Mercedes W14

[organic]

Now they've got the data for the high downforce setup from the 3 day test, wouldn't running this wing and the low downforce setup just be as to correlate the low downforce against the high, to make sure the low downforce does what they think it should from the sims etc?

Yes which makes a lot of sense to do!

[stonehenge]

George's car on the right looks to be fitted with the original RW. Likely they'll do tests in FP1 with both drivers and make a decision for the rest of the weekend

There are ample reasons to run both wings for comparisons in FP1, I wouldn't take it as an indication of them still considering which wing to run. Mike Elliott was pretty clear that they're gonna run a different wing than testing.

That being said, hypothetically, if they are considering running such a high df wing in Bahrain, it would probably not bode well for their concept (especially the floor). So, let's wait and see, but I'm pretty sure they're running both wings just for data and aren't actually considering using it because that would be...well, not great.

Unless conditions are significantly different than last Saturday (or other stuff on the car has changed) then why run both wings between George and Lewis in FP1? That isn’t a direct question to you as such, just a thinking out load kinda moment. Surely that have the relevant data on the barn door from 5 days ago

I obviously could be very wrong here, but what I've gathered from the things Mike Elliott said and other unnamed personnel at Mercedes is that they really weren't trying to optimize the setup for Bahrain during testing. They were mainly just trying to understand the car. A popular theory for why they ran such a high df rear wing is that they wanted to see if it would trigger porpoising, and I'm inclined to believe that was at least part of the reasoning.

You always want to isolate variables as you change more and more things about the setup so you know what is causing a certain effect. If we recall from last year, Mercedes' biggest problem was that they just didn't understand why thing were happening. It makes a lot of sense to me that as you start trying to optimize the setup for Bahrain and try to get the floor to produce the downforce it needs to, you'd want to isolate the variable of the rear wing if you can.

Lastly, Mark Hughes had an interesting observation on The Race's podcast this week. He said that Mercedes' third day of testing looked a lot like other teams' first. In other words, partly because of the struggles they had on the second day, they are still on a pretty steep learning curve, if that makes sense. I think that might be another reason for Mercedes to run the high df rear wing on a car during fp1--they didn't really get to do their full testing program so they have some catching up to do.

[ringo]

Very deep scoop, making it a shallower angle than possible, but huge camber makes it up a bit. Like Ferrari, DRS flap closed is not at the maximum angle. Overall, wing seems to be a Ferrari-like attempt at decently efficient downforce for the race, while making a tiny sacrifice in lower drag difference between DRS close-open states. They also did a much better job with endplate transition design, getting rid of those chubby corners on high-downforce wing from last year. Should result in a very decent drag reduction overall.

This is a very positive sign for Mercedes, showing they don't expect the need to rely on wing downforce to make-up the deficit of floor downforce compared to opponents.

Yes the wing corners look less chubby. Possibly the cost cap prevented them from sorting those out last year.
What I notice with these Merc wings is the trailing edge has rectangular corners as opposed to curved. The wing appears bigger when viewed from the back compared to the other cars.
Are they creating two vortices with the sharp corners?

[KeiKo403]

There are ample reasons to run both wings for comparisons in FP1, I wouldn't take it as an indication of them still considering which wing to run. Mike Elliott was pretty clear that they're gonna run a different wing than testing.

That being said, hypothetically, if they are considering running such a high df wing in Bahrain, it would probably not bode well for their concept (especially the floor). So, let's wait and see, but I'm pretty sure they're running both wings just for data and aren't actually considering using it because that would be...well, not great.

Unless conditions are significantly different than last Saturday (or other stuff on the car has changed) then why run both wings between George and Lewis in FP1? That isn’t a direct question to you as such, just a thinking out load kinda moment. Surely that have the relevant data on the barn door from 5 days ago

I obviously could be very wrong here, but what I've gathered from the things Mike Elliott said and other unnamed personnel at Mercedes is that they really weren't trying to optimize the setup for Bahrain during testing. They were mainly just trying to understand the car. A popular theory for why they ran such a high df rear wing is that they wanted to see if it would trigger porpoising, and I'm inclined to believe that was at least part of the reasoning.

You always want to isolate variables as you change more and more things about the setup so you know what is causing a certain effect. If we recall from last year, Mercedes' biggest problem was that they just didn't understand why thing were happening. It makes a lot of sense to me that as you start trying to optimize the setup for Bahrain and try to get the floor to produce the downforce it needs to, you'd want to isolate the variable of the rear wing if you can.

