Mercedes GP MGP W01

[F1_eng]

I wish people would stop coming to crazy solutions. If something is not working on the car, you don't stop everything and put everyone on that one thing to develop it. If for example, the tyres aren't understood, you don't stop everyone in aero/transmission/vehicle dynamics and put them on a tyre development project. Most are not suitably skilled to do this, especially with tyres. This is what tyre engineers are supposed and skilled to do. If there was one really good tyre engineer that got the tyres working very well and Mercedes started winning, you guys would jump to the other conclusion that the engineers were great.

There is also a post about elastokinematics by someone, you are very ill-informed if you think this would be a really easy thing to do. And everything you do in parc-ferme is recorded by the FIA, photos taken sometimes and all documented at the end of the weekend. So if you adjust this bolt every race in parc-ferme, there would be documents every race saying and showing you adjusted the same bolt every time. If you were going to try something like this, there are far more elegant solutions, such as putting a secondary spring inside the damper housing which is adjusted by a bolt on the outside.

Things these days are not easy to do, they may seem simple but believe me, there's always a 100 things about the item you'd have never though about. No in-season testing increases the risk and slows down development.

[NewtonMeter]

Rosberg still thinks it's too early to throw in the towel on the W01:
http://www.worldcarfans.com/11006302712 ... ---rosberg

I reckon they should use it (W01) as a testbed for new developments. I.e., develop it, but with the focus on 2011. If an experimental part works, put it on and use it, if it doesn't, well then you learn something else...

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

I suppose being an F1 eng(ineer) allows you to judge what others post.
Why dont you put forward your own ideas?

IMO far more constructive than saying someone is wrong.

[Shaddock]

What i find interesting is that certain teams have characteristic faults, that tend to be hard to get rid of even as time passes and key personel come and go. This tyre issue is nothing new to honda, who have been making crap cars bar the 2004 bar and the Brawn.
Last year Button had tyre issues with the Brawn, they were just lucky the car was really fast so compromises could be made, refueling also meant these compromises wont have a big effect since the car is never at 2 extremes.
The Brawn had some pretty crazy camber angles on the rears last year, in Hungary, to combat their heating issues.

Could it be that the W01 was set up with a certain camber to work the tyres more, but this camber only exists at a range of ride heights?
Maybe when the car is in quali trim and light, the suspension droops and camber is less aggressive, which affects their quali pace so far.
Under heavy fuel, for the start, the suspension is compressed and the camber is too high, not in the sweet spot to solve the grip balance and heating issue. However there could be a time when the ride height is just right and the car works and we get those fast sector times that arbitrarily come up for Mercedes in the race.

Good post, but with the change in tyre compound for this year, wouldn't suspension geometries/weight distributions have changed as well compared to last years, especially if you have identified that as a problem area.

The other options are:-

They did carry over last year’s suspension geometry to this year’s car, as an ‘aero compromise’ that had more pros out than cons.

They made subtle changes on last years suspension but this hasn’t solved the issues with this years tyres.

[marcush.]

I wish people would stop coming to crazy solutions. If something is not working on the car, you don't stop everything and put everyone on that one thing to develop it. If for example, the tyres aren't understood, you don't stop everyone in aero/transmission/vehicle dynamics and put them on a tyre development project. Most are not suitably skilled to do this, especially with tyres. This is what tyre engineers are supposed and skilled to do. If there was one really good tyre engineer that got the tyres working very well and Mercedes started winning, you guys would jump to the other conclusion that the engineers were great.

There is also a post about elastokinematics by someone, you are very ill-informed if you think this would be a really easy thing to do. And everything you do in parc-ferme is recorded by the FIA, photos taken sometimes and all documented at the end of the weekend. So if you adjust this bolt every race in parc-ferme, there would be documents every race saying and showing you adjusted the same bolt every time. If you were going to try something like this, there are far more elegant solutions, such as putting a secondary spring inside the damper housing which is adjusted by a bolt on the outside.

Things these days are not easy to do, they may seem simple but believe me, there's always a 100 things about the item you'd have never though about. No in-season testing increases the risk and slows down development.

