design a car with the compromises and design philosophy the works team made. These are of course small, but F1 is about very small things.

Yep. that's likely the bulk of the disadvantage, though it also translates in an argument from the manufacturer that they can run higher modes more/longer because their cooling is optimally suited to that, while the customers might luck into a better set up, but can hardly design for it.

[Ryar]

My guess is time and millimeters.
For a works team, especially since Mercedes upped the antics, they are designed more or less together, with compromises in both areas and a single design philosophy. Same goes for suspension and aero. Customer teams alway have to wait what they will get so are always a few months behind. Then they have to design a car with the compromises and design philosophy the works team made. These are of course small, but F1 is about very small things.

Yep. that's likely the bulk of the disadvantage, though it also translates in an argument from the manufacturer that they can run higher modes more/longer because their cooling is optimally suited to that, while the customers might luck into a better set up, but can hardly design for it.

The cooling excuse would be very poor. Customers would be provided detailed requirements of the cooling needs for customers to build their own solutions. Customers then build cooling solution inline with it. Customers can have their own innovative cooling solutions, might even be in partnership with 3rd parties if they desire, which might be better than that of manufacturers. Once the manufacturer provides details of cooling required for the engine to be run to its most aggressive, it can't be overruled that customers cannot meet it, hence manufacturers can run more aggressively as they have the cooling necessary. Other than the point Jolle made, I am sure there other things that manufacturers hold back from sharing with customers. FIA should certainly look more deeper to ensure customers aren't being handicapped.

[mcdenife]

The manufacturer teams design their cars/engine as one, ie the car is built for the engine or vice versa. The customer teams are given specs/dimensions etc to build to, eg mating points for gearboxes, suspension & sundary etc, and cooling requirements (the 'what' not the 'how' or 'where'), all of which impact the aero design. So it is inevitable that, short of giving customer teams a physical engine at the start of the design process to build to or around, they will be always be at a disadvantage. There is a reason it has been said customer teams cannot win (ie versus factory team using the same engine unless the engine was built specifically that customers car). The manufacturers dont need to hold anything back and I doubt they do. With regards to the number of engines used, I think the customers pay a set amount for a specific number of engines per season and will therefore have to pay extra for any additional engines over that, depending on the reasons the additional engines are required.So it stands to reason that for cost reasons, customer teams are less likely to want to use additional engines outside their allocation. They are not limited by what the manufacturer can supply them but by what they can afford (and penalties of course)....unless they are in a championship fight.

[basti313]

My guess is time and millimeters.
For a works team, especially since Mercedes upped the antics, they are designed more or less together, with compromises in both areas and a single design philosophy. Same goes for suspension and aero. Customer teams alway have to wait what they will get so are always a few months behind. Then they have to design a car with the compromises and design philosophy the works team made. These are of course small, but F1 is about very small things.

Yep. that's likely the bulk of the disadvantage, though it also translates in an argument from the manufacturer that they can run higher modes more/longer because their cooling is optimally suited to that, while the customers might luck into a better set up, but can hardly design for it.

The cooling excuse would be very poor. Customers would be provided detailed requirements of the cooling needs for customers to build their own solutions. Customers then build cooling solution inline with it. Customers can have their own innovative cooling solutions, might even be in partnership with 3rd parties if they desire, which might be better than that of manufacturers. Once the manufacturer provides details of cooling required for the engine to be run to its most aggressive, it can't be overruled that customers cannot meet it, hence manufacturers can run more aggressively as they have the cooling necessary. Other than the point Jolle made, I am sure there other things that manufacturers hold back from sharing with customers. FIA should certainly look more deeper to ensure customers aren't being handicapped.

In theory this is correct. But in reality it hits a border in aero philosophy and the number of different cooling circuits. While the works team can find the best compromise between their aero idea and the cooling of the engine, especially between the different circuits, the customer team needs to take the cooling as a given.
So the customer team could never decide for example to run the battery harder when they see the aero concept would have a bit more cooling from the roll hoop available without big drawbacks as long as the aero concept of the works team does not have the same.

There are 9 coolers that need to be integrated into the cooling concept in regard how you guide the air over and through the car. The only chance for a customer team is to copy this as good as possible from the works team...does someone still remember the pink Mercedes? In my point of view the big performance jump was not just some aero copy from a year ago, but extracting everything from the mighty engine.

This was the core idea of this engine concept by Ferrari. The high number of cooling circuits is just there because Ferrari wanted to make it impossible for customer teams (RB and McL who have beaten them for years) to be on par.

[Just_a_fan]

I think that is a great question, and one that deserves to be rolled out to include all engine manufacturers.

Indeed so, and it would be good if the thread was renamed accordingly.

As for the general point about customer teams, all customer teams are limited by the supplier. If they don't like it, they can build their own parts, be that ICE or any other component.

[Stu]

I think that is a great question, and one that deserves to be rolled out to include all engine manufacturers.

Indeed so, and it would be good if the thread was renamed accordingly.

As for the general point about customer teams, all customer teams are limited by the supplier. If they don't like it, they can build their own parts, be that ICE or any other component.

Renamed…

As with most manufacturing it becomes a cost/benefit thing, but I’m not sure that I would want to be limited by supplier parts if I had a ‘big idea’ that I wanted to explore.

[Just_a_fan]

As with most manufacturing it becomes a cost/benefit thing, but I’m not sure that I would want to be limited by supplier parts if I had a ‘big idea’ that I wanted to explore.

I guess the issue with engines is that they are ridiculously expensive to develop. Yes, we all know the basics, but making a competitive ICE is non-trivial. The simple reality is that those that make the investment can reap the rewards therefrom. That's just 101 stuff.

Could Williams or McLaren develop a competitive F1 ICE? No. They just can't. McLaren's road cars all use bought in ICE technology, after all. So they have to buy in the kit and abide by the restrictions imposed on them by the ICE supplier.

The important difference between the Mercedes PU deals and those from Ferrari and Honda/Redbull, is that the Mercedes customer teams can compete. The Ferrari and Red Bull customer teams aren't really customer teams, they're subsidiary teams. Red Bull owns Alpha Tauri. AT can never truly compete with Red Bull. Williams or AM can compete with Mercedes if they get the rest of the car right.

Much is made of the PU deals made by Mercedes, but the reality is that they represent the least impediment to competition out of any of the PU deals. Yes, Mercedes give them guidelines about maps and reliability constraints, but the teams can go mad with the ICE if they're happy to pay for the replacement.

[DragonSGC]

With the upcoming engine freeze could customer teams designing their 2023 cars have a far more synergistic design with chassis and engine because the volume (and inherent shape/s) the PU has will not be changing so the advantage that the PU works team has is no longer as large?