I wasn't just referring to AMR end of 22 compared to end of 23. I am talking several teams, not least RB/Ferrari/Merc. So no, I don't think that the comparison falls flat. The start of a new regulation set when basically all teams are running severely overweight cars is obviously going to see rapid improvement. Diminishing returns is a real thing and expecting teams to gain a second of lap time from the end of 23 to the beginning of 24 is very ambitious. For reference, a second of lap time would put most cars 3+ tenths ahead of what they did in 2021, that is with a close to 50kg heavier car. Seems rather optimistic in my book.organic wrote: ↑14 Jan 2024, 23:18Of course amr looks bad in the end of '23 to end of '22 comparisons. They ran that trick wing at the end of '22 which was very efficient and in '23 they were massively hurt by TD018 (forced into many changes) and this also undermined their entire development trajectory causing their car to get slower over the course of '23. I think this comparison therefore falls at least equally as flat
Ignoring the aero changes from '22 to '23 is just ridiculous. They upped the minimum throat height of the diffuser as well as the floor edge changes. These changes both cost downforce and teams plus Tombazis have estimated that at about 0.5s. Some teams were probably losing more than that.
There's also the factor that most teams barely changed their chassis from '22 to '23 which they'll be able to completely redesign for '24 so there's likely 'free' laptime in optimization of layout in there. Also no rule changes and same tyres so everything is a known quantity meaning the engineers don't need to hedge bets and can be aggressive with the development
The aero changes are valid to bring up but then we should also consider the tyre changes which Pirelli claimed would be worth around a second.