But..IT would work ...you know ,I know.And Elastokinematics is already in use in F1
certainly to help tyre working .the point is how do you get it to not move when the lady is filled up? Temps? Cold lady is soft ,Hot lady is stiff in camberelasticity ..it can be done.
To be fair I spilled the bolt thing just to show how it could be done as a quick fix ...to see if that would help them .There are ,as you said much more elegant solutions to this.
for example ..ohlins has something in their portfolio wich is called high frequency damperpiston ,which is basically nothing else as a bit of slck in the damper piston aiming at increasing tyre temps and grip...

But :you would say after Q3 there is no nuts and bolts checking in F1 ? they just leave the car in parc ferme conditions ,fill er up and go racing ..?you are joking on me ,are you?

[marcush.]

What i find interesting is that certain teams have characteristic faults, that tend to be hard to get rid of even as time passes and key personel come and go. This tyre issue is nothing new to honda, who have been making crap cars bar the 2004 bar and the Brawn.
Last year Button had tyre issues with the Brawn, they were just lucky the car was really fast so compromises could be made, refueling also meant these compromises wont have a big effect since the car is never at 2 extremes.
The Brawn had some pretty crazy camber angles on the rears last year, in Hungary, to combat their heating issues.

Could it be that the W01 was set up with a certain camber to work the tyres more, but this camber only exists at a range of ride heights?
Maybe when the car is in quali trim and light, the suspension droops and camber is less aggressive, which affects their quali pace so far.
Under heavy fuel, for the start, the suspension is compressed and the camber is too high, not in the sweet spot to solve the grip balance and heating issue. However there could be a time when the ride height is just right and the car works and we get those fast sector times that arbitrarily come up for Mercedes in the race.

Good post, but with the change in tyre compound for this year, wouldn't suspension geometries/weight distributions have changed as well compared to last years, especially if you have identified that as a problem area.

The other options are:-

They did carry over last year’s suspension geometry to this year’s car, as an ‘aero compromise’ that had more pros out than cons.

They made subtle changes on last years suspension but this hasn’t solved the issues with this years tyres.

this is a phenomenom you will find in all racing ...teams tend to have their own set of problems ...and if they experience the same problems it is more likely than not that they will feel the pain at different times..see hydrailic issues of Virgin,Lotus ,HRT all running basically the same box of... but it was Virgin having the biggest trouble ....for whatever reason...

[ringo]

What i find interesting is that certain teams have characteristic faults, that tend to be hard to get rid of even as time passes and key personel come and go. This tyre issue is nothing new to honda, who have been making crap cars bar the 2004 bar and the Brawn.
Last year Button had tyre issues with the Brawn, they were just lucky the car was really fast so compromises could be made, refueling also meant these compromises wont have a big effect since the car is never at 2 extremes.
The Brawn had some pretty crazy camber angles on the rears last year, in Hungary, to combat their heating issues.

Could it be that the W01 was set up with a certain camber to work the tyres more, but this camber only exists at a range of ride heights?
Maybe when the car is in quali trim and light, the suspension droops and camber is less aggressive, which affects their quali pace so far.
Under heavy fuel, for the start, the suspension is compressed and the camber is too high, not in the sweet spot to solve the grip balance and heating issue. However there could be a time when the ride height is just right and the car works and we get those fast sector times that arbitrarily come up for Mercedes in the race.

Good post, but with the change in tyre compound for this year, wouldn't suspension geometries/weight distributions have changed as well compared to last years, especially if you have identified that as a problem area.

The other options are:-

They did carry over last year’s suspension geometry to this year’s car, as an ‘aero compromise’ that had more pros out than cons.

They made subtle changes on last years suspension but this hasn’t solved the issues with this years tyres.

The W01 and Brawn GP may be different, but the engineers will approach the problem in the same way. Their thought patterns wont change, all that changes slightly is the problem that they have to solve.
In the same way a german engineering team may approach designing a BMW different from a lexus engineering team designing an IS350. All meet the same objective, but one is better because the design team is better or has better approach.

So even though the suspension or the tyres may be a little different. The Honda team will still use the same old tricks to meet their objective. No doubt they will solve the problems, but when they go to 2 decimal places, a better team solves it to 4.

[marcush.]

