Mercedes GP MGP W01

[bill shoe]

Scarbs says the Mercedes change is to move the wheels forward and the weight bias rearward. You can take this to the bank.

http://scarbsf1.wordpress.com/2010/04/2 ... edictions/

He says the 2009 Brawn was fast in part because it had ~49% front weight. This would have been a good match for the 2009 front slicks that were almost as wide as the rear and vertically stiffer than the rear.

Reading between the lines it appears the 2010 slicks have a more conventional distribution with grip and stiffness biased more to the rear tires.

[marcush.]

with regard to the ballast placement possibilities...
we are speaking of a volume of 519cm³ /0.5litres of ballast to be mounted in the rear axle area.Thats a piece of tungsten 150x150x23mm to be placed...it ´s hard to believe you can´t find a place anywhere to put this ,considering the ballast can be
made to conform to shapes.

with the car moving backwards relative to the tyres and the front wing ,the question
arises how does the aerodynamic CoP move ...for sure the middle section of the undertray will increase in length with the front tyres moving forward.
But shorten the gearbox bellhousing this will reduce undertray area on the full width of the car ,so the losses there would be big in area and the flow from the sidepods towards the rear wheels would see more obstruction as well .. so aerodynamically moving the rear forward seems to be quite involved.
I had been under the impression the change of gearbox was more aimed at optimising
difusser layout through clever repositioning of suspension pickups ?

[bill shoe]

with regard to the ballast placement possibilities...
we are speaking of a volume of 519cm³ /0.5litres of ballast to be mounted in the rear axle area.Thats a piece of tungsten 150x150x23mm to be placed...it ´s hard to believe you can´t find a place anywhere to put this ,considering the ballast can be made to conform to shapes.

Yea, the Scarbs piece oddly says there is no space for rear ballast. I agree with you, I think they can fit a small piece of custom-shaped tungsten in the rear of the car. Scarbs even mentions the transmission has some ability to be shortened, so if nothing else they could put tungsten in empty spots in the transmission case.

I think they could easily change the weight distribution by moving ballast, but the wheelbase change goes back to the need to move the fuel tank c.g. to match the car's new overall c.g.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Bill Shoe

Why go through the rigmarol of shortening the gearbox to make it more compact if you only going to add weight there anyways?

I thought they were Shortening the gearbox to allow a bigger diffuser?
Scards mentions the car itself will be going backwards relative the wheels, So shortening the gearbox makes it possbile to run the same diffuser or a larger one.

Could be wrong here so just referencing for my own peace of mind

Also does McLaren not supply the gearbox? or is it all Mercedes now?

[raymondu999]

AFAIK even the BGP001 didn't use a McLaren gearbox

[Timstr]

Brackley have had their own gearbox design unit since the BAR-Honda days.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Thanks guys,

I was under the assumption that they used a McLaren gearbox last year and this.
Very interesting. Mercedes investment at work eh?

[mx_tifoso]

Very interesting. Mercedes investment at work eh?

Did you not just read that this team has had a gearbox department since the BAR era?

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Mercedes recent investment at work MxTifosi

I suppose you imagine Brawn would fund the team out his own pocket now?

The comment stands.

[mx_tifoso]

No I don't imagine that, but I somehow understood your comment to mean that the gearbox department was thanks to the Mercedes investment.

Or do you mean that only through Mercedes has this team been able to keep the gearbox department?

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Clearly the latter

[Timstr]

Clearly the latter

You could say that for the entire team. What's more important is that Mercedes bought Brawn with all the facilities AND IP of contemporary F1 gearbox technology. Mercedes don't have an F1 gearbox. That was McLaren's territory.
In the Honda days, the team was one of the first to successfully run a carbon fibre case and one of the first to introduce fast shifting gearboxes. Mercedes has now bought into all of that IP with the purchase of the team.
There's not a lot of new developments going on in F1 gearboxes these days anyway, as the rules are very restrictive.

[marcush.]

as far as I remember the BGP of last year used an adapted Honda box,wich even included step gears as the crankheight were not identical .I´m not sure if that was reatined till the end of 2009 or is still in use now ,but one would think that adding gears would elongate the box .

As for the ballast claims,i feel that Brawn has not much ballast to play with in their cars ,as otherwise the claims of not being able to move the Weightdistribution as desired does not make any sense.for sure if they had 30 or even 40 kilos to play with it would be easy to get the WD into the ballpark .
The new for 21010 rules of mandatory aluminium uprights ,bigger fueltank will have accounted for some added weight but I doubt it could be as much as 15 kilos?,maybe
they have an additional 5 to 10 kilos with the increased base weight ,so the question would be just how little they had to play with last year??? But then the claim was raised of them having a 50% split ....which would of course raise the question how they would possibly have achieved this without resorting to put significant amounts of heavy metal into their splitter

[dren]

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/83200

Schumacher doesn't sound too promising when talking about the updates.

[dren]

as far as I remember the BGP of last year used an adapted Honda box,wich even included step gears as the crankheight were not identical .I´m not sure if that was reatined till the end of 2009 or is still in use now ,but one would think that adding gears would elongate the box .

It was rumored that Honda was developing a trick gearbox for the car last year before Honda backed out of F1.