2023 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[SSScoffee]

Did Ham cooked his tyres in the first Stint? Or did he had no pace, because George was catching him fast

[Henri]

They need to stop being hard headed and copy tge red bull concept like McLean did... McLaren is humbling them and outdeveloped them by gaing 1.5 sec lol

Problem is. McLaren are still a mile behind Red Bull themselves.

So just copying Red Bull isnt the silver bullet. They need to find something that enables them to actually challenge Red Bull and not just catch up to McLaren.
If that is possible

McLaren are the closest team to redbull right now.. and they where 2sec behide and gained crazy amount in development.. Mercedes should be embarrassed

[Henri]

They need to stop being hard headed and copy tge red bull concept like McLean did... McLaren is humbling them and outdeveloped them by gaing 1.5 sec lol

That's what Lewis seems to be trying to get them to do, according to him they've already added some things to the W15 he's requested and he's going down to the wind tunnel this week. They'd be fools to not follow McLaren and RB and stick with their zero pod concept for another year

McLaren has impressed me with there development its 2009 like.. peter pro gonna build a beast like the red bulls cars in designed in 2011

[K1Plus]

They need to stop being hard headed and copy tge red bull concept like McLean did... McLaren is humbling them and outdeveloped them by gaing 1.5 sec lol

That's what Lewis seems to be trying to get them to do, according to him they've already added some things to the W15 he's requested and he's going down to the wind tunnel this week. They'd be fools to not follow McLaren and RB and stick with their zero pod concept for another year

McLaren has impressed me with there development its 2009 like.. peter pro gonna build a beast like the red bulls cars in designed in 2011

Just like they gave Pete Prod freedom at McLaren with the concept change, Mike Elliott needs to give James Allison and his team freedom to design the car to Lewis's wishes and get him the 8th championship.

James is back to TD, but imagine Mike from the CTO position telling him "No, you must stick to zeropod, because of the image of the company. We can't copy. It will be embarrassing."

[j_ste]

They need to stop being hard headed and copy tge red bull concept like McLean did... McLaren is humbling them and outdeveloped them by gaing 1.5 sec lol

Problem is. McLaren are still a mile behind Red Bull themselves.

So just copying Red Bull isnt the silver bullet. They need to find something that enables them to actually challenge Red Bull and not just catch up to McLaren.
If that is possible

McLaren are the closest team to redbull right now.. and they where 2sec behide and gained crazy amount in development.. Mercedes should be embarrassed

McLaren commited to a change, early enough, that allowed them to build a proper car. Mercedes commited to a change, that left them with a frankenstein car.

Next season we will see but Red Bull are so far away, it might not matter

[ringo]

I'm guessing what Hamilton means is he knows what feels wrong with the car. He's not coming to the wind tunnel to evaluate solutions. Formulating the problem is the easy part, solving it is why you have engineers. Adding rear load sounds simple, but it becomes complicated when you need to add that whilst keeping all the goodness (as Allison would say) that you already have. Can't let the car become sluggish on the front end, or inefficient in a straight line whilst focusing on adding rear load.. A more complicated equation than it seems.

Could it be that the rear load issue on the W14 be because they copied quite a bit of the RB18/19 concept? Max likes a very sensitive front end, and he'll handle the rear. So I'm just wondering.

No. It's not that simple. Max likes a sensitive front end when the car has a lot of rear end. He's not different than any driver with this preference. When the rear gets loose he will drive like how he drove in singapore. An F1 car jas to have a certain front to rear load to be drivable regardless of who is driving and whatever style they have. The media has been overplaying this driving style thing a lot. Max needs as much rear grip as possible to be fast. He wont drive a rear end that's breaking loose in some corners then the front breaks loose in others. He will not be able to lean on the car as we have seen in Singapore.

[ringo]

Did Ham cooked his tyres in the first Stint? Or did he had no pace, because George was catching him fast

Front wing damage from checo. The diveplane on the outside of the wing was broken off it seems from the onboard camera. This may have affected the balance in the corners.

[ringo]

The way Hamilton raced George today seemed like the kind of argy bargy reserved for opponents of other teams, not a teammate. I don't think Mercedes cares who finishes ahead of who, they have bigger fish to fry, but they do need both cars to finish.

I think Hamilton was completely focused on Ferrari and knew that falling behimd george would have killed his race to get them.
Looks like Lewis' eyes are opened fron Singapore. There he played mr. Big brother nice guy and allowed George to be ahead and both lost out to a race they could have won. He was very reflective post race then and i think he came back a little more aggressive than we have seen him in a few years.
He did fix qualifying and wanted to take matter into his own hands to beat the red cars.
For me he had a very strong race. Similar to what he used to have back in the day in terms of decisiveness and aggression. But everyone's focused on team orders and penalties.
He did what he needed to do and that's not be bottled in by George. Ferrari are now 20 points behind. With 6 races left Ferrari can beat Mercedes at this rate and Sainz did say after rhe summer break that that's their goal. Ferrari have improve strategically and there are less errors.
George focusing on beating Lewis track to track now is not the way for Mercedes to bring home P2 in the constructors. Also we do not know what's in Hamilton's contract for the WCC position and nunber of podiums.

