Mercedes W13

[Shakeman]

EDIT: Explained in the Kyle Vid.

It's a great explanation of the legality of the sidepods and mirror winglet function.

[214270]

EDIT: Explained in the Kyle Vid.

It's a great explanation of the legality of the sidepods and mirror winglet function.

Indeed. The man really knows what he’s talking about, I’ve come to rely on his commentary a fair bit

[AMG.Tzan]

The car was porpoising quite a lot yesterday!

The car is much more settled today but that's at the cost of ride height! If they don't manage to solve their porpoising issues first, there's absolutely no meaning in adding more downforce to the car as it will just poroise like crazy down the straights...

I'm curious to see how they'll manage to solve this issue as the suspension systems have gotten so much simpler this year! If they manage to solve porpoising though, I expect the car to be quite fast...

[AeroDynamic]

Motorsport.com

[PlatinumZealot]

So, this is an interesting development.

Earlier today the photos below where posted by w1thso claiming they showed air inlets on the leading edge of the floor. The only thing I see that "looks like" a hole doesn't look like it would even be big enough to keep the driver cool.

However, in the video NoDivergence posted (below), Mike Elliot said "further down in time people will see pictures from underneath and they'll work it out." when Ted asked him about how they were cooling the car. As expected Ted didn't pick up on this comment.

I quickly checked the technical regs, and I couldn't find anything that confirmed or dispelled my belief that you couldn't have have holes that allowed air to pass through the floor (bottom to top, or visa versa).

Can you have holes in the floor now?

https://i.imgur.com/Smh9Mn2.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/Dw3vkNe.jpeg

Cooling air intakes in the leading edge of the floor to compensate for the new side pods.

Pat Symmonds said some teams have shifted the electronics from the the side-pods to the keel area. Mercedes seems to be one of those teams.

[Chubbs]

What is the patch on the tyre seen here? It appears to be labelled with something

[holeindalip]

https://cdn-1.motorsport.com/images/mgl ... sion-1.jpg
What is the patch on the tyre seen here? It appears to be labelled with something

They heat it with a blow torch and scrape rubber off to get tire temp readings, wear and I’m sure a lot more

[zioture]

Mercedes W13 B analysis

[Hoffman900]

https://cdn-1.motorsport.com/images/mgl ... sion-1.jpg
What is the patch on the tyre seen here? It appears to be labelled with something

They heat it with a blow torch and scrape rubber off to get tire temp readings, wear and I’m sure a lot more

Tire temp is useless within seconds of it rolling into the grid spot and then the torch messes it up. You can read a lot of other interesting stuff though and they have depth holes in them, typically.

[ENGINE TUNER]

The team is still working on setup. Russell is improving in sector 2.

They better be! It’s only day 4 of on track testing.

Hell, you could be on a track 1000x and still be working on set up.

The team will have done a lot of set up options in the sim. They'll bring the most promising to the test and then try them on track. Some will be better than others. It'll also allow the sim model to be refined.

They're still at the "if we do this, what will happen?" stage. It's why it's called testing after all.

The simulator can NOT predict how a car will respond/react to set up changes. It only takes in whatever data is programmed in and spits out the behavior that is programmed to correspond to those parameters. They are currently gathering the real on track information to feed into the sim, all prior information were educated guesses.

[Phlumbert]

So I am guessing the launch render was a very early concept. Barcelona's chassis was probably a 90% concept while Bahrain's solution is probably close to the final concept of the W13. Seems Mercedes have been very busy last year.

[Hoffman900]

So I am guessing the launch render was a very early concept. Barcelona's chassis was probably a 90% concept while Bahrain's solution is probably close to the final concept of the W13. Seems Mercedes have been very busy last year.

No more busy than anyone else!

I’d be curious to see the evolutions from initial concept to current design from all the teams.

[Phlumbert]

So I am guessing the launch render was a very early concept. Barcelona's chassis was probably a 90% concept while Bahrain's solution is probably close to the final concept of the W13. Seems Mercedes have been very busy last year.

No more busy than anyone else!

I’d be curious to see the evolutions from initial concept to current design from all the teams.

Fair point but how many other teams have shown us three different chassis stages?

[Watto]

They've lowered the car now and ts porpoising quite a lot so its still a big balancing act

[colonelbadger]

Yeah Hamilton was bouncing all over the place when he attempted to open DRS on the straight !!!