aleks_ader wrote: ↑28 Jul 2022, 21:38
dialtone wrote: ↑28 Jul 2022, 19:41
Evo2racer wrote: ↑28 Jul 2022, 19:38
Why not Mercedes ?
Question of balance, Mercedes typically has to sacrifice something, plus they aren't that fast in slow corners, see Monaco.
Well IDK but they got edge in low speed in all races even from Bahrein. Or at least their setup goes in that direction of car strengths. But for that performance window their car have quite a bit of drag. So much drag that they cannot really compete in qually trim where each compromise amplifies even more. Especially this year we got at least another variable into setup window - bouncing. Witch counter act into drag window even more negatively. Because when u try to reduce it u lift body and makes L/D ration even worse.
In race trims last races they are much closer IMO. But this is more compromise of heavy cars and tire limited stints. Maybe even some lacklustre power from size zero radiators or some E10 problems doubles the pain even further. Also setup orientation towards race setups and experimentation doesn't really help its peak performance. Qually setups needs fine tuning and total comintment into car philosophy. It is obvious that car doesnt have constant perfomance window from track to track.
Seems a bit of a stretch to me to say that Mercs had the edge on slow speed since Bahrain in ALL races. When the track called for high downforce setups, like Barcelona or Monaco, it was the Ferrari that was fastest, here in France Ferrari was 0.6s faster than Ham in S3 alone, even T15 was the only corner where HAM has better minimum speed, but overall was slower on average through it, every single other corner HAM is slower.
Bahrain is still a track with a variety of possible options available, Ferrari had the medium downforce package while Mercs had a high downforce wing so obviously you end up performing better in the slower corners, and it was still just barely better, 2 out of 3 slow corners in Bahrain with less than 1kph difference, 1 out of 3 with 4kph difference, but Ferrari had the better exit out of that corner anyway. So Mercs chose to be better in the corners to keep the tires alive for longer, but that's not an inherent feature of the car.
Silverstone is certainly a different beast, hard to know the true values in the field (VER and LEC both with broken cars plus bad choices from Ferrari) but it's unquestionable that Mercs were close to top pace. IMHO it hasn't been the case in any other track, not that it can't change in the future of course, sadly Mercs are close to the top2 somewhat points wise.