Yes, indeed, it does not make sense at all. I also think it just cannot be a coincident that all the Mercedes cars are worse this year and, if we exclude McLaren, are suffering most from porpoising. Because of that i still think the sidepod- concept of the car also has to be a part of the problem. McLaren, maybe because of Neil Oatleys experience with ground effect cars, was just able to solve the porpoising issue with some kind of trade-off in the design-phase already. And Astons concept, while still being a little bit different, just has the same characteristics as Mercedes in that regard. However, i think its fair to say that the teams with different concepts than the Mercedes cars have less problems and the sidepod-concept imay be a part of the problem. Maybe the floors of the "Zero and Micro-Sidepod"- Teams and Astons huge and long undercuts are prone to oscillations and movements that does not happen with the sidepod concepts of RBR, Ferrari etc. You probably have to add more weight to the floor if thats the case. And as the cars are already too heavy, thats the last thing you want to do. Anyway - in my opinion its just too obvious that the more similar concepts of the Mercedes cars must be in relation with their performance getting worse, while the cars with a different concept improved. I just do cannot believe there is no relation in that regard.LM10 wrote: ↑01 Apr 2022, 22:32I think that the cutaway floor didn't give them what they were hoping for or what it brought to other teams. If yes, they definitely would have sticked with it. So in both races they eventually went for the certain solution which at the moment is to simply increase the ride height.Andi76 wrote: ↑01 Apr 2022, 22:03Some updates from Andrew Shovlin about Mercedes trying to solve their problems. They obviously do not want to trade downforce for less porpoising :
https://www-autosport-com.cdn.ampprojec ... 08717/amp/
The explanation of Mercedes sticking to their idea of wanting to solve the issue without losing performance sounds like they are the only team rejecting compromises. In fact every single team is working on solving it without losing downforce, not just Mercedes. With the difference being that other teams use modified floors helping them reduce the issue and bridge the time until they bring proper upgrades to completely solve the porpoising. For some reason Mercedes make it look like they by choice have given up on the part-time solution (being a modified floor) even though it would provide better performance. I don't know, it doesn't make sense at all.
And always the talk about drag...maybe they just designed their cars with a wrong coefficient in mind?
In relation to the powertrain, Dr. Marko from RBR said something interesting yesterday. In Saudi Arabia Wolf said that E10 fuel cannot be the reason if there would be a lack of power of the Mercedes powertrain as you need to put more Ethanol in. 10% instead of 5%. Thats it. Dr. Marko said that at least at Red Bull, it was much more than that. He said that they had to put a lot of effort and developement work in fuel and engine that and they made a lot of changes. He also added that Mercedes had lost 50 engineers to Red Bull Powertrains and that loosing so many experienced engineers could easily have affected their performance.
But anyway- whatever is the reason - engine/E10, drag, porpoising, the concept itself- i am really interested to see whats was the reason for all the problems the Mercedes Teams are facing. And i still believe the concept is a much bigger part of the problem than Mercedes is saying/admitting or wants to believe.