2023 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[AR3-GP]

Wonder why Merc suddenly has such bad deg, dont think its the new floor as the deg was the usual in cota and mexico and they still had good deg on the low downforce setup like in Monza. So much for them understanding and fixing what went wrong in Brazil

I don't think they had amazing deg in Monza. Mclaren was just even worse.

[Bill_Kar]

Russell is P3 on the grid, almost P2. So we can't act like the car just doesn't work here.

He made a mistake in the turn 7-8-9 area and that knocked him out.

Car looks fine, on the whole.

Ok thanks. I reckon he did a mistake, tyres being dead didn’t make any sense since he was on the same plan as GR

[atanatizante]

HAM said they changed the car for FP3 and it looked worse than FP2 and in qualy even worse.
He was moaning about rear deg so they induced some understeer to the car in order to protect the rears, something we could easily see in turn 1 when he always made micro-corrections to the steering wheel.
And that`s the reason why he was 4 tenths slower than RUS in S1, despite the latter top speed being higher in qualy this was just misleading for it was set it just in Q1 using a tow ...

RUS also was complaining about graining and even said that it`ll be interesting to see had the H tyre on a heavier car will start graining, further suggesting that it could be an easily 1-stop race tomorrow had they could keep graining in check.

On the other side, Toto was saying that RUS should be patient in the first phase of the race and for HAM that his tyre window went off for only 3 or 4 degrees C, hence their car's optimal window is very narrow, something they are trying to hide to us but doing a bad job unfortunately...

So it seems that it`s an S-M-S two-stop race tomorrow for RUS and an M-S-S and maybe an H-M/S one-stop for HAM monitoring the race and tyre deg with the race progressing?

[Luscion]

[atanatizante]

This graph must be taken with a grain of salt due to the top speeds are not taken into account, unfortunately ...
Both Merc drivers did that in their Q1 for HAM and Q2 for the RUS case as I was watching them both on their cams on-board ...

[Luscion]

Top speeds for Quali

[Hammerfist]

This circuit paints a pretty simple picture of mercs struggles. They can’t generate good downforce without heavier wings. When they run low downforce the car is pretty damn fast in the straights but can’t live with the best cars in the corners. Tire deg is also suspect when using low df. So it’s obvious what needs to improve next year. Mainly the efficiency. Balance is secondary imo.

[Luscion]

This circuit paints a pretty simple picture of mercs struggles. They can’t generate good downforce without heavier wings. When they run low downforce the car is pretty damn fast in the straights but can’t live with the best cars in the corners. Tire deg is also suspect when using low df. So it’s obvious what needs to improve next year. Mainly the efficiency. Balance is secondary imo.

Yea i assume reducing drag will be one of Merc's top priorities with the W15, whats interesting to me is Duchessa has pointed out Merc has already managed to reduce their drag quite a bit by changing their front wing, floor and suspension and that Merc are reaching a higher top speed than Ferrari and 1 kph away from RB because they're also able to run a more aggressive power map with their engine despite still having more drag, i wonder if its because Vegas is so cold it negates the cooling limitations of the zero pod concept which would give more credit to the report of how much the concept limits their engine power.

[f1jcw]

I thought getting more usable downforce be priority, they reduce wings then and lose the drag penalty

[Hammerfist]

This circuit paints a pretty simple picture of mercs struggles. They can’t generate good downforce without heavier wings. When they run low downforce the car is pretty damn fast in the straights but can’t live with the best cars in the corners. Tire deg is also suspect when using low df. So it’s obvious what needs to improve next year. Mainly the efficiency. Balance is secondary imo.

Yea i assume reducing drag will be one of Merc's top priorities with the W15, whats interesting to me is Duchessa has pointed out Merc has already managed to reduce their drag quite a bit by changing their front wing, floor and suspension and that Merc are reaching a higher top speed than Ferrari and 1 kph away from RB because they're also able to run a more aggressive power map with their engine despite still having more drag, i wonder if its because Vegas is so cold it negates the cooling limitations of the zero pod concept which would give more credit to the report of how much the concept limits their engine power.

Good point. Some folks did pick up the higher engine modes from free practice telemetry. So it does appear to be the case they are able to push the pu more because of the lower temps in Vegas. Hopefully that makes them difficult to overtake here.

[Spoutnik]

Lewis won't score points IMO. The fp3 long run was woeful and now not even a good starting position. With Perez and potentially Sainz behind I could see him going backwards rather than forwards.

3rd Q2 elim for Lewis this year, his performance is a bit more variable than russell it seems

I think Lewis will end up ahead of Russell and around the podium honestly. This race will be chaos

[atanatizante]

This race track resembles to Baku and most probably to Saudi one.
On both races the had C2,C3 and C4 but here they went softer as in Monaco with C3,C4 and C5.
At Monaco it was easily a C5-C4 1-stop race so it seems to be the same story here although due to lower temps we should see some graining at the beginning of the stints so it could be a M-H 1 stop maybe for some drivers here but most of all will probably do a S-M-S 2-stop race.

Now regarding setup for the race I presume HAM sacrificed the qualy for the race pace and due to his position on the grid he`ll forced to manage a 1-stop race

[Vanja #66]

Congrats to Mercedes team, they got Max the win today by demanding the penalty for Sainz, well done Toto, well done! I love how it bites him back every time he whines and bemoans

[Venturiation]

Lewis won't score points IMO. The fp3 long run was woeful and now not even a good starting position. With Perez and potentially Sainz behind I could see him going backwards rather than forwards.

3rd Q2 elim for Lewis this year, his performance is a bit more variable than russell it seems

Another --- prediction

[organic]

Lewis won't score points IMO. The fp3 long run was woeful and now not even a good starting position. With Perez and potentially Sainz behind I could see him going backwards rather than forwards.

3rd Q2 elim for Lewis this year, his performance is a bit more variable than russell it seems

Another --- prediction

I'll take it Can't get them all right