zoroastar wrote: ↑23 Mar 2023, 09:59
anybody that thinks the rb19 is more dominant than the 2014 &15 merc,( after only 2 races) clearly didnt watch f1 in 2014 &15. or are so enamored with lewis that they refuse to believe that he could be wrong. hes clearly talking about cars that he has raced AGAINST, and doesnt have a clue what it was like for every other driver besides him and rosberg. welcome to reality lewis, looks like your endless string of luck has finally run out. : o
I will agree that the rb19 is a more complete package. the mercs were the only team that really understood the turbo hybrids from the start. hard to say what the redbull would have done with that PU in the back.
Very true. Good comments there.
Honestly, I think Merc was turning their engine down back then — meaning, their advantage was much larger than the public ever realized. There have been some good arguments over the years to support this idea and a lot of them are lost in the thousands of pages of endless threads here. Merc had such advantage, they only used enough to ensure winning. In fact, I remember in an interview with Lewis shortly after it was realized how much advantage they had in the W05, and he kinda smirked in the interview when asked about their engine, and said they not only were indeed most powerful, but had more engine updates coming. Nobody could believe this was possible because they were so much faster with such a huge engine advantage, but Merc did in fact bring more speed week after week that whole first and second years of the engine rule changes. Untouchable. Had they lit the wick entirely, they would have been crippled by the FIA in some way to keep the sport from becoming embarrassingly lopsided (tho it already was imo), and uninteresting to anyone but fans of Merc and their drivers. I was a Schumacher fan so I knew how great it was to have a favorite driver untouchable, and how much you don’t care what others think about it.
I don’t see that kind former Merc level of overwhelming power/dominance in the RB. AM is really right there, they simply have a top speed/drag issue, but they claim the design is so good, they have huge developments in the pipeline building on their concept that address their drag, and they have something like 40% more wind tunnel time this year due to their finishing position last year. Those updates and time in the wind tunnel will result in some serious speed to be found, and imo, more than RB will find, but I may be wrong in that idea. Just my gut after watching this circus for far to long. Lol
Imo, RB have simply mastered this aero reg, and are reaping the rewards for the first half of the season. But AM, Ferrari, and possibly Merc, should be much more challenging by mid season. There was no hope of that in 2014 and on for years after. That won’t be the case with his aero set much like when Macca developed the coanda effect and RB found a way to beat them at their own game. There will be some of that since it’s a lot easier to see aero updates that work than engine updates.
I’ve read the theory on this very website actually, that Newey, because he spent so much time on his Aston Martin pet project the Valkyrie — which was based on Bernoulli effect — had a massive advantage of understanding this phenomena going into the new aero regs. Similarly, Merc had a massive advantage of all their worldwide R&D working with turbos long before the engine formulae was changed that fateful year of 2014. Practically speaking, and on that point, I don’t think one or two clever engineers at RB can compare or match the empire and brain trust that drove and motivated the W05-... efforts considering the additional engine advantage they held back until needed, and the hopelessness of other teams catching them anytime soon. I don’t see that kind of dominance in the RB this year or next to come.
I don’t think RB can turn it on or off like one could with an engine mode. Tho it is rumored, and some graphs here on this thread render, that RB have a bit of advantage harvesting at the top end speed that other teams don’t share atp.
Watching F1 since 1986.
