Is the W14 really that bad?

[Sevach]

If you compare what Merc has done the last few years yes its a bad car to their standards

Would the likes of Mclaren ,williams ,alfa etc be happy if their car performed like the w14 I'm sure they would consider the car a huge success

It's Mercedes that have set the ground for journalistic and social media review.

Haven't they labelled it their worst car, called it a "shitbox" TW, "glad I never have to drive that again" " won't be asking to keep that one" LH.
Added to which they say they need to get back to the front where they know they belong, or words to that effect.

They've layed the foundation, of course it's going to be discussed on that basis. Naive to think otherwise.

Agreed Mercedes themselves set this impossible standard, after Bahrain their "we are sorry" letter, "worst day of Mercedes-AMG" by Toto... they set people up to refer to this car as a complete failure.

While if you set reasonable standards... the Ferrari SF21 was regarded as good improvement, Ferrari getting back on track... it won 0 races, set 2 poles and finished a distant 3rd.

[Cs98]

If you compare what Merc has done the last few years yes its a bad car to their standards

Would the likes of Mclaren ,williams ,alfa etc be happy if their car performed like the w14 I'm sure they would consider the car a huge success

It's Mercedes that have set the ground for journalistic and social media review.

Haven't they labelled it their worst car, called it a "shitbox" TW, "glad I never have to drive that again" " won't be asking to keep that one" LH.
Added to which they say they need to get back to the front where they know they belong, or words to that effect.

They've layed the foundation, of course it's going to be discussed on that basis. Naive to think otherwise.

Agreed Mercedes themselves set this impossible standard, after Bahrain their "we are sorry" letter, "worst day of Mercedes-AMG" by Toto... they set people up to refer to this car as a complete failure.

While if you set reasonable standards... the Ferrari SF21 was regarded as good improvement, Ferrari getting back on track... it won 0 races, set 2 poles and finished a distant 3rd.

Merc made the decent W13 out to be the SF1000. So where do you go from there when the next car isn't better?

Merc has always underplayed their hand. I thought that was just due to their winning ways and wanting to maintain that underdog mentality. But now that they are a real underdog and still pretending they are worse than what they are I'm starting to think it's pathological.

[AR3-GP]

I agree that in absolute terms it’s the 2nd-4th best car in the last two years.

However Mercedes has been the main driver of all of the hyperbole. Last year as some noted, Toto called it a ****box. Hamilton said he never wanted to drive it again. This season Toto said Bahrain was one of Merc’s worst days in racing history….Mercedes wrote an apology letter to its fans! Publicized crisis meetings…Talking about throwing away concepts.

This perceptions is very much held by Mercedes. It is not one that observers invented. Ultimately it comes down to expectation vs Reality. Mercedes is one of the only teams who expected there car to battle the RB19. To miss the mark suggest there are big deficiencies compared to their own expectation.

The W14 is the best Mclaren beater they could have built, but it’s also the worst Red Bull beater they could have built. Mercedes have taken the latter position.

[ValeVida46]

However Mercedes has been the main driver of all of the hyperbole. Last year as some noted, Toto called it a ****box.

That was off the cuff radio message. It's relative, and needs contextualising.
It was made in Baku. With Hamilton 1.7 seconds off Pole and finishing over 1m10 seconds behind.
Lewis said it was as good as he could do given the level of porpoising and Toto made the consolation comment.

This season Toto said Bahrain was one of Merc’s worst days in racing history

They missed pretty high expectations. The alternate would be to set expectations of 2nd or 3rd....so they're obviously disappointed it isn't challenging for wins.

Mercedes wrote an apology letter to its fans!

Not the first team to do so, and certainly not the last.

Publicized crisis meetings

Or they can pretend it'll be ok, which I'd have way more issue with.

Hamilton said he never wanted to drive it again.

Yes, it was literally crushing his back. Again, contextualising the comment is helpful because it means more than just it being slower.

Talking about throwing away concepts.

They stood by their concept despite the media and the fans insisting they throw it away. We literally have over 50 pages of zeropod-ology here to prove that.
The moment they decide to pursue other ideas, it's contentious.

Damned if they do, damned if they dont...

[AR3-GP]

Damned if they do, damned if they dont...

1) Admirable effort to preserve the quote trees

Not the first team to do so, and certainly not the last.

