2023 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[AMG.Tzan]

Another boring race. Lewis had the car for P2 or P3 at the very least, the start but also whatever happened on his outlap on the hards cost him dearly - does anyone have a clip of his outlap? the gap went from 3s to Norris to 9s. Still, it was a great final stint and to take pole against the most dominant car in F1 history it was a good weekend for him.

Redbull finish with the biggest margin of the season on a track they expected to struggle at according to Marko, they will win every race this season. F1 need to step in now it's getting ridicoulous they are killing this sport, there's no point tuning in if you want to see a battle for the win until 2026.

Well you really don't have to watch it if it's not interesting, is there any point coming to a long time technical forum to tell other people this.

Presumably you saw Merc in the years 2014~2020 ?

The rules are the same for each and every team.

Can’t tell people to stop writing their opinions!

Mercedes never won 12 races in a row and always had some kind of competition within the team or from the outside! That they ended up winning every single one of these 8 championships had more to do with them pushing development to the end and spending a lot of money!

Under a budget cap era this shouldn’t happen since the rules were meant to bring the field closer together and end big team dominations! If we’re going to have dominance again what’s the point in having the budget cap and development restrictions anyway?

Get a grip of the situation of our sport and stop acting as if everything is normal and should continue this way just because Mercedes dominated before…

[AR3-GP]

Mark Hughes

Then there was the power unit cooling levels. At the base of the Red Bull’s new engine cover there are five cooling gills. Every one of them was open. They inflict a very significant performance penalty as the hot extracted air compromises the downforce-generating airflow to the rear of the car.

The Mercedes gills are sited further forward, atop the sidepods. At some hot races earlier in the year, it had up to four of them opened up. Here, it had only two. Did Mercedes go a little over-ambitious with its cooling package? That would for sure help it in qualifying and without that choice Hamilton would not have been on pole. But it seems as if it did hurt Mercedes in the race.

https://the-race.com/formula-1/mark-hug ... o-drastic/

[CHT]

LH has been very vocal about penalty for budget cap recently..i am not sure has got to do with Merc already exhausted their budget for 2023 , perhaps spending too much in trying to fix the zero pod design,

Without tesring major updrade this year its unlikely they will be able to produce a winning car for 2024.

[pursue_one's]

Mark Hughes

Then there was the power unit cooling levels. At the base of the Red Bull’s new engine cover there are five cooling gills. Every one of them was open. They inflict a very significant performance penalty as the hot extracted air compromises the downforce-generating airflow to the rear of the car.

The Mercedes gills are sited further forward, atop the sidepods. At some hot races earlier in the year, it had up to four of them opened up. Here, it had only two. Did Mercedes go a little over-ambitious with its cooling package? That would for sure help it in qualifying and without that choice Hamilton would not have been on pole. But it seems as if it did hurt Mercedes in the race.

https://the-race.com/formula-1/mark-hug ... o-drastic/

Lewis on the reconnaissance lap

[organic]

Mark Hughes

Then there was the power unit cooling levels. At the base of the Red Bull’s new engine cover there are five cooling gills. Every one of them was open. They inflict a very significant performance penalty as the hot extracted air compromises the downforce-generating airflow to the rear of the car.

The Mercedes gills are sited further forward, atop the sidepods. At some hot races earlier in the year, it had up to four of them opened up. Here, it had only two. Did Mercedes go a little over-ambitious with its cooling package? That would for sure help it in qualifying and without that choice Hamilton would not have been on pole. But it seems as if it did hurt Mercedes in the race.

https://the-race.com/formula-1/mark-hug ... o-drastic/

Bit sloppy from Mark. RB were nowhere near maximum cooling outlets in the race today

More than 5 gills on the engine cover and extra gills on sidepod top run in FP2

In the race they only had the 5 engine cover gills open, none on sidepod

So I think Merc were no outlier in terms of not opening all of the cooling. Alpine and Ferrari opened their cooling up but I don't think McLaren/RB/Merc did. Only Merc ran into cooling problems in the race. Maybe overly aggressive but I don't think they were going in completely the wrong direction with how much cooling they opted for as Hughes is suggesting

Merc also have gills in their engine cover gutter. Is possible they can increase those which isn't easily photographed

[Tvetovnato]

According to Shovlin, they didn’t expect the ambient temps to be as high as they were today, so they simply got it a bit wrong there.

[organic]

Merc have always pushed up to limit with cooling compared to most teams

[mkay]

According to Shovlin, they didn’t expect the ambient temps to be as high as they were today, so they simply got it a bit wrong there.

That would be foolish. Sunday was always forecast to be 2-3C warmer than Friday/Saturday.

[AR3-GP]

A different team claims to have found 2 tenths from a change to their sidepod in Hungary. I wonder if this will cause Mercedes to think a bit more about how that could be and if they could find so much performance from a sidepod upgrade.

[denyall]

A different team claims to have found 2 tenths from a change to their sidepod in Hungary. I wonder if this will cause Mercedes to think a bit more about how that could be and if they could find so much performance from a sidepod upgrade.

It's all about HOW the sidepod interacts with everything else.

If the Merc SIS is in the wrong spot the possible sidepod shapes available may indeed not give benefit.

I believe that sidepod shapes matter and also that the "winning" sidepod shape is not available to Merc this year.

No doubt Merc engineers know what they want to do for next year.

[Big Tea]

According to Shovlin, they didn’t expect the ambient temps to be as high as they were today, so they simply got it a bit wrong there.

