The car, just like in Monza, isn’t bad. We just don’t know how good it is…yet.
In recent years they have been miles off it at Baku…so today, even though Friday, is a massive improvement
Looking good just need to qualify well
Shovlin:Today wasn't the smoothest Friday we've ever had. Unfortunately, we lost a little bit of running time with a precautionary power unit change ahead of FP2. Once we were out on track, I wasn't completely happy with the balance of the car. I was struggling to get the tyres in the right window and was lacking a little confidence. I'll work hard overnight to improve on that, step my game up for tomorrow and close the gap.The good news is that Lewis was looking very quick out there. It encourages us that the car is strong, and we can be competitive this weekend. It looks very close between several teams, with Ferrari in particular looking strong. If we can make improvements overnight though we can aim to be in the mix for qualifying and the race on Sunday.
Lewis had two decent sessions and finished the day happy with the car. His pace also looked sensible although we know the areas we've got to work on. Overall, we're pleased with how his weekend has started. As has been the case in recent races, it looks very tight at the front in terms of single lap, so we'll be working hard overnight to find every bit of lap time. In comparison to Lewis, George had a more challenging day. He wasn't very happy with the balance of the car in FP1, so we spent that session trying to improve it. Shortly after FP1 finished, we spotted an issue with the power unit that led us to take the cautious approach of swapping it out for FP2. That unfortunately cost him 25 minutes of valuable track time and whilst we got to run both tyres, the programme was compromised. We'll be aiming to recover some of the lost ground with George tomorrow in FP3.
don't touch his car!!!!!
You can't stand still between Friday and Saturday.
Their wing level is somewhere between Ferrari and Red Bull this weekend.AR3-GP wrote: ↑13 Sep 2024, 23:59I still think that Mercedes is doing something interesting with their suspension. Hamilton complained about a hot seat again. It's not the radiator air. It's the floor scraping and transferring heat to the bottom of the seat. Somehow they are able to run the car extremely low, which is why they can get away with such a small rear wing like they did in Spa this year.
I think they are less than both of them, but maybe it's because of the way it is painted.zibby43 wrote: ↑14 Sep 2024, 03:55Their wing level is somewhere between Ferrari and Red Bull this weekend.AR3-GP wrote: ↑13 Sep 2024, 23:59I still think that Mercedes is doing something interesting with their suspension. Hamilton complained about a hot seat again. It's not the radiator air. It's the floor scraping and transferring heat to the bottom of the seat. Somehow they are able to run the car extremely low, which is why they can get away with such a small rear wing like they did in Spa this year.
At both races (Zandvoort and Monza) they were running the old floor and although their simulations said it's an improvement, on Sunday race they were slower due to the car's working window was much smaller for being much sensitive to the track temperature.Sevach wrote: ↑13 Sep 2024, 11:08This generation of cars made upgrading your car waaaay more tricky than with flat floors, i'll miss this once the new 26 rules come(i suspect we will be back to more complexity=better).
Sometimes upgrades backfired and teams lost their way, but not nearly as much as now.
Is it scaling or other limitations to wind tunnels?dren wrote: ↑12 Sep 2024, 19:03This goes to show you that aerodynamics is still not a fully unsterstood field with several teams in these regs getting it wrong. I wonder if the performance they see in the tunnel doesn't scale proportionally to the larger race car. Wings may scale differently than the floor, etc, or have nonlinear scaling.
For example i think maximum speed is currently limited to 180 KM/H.
Also the wind tunnel models have no suspension whatsoever(as far as i understand), it must be hard to simulate the range of ride heights cars have to work and reactions to bumps, scrapping the ground...