Mercedes W13

[NathanOlder]

From AMuS:

The engineers now understand the car better. But it will be a while before the bouncing disappears and the team is no longer forced to make such major compromises when it comes to setup. Mercedes is aiming for a cure by the start of the European season in Imola. That would already be the end of April, and should happen through a better understanding. Hamilton fears: "We have a fundamental problem. It will take a while."

To put it in numbers: Mercedes is half a second behind on one lap. The gap grows over the distance because the Silver Arrow works the tires harder. An example: after 34 laps, Hamilton was 28.8 seconds behind. That corresponds to eight tenths of a second per lap. The engine is no longer life insurance for Mercedes. There seems to be some performance missing. Suboptimal after the combustion engine was frozen in early March. However, it must be mentioned that Mercedes added a lot of dirty downforce via the rear wing and beam wing. That reduced the top speed.

I'm not too sure on the race pace just yet, the first stint he was tucked up behind Sainz for all of it until his tyres let go, then he fell back behind Perez and dropped away. After that they went to the Hard tyre which was a bad choice, the Medium was much better which Perez went for and the others ahead went for another stint on the softs if I recall correctly. So a good chunk of that 28.8 second deficit was not entirely true. If the car was 8 tenths a lap slower, how was lewis able to hang on to Sainz for so long, and also on the back of Perez after the safety car until Perez had issues.

[Shakeman]

I don't know, the shape just seems so suboptimal aero wise.

It could also be that the shape produces unwieldy amounts of peak downforce that they simply cannot control without raising the ride height.

I'd love to know the level of downforce increases with the reduction in ride height and what the shape of the graph looks like. I'm sure someone could put some real numbers too it.

[Evo2racer]

Hello guys,

I am new here and have a very basic question:

To me it seems like the next track in Saudi Arabia is extremely flat and has almost no bumps… therefore according to my understanding this track should be much better suited for the W13 and most of the car issue could be solved?! (Porposising issues)

Am I missing something ?

Thanks a lot in advance for your answers

[KiLLu12258]

It’s all relative though, and it’s quite clear to everyone that the ride height changes Merc have needed to make are more drastic than anything RB and Ferrari have done.

The W13 is quite literally frozen in development until the baseline proposing is solved.

I know you’re determined to somehow prove that Merc can’t fix their issues, but the evidence presented thus far isn’t compelling.

On the contrary I'm convinced they'll fix their issues, they won 8 WCC in a row and dominated an era, and there's no way they can be counted out even in this state. If they stay like this for a month I'll be a very happy Ferrari fan.

However I do find the narrative here funny. First was Merc was going to blow everyone away with the A car, it's Merc. Then they'll blow everyone away with the B car and it's ominous™, 1.5s faster in wind tunnel. Then they are just sandbagging their testing issues but will bring a floor and will fix this simple issue before the race. Other teams saying they tried that concept and chose not to go deeper on it wasn't true or they didn't develop enough, then they'll fix the issue overnight anyway before quali. Then in quali they're not actually 0.5/7 behind but only 0.3 if you cherry pick stuff. Then they aren't really 1s off pace in race, they just need to lower the car a bit and they'll gain 20 seconds a lap...

It kinda lacks for respect for other teams too, as if no other team can build a decent car and Merc can do nothing bad, and even when it seems bad, they're just sandbagging or part of some grander plan. Merc themselves are humbler than this.

In my opinion what is going on is: they don't know what the issue is exactly and don't know when W13 will be fixed yet, they will 100% solve this issue very very soon and the pace after that is absolutely unknown right now. It's also unlikely that all customer teams built mini-vans for the season while in 2014 any Merc powered car was lapping everyone around even on 3 wheels.

Here's another reality: if Ferrari was the team 0.5 behind in quali and 1s behind in race it would be Next Year™

What Merc did in the past is a lot less relevant now. They weren't operating under this new wind tunnel / CFD cap... no budget cap. They can't throw everything they have at the problem. their resources is completely bottlenecked by the regulation. They have a lot of the same talent and facilities but not the same resource of time and money to solve it. If a team can do it with this challenge, they can but it's a tall order depending on how challenging the issues are to understand/develop solutions for.

