2023 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[AR3-GP]

Big news and good noises coming out of the Mercedes camp:
https://the-race.com/formula-1/mercedes ... ter-shift/

Says Merc are making big gains in the WT in the last 10 days.

“The trajectory is set now, it’s not anymore single qualifyings or races, we’re now storming full steam ahead on changing things. ”

Asked by The Race to elaborate on the nature of the ‘big steps’, he said: “Big steps in relative performance to where we are even now.

“The kind of gains that are coming in our R&D and in aero are much bigger than we’ve had for a long time – so we’ve unlocked some potential because we’ve simply looked at things from a different angle now.

He said the new development work going has “probably managed to find more performance in a week than we found in almost a month, let’s say, over the winter”.

Well then, they've been incompetent in the extreme with new car design for 2023. Sounds like B.S.

I think if they are running a concept that is like Ferrari/RB/AMR, then you know that it works already.

[mendis]

Big news and good noises coming out of the Mercedes camp:
https://the-race.com/formula-1/mercedes ... ter-shift/

Says Merc are making big gains in the WT in the last 10 days.

“The trajectory is set now, it’s not anymore single qualifyings or races, we’re now storming full steam ahead on changing things. ”

Asked by The Race to elaborate on the nature of the ‘big steps’, he said: “Big steps in relative performance to where we are even now.

“The kind of gains that are coming in our R&D and in aero are much bigger than we’ve had for a long time – so we’ve unlocked some potential because we’ve simply looked at things from a different angle now.

He said the new development work going has “probably managed to find more performance in a week than we found in almost a month, let’s say, over the winter”.

This is reminiscent of Ferrari gossip wine of the past decade. Desperation leading to PR BS.

[zibby43]

Big news and good noises coming out of the Mercedes camp:
https://the-race.com/formula-1/mercedes ... ter-shift/

Says Merc are making big gains in the WT in the last 10 days.

Well then, they've been incompetent in the extreme with new car design for 2023. Sounds like B.S.

I think if they are running a concept that is like Ferrari/RB/AMR, then you know that it works already.

Didn’t they say last year that they tested rivals’ designs and that they didn’t think they were worth pursuing further?

What’s changed?

Makes me wonder how true those past statements were, because what they’re saying now makes sense given the AM is flying with so many Merc components.

[mendis]

You people are so lucky to have someone like Lewis in your team and yet some of you have the balls to call him washed. smh.

Why should anyone in Mercedes feel lucky? Infact, they should be grateful for George for having given a solitary win last year and putting that dog on top 3 in this race. Hero worship serves no purpose, unless the hero actually performs miracles. 24 races now, there isn't one from Lewis. He is only complaining so far.

[kc_f1]

They just need to shut up and get the job done. They are making way too much noise - first the overkill with the apologies to fans and how they got it wrong. And now about making gains with the new concept.

"Confuse them with your silence and shock them with your results"

[shady]

When you are weak, appear strong.

[harty71]

[mzso]

There are some worrying questions to be asked:

1. Why the RB19 car could run like the W13 car as low as possible on the track and the W14 car couldn't do that? Coz it`ll break as Toto said, isn`t it? But the real question to be asked is whether they design this year's car not to run so low or just they don`t have a clue how the RB team is able to do that without porpoising/bouncing?

2. Elliot said that they`ve run in the CFD the RB concept car but unfortunately this solution wasn`t better than what they have now ...

Then that tells me their CFD is wrong and it often is.

More like they missed crucial details of the concept.

George is proof that drivers evolve with each generation, absolute stonking qualifying from him.

More like, driving a dominant car for years don't elevate you as a driver, no matter how much fools gush about you.
Russel just brought Hamilton back down to earth. Probably his last teammate who was this capable, was Alonso.

Being "old" is not an excuse. Alonso is the oldest and he even isn't really old in an absolute. Vettel wasn't old either, he was just suffering from not-having-a-dominant-car disease.

[mzso]

Alonso got bent over by Ocon last year, and now he’s a god again. Lewis had a bad day, and apparently needs putting in a home. Embarrassing, but that’s forums for you.

How blind you need to be to actually type something like that? Alonso was much better. I also got almost all of the technical and other issues.

It's the same dumb thing a suddenly calling a driver the greatest ever when they drive a car that's better than all the others by a huge margin.

[mzso]

The only thing I worry about when it comes to Lewis is Mercedes never being able to give him a car that can win again. That is a distinct possibility now and he may end up never competing at the front again. We shall see.

What I'm sad about is that Russel got to the team as they fell back. I would have liked to see him defeat Hamilton for the championship.

[AMG.Tzan]

People writing “Lewis doesn’t have it anymore, hang up the gloves Lewis”

Yet the guy bleached Russell two weeks ago, battled Alonso in a much faster Aston Martin (at that stage of the race) and got quite close to Sainz! Russell on the other hand got bleached by a pay driver! These are pure excuses from people painfully waiting 8 years for Mercedes’s domination to end!

