2023 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[mendis]

To understand what is noise and what is a trend requires sampling of a large dataset.

Data will accumulate over the next few races. BY the end of the season, we'll know whether Mercedes have turned the corner and are/can be competitive on merit.

What would be a reference to measure the progress if Red Bull isn't going to upgrade the current car at the same rate, to focus on next year? We saw that happen once already.

[pursue_one's]

Mercedes are looking for a Design Team Leader.
Is this a bad sign?

https://www.mercedesamgf1.com/careers/v ... req-230197

[ValeVida46]

Mercedes are looking for a Design Team Leader.
Is this a bad sign?

https://www.mercedesamgf1.com/careers/v ... req-230197

This is an exciting role for a highly experienced Design Team Leader to join our in-house creative visual design team. You’ll be reporting to the Head of Creative Design managing the graphic design department, helping to deliver creative projects and graphics for the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team.
We’re looking for a multidisciplinary Design Team Leader with a strong portfolio who has extensive experience in delivering engaging and creative solutions for all aspects of design, including but not limited to; branding, illustrations, digital, print and signage.

This has nothing to do with the technical side.

[cplchanb]

Mercedes are looking for a Design Team Leader.
Is this a bad sign?

https://www.mercedesamgf1.com/careers/v ... req-230197

…

This has nothing to do with the technical side.

yea looking at the description its more for marketing.

[chrisc90]

To understand what is noise and what is a trend requires sampling of a large dataset.

Data will accumulate over the next few races. BY the end of the season, we'll know whether Mercedes have turned the corner and are/can be competitive on merit.

What would be a reference to measure the progress if Red Bull isn't going to upgrade the current car at the same rate, to focus on next year? We saw that happen once already.

Similar led them down the garden path over winter after the W13 won a race in Brazil. The lack of development from other teams probably made them think that they have a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel. That soon turned round come pre-season testing when they realised the car was essentially a ‘dud’ in terms of competing for wins each weekend.

Whether they will get caught up with the lack of development from Red Bull in the second half of the season will be something that we need to wait and see. It’ll be a little bit embarrassing if the same happens this season going into next. (Granted that was a different style of car/zeropods)

The Silverstone stuff is just all media fantasy in my opinion. They know they will have a lot of Lewis/George fans there so hyping the crowd early on.

Yea the car has taken a step forward, but it hasn’t took that much of a step forward in terms of battling for the wins. Even across the medium and hard stint in Canada your roughly 1/2 a second off Verstappen, and a tenth or 2 to Alonso who was managing a lot. (The time when Lewis should have been there to strike)
That’s not even including Ferrari in the mix either, who drove a strong race.

[AR3-GP]

To understand what is noise and what is a trend requires sampling of a large dataset.

Data will accumulate over the next few races. BY the end of the season, we'll know whether Mercedes have turned the corner and are/can be competitive on merit.

Ultimately it's difficult to gauge anything by hyper focusing on specific events as F1 is very complicated. What's not complicated is the WCC. I think it's best metric for interpreting the improvement where it matters (seeing the big picture). Last year they took 3rd. It would be a good step if they can take 2nd this year. Then maybe next year they can take 1st.

I realize we tend to get lost in these nitty gritty discussions about race pace and what not, but with so much complexity in how teams pace their development for the current season with an eye towards the next, it's impossible to make long term conclusions. End of last year would have you believe Mercedes will be challenging for the title this season.

That's why I now think the WCC is the safest way to see the big picture. AMR made up several positions. Merc have made a smaller one. These two teams have made the most improvement.

[dans79]

I don’t understand how Mercedes can develop much more than the rest of the field

Last year already they did that, but with budget cap it is strange

Hamilton said they need to focus on 2024 and I agree.

They have now to switch everything to 2024 like Red Bull is.

I dont understand it either. I was going to hold judgement until the 2022 cost cap results were published. Has anyone seen those yet? Summer break?

mitigating factors exist outside of the regulations.

1) teams are not equal when it comes to the quality of their wind tunnels, for example.
https://the-race.com/formula-1/is-red-b ... aim-valid/

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner believes its aerodynamic testing penalty for breaching the Formula 1 cost cap is “hugely draconian” because its “relic of the Cold War” windtunnel has inefficiencies.

“And you have to remember that we operate out of a windtunnel that is actually a listed building, it’s a relic of the Cold War. It’s not a state-of-the-art windtunnel that our competitors enjoy.

“It was built in the 1950s and it has its own limitations when it’s either too cold or too hot at getting the conditions and the operating temperature at that tunnel to the right temperature.

“So therefore, a penalty like this is hugely draconian.

Merc's tunnel was last updated in 2012, and AM is working on a brand new one of their own.

2) the servers the teams run cfd simulations on are also not equivalent, because the FIA rules have a giant hole in them.
https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files ... -04-29.pdf

The amount of compute resource used for the solve part or parts of all RCFDs shall
be measured in Mega Allocation Unit hours (MAUh) and will be calculated as
follows.

AUh = (NCU * NSS * CCF) / 3600

Where:

AUh = The total number of Unit hours allocated to a CFD solver run. An
Allocation Unit hour represents the use of a unit of resource allocation for
one hour (and 1 x MAUh = 1,000,000 x AUh). An Allocation Unit hour is
equivalent to a core hour on a physical CPU core.