If they're going to be in with a chance of any titles, they need a reliability advantage like Ferrari had in some of the Fernando years to bring them closer to the top in the standings. And they must solve some of the issues that unlock big performance gains within 7 races really. After that they need to develop to get ahead or stay ahead of the other teams developments that they are working on right now while Merc try and fix their car.

you are right. it won't be a easy task for them, because rb and ferrari will develop their car while mercedes has to fix the issues first. But that means also that right now mercedes has the most potential step forward in their car, because what we all dont know is how much time they really lose because of the issues.

And while in the history rb was really good in developing the car over the season,ferrari most of the time wasnt. they had many great cars in the first races but were struggling to move forward, rb was the complete opposite. They were not on point for the first races many times.

Yes, now that means nothing because of new rules and stuff. But at the end it will be interesting which car concept has the most potential for improvements. Thats something we dont know right now. I can imagine that the issues bringing more issues and a lot of compromisses setup wise costs mercedes easily half a second.

When mercedes had the car called "diva" it was the same. When they could figure out the tire window there were unbeatable. So half a second is something absolutely possible coming with a perfect setup alone, maybe even more.

But another story is the engine. Right now- it looks like the engine itself is also far behind the others.

[GrizzleBoy]

I don't know, the shape just seems so suboptimal aero wise.

It could also be that the shape produces unwieldy amounts of peak downforce that they simply cannot control without raising the ride height.

I'd love to know the level of downforce increases with the reduction in ride height and what the shape of the graph looks like. I'm sure someone could put some real numbers too it.

You mean those chunky rectangular cooling exit shapes behind the airbox that Merc, McLaren and Williams have, could be making lots of downforce?

Hmm I don't know, I can't fathom it.

They just seem so ungainly it's making me wonder if they just have cooling issues overall on the merc engine.

I know it's a consequence of experimental placement of cooling arrangements and such, but my hair won't allow me to believe the cars are actually purposely designed to look so boxy at the back.

[Just_a_fan]

I don't know, the shape just seems so suboptimal aero wise.

It could also be that the shape produces unwieldy amounts of peak downforce that they simply cannot control without raising the ride height.

I'd love to know the level of downforce increases with the reduction in ride height and what the shape of the graph looks like. I'm sure someone could put some real numbers too it.

Here's a graph for a generic ground effect device showing how the downforce (-Cl) varies with distance from the ground (ride height represented by the dimensionless relationship h/L because it's not just the distance from the ground but also the size of the device (the floor in this case) that determines ground effect - a large body will be "in ground effect" at a greater height than a small body).



You can see how the downforce changes a lot with a small change in ride height near the peak.

This is obviously a simplified device but it shows the effect.

[NathanOlder]

Hello guys,

I am new here and have a very basic question:

To me it seems like the next track in Saudi Arabia is extremely flat and has almost no bumps… therefore according to my understanding this track should be much better suited for the W13 and most of the car issue could be solved?! (Porposising issues)

Am I missing something ?

Thanks a lot in advance for your answers

That is indeed the hope. The bumps certainly amplify the porpoising. So with less bumps, hopefully the W13 can run lower to the ground and be a little more competitive.

[timoth]

Hello guys,

I am new here and have a very basic question:

To me it seems like the next track in Saudi Arabia is extremely flat and has almost no bumps… therefore according to my understanding this track should be much better suited for the W13 and most of the car issue could be solved?! (Porposising issues)

Am I missing something ?

Thanks a lot in advance for your answers

Jeddah has a lot of extremely fast corners and straights. I think the average speed in Jeddah is the second high only after Monza. So if anything it is much worse for porpoising. W13 is very good in slow corners (at least in Bahrain it was one of the best) and Jeddah is the exact opposite of that. Merc porpoising problems weren't mainly because of bumps. Lewis said in post-race interviews that he had porpoising everywhere, straights, fast corners, everywhere.
Ferrari had the most downforce in Bahrain but RedBull had the least porpoising problems and they looked extremely fast in straights. They also seem to have the most efficient car. Maybe they're favorite for Jeddah, although everybody was saying this before Bahrain race too. So let's see.

