2023 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[Vanja #66]

Poor Russell, he is clearly the number two in the team

Sounds more like "please dont retire, we can do it"

[Spoutnik]

Doesn't look like they're solving s*. I bet you the upgrade that comes in a few races will do absolutely nothing, and they'll be like oh, the correlation didn't blah blah... the usual junk. Heads need to start rolling

Spot on. I have the same exact feeling. They are stuck. Someone here was betting his house that the 2023 changes would help Mercedes and harm others. Doesn't look like Mercedes consulted him either. If that was genuinely the case, they have let go an opportunity to score over their competition.

Russell will continue getting fugazi 4th places and Toto will shout *** words at the radio but nothing good seem to be coming from this team. How can Aston made so much progress and these guys regress.

I don't know if I'm the only one but how on earth you spent the winter designing a car, you come to the first race and you are saying "we will change the sidepots"

Ferrari are a bit slower than last year at Barhein relative to RB, but it's clear that their car has a lot of room for improvement/is designed for all race tra k on the calendar (Barhain not the best fit for them), and they are close

[Spoutnik]

Poor Russell, he is clearly the number two in the team

Sounds more like "please dont retire, we can do it"

I think they feel they owe it to him cause they spent 2021 with almost no upgrades... for what today...?
Russell is clearly like Ocon he will race well in the middle and get some fugazi points thinking he's better than Hamilton, the team is pretty much 50-50

I don't think the team will let Russell down in a title fight. It's just imo that they now that he's not at the moment at the level to sustain a title fight with the likes of Verstappen, Alonso or even Leclerc.

Hamilton should find another team for 2025 imo if things don't change

[f1jcw]

Russell was not safe, he almost was knocked out in Q2.

This is Q3, ran late, ran one and had no time to run again.

Did they think the track would be faster

Yet again, with Merc, DONT OVER THINK IT!

There was no point in running twice because they only had the new tyres for one run.

what you usually do is run with the used softs, get a banker in and then run with the new

[harty71]

Poor Russell, he is clearly the number two in the team

Sounds more like "please dont retire, we can do it"

I think they feel they owe it to him cause they spent 2021 with almost no upgrades... for what today...?
Russell is clearly like Ocon he will race well in the middle and get some fugazi points thinking he's better than Hamilton, the team is pretty much 50-50

I don't think the team will let Russell down in a title fight. It's just imo that they now that he's not at the moment at the level to sustain a title fight with the likes of Verstappen, Alonso or even Leclerc.

Hamilton should find another team for 2025 imo if things don't change

Russell is more than capable of winning a title given the right car, he beat the most successful driver ever for crying out loud, what more does the kid need to do?

[De Jokke]

https://racingnews365.com/russell-merce ... -overnight

[organic]

https://racingnews365.com/russell-merce ... -overnight

"With the change we made we expected to find probably one tenth [of a second] and we found maybe five or six tenths, and we need to understand why that is."

[Venturiation]

Here is the interview with toto

He says they gave the concept another chance this year but already in testing it was below than what they were seeing
And qualifying confirms it
They haven’t decided yet what to do and engineers are discussing it

[Cs98]

The problem is I just don't see it in the long runs, in fact I think they are closer on one lap pace than race pace. Which would mean that they have essentially lost the greatest strength of the W13.

[GSBellew]

Ive no idea where this 0.2 difference in tyre offset is coming from. The car is 0.676 behind the Red Bull. No rubbish about a driver not hooking up a corner, older tyres and al that rubbish. Today the car is 0.676 slower than Max's red bull. If they look at it that way they will want to take into account track evolution, wind direction/speed, track temperature, amount of rubber down, time of the day. All rubbish. Too many hypotheticals.

Red bull could turn round and said, we are 0.2 down because the wind changed direction, or max brakes 30cm earlier than another corner, or the track temp rose marginally.

It's coming from desperation, it's an attempt to make things appear better then they are, as you rightly said, the only gap that matters is the gap recorded on the day, anything else is just hypothetical make yourself feel better bull.

[Spoutnik]

Ive no idea where this 0.2 difference in tyre offset is coming from. The car is 0.676 behind the Red Bull. No rubbish about a driver not hooking up a corner, older tyres and al that rubbish. Today the car is 0.676 slower than Max's red bull. If they look at it that way they will want to take into account track evolution, wind direction/speed, track temperature, amount of rubber down, time of the day. All rubbish. Too many hypotheticals.

Red bull could turn round and said, we are 0.2 down because the wind changed direction, or max brakes 30cm earlier than another corner, or the track temp rose marginally.

It's coming from desperation, it's an attempt to make things appear better then they are, as you rightly said, the only gap that matters is the gap recorded on the day, anything else is just hypothetical make yourself feel better bull.

My bet for tomorrow is that without SC they will end up +30s behind Verstappen.

[De Jokke]

if you look at this, both drivers seem confident they can catch RBR along the way:


So strange that Toto now tells they'll be ditching the concept

[AR3-GP]

if you look at this, both drivers seem confident they can catch RBR along the way:


So strange that Toto now tells they'll be ditching the concept

Driver interviews are PR. You would think everyone qualified on pole if you didn't actually look at the times.

[Vanja #66]

I think they are stuck. Mid wing wont have much use with a bluff sidepod.
They may have to remove it.. but it's where the SIS are.. so I am not sure what can be done. It's a headache.
The other options is to do their hybrid pods and somehow do a better floor and diffuser.

I already mentioned somewhere I believe Merc mighty want to choose their own interpretation of AMR-like concept, it seems to have some very nice effects and is also relying on similar cooling setup that Merc is already using. It really would make sense in my view.

As I already mentioned, sides can't gain 5 tenths, but it seems they could maybe lose that much time alone... This is why I expected Merc to be 2-3 tenths off RB/Ferrari (whichever car was faster) as I was sure they don't have negative aero interaction between sides and floor. I mentioned they need floor performance, but mid wing vortex really could cause some trouble with diffuser interaction, which can cost them 2-3 more tenths over a lap. So I'm not ruling this out now, even if I didn't consider it last year.

[zibby43]

The problem is I just don't see it in the long runs, in fact I think they are closer on one lap pace than race pace. Which would mean that they have essentially lost the greatest strength of the W13.

Lewis seems pretty confident their long race pace is stronger. I think it’s been very difficult to extrapolate long run pace the past few years. Teams are too good at obfuscating the picture via stint length, age of tires, fuel load, engine modes, etc.