I’m a Hamilton fan and I was pissed off today by his performance compared to Russell but apparently that’s a track that suits Russell more as was the case last year! Apart from that Hamilton always seems to go more for a Race setup with less downforce whereas Russell goes for more downforce…that’s why Hamilton lost almost all his 0,4 secs in the 1st sector alone!

What about everyone else then? Or is the W14 just still .750 behind everyone else?

Surely everyone else in front of Lewis didn’t set the car up for the race.

The Lewis era is over. I’ll honestly be shocked if he wins another race before he retires.

Yeah I expect the same…

Apparently he has forgotten how to drive

[mendis]

People writing “Lewis doesn’t have it anymore, hang up the gloves Lewis”

Yet the guy bleached Russell two weeks ago, battled Alonso in a much faster Aston Martin (at that stage of the race) and got quite close to Sainz! Russell on the other hand got bleached by a pay driver! These are pure excuses from people painfully waiting 8 years for Mercedes’s domination to end!

I’m a Hamilton fan and I was pissed off today by his performance compared to Russell but apparently that’s a track that suits Russell more as was the case last year! Apart from that Hamilton always seems to go more for a Race setup with less downforce whereas Russell goes for more downforce…that’s why Hamilton lost almost all his 0,4 secs in the 1st sector alone!

What about everyone else then? Or is the W14 just still .750 behind everyone else?

Surely everyone else in front of Lewis didn’t set the car up for the race.

The Lewis era is over. I’ll honestly be shocked if he wins another race before he retires.

Yeah I expect the same…

Apparently he has forgotten how to drive

Definitely not! He just has got a team mate that is driving better. Throughout the history, great cars have made some drivers look better than they actually are!

[chrisc90]

What about everyone else then? Or is the W14 just still .750 behind everyone else?

Surely everyone else in front of Lewis didn’t set the car up for the race.

The Lewis era is over. I’ll honestly be shocked if he wins another race before he retires.

Yeah I expect the same…

Apparently he has forgotten how to drive

Definitely not! He just has got a team mate that is driving better. Throughout the history, great cars have made some drivers look better than they actually are!

Also replying to AMG.Tzan…

I think the way the team operates is changing a little aswell. Russell is a young driver with many many seasons ahead of him. Bottas was 31/32 during the final years at Mercedes for him, and I think he, Lewis and the team knew that focus was on Lewis. Lewis was/is the front page of Mercedes. However now George has come in and got ambition, talent (not that VB/LH doesn’t) and drive to succeed the front cover has changed slightly. With a poorer than anticipated car from the team, this has only highlighted the issue and getting more media attention for the lack of results everyone was accustomed to over the last 7/8 years.

I fully agree that the car us 75% of the job these days to getting the results, the rest by the driver getting the car in the right window where they want it. I think it’s a little too early to be making comparisons for this season, but over the era of the car Russell does appear to be getting hold of the horns better on the W13/14 so far. Whether this is down to the ground effect era of cars needing to be driven differently (as other drivers have said they’ve changed, adapted driving styles and picked up on on this forum) or just getting the car in a better setup window but I’d be fairly sure the overall setup of the cars is pretty much similar between team mates come the end of FP3 and into qualifying.

A 4-way fight for the championship would be absolutely amazing, you know tensions would be mega high and teams would have highs and lows between them.

I think most F1 fans would want to see Lewis, and George back fighting for wins, which is why I think these next few months are going to be absolutely critical for Mercedes to develop their next concept to be competitive.
I still don’t think they have a true understanding of where they need the car to be, as last year should have highlighted that perfectly fine instead of chasing the same concept over winter and throwing away 2-3 months of development which would have been better suited towards a different concept. What suddenly pinged up in the WT/CFD data that made the team think, “oh, we barking up the wrong tree here” and needing to make a last minute change of concepts. There must have been something as there was very little evidence of change before the Bahrain testing.

What will be interesting is whether the changes proposed are brought in in stages, introduced gradually, or whether there will be a full design change like what AMR did with their B-spec car last year.

Irrespective of what they bring, the change is going to have to be a good 1 second quicker than the car now (given the teams aheads development between now and Imola/silverstone, wherever merc propose to bring the new car) and that is a monumental mountain to climb. It’s literally W14B car rolling out the garage and having .750-1 second extra race pace. Unless the changes they introduce gradually can work with the existing concept, but probably a risky path to go down there. For example expecting a mid wing change (removal) to work with the narrow pod design. Or a front suspension change to work with the airflow on the existing setup and the new one of the side pod concept got changed.
Therefore I think it would be better for a full introduction rather than a gradual change over a few races.

[TotoWolf]

[Hammerfist]

The only thing I worry about when it comes to Lewis is Mercedes never being able to give him a car that can win again. That is a distinct possibility now and he may end up never competing at the front again. We shall see.

What I'm sad about is that Russel got to the team as they fell back. I would have liked to see him defeat Hamilton for the championship.

If the mighty verstappen could not stop Lewis in the final 4 races of 2021 how on earth would George Russell have done that? Especially considering we saw he was outperformed by Hamilton in 2022? Are we now saying George is better than Max?