Mercedes W13

[OO7]

[Marty_Y]

[Jozsusz]

This floor really looks simple compared to the previous one.
Also Palmer said that he heard whispers that Merc will bring some updates for the final day.
I hope it's gonna be a more complex floor.

[Just_a_fan]

As a driver, Palmer couldn't drive a well greased stick up a dog's doo-dah. I wouldn't pay much attention to him with regard to technical issues.

His Dad's a nice bloke but Jolyon? M'eh.

[dans79]

As a driver, Palmer couldn't drive a well greased stick up a dog's doo-dah. I wouldn't pay much attention to him with regard to technical issues.

His Dad's a nice bloke but Jolyon? M'eh.

Palmer? this is a Scott Mansell video, and he's not actually calling them illegal.

[AR3-GP]

As a driver, Palmer couldn't drive a well greased stick up a dog's doo-dah. I wouldn't pay much attention to him with regard to technical issues.

His Dad's a nice bloke but Jolyon? M'eh.

Palmer? Trip to specsavers?

[Thunder]

I moved the telemetry graph to the Team Forum. I feel it's better to discuss it there where we're not restrained to only talk about the Car.

[SmallSoldier]

From this angle it looks very impressive:



Vía Scarbs

[izzy]

From this angle it looks very impressive:

Vía Scarbs

It does doesn't it. And those mirror wings look huge!

[Marty_Y]

The W13 looks brilliant, especially when viewed from the front.

I just hope they can get it to start behaving the way they want, so it's real performance potential can be exploited.

[NoDivergence]

Its not as easy to just make bigger sidepods. They are part of the whole Aero-Concept, so i do not think you just can change your sidepods. That would conpromise your whole Aero-Philosophy.
And like you say - it would not solve their problem with the rear and beamwing. They cannot do that without redesigning their car completely.

Less drag without sacrificing downforce is always beneficial...thats the reason why they could do it. I do not think we were told that wider sidepods mean less drag...we were told Ferraris tube-sidepods mean less drag. For sure the tyre wake management is better with wider sidepods, and this can reduce drag, but at the end of the day drag depends on much more than that. You cannot say that a wider sidepod necessarily means less drag... Mercedes clearly got rid of some drag in the sidepod area... and they have even more space and huge downwashing element that suggests they get even more air over the top of the diffusor. We do not know the drag of this element. And we do not know the drag compared to the old sidepods. But it seems possible to me that today modifications give them less drag, without sacrificing downforce. Probably even more downforce. No F1 team makes such a change if there is no gain in downforce or less drag.

But anyway- its just some thoughts. Maybe i am totally wrong.

What problem with the beam wing and rear wing? They have the most clean flow on the floor which goes to the the diffuser roof and the beam wing, which then supports the diffuser and rear wing. Their issues aren't downforce, it's balance and getting the suspension and tires working in conjunction.

Floor over the Top of the floor does not really suppoer the beamwing or rear-wing. And its a huge difference in these concepts.

I quote Vanja, our aerodynamicist here, who explained this in another thread

"In my view, it makes a lot of sense to hear Ferrari tried developing this nano-pod design, they were minimizing sidepods consistently from 2017-2021. It also makes a lot of sense they opted for something different if it showed greater potential - something completely different in this case.

To improve the aerodynamic floor performance with any given floor design you have to get more air to the rear wing and then to the beam wing, in that order. Getting more air on top of the diffuser is tertiary. Rear wing creates more suction and will help beam wing as a secondary effect as well. To that end, I'd never go Mercedes direction and start putting stuff higher, clogging up the flow ahead of rear wing...."

So getting air over the top over the diffusor is always beneficial, but it does neither support the rear-or beanwing a lot nor does it get close to the amount of suction you get from getting more air to the rearwing. Also their problems have nothing to do with balance, suspension or tyres working in conjunction...not at all. Porpoising has nothing to do with balance or the suspension or tyres working in conjunction. You can use the one or the other as part of the solution, but its not part of the problem itself. So sorry if i have to say you are totally wrong in that regard.

This is so wrong, I don't even know where to start. You've heard of circulation before, right? Do you understand how a multi element wing even works?

Just FYI, but the past 8+ WCC's have been won with cars with centerline concentrated cooling.

As far as porpoising goes. It's a phenomena that is due to ride height. Aero balance (center of pressure stability and also variation in ride height front to rear of the floor), suspension (maintains or controls ride height), and tires (damping, natural frequency) most certainly are all part of the system that results in this phenomena and certainly the magnitude of it.

[SICK AL SPEEDSHOP]

From this angle it looks very impressive:

Vía Scarbs

It does doesn't it. And those mirror wings look huge!

Agreed! Compared to the crash structure wings the mirrors look really big. So many interesting and fantastic details on the W13 B Spec.

[De Jokke]

Man that nose is so dull, what a shame.
They used to had such a nice one on the 2015/2016 car: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=htt ... AdAAAAABAb
Back to w13: once the purpoising is under control, I think it'll fly (with the right setup) but I'm afraid it'll take some races before they know how to operate it properly.

[Marty_Y]

As a driver, Palmer couldn't drive a well greased stick up a dog's doo-dah. I wouldn't pay much attention to him with regard to technical issues.

His Dad's a nice bloke but Jolyon? M'eh.

Palmer isn't in this video, it's a good video, Scarbs says the car is perfectly legal and ticks all the boxes.

It's easy to get mistaken, I've watched loads of videos about the cars in the last couple of days, and testing which Palmer was commentating on, and it all starts to blur together after a while.

Palmer wasn't great as a F1 driver I have to agree, but I don't mind him as a commentator, it's probably a controversial opinion but I think he's likable and has recent experience as a F1 driver so most of the time he knows what he's talking about.

[mantikos]

What exactly did Sainz mean by this regarding the GPS: “I think it’s typical Mercedes, typical George, hyping up the others and then coming to the first race and blowing the competition away. As you can imagine, I don’t believe much. In the GPS we can already see what they’re doing. ”

What he is saying is that they are deliberately hiding pace (sandbagging), if it is visible on GPS it probably means that they are doing lift & coast through to the braking point along the straights.

I also think they are not showing their hand. But i also think they have some serious problems as they cannot get rid of porpoising. And i do not think this is part of their sandbagging, because it would damage their programm. I also think think they did not put their money on the right concept, as this would mean that all the other teams are wrong and only Mercedes is right. And thats something i can't imagine, especially as they obviously have some problems. But we will see soon. Maybe its indeed Mercedes are the only ones who got it right again.

For many years Mercedes was low rake while others weren't, they were longer, where others weren't - didn't meant others were wrong, it just means they all have their philosophy and they can all achieve similar things with differing trade-offs, none of them are wrong I bet