Mercedes W14

[Farnborough]

Think it just emphasizes that Mercedes still don’t understand floor downforce well enough, and can compensate for that loss with barn door wings when the drag penalty is lower.

Interesting that in the final corner, Hamilton was fighting rear instability though. The Red Bull looked comparatively serene.

Hamilton said that he was caught by a crosswind that unsettled the car in the final corner. The Red Bull had issues earlier in the lap, so it wasn't plain sailing stability wise for them.

They understand floor downforce well enough to take pole on merit and to be the most consistent challenger across the season. They're a good step back from Red Bull but their season has ebbed and flowed less than other teams.

They may understand floor loading, but they haven't got it to the same level as other concept.

The big rear wing, effective round the faster mid circuit at more elevated speed, but typically at last two corner with speed down low it's effect is at the minimum and LH demonstrated exactly that.
Pushing as hard as he could (shouldn't any driver ? ) you could again see that rear was chassis limited, albeit gently enough to give him decent signal and allow many small corrections to contain, without getting too squirrely.
You could say, just enough load on rear to do the job and perfectly chosen in overall setup to blend into that best lap time.

It doesn't let the floor off the hook though, it's still week and should have been pulling it's fair share of load through these two slow long corners.
Certainly a balance struck for this circuit, but it asks very specific questions of all the cars here.
Again, Spa should let us see more of the balance in concept overall.

[pursue_one's]

[organic]

The RW endplate solution is elegant. Expect to see merc's implementation copied by RB and Ferrari for Singapore

[Just_a_fan]

The RW endplate solution is elegant. Expect to see merc's implementation copied by RB and Ferrari for Singapore

It will be interesting to see whether these sorts of solutions get the same treatment as AMR's clever design to create an upstand. Presumably, provided the teams can show that they aren't reducing the all-important (for following) upwash of the wake, it's ok.

[Cs98]

New rear wing.

[organic]

New rear wing is quite unconventional in design compared to others on the grid. The design seems to be entirely focused on having a very backed off 2ndary flap towards the tip. Aims to minimize the tip vortex allowing them to run the very aggressively shaped squared off corners ?

Also it doesn't "look" very low downforce. I suspect this is a medium downforce wing that is replacing the Bahrain spec one which didn't produce enough rear downforce. What suggests this? They are running a trimmed flap on this wing for Spa which suggests to me it's not a fundamentally low df rear wing. A trimmed flap is not ideal as less DRS effect

[Cs98]

New rear wing is quite unconventional in design compared to others on the grid. The design seems to be entirely focused on having a very backed off 2ndary flap towards the tip. Aims to minimize the tip vortex allowing them to run the very aggressively shaped squared off corners ?

Also it doesn't "look" very low downforce. I suspect this is a medium downforce wing that is replacing the Bahrain spec one which didn't produce enough rear downforce. What suggests this? They are running a trimmed flap on this wing for Spa which suggests to me it's not a fundamentally low df rear wing. A trimmed flap is not ideal as less DRS effect

Looks to me like it's their low DF wing, similar to the one on the RB. Then with different DRS flaps and gurney flaps they can adjust it from true low DF, to low-medium downforce. In this case with the cut-out it's low DF. Expect to see the same at Monza minus the gurney flap.

The mainplane design reminds me of Ferrari's second lowest spec DF wing from last year.

[icantride]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F2B5JUVX0AE ... ame=medium
New rear wing.

Looks like they've also removed all of the vortex generators on the SIPS mid-wing. Unless they plan on bonding them back on once the car is built

[pursue_one's]

[Luscion]

https://i.imgur.com/rMXEQJe.png
https://i.imgur.com/8YMPoOG.png
https://i.imgur.com/Bd4IbJ4.png

Thought they're upgrades might have been a new floor but looks like that isn't the case, interested to see what they're upgrades are this week and hope it's not just minor changes to already existing parts.

[balalev]

[CaribouBread]

...

The inlet area looks to be the same or a bit larger its not obvious, but this seems to be the first design to eat into the outwashing/undercut flow. Pretty radical.

[Farnborough]

Interestingly, in the above two photo, you can see the lower of the impact protection tubes "SIS" pre floor installation on left, then with floor installed on right but without it's top cover/flow cowelling in place, just peaking out of surface trench.

They look similar in location to others within floor siting (some use them lifted and incorporated into sidepod) as there appears to be a rules "floor" that wouldn't allow them lower. They are obviously to protect driver from side impact eventuality, as such logically placed in regard to driver's seat position in vertical layout.

[organic]

Okay it's pretty skinny

Spa/Monza/Vegas wing

They'll probably carry it through to next year and maybe get use out of it at Saudi/Miami too

[j_ste]

Not sure what kind of wing I was expecting. But that one is for sure more LD than I thought we'd see.

Its good that they continue to work on this current structure.