That may be true, but my point was that Mercedes themselves sensationalized the "poorness" of the W14. Would you disagree then and that they instead, downplayed the struggle?

They missed pretty high expectations. The alternate would be to set expectations of 2nd or 3rd....so they're obviously disappointed it isn't challenging for wins.

Which only justifies how poor Mercedes feel the W14 is. Would you agree or disagree?

Yes, it was literally crushing his back. Again, contextualising the comment is helpful because it means more than just it being slower.

The Merc stopped porpoising after Spain. This was only 5 races into the season. There were 16-17 other races. Hamilton just hated the car from start to finish.

[Chuckjr]

Really insightful statements AR3-GP. Thank you. I personally did not realize how much negativity towards the car has been instigated by Merc themselves, but there it is.

I remember Russell saying that because of his win last year, the team/engineers believed it was a design to stay with and continue to develop. That statement is still mind boggling to me.

Surely, surely Merc knew and fully understood that Ferrari and RB had stopped development of their cars many races before that win, so any gains Merc made were by comparison, synthetic.

In fact, I remember posting Merc should abandon the turd pod design mid season last year when all the other sharp enders were onto their 2023 cars. That idea was met with some negativity here. lol. At least Merc could have started on something that fundamentally was more sound and not so exotic/extreme in its aero concept. Anyway, the win really meant nothing in terms of comparison because they basically beat abandoned designs. So why on earth use that late win as a reason to keep going with it??

It really must be a pride/ego thing because it certainly could not have been a decision made from logical conclusions — even people in this forum knew the turd pod concept couldn’t be polished, and therefore was never going to catch the RB before the next reg changes. Merc’s only hope was to change completely over mid-season last year. They are too far behind now to do anything but radical changes in hopes it’s enough to catch up the time that has been lost. That’s a tall order me thinks.

[organic]

AMR's relative success in going down the RB route and abandoning their dead-end concept immediately makes Merc's fumbling with their zeropod concept look like a worse decision than it is.

Reality is that RB are ~1s ahead of the competition already and are claiming not to have focused on the RB19 much; how successful are you going to be in catching up to them with the same concept as them? Historically we can conclude it is very unlikely that there will be championship success from doing so now...

I don't think that it's as much of a no brainer as it is; sticking with their design in the hope they would find more potential is the only way Merc would return to the very top in the next few years.
It seems they've already found out now that this untapped potential is unlikely to be there. If it was there, then it'd eventually look like a good decision, but with still a period of turmoil now and we'd be none-the-wiser apart from different sounds from the mercedes camp

My point is that we can judge them harshly now for taking the risk in hindsight, but it might still have been the best move at the time

It is 3rd/4th fastest but that isn't much worse than last year; that isn't a big loss compared to the possible gains of finding their car could outdevelop RB. Abandoning the concept at end of 2022 would've meant never finding out if zeropods could have outdeveloped RB and you gain what? Only a few months in 'catching up' time and the likelihood of still never beating RB in the same set of regs

They played a risky game and lost, but sometimes you have to in F1

[JordanMugen]

That may be true, but my point was that Mercedes themselves sensationalized the "poorness" of the W14.

They have, yet it's really a solid upper midfield car. The kind of car which BAR typically produced. I think Mercedes will eventually come to the acceptance stage of a being an upper midfield team -- perhaps with a long term plan to return to the front, much as Red Bull did from 2014 to 2020.

[ChrisF1]

That may be true, but my point was that Mercedes themselves sensationalized the "poorness" of the W14.

They have, yet it's really a solid upper midfield car. The kind of car which BAR typically produced. I think Mercedes will eventually come to the acceptance stage of a being an upper midfield team -- perhaps with a long term plan to return to the front, much as Red Bull did from 2014 to 2020.

Axtually this is a really interesting point.

Other than a Double Diffuser in 2009, and the untouchable PU era from 2014-2020, they've been in a very similar place since 2004. Solid upper midfield or best of the rest, and capable of race wins in the right circumstances (06, 12, 13).

Why am I not surprised that their good seasons are due to Ross Brawn's decision-making, and are as soon as we've seen a dramatic rule change they're lost without him.

It's almost like Toto is being shown up to being a glorified babysitter, and even then he needed to one of the kids to leave the house to keep the other one happy.