That would be foolish. Sunday was always forecast to be 2-3C warmer than Friday/Saturday.

As Ham was starting with no cars in front of him, I assume they gambled a little on getting ,ore clear air than they would have had he actually lined up 4th. Also mention, some are saying Lewis was capable of putting in good times late so should have been capable of finishing higher had he pushed, he put those times in then because he ahs 'saved' the car earlier. Had he killed his tyres in early stints, he could not have done it then.

I think that is where the Merc is right now, and a respectable effort. So await a new tweek to be able to challenge (if it comes).

[CHT]

According to Shovlin, they didn’t expect the ambient temps to be as high as they were today, so they simply got it a bit wrong there.

That would be foolish. Sunday was always forecast to be 2-3C warmer than Friday/Saturday.

Merc engines were supposed to be able to operate at higher temperatures to allow for a more aggressive cooling setup. It seems that Merc is still pushing for this despite earlier set back, while teams like Mclaren and AM have already abandoned the concept to copy RBR design instead.

Merc seems to be caught between a rock and a hard place at the moment. On one hand, they wish to copy RBR design, while at the same time still wishing to pursue an aggressive cooling to take advantage of engine strength

One hypothesis is that Merc could have exhausted this year's budget cap while working hard to fix the zero pod designs. And that is why they have yet to introduce major upgrades like Mclaren. If this hypothesis is correct, Merc is likely to play catch up again in 2024.

[Farnborough]

According to Shovlin, they didn’t expect the ambient temps to be as high as they were today, so they simply got it a bit wrong there.

That would be foolish. Sunday was always forecast to be 2-3C warmer than Friday/Saturday.

Merc engines were supposed to be able to operate at higher temperatures to allow for a more aggressive cooling setup. It seems that Merc is still pushing for this despite earlier set back, while teams like Mclaren and AM have already abandoned the concept to copy RBR design instead.

Merc seems to be caught between a rock and a hard place at the moment. On one hand, they wish to copy RBR design, while at the same time still wishing to pursue an aggressive cooling to take advantage of engine strength

One hypothesis is that Merc could have exhausted this year's budget cap while working hard to fix the zero pod designs. And that is why they have yet to introduce major upgrades like Mclaren. If this hypothesis is correct, Merc is likely to play catch up again in 2024.

Looks like MB have a top line decision here, at this point. Perhaps that was what the meeting was about that LH mentioned with all the higher management ?

The decision is, continue with individuality if that means so much to them. Or, moving to what is becoming a blueprint for performance in this rules regimen, and with just two years to run after this season.

Once that is made, the rest will follow. Undoubtedly with the skills they have success is attainable, but looks like it depends on that first line concept choice.

We know which avenue Lewis wants, he sits in the car beside the competition, they should take note of his view and particularly in light of his huge in depth evaluation of what it takes to beat the others. He has the experience, they should listen.

[Willy]

That would be foolish. Sunday was always forecast to be 2-3C warmer than Friday/Saturday.

Merc engines were supposed to be able to operate at higher temperatures to allow for a more aggressive cooling setup. It seems that Merc is still pushing for this despite earlier set back, while teams like Mclaren and AM have already abandoned the concept to copy RBR design instead.

Merc seems to be caught between a rock and a hard place at the moment. On one hand, they wish to copy RBR design, while at the same time still wishing to pursue an aggressive cooling to take advantage of engine strength

One hypothesis is that Merc could have exhausted this year's budget cap while working hard to fix the zero pod designs. And that is why they have yet to introduce major upgrades like Mclaren. If this hypothesis is correct, Merc is likely to play catch up again in 2024.

Looks like MB have a top line decision here, at this point. Perhaps that was what the meeting was about that LH mentioned with all the higher management ?

The decision is, continue with individuality if that means so much to them. Or, moving to what is becoming a blueprint for performance in this rules regimen, and with just two years to run after this season.

Once that is made, the rest will follow. Undoubtedly with the skills they have success is attainable, but looks like it depends on that first line concept choice.

We know which avenue Lewis wants, he sits in the car beside the competition, they should take note of his view and particularly in light of his huge in depth evaluation of what it takes to beat the others. He has the experience, they should listen.

Designing a high performance car has nothing to do with what a driver feels! Guys that sit in the factory doing design work, barely care about what a driver wants. They listen, but I doubt they care. They just go through scientific ideas and rely on numbers to see if their ideas work and the car as a whole delivers the performance they envisage with those designs. That's what they did with W13, but their correlation was massively off, it gave them a shock. I am afraid, a driver asking the team to copy another car, isn't adding a great deal of value and it would be very irritating for those guys. That's just the nature of those engineers.

They have gone down quite a long way with their concept and there is no turning back to make this concept work for another car's design. I guess that's why they say the Red Bull type sidepods hampered their downforce when they tried on the computer. Most likely, they might already be working on a completely new concept, which in turn may or may not be what they want it to be. But that's the need of the hour. When that new concept comes, will it perfectly suit Lewis? Unless it comes with a great balance out of the box, it wouldn't really be liked by either driver. If it has performance in it, then both of them will try to get over their dislike. If it doesn't, you will hear driver complaints going through the roof.

I really hope they don't copy Red Bull and in fact come up with something that is original that has a lot of potential.

[omegacel71]

I really hope they don't copy Red Bull and in fact come up with something that is original that has a lot of potential.

The Cost Cap will scare most of the top teams into not being too innovative/risky. Like how zero-pod concept was only good in the simulations.There is fear of getting it wrong and having to waste another year away.