I think you learn as you go along and you should learn most of the things taht did not work as anticipated.
But then the Brawn boys should be masters in Tyre understanding now...
so maybe this is still black art...

[PlatinumZealot]

I also think they understand what the tyres need to do but the car is what holds the tyres down. So the guys have to design the car to hold the tyres down, that is what they can't do.

If I put ferrari Enzo wheels and tyres onto to a Honda civic I can't expect the car to behave good. But If I put Honda civic tyres onto a Ferrari enzo I know the car will still have respectable performance because of other factors.

[aral]

If I put ferrari Enzo wheels and tyres onto to a Honda civic I can't expect the car to behave good. But If I put Honda civic tyres onto a Ferrari enzo I know the car will still have respectable performance because of other factors.

WHAT???????????????

[Italiano]

If I put ferrari Enzo wheels and tyres onto to a Honda civic I can't expect the car to behave good. But If I put Honda civic tyres onto a Ferrari enzo I know the car will still have respectable performance because of other factors.

Care to tell me, what you're smoking? Must be some hardcore crap.

[gridwalker]

If I put ferrari Enzo wheels and tyres onto to a Honda civic I can't expect the car to behave good. But If I put Honda civic tyres onto a Ferrari enzo I know the car will still have respectable performance because of other factors.

I can't believe that I just read that on this board ...

[PlatinumZealot]

What is wrong? Don't you agree?

The point of the example is that a good design is not just for one condition and one tyre condition. What you see in the races is that the Mercedes only "turns on" the tyres at tiny ranges of time during the race. The tyres are the same for all the cars, so it comes down to the car not necessarily the understanding of the tyre. In the example the Honda Civic is say the Lotus, the Enzo is the RedBull. You can put the undesirable tyres on the RedBull and it will go faster than the Lotus with the good tyres.. all because the Lotus wasn't designed as well, that's all i'm saying. I don't see what is so outlandish about that.

[marcush.]

I would go further still and say :
give the Merc to Red Bull and they will be maybe not be as domenant but better than anything we have seen yet of this car.

Obviously the car has potential ,it is not as if it was miles away in speed .
We have seen that Red Bull,Macs,ferrari ,renault have at days when one or both groups do not get it right they are not better than Mercedes.
But since a few weeks both nico and Rosbergs group have lost the plot completely how to make the car /tyre combo work on empty tank.
We have heard complaints of Rosberg who was angry with his engineers not trying to adjust the setup to the conditions but them waiting for the conditions to come to them....to me that is not a good approach at all...instead of working the car in the available time and learn they wait for FP3 and have not much time to decide what to do for Qualy.no wonder they don´t know how the thing reacts if minute changes to conditions throw their setup out of the door.
Maybe Rosberg went over the top with his comments..but could it be their approach is rather static and this leads to some surprise in the qualy sessions ,as you only have airpressure to play with?

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

I would disagree Marcush,

If you gave Red Bull a carbon copy of the W01, with its inherent flaws we have discussed, such as Tyre management, degredation and not forgetting its weight issues which Mercedes may or may not have solved. Then I would say Red Bull would struggle as equally as Mercedes have done because there is only a finite amount of changes that can be made(homologation rules).

I have already stated my belief that the W01 is not a bad car. Had it been dialled in to use this years tyre specs correctly the design would be competitive to say the least. Perhaps not Red Bull fast but a damn site closer for sure.

The problem is a very complex one, as Mercedes has flaw that was set in at a very early stage of development. To get the high percentiles and tolerances you need to push everything to its limit, and if you get it wrong you will need to reverse engineer a component after laborious analysis, find what is wrong and hope your solution works.

Mercedes knew what the problem was way back in February winter testing, yet they are still suffering from the same issues.
They are having to load the car with more and more downforce to correct the issue, as is witnessed by their slow straightline speed(Slowest of all Mercedes powered cars anyway). This is also inspite of them having their slippery airbox solution, the most effiecient of all to the naked eye.
The reason is because the flaw is "dialled" in to the chassis IMO and has no means of correction under the homologation rules.

Its also a very good explanation as to why Mercedes cannot tell if its updates are working. Maybe they can find a magic bullet in the next month or so, but I doubt it.
I will say whoever got the tyre predictions wrong should get a serious earbashing!