[Ozan]

we(f1 fans) tried to run away from mass-aero-dependant cars as much as we can, like transitioning from 2008 to 2009 cars, 2018-2019-2020 cars which lacked front wing deflector-stuff, rear floor stuff that were in front of the tires etc. (some terms I don't know exactly) and when overtaking working group came up with the latest car design(f1 basic 2022 car) I thought now we can see nearly-equal cars because the engines are now nearly equal, we have less aero dependant car,more of a ground effect car that can be done by every team but we failed again.like 2010-2013 era where redbull excelled at aero designing-perfecting the car, they did it again in 2022 and 2023. the car seals the side of the rear tires again, they have a very balanced car front to rear, and like they did it back in 2010-2013 years where they had some kind of tunnels in front of the rear tire, they did it again with this year's car.(check the aero-wiz from the screenshot) they don't even need to use second beam wing in Jeddah because they have so much good rear downforce on that car.

W13 and W14 in my opinion lacked these aero features, Merc just tried zero-sidepod concept because they thought that ultra low drag car would benefit them but they are wrong again this year. AMR fixed this by applying RBR like aero to their car and look where they are.
(you can also watch Shub's video about this)

(p.s: excuse my English if I may be misunderstood)

[PlatinumZealot]

All formula1 cars are aero dependent so you are definitely using the wrong term there!

The simpler serfaces we see nowadays were to reduce dirty air and development costs.

The teams that have the biggest spending and the deepest knowledge and best tools and leadership always go to the front.

RedBull just happen to have edtremely deep knowledge on ground effects on top of a stellar understanding of aerodynamics and suspension in general.

[Chuckjr]

Generally speaking, I personally think it’s bit of a cop out to claim a team couldn’t beat RB at their own game. Heck RB have been taking other teams concepts and improving them for years — and winning with them. Coanda is a relevant example. I don’t see many people lining up claiming RB should have not won because they copied the coanda effect. Also, RB have made an empire in F1 without being a engine manufacturer. They in fact use another manufacturer’s power tools to beat the opposition at their own game. Macca did it for years. There’s just as much pride in that as beating the opposition with an original idea. Some would argue it’s more fun to beat someone at their own game. Pick your cleverness poison I guess.

All I’m saying is, it’s silly to think the only way of beating RB is by doing something different. It takes just as much cleverness to beat them at their own game as to beat them with an original idea. Same brain power. Again, pick your poison.

The sport is filled with copycats anyway, and is the money, spoils, and exposure any less for a winning team that copies than one who copies less? Come on. Only the hard core people here differentiate these differences and care because everyone here is a dyed-in-the-wool F1 fan. We are not who they are marketing to honestly...they are marketing to the soft masses.

Show me an average fan who cares how their team wins within the rules? Is the win any less if it’s not in an original car? To drive this point home...How many people consider Lewis’s championships empty because he could only be beat by one guy? Far, far fewer than the masses who think they were legit championships. Same situation here. A Merc RB copy would render just as much credit winning with a copy as winning with an unbeatable car. It’s why they are about to release a car that will be a copy of others “with their own flare”. Whatever that means. It’s still a copy with flare...but a copy nonetheless. Yet it will still be considered a legit contender by the soft masses if it can put in a sharp end time.

[PlatinumZealot]

The regulations are new so doing something different has high rewards if it works.

On the other hand three years into regulations teams will have sussed out what is optimal and usually they are all follwing that single concept.

There is a third scenario. And i will usw the hybrid era as an example.
In the Hybrid era the low floor and high rake were two concepts but they are not fundamentaly different so that one has an advantage over the other. This is where being different can give gains on certain tracks or scertain situations.

In this Ground effect era... The rules are so tight that i think it's going to go one way... In 2024 all the cars might as well be copies.

[langedweil]

To drive this point home...How many people consider Lewis’s championships empty because he could only be beat by one guy? Far, far fewer than the masses who think they were legit championships.

Well, not trying to be a dork or trying to set this topic on fire .. but I actually think you're wrong with that assumption.

[langedweil]

In this Ground effect era... The rules are so tight that i think it's going to go one way... In 2024 all the cars might as well be copies.

True, and I even think Fer will go down the same route ..
All teams should be able to reverse engineer what RB is doing with floor, suspension geometry etc. And they will.