CCF = Peak Processing Unit clock frequency in GigaHertz achieved during
the CFD solver run. This will be the peak frequency theoretically
achievable during the run based on one of the following:

i) The standard or base clock frequency value from the Processing Unit
Manufacturer’s specification (if overclocking or enhanced modes are not
used in the run).
ii) The maximum “turbo”, “HPC” or other enhanced mode frequency value.
iii) The maximum overclocked frequency value.

NCU = Number of Processing Unit cores used for the solver run. The effects
of multi-threading, where simultaneous threads run on the same physical
core will be ignored.

NSS = Number of solver wall clock seconds elapsed during the run. Message
passing time during calculation must also be included.

All information required for auditing of this calculation must be present in the output
from the run including the CCF value.

This is flawed because it doesn't take into account IPC improvements per processor generation. IPC is where manufactures have made the biggest strides over the last decade.

very high level overview.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_cycle

It got next to no coverage but almost all of the top teams upgraded their server centers to the latest generation cpus before the cost cap kicked in.

https://www.amd.com/en/case-studies/f1- ... g-petronas
Simon Williams, Head of Aero Development Software at Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1.

“EPYC was the front runner in delivering the performance and space saving we needed,” continues Williams. The Mercedes F1 team chose 2nd Generation AMD EPYC™ processors to replace the three-and-a-half-year-old system it had from another vendor. “We gained a 20 percent efficiency improvement on the old system. This is a big step because we're usually looking at one or two percent gains. The new system is allowing us to focus our effort on aerodynamic performance.

3) Finally even the cfd software teams run is not equivalent. The back of the grid is most likely running off the shelf or barely customized software, while those at the front are most likely running 100% custom code.

My degrees is in computational physics, and you can gain massive performance improvements by using the right algorithms, and/or making the right assumptions.

Here is a very very simple example of what i'm talking about.

[Vanja #66]

2) the servers the teams run cfd simulations on are also not equivalent, because the FIA rules have a giant hole in them.
https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files ... -04-29.pdf
***

Brilliant, thanks for sharing!

[zibby43]

Per AMuS, Merc engineers reported that Canadian GP data suggests Verstappen may have only had 1 tenth in reserve.

[InsaneX_Badger]

Per AMuS, Merc engineers reported that Canadian GP data suggests Verstappen may have only had 1 tenth in reserve.

That could be true, but I think it's more due to the RB struggling to fire up the tyres at the current track conditions more than anything.

[Juzh]

Per AMuS, Merc engineers reported that Canadian GP data suggests Verstappen may have only had 1 tenth in reserve.

In terms of car performance on hard tyre, in second half of the race in particular nothing was in reserve, except maybe if Ver himself wasnt pushing 100%, but actually I think he was, because tyres were on verge of dropping out of operating window completely, so he was instructed to drop the management and floor it.

[PlatinumZealot]

I think overall merc will be pleased that they have effectively cleared ferrari and closed the gap to am on an unfavourable track. Lets see what happens with austria and uk. Is AM bringing anything to silverstone?

Cleared Ferrari? Can't be too sure about that one my friend! Helmut Marko beleives that the Ferrari had the race pace to threaten Max if they had started up the front and gotten a good strategy.

Ferrari are still in that squabble. It's going to be tracks that make the difference.

[zibby43]

I think overall merc will be pleased that they have effectively cleared ferrari and closed the gap to am on an unfavourable track. Lets see what happens with austria and uk. Is AM bringing anything to silverstone?

Cleared Ferrari? Can't be too sure about that one my friend! Helmut Marko beleives that the Ferrari had the race pace to threaten Max if they had started up the front and gotten a good strategy.

Ferrari are still in that squabble. It's going to be tracks that make the difference.

Could it be that the cooler temperatures helped the Ferraris not completely decimate their rear tires?

Hamilton was able to keep the Ferraris at bay in the latter half of the race.

[chrisc90]

I think overall merc will be pleased that they have effectively cleared ferrari and closed the gap to am on an unfavourable track. Lets see what happens with austria and uk. Is AM bringing anything to silverstone?

Cleared Ferrari? Can't be too sure about that one my friend! Helmut Marko beleives that the Ferrari had the race pace to threaten Max if they had started up the front and gotten a good strategy.

Ferrari are still in that squabble. It's going to be tracks that make the difference.

Could it be that the cooler temperatures helped the Ferraris not completely decimate their rear tires?

Hamilton was able to keep the Ferraris at bay in the latter half of the race.

A bit skewed considering different strategies and the Ferrari cars started 8 cars back aswell.

If the Ferrari's, and possibly Perez started further up, I think the outcome would have been different. The Ferrari had the fastest pace all weekend just about.

[zibby43]

Cleared Ferrari? Can't be too sure about that one my friend! Helmut Marko beleives that the Ferrari had the race pace to threaten Max if they had started up the front and gotten a good strategy.

Ferrari are still in that squabble. It's going to be tracks that make the difference.

Could it be that the cooler temperatures helped the Ferraris not completely decimate their rear tires?

Hamilton was able to keep the Ferraris at bay in the latter half of the race.

A bit skewed considering different strategies and the Ferrari cars started 8 cars back aswell.

If the Ferrari's, and possibly Perez started further up, I think the outcome would have been different. The Ferrari had the fastest pace all weekend just about.

Highly skeptical. Also, LEC pitted one lap earlier than HAM. Lap 39.