2022 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[JordanFiveOh]

They only underestimated for this race, since it was hotter than anticipated.

Also remember they have to set the cooling requirements before Park ferme now

Yeah, that too! Forgot about that.

[Mchamilton]

Verstappen was doing very similar lift and coast. Ok slightly less but still severe. 200m lift n coast message was very late in the race.

if you class like lap 10 as late in the race then yeah.
it was before george and verstappen were battling

It was on lap 24 and if you check out verstappen's onboard he was doing L&C at around 150m. My point is everyone was tight on cooling apart from maybe ferrari (i havent checked but we've not heard anything from them on that front). It was a conscious decision by mercedes to take cooling off the car and do some lift and coast, it wasn't something that just suddenly appeared out of thin air.

It was more of an inaccurate prediction of the conditions on sunday than a conscious decision to lift and coast for 2/3 of the race

[dialtone]

Verstappen was doing very similar lift and coast. Ok slightly less but still severe. 200m lift n coast message was very late in the race.

Check the telemetry charts and you will see the huge drop off at end of straight. I pointed this out, when people were wrongly saying it was drag.

https://i.imgur.com/V6G5zsH.png

Using some rough calculations after copying the graph I estimate that HAM was losing about 7 hundredths of second during lift and coast before braking into turn 1. He lost maybe about the same or less into turn 10. And you can see two other lifts over the lap.
So It safe to say about 2 tenths were lost to lift and coast AT LEAST.

And Hamilton seems to have the highest minimum speeds in nearly all the corners or at least on par with Perez but faster than Sainz. Not sure if he was using more of the tyres in the corners to compensate for the deficit from lift and coasting but still very encouraging.

To be clear Sainz had a broken diffuser after he spun.

[dialtone]

I apologize but my earlier graphs had a mistake of considering the full race all of the time, so including the massive lift and coast from Mercedes at the end of the race. Here is instead the corrected graph of laps 2-24 between LEC, VER and HAM:



Lift and coast here was very clear. Hamilton was lifting a lot after the first few laps. Way more than what I had in the original graph. That being said, these are the first laps until Verstappen spun and everyone was taking it very seriously, and little lift and coast was happening for anyone:



This is laps 2 to 8 (then Verstappen spun out). I don't know if hamilton was having speed problems in lap 2-8 but he was certainly slower top speed, not lifting and coasting much, also not caring much about those softs compared to VER and LEC, and his tires didn't last much in that first stint actually.

[PlatinumZealot]

The 2nd plot is very strange... It is showing that the throttle graph is slightly out of sync OR the Mercedes ERS was harvesting early. You can see where the throttle is 100% and the velocity of the Mercedes is decreasing! This is definitley not normal.

[dialtone]

The 2nd plot is very strange... It is showing that the throttle graph is slightly out of sync OR the Mercedes ERS was harvesting early. You can see where the throttle is 100% and the velocity of the Mercedes is decreasing! This is definitley not normal.

Yeah it's weird, but it's in the data...



This is lap 3 which is actually the fastest lap in that early chunk of laps from him. In the F1TV broadcast that's the same lap where he asks to save the engine. Funny thing is that the following laps are all slower timing wise, but all sub 300kmh top speed, so there's nothing special.

As for what happens at the end of the lap where the distance curve appears to desync, Lewis really uses the whole track kerb to kerb before the chicane, while Leclerc for example doesn't touch either kerb, in fact both LEC and VER stay far away from the left hand side kerb before the chicane.

[AR3-GP]

I figure this might be the appropriate place to ask this but why on earth are Mercedes running with a narrative of being 1 tenth behind Ferrari and 2 to 3 tenths behind RB in Spain?

How does that even pass a sanity check? When you reach such a conclusion which seems to have a mind boggling discrepancy within (that RB was somehow 1 to 2 tenths ahead of Ferrari in spite of everything from qualy and the race suggesting otherwise) , shouldn’t that make you question the result of your analysis? Did somebody forget to do a sanity check?

[dialtone]

I figure this might be the appropriate place to ask this but why on earth are Mercedes running with a narrative of being 1 tenth behind Ferrari and 2 to 3 tenths behind RB in Spain?

How does that even pass a sanity check?

I asked myself the same question and I just can't figure out how they can possibly have gotten to that conclusion. In that video they even specifically referenced the "leading Ferrari" which was ~76 seconds ahead at that point.

The only thing I can think of is that the start of the medium tyre stint against Leclerc was on a similar pace:

LEC
LAP 23 M/2 Stint 2: 1:27.210
LAP 24 M/3 Stint 2: 1:27.196
LAP 25 M/4 Stint 2: 1:27.030
LAP 26 M/5 Stint 2: 1:27.279

HAM
LAP 24 M/2 Stint 3: 1:27.980
LAP 25 M/3 Stint 3: 1:27.415
LAP 26 M/4 Stint 3: 1:27.156
LAP 27 M/5 Stint 3: 1:27.244

However Leclerc was in cruise mode here... Average of 3 laps where both have the same tyres:



Leclerc is basically losing 0.4s in S3 to not overheat the tires. Ham's lift and coasting is losing him just 0.1s in S1, here's an example lap from the 3 above:



Of course this is ignoring the soft tire stint where LEC gained 17 seconds on HAM. HAM was 53s behind after 1st lap, when LEC retired HAM was 76 secs behind. I'm not sure how it can be said 0.1s behind.

