wesley123 wrote: ↑11 Jun 2022, 16:09
Andi76 wrote: ↑10 Jun 2022, 23:26
Like i said - Barcelona is a well known track. As one of the two or three best teams Mercedes knows exactly what to do there, thats the reason why they were so good there.
This is the case for every team, which cancels it out.
When the zero-pod concept is such a great concept - why did they have problems on any other track?
This can be due to a variety of things.
This argumentation is also incredibly flawed when you consider that they released the big update in Barcelona. So you have exactly one reference to draw your conclusion, and this conclusion even contradicts what actually happened.
You conclude that the zeropod design is flawed, yet at THE aero-dependent track on the calendar, the car has performed best thus far. It doesn't really take much to realize how that makes no sense. If the zeropod was flawed and the cause of all problems, they would have fared worse at Barcelona.
And why got all the teams with similar concepts got worse and all teams with other concepts did improve?
Is that actually the case to begin with?
And why do all the micro/zeropod concept cars have drag problems?
How can you ever conclude that to begin with? Apart from "drag problems" not really being a thing in F1 due to the power these cars have and it being a downforce-dominated formula, there is little evidence to suggest it being the case.
I will not start this discussion again. We had this several times in this forum already. So i will just reply to your arguements. Its not true that i only have one track to draw my conclusion about zeropods. Its race-nr. 8 now. So its almost 8 different tracks i draw my conclusions from. But anyway - lets take a lot at Barcelona and the arguements :
But first lets start from the beginning and lets take a look at the teams with Micropods/Zeropods :
Mercedes, McLaren, Williams. Mercedes is worse than last year. McLaren, too. Williams is still the worst team.
Then you have the teams with "big sidepods" - Ferrari, Red Bull, Haas, Alfa, Alpine, Alpha - Ferrari and Red Bull are by far the two fastest teams, so to say that they improved is surely not wrong, even as Red Bull was great last year, too. Haas improved without a doubt, as did Alfa. Alpine and Alpha - its track dependant, but they can challenge the Nr. 3 team sometimes, which they were not really able to do last year, so its a small improvement. Then we have Aston Martin, who has changed their concept recently to big sidepods and they seem to improve now, too. So yes - it really is the case that teams with different concepts did improve and teams with similar concepts got worse.
There is no conclusion needed to say that Zeropod design has a drag problem. Toto Wolf said it in public. In every single race at the beginning of the season he said they have too much drag...and sorry, i will not even comment the sentence "drag problems not really being a thing in F1 due to the power these cars have". This is good news for aerodynamicists as L/D numbers have no importance any more and maximum downforce is all they have to focus on from now. Come on....you know this is...but you obviously do not know that the 1000 bhp is the overall power of the system. But they do not have this power all the time. In 2003, when BMW and Ferrari had 920-940 bhp, cars were probably had power as they had this power all the time. And drag was very important back then....
Also all the other teams knowing Barcelona very well, too, does not cancel it out that a team with better engineers and driver performs better than another team with less talented drivers and engineers. You basically say that there is no difference between teams and drivers in F1, what is just horribly wrong. What you also know exactly if you just think a millisecond about it.
Anyway, its obvious Mercedes has more than one fundamental issue with the car.
And to be honest - who has not realised that zero-pods have more than a few problems - is far from reality. Its just two obvious. With 8 races almost, and only one with an acceptable performance - a car like that definetely has not a "good concept". The suspension is one of the biggest problems of the car, but the zero-pods are second with aerodyamics just wrong for the ground effect cars. Zero pods are reducing floor-edge vortices as their intakes go all the way down to the floor. Pressurisation zone under the sidepod inlets, protruding forwards, "feeding" the floor are missing, too, because of the same reason. The massive floor area will always make more trouble with bouncing and overall performance, as floor flexing is a well known reason for this. But i said i do not start this discussion again, so i won't add the other disadvantages of this concept.
So i conclude with - 8 races almost and the car is far from being good on most tracks. Teams with similar concepts also went down the pecking order. Teams with "different comcepts" improved. There can be no discussion about this. Also all teams had "micropods" and zeropods are just an evolution of this very concept. And there is a reason why almost every team went away from that. And this alone says everything about zeropod-concept. Its wrong and Mercedes just got the new regulary totally wrong. That is something that can happen. Its easy to go down a wrong path. The leading team often does not want to take big risks. Thats also the reason why big regulation changes often end a teams era of sucess. This happened to Ferrari in 2005. It was not only the tyres. They went for maximum downforce when aerodynamic efficiency was the way to go. As Ferrari corrected their mistake in 2006, Mercedes will in 2023 and we will not see zeropods next year.