Lastly, Mark Hughes had an interesting observation on The Race's podcast this week. He said that Mercedes' third day of testing looked a lot like other teams' first. In other words, partly because of the struggles they had on the second day, they are still on a pretty steep learning curve, if that makes sense. I think that might be another reason for Mercedes to run the high df rear wing on a car during fp1--they didn't really get to do their full testing program so they have some catching up to do.

But wasn’t the barn door rear wing to alleviate some of the porpoising problems? I would think they wouldn’t want to spend a shakedown (as curtailed as it was), a filming day and a whole 3 day test running with the same rear wing as last year? Surely they’d want to drop the car to the floor as much as possible and add a track relevant rear wing to see if the relevant levels of downforce produced by the floor is enough to a. Give them what they want downforce wise. And b. Not induce porpoising.

[Vanja #66]

Yes the wing corners look less chubby. Possibly the cost cap prevented them from sorting those out last year.
What I notice with these Merc wings is the trailing edge has rectangular corners as opposed to curved. The wing appears bigger when viewed from the back compared to the other cars.
Are they creating two vortices with the sharp corners?

I think it's about this:

It seems to be their preference to use the maximum allowed surface of the wing. They likely found some gains with slight lateral expansion (like diffuser) as you said.

Since some teams tried that and gave up later, it doesn't look like a big differentiator at all, likely just the way different teams take different trade-offs.

[Venturiation]

Unless conditions are significantly different than last Saturday (or other stuff on the car has changed) then why run both wings between George and Lewis in FP1? That isn’t a direct question to you as such, just a thinking out load kinda moment. Surely that have the relevant data on the barn door from 5 days ago

I obviously could be very wrong here, but what I've gathered from the things Mike Elliott said and other unnamed personnel at Mercedes is that they really weren't trying to optimize the setup for Bahrain during testing. They were mainly just trying to understand the car. A popular theory for why they ran such a high df rear wing is that they wanted to see if it would trigger porpoising, and I'm inclined to believe that was at least part of the reasoning.

You always want to isolate variables as you change more and more things about the setup so you know what is causing a certain effect. If we recall from last year, Mercedes' biggest problem was that they just didn't understand why thing were happening. It makes a lot of sense to me that as you start trying to optimize the setup for Bahrain and try to get the floor to produce the downforce it needs to, you'd want to isolate the variable of the rear wing if you can.

Lastly, Mark Hughes had an interesting observation on The Race's podcast this week. He said that Mercedes' third day of testing looked a lot like other teams' first. In other words, partly because of the struggles they had on the second day, they are still on a pretty steep learning curve, if that makes sense. I think that might be another reason for Mercedes to run the high df rear wing on a car during fp1--they didn't really get to do their full testing program so they have some catching up to do.

But wasn’t the barn door rear wing to alleviate some of the porpoising problems? I would think they wouldn’t want to spend a shakedown (as curtailed as it was), a filming day and a whole 3 day test running with the same rear wing as last year? Surely they’d want to drop the car to the floor as much as possible and add a track relevant rear wing to see if the relevant levels of downforce produced by the floor is enough to a. Give them what they want downforce wise. And b. Not induce porpoising.

It was to compensate for the reduced floor downforce downgrade that they did to mitigate porpoising

[KeiKo403]

I obviously could be very wrong here, but what I've gathered from the things Mike Elliott said and other unnamed personnel at Mercedes is that they really weren't trying to optimize the setup for Bahrain during testing. They were mainly just trying to understand the car. A popular theory for why they ran such a high df rear wing is that they wanted to see if it would trigger porpoising, and I'm inclined to believe that was at least part of the reasoning.

You always want to isolate variables as you change more and more things about the setup so you know what is causing a certain effect. If we recall from last year, Mercedes' biggest problem was that they just didn't understand why thing were happening. It makes a lot of sense to me that as you start trying to optimize the setup for Bahrain and try to get the floor to produce the downforce it needs to, you'd want to isolate the variable of the rear wing if you can.

Lastly, Mark Hughes had an interesting observation on The Race's podcast this week. He said that Mercedes' third day of testing looked a lot like other teams' first. In other words, partly because of the struggles they had on the second day, they are still on a pretty steep learning curve, if that makes sense. I think that might be another reason for Mercedes to run the high df rear wing on a car during fp1--they didn't really get to do their full testing program so they have some catching up to do.