[silver]

I figure this might be the appropriate place to ask this but why on earth are Mercedes running with a narrative of being 1 tenth behind Ferrari and 2 to 3 tenths behind RB in Spain?

How does that even pass a sanity check?

I asked myself the same question and I just can't figure out how they can possibly have gotten to that conclusion. In that video they even specifically referenced the "leading Ferrari" which was ~76 seconds ahead at that point.

The only thing I can think of is that the start of the medium tyre stint against Leclerc was on a similar pace:

LEC
LAP 23 M/2 Stint 2: 1:27.210
LAP 24 M/3 Stint 2: 1:27.196
LAP 25 M/4 Stint 2: 1:27.030
LAP 26 M/5 Stint 2: 1:27.279

HAM
LAP 24 M/2 Stint 3: 1:27.980
LAP 25 M/3 Stint 3: 1:27.415
LAP 26 M/4 Stint 3: 1:27.156
LAP 27 M/5 Stint 3: 1:27.244

However Leclerc was in cruise mode here... Average of 3 laps where both have the same tyres:

https://i.imgur.com/g6rcCUH.png

Leclerc is basically losing 0.4s in S3 to not overheat the tires. Ham's lift and coasting is losing him just 0.1s in S1, here's an example lap from the 3 above:

https://i.imgur.com/zWC5IWV.png

Of course this is ignoring the soft tire stint where LEC gained 17 seconds on HAM. HAM was 53s behind after 1st lap, when LEC retired HAM was 76 secs behind. I'm not sure how it can be said 0.1s behind.

I would like to think it's just a PR stunt to keep the press and Mercedes fans engaged in amnesia. Deep down, nobody knows the reality better than Mercedes team themselves. Monaco is going to hide the reality for some more time and the drums would keep beating. Baku would reveal the reality of the progress, more so if the leaders have an incident free race. If they have made genuine progress, great and I hope they have and would like to keep myself in check until then, otherwise, it would be a sham that they would be contributing to currently.

[zibby43]

Yes, Mercedes, the team that has for years underplayed their pace/performance at all costs, is suddenly shifting course and overstating their performance.

All while explicitly mentioning that the positive pace was limited to one race thus far, so they have to be guarded.

Some of y'all crack me up.

[dialtone]

Yes, Mercedes, the team that has for years underplayed their pace/performance at all costs, is suddenly shifting course and overstating their performance.

All while explicitly mentioning that the positive pace was limited to one race thus far, so they have to be guarded.

Some of y'all crack me up.

Rather than cracking up a joke, could you help instead understand how they got to being 0.1s behind a car that gave them 20 seconds in 20 laps?

[AR3-GP]

I would also like to see an answer to Dialtone’s question.

[silver]

Yes, Mercedes, the team that has for years underplayed their pace/performance at all costs, is suddenly shifting course and overstating their performance.

All while explicitly mentioning that the positive pace was limited to one race thus far, so they have to be guarded.

Some of y'all crack me up.

Past performances are not a yardstick of present or future. When Mercedes showed up in second winter testing, everybody thought they have created some sort of world beater again, but with time it proved that they had created a dud. But in the time back then, no one was really ready to write them off as 2019 had a similar situation. Any similarities to 2019 ended right at the Bahrain test itself. So instead of laughing off based on Mercedes' past performance, a more measured approach until they climb back up would be more apt. It's important to be real and critical of the data available, account for qualitative attributes from Spain where neither of the best cars of the top had a clean race. Until the 3 teams have a clean race, it's hard to establish the real gains Mercedes has made. Until then, hold off posting useless stuff please.

[Sevach]

One thing that needs to be considered, Spain was the most tire limited teams have been all season, this was a race about keeping the tires alive rather than outright pace, tire offsets that in previous races meant very little (things like 4 laps) were making a huge difference last weekend.

So this was a very particular weekend and we need to see more before yelling "THEY'RE BACK".

[Quantum]

One thing that needs to be considered, Spain was the most tire limited teams have been all season, this was a race about keeping the tires alive rather than outright pace, tire offsets that in previous races meant very little (things like 4 laps) were making a huge difference last weekend.

So this was a very particular weekend and we need to see more before yelling "THEY'RE BACK".

I'd say Monaco is the least reflective of the mean track average. It's the slowest and has the least similar track surface. Azerbaijan is the following race and is pretty much the the opposite with high speed being the go to. Similar track surface though. Canada will be a very good indicator as it's got a good blend of high speed straights, tight corners, fast corners and an abrasive track surface.

Similarly James Vowles indicated that Mercedes misjudged the temps for Sunday by 4 or 5 degrees, as it was hotter on Sunday than Saturday.
Both cars were compromised on cooling, with George Russell being affected by it from the start of the race.
I beleive it was lap 3 when he radio'd to see if the warnings were in fact real.
Here's the rundown by Vowles.