McG wrote: ↑27 Mar 2022, 11:00
lh13 wrote: ↑27 Mar 2022, 08:12
What I'm saying is, Mercedes chassis department has been 'saved' by their engine department often in the recent past. Mercedes always had good chassis, that much is clear, but never 'great' chassis, that is all I'm saying. They've produced cars with 'downforce at all cost' more often than not, stick whatever we can to make the aero work, and it was all possible due to their PU advantage. In short, they've been building their chassis around the capabilities of their PU, with 'dirty' downforce, hence my opinion that they've never built great chassis.
This year, Toto has admitted that they're running a lot of drag. This is not just the drag from the wings. In Saudi Arabia, they're running perhaps the shallowest wing and still nowhere on the straights, so the entire car is draggy.
Are they so incompetent that they didn't know how much drag they were running in the wind tunnel? No, I believe they knew exactly how much drag they were running, and it was a conscious decision as they were confident that their PU will get them through, once again, but now they're caught off guard because of their PU deficit, which I believe is a thing, while many others are not believing.
Popoising actually might be 'saving their face' at the moment, as they look to have problems that expand beyong the scope of popoising. Only time will tell.
Again, this is all my opinion, hence my post in the 'non-technical' thread. Please don't ask for 'data', I don't know where to get it.
In an interview on Beyond The Grid one of the Mercedes engineers or designers, or was it the one with 3 of them, said that in the early hybrid years everyone thought they were gaining most of their dominance from the engine, when in fact it was the chassis. And that they kept this illusion up for some time. I invite you to go and listen to the hours of interviews before going on your own made up hunch. Mercedes never having a great chassis is only arguable in the sense that Red Bull have maybe been better, which wouldn't be surprising. But Red Bull a lot of the time were pushed to break the rules by implementing things like flexible rear wings. Again, your hunch doesn't really work.
A little bit of nonsense all ends, isn't it?
In 2014 they clearly played with the opponents with the massive PU advantage. Even Williams was good in this year.
Then they got the packing of the cooling to a level where no non-works team and no other normal turbo engine could go. It was always then the combination of the top engine with the packing levels that made the chassis superb.
Merc got first robbed by Ferrari by the engine advantage with the fuel tricks, then Honda came in with robbing the split turbo advantage gifted to them by FIA that lifted the token system against Merc and now all the others copied the same split turbo.
Nonsense with flex wings. Everyone had to flex the wings, Merc maybe most on the front wing. They also exploited oil burning always to the maximum. Everyone goes to the allowed maximum.