But wasn’t the barn door rear wing to alleviate some of the porpoising problems? I would think they wouldn’t want to spend a shakedown (as curtailed as it was), a filming day and a whole 3 day test running with the same rear wing as last year? Surely they’d want to drop the car to the floor as much as possible and add a track relevant rear wing to see if the relevant levels of downforce produced by the floor is enough to a. Give them what they want downforce wise. And b. Not induce porpoising.

It was to compensate for the reduced floor downforce downgrade that they did to mitigate porpoising

I understand that but what I don’t understand is why using that same rear wing would be useful for testing with to see if you’ve resolved your porpoising issues.

[organic]

Porpoising is aggravated by higher downforce levels. To test whether they have resolved porpoising they therefore tried everything they could to make it happen, hence the larger rear wing

[SmallSoldier]

Comparison PU layout W13 vs W14



Via: Sala Stampa

[stonehenge]

But wasn’t the barn door rear wing to alleviate some of the porpoising problems? I would think they wouldn’t want to spend a shakedown (as curtailed as it was), a filming day and a whole 3 day test running with the same rear wing as last year? Surely they’d want to drop the car to the floor as much as possible and add a track relevant rear wing to see if the relevant levels of downforce produced by the floor is enough to a. Give them what they want downforce wise. And b. Not induce porpoising.

It was to compensate for the reduced floor downforce downgrade that they did to mitigate porpoising

I understand that but what I don’t understand is why using that same rear wing would be useful for testing with to see if you’ve resolved your porpoising issues.

I think Mercedes' big problem last year was that they had to run the car *much* higher than they originally intended because of the porpoising. That meant that the floor didn't generate the level of downforce they were expecting and so they needed to find that df somewhere else--which is how you end up running a high df rear wing at medium df tracks. I think this is critical to understand Mercedes' approach to this year's car and their decision making. They clearly think there's still a lot of potential in the car if they can just extract that, which means getting the performance from the floor without triggering porpoising.

Obviously I don't know if that's what's going on in their heads, but their testing program makes a lot of sense from that perspective. They really weren't trying to optimize performance for Bahrain, they were just doing everything they could to see if porpoising was resolved. Now they can slowly start to extract potential from the car. Don't get me wrong, I don't think this means Mercedes will magically be a second faster or anything like that. Extracting performance from a concept isn't easy, and Mercedes are a year behind Red Bull and Ferrari. I think that's why they consistently say that they're starting from behind and playing catch up.

[KeiKo403]

Porpoising is aggravated by higher downforce levels. To test whether they have resolved porpoising they therefore tried everything they could to make it happen, hence the larger rear wing

I get that starting a response with ‘with all due respect’ can sound very passive aggressive but I really don’t intend it to.

With all due respect and apologies if it’s just a turn of phrase but did they try everything they could? Wouldn’t a better test be to slam, for want of a better phrase, the floor to the track surface and run with a lower downforce wing? It was the intended low ground clearance of the W13 which caused the porpoising wasn’t it, raising the car up and replacing the lost downforce with the big rear wing was a way to limit the bouncing whilst still retaining some level of good downforce at the expense of drag.

Don’t get me wrong they know what they’re doing better than me but it strikes me that they either know their car has inherent problems once again or they’re hiding a beast of a car .
(Or, for completeness, they have an alright car which they can build on through the season )

[Mattchu]

The side-pods radiators seem to have been tweaked...They don`t seem as steeply inclined as last year and also look to be a lot shorter, the top section looks like it starts several cm`s below the lower one, and they both seem to stop around the logs whereas before they went much nearer the floor.
Maybe they`re a bit wider, if not I`d imagine that helps with the weight saving, be good to see a top shot.



Credit to original photo: Sala Stampa

[Stu]

The side-pods radiators seem to have been tweaked...They don`t seem as steeply inclined as last year and also look to be a lot shorter, the top section looks like it starts several cm`s below the lower one, and they both seem to stop around the logs whereas before they went much nearer the floor.
Maybe they`re a bit wider, if not I`d imagine that helps with the weight saving, be good to see a top shot.

https://i.postimg.cc/SRczwzrH/rad1.png

Credit to original photo: Sala Stampa

There are two things at play here:
1) the minimum height of the throat section has been raised for this year
2) this kind of rework probably had to wait due to budget cap constraints, it really frees up the underfloor.

[NtsParadize]

[KeiKo403]

Is there 2 stays there? One in front of the suspension (normal floor stay) and another at the back by diffuser roof/beam wing?