[siskue2005]

Hello guys,

I am new here and have a very basic question:

To me it seems like the next track in Saudi Arabia is extremely flat and has almost no bumps… therefore according to my understanding this track should be much better suited for the W13 and most of the car issue could be solved?! (Porposising issues)

Am I missing something ?

Thanks a lot in advance for your answers

Jeddah has a lot of extremely fast corners and straights. I think the average speed in Jeddah is the second high only after Monza. So if anything it is much worse for porpoising. W13 is very good in slow corners (at least in Bahrain it was one of the best) and Jeddah is the exact opposite of that. Merc porpoising problems weren't mainly because of bumps. Lewis said in post-race interviews that he had porpoising everywhere, straights, fast corners, everywhere.
Ferrari had the most downforce in Bahrain but RedBull had the least porpoising problems and they looked extremely fast in straights. They also seem to have the most efficient car. Maybe they're favorite for Jeddah, although everybody was saying this before Bahrain race too. So let's see.

Jedha is also very smooth and new track unlike bahrain, that should help with bouncing

[AMG.Tzan]

Toto said they were "overwinged" yet they were still missing rear downforce the drivers said!

The wings on this car look bigger than their competitors' since Day 1 of testing which has me a bit worried about the rest of the season! Apparently Mercedes' diffuser isn't as efficient as RB's and Ferrari's and porpoising is also a factor here but still if there wasn't porpoising I don't think Mercedes would have been up there with them!

We need a big upgrade soon and I don't see how they'll manage to do that with the time and money constraints from the budget cap!

Race pace is even worst than qualifying pace I think! I don't know how Lewis managed to keep up with Sainz at the start...

I expect Jeddah to be a really bad race for Mercedes with all those drag issues...

[De Jokke]

BUT there was low hanging fruit said wolff and also lots of ideas to improve the car (shovlin).
Keep believing guys. Yesterday was a great result, imagine Valteri still there (he would have been 9-12th), although I find him a very sympathetic driver. But good they brought Russell on board. It might keep them in a chance for the WCC until they have fixed the car.

ps: if you see this car from the back (rear end shot), man this gives me mp4-24 memories

[Just_a_fan]

Toto said they were "overwinged" yet they were still missing rear downforce the drivers said!

The wings on this car look bigger than their competitors' since Day 1 of testing which has me a bit worried about the rest of the season! Apparently Mercedes' diffuser isn't as efficient as RB's and Ferrari's and porpoising is also a factor here but still if there wasn't porpoising I don't think Mercedes would have been up there with them!

We need a big upgrade soon and I don't see how they'll manage to do that with the time and money constraints from the budget cap!

Race pace is even worst than qualifying pace I think! I don't know how Lewis managed to keep up with Sainz at the start...

I expect Jeddah to be a really bad race for Mercedes with all those drag issues...

They are carrying more wing because they are having to run the car higher off the floor to reduce the porpoising. That doesn't mean the diffuser is less efficient, it just means the floor is less effective because it is running at a less-than-ideal height.

There is talk of a serious upgrade at Imola which, if so and if effective, isn't too bad. Until the, they just need to take whatever points they can - it's a long season so it's still all to play for.

[izzy]

There's plenty they can fiddle with isn't there. Heave spring, heave damper bump and rebound, stops, corner springs and damping...

If they can get to run it a bit lower they can shallow off the rear wing for less drag.

In a way, it's been so bad, there's a lot of scope

[Just_a_fan]

If they don't find a way to run a bit less wing, they're going to be toast in Jeddha. Almost half of the track - from T17 to T27 is near enough flat out. If they're as slow as they were on the straights in Bahrain, they're going to be overtaken by a three-legged camel, let alone a F1 car.

[SiLo]

I was wondering when we might see a low downforce rear wing. I wonder if that would actually reduce porpoising?