[Hammerfist]

They need to stop being hard headed and copy tge red bull concept like McLean did... McLaren is humbling them and outdeveloped them by gaing 1.5 sec lol

Problem is. McLaren are still a mile behind Red Bull themselves.

So just copying Red Bull isnt the silver bullet. They need to find something that enables them to actually challenge Red Bull and not just catch up to McLaren.
If that is possible

Exactly this. Mclaren isnt gaining that much on rbr. Typically copying will mean you will never be as good as the original and eventually you will get to a dead end. See racing point in 2020 and Aston Martin this year even. If Merc is to get to the front they will need to innovate not copy imho.

[chrisc90]

Lewis' post race comments. He does mention the sliding and bouncing remains at the minute when they add downforce, which could be important to note.

[Spoutnik]

The way Hamilton raced George today seemed like the kind of argy bargy reserved for opponents of other teams, not a teammate. I don't think Mercedes cares who finishes ahead of who, they have bigger fish to fry, but they do need both cars to finish.

I think Hamilton was completely focused on Ferrari and knew that falling behimd george would have killed his race to get them.
Looks like Lewis' eyes are opened fron Singapore. There he played mr. Big brother nice guy and allowed George to be ahead and both lost out to a race they could have won. He was very reflective post race then and i think he came back a little more aggressive than we have seen him in a few years.
He did fix qualifying and wanted to take matter into his own hands to beat the red cars.
For me he had a very strong race. Similar to what he used to have back in the day in terms of decisiveness and aggression. But everyone's focused on team orders and penalties.
He did what he needed to do and that's not be bottled in by George. Ferrari are now 20 points behind. With 6 races left Ferrari can beat Mercedes at this rate and Sainz did say after rhe summer break that that's their goal. Ferrari have improve strategically and there are less errors.
George focusing on beating Lewis track to track now is not the way for Mercedes to bring home P2 in the constructors. Also we do not know what's in Hamilton's contract for the WCC position and nunber of podiums.

Pretty much agree on everything.

Ferrari will catch Merc easily at this rate, especially considering Russel loss of points in Singapore.
Arguably, Ferrari should already be ahead : Leclerc had a DNF while in 3rd place at Barhain, Sainz DNF at Spa when Ferrari was the clear 2nd best (Leclerc finished 3rd), they had an horrendous strategy at Silverstone, Leclerc suffer grid penalty at Monaco (3rd to 6th on the grid) Carlos damage his front wing and put it against the wall during the race (finished 8th, should've finished 4th at least), Carlos lost a 4th/5th place with the restart mess in Australia, Charles DNF in Zandvoort...
This + Lewis maximizing everything makes Merc looks strong...

Lewis is probably aiming at 2nd in the WDC too if Perez can't get his head around.

[ringo]

It will be a tall order for hamilton to close 33 points to Perez. It can be done with a few podiums and perez typically u der performing. But the mclarens seem to have the podium locked out.
Ferrari do have the car that deserves P2 in the constructors but as you listed above there have been many issues that set them back in terms of points. I think Vasseur's making his mark now and the team os making less errors

[Spoutnik]

It will be a tall order for hamilton to close 33 points to Perez. It can be done with a few podiums and perez typically u der performing. But the mclarens seem to have the podium locked out.
Ferrari do have the car that deserves P2 in the constructors but as you listed above there have been many issues that set them back in terms of points. I think Vasseur's making his mark now and the team os making less errors

Perez mind seems gone honestly. I can see him DNFing again this season, furthermore I don't think he will be particularly good at some tracks tougher for the RB19 (Interlagos in particular, I can see him struggle a lot in Cota too). But I don't think Hamilton will be able to leap him indeed as if McL doesn't secure the podium, Leclerc will probably instead of Lewis.
Funny stats is that Leclerc finished 4th of the last 3 races

I think the mood is high indeed at Ferrari. Even if there's a lot of politics going on, Sainz and Leclerc are there to maximize the points for the teams, and Leclerc had no issue to sacrifice himself in Singapore. I can see them finish 4th & 5th quite often these last few races.

[SSScoffee]

Lewis' post race comments. He does mention the sliding and bouncing remains at the minute when they add downforce, which could be important to note.

They haven't upgraded their floor this year IIRC. Maybe they realised that adding load would only lead to bouncing with the current concept.

[Luscion]

Lewis' post race comments. He does mention the sliding and bouncing remains at the minute when they add downforce, which could be important to note.

They haven't upgraded their floor this year IIRC. Maybe they realised that adding load would only lead to bouncing with the current concept.

Rumor is their Austin upgrade includes a new floor so hopefully they've found a solution to the problem