Mercedes GP MGP W01

[marcush.]

Marcush you forget...

Next year ALL teams will operate under the resource restriction. I believe Mercedes are now at around 420 staff, 20 staff above the mandatory figure next year.
Red Bull and Mclaren will have to axe around 150/200 staff each to reach this figure.
Thats when you will see the pain really hitting home.

What Ferrari are going to do with axing 400 jobs is another matter as they currently stand at over 800 staff.

Maybe we will not see the effects of this until midway through next year, as teams can use all their current resources up to 31 december I believe.

And you can bet your bottom dollar Mercedes and Brawn are keeping tabs on what is going on with regard to RB and Mclaren staff.

To surmise, Mercedes really arent doing so badly if you look at the the conditions they are opertaing under.
Tight budget
Inherrent issue with the car
Staff comings and goings
added pressure of Mercedes and Schumachers return

Wait till 2011, I reckon Schumacher is too, he knows the score....

JET ,I´m aware of this but still it is obvious there is a need for expertise in the team to solve this tyre issues.
They made a collective brainstorm in MERCGP after Canada and anyone was invited to forward ideas .they filtered out the best ones and out came they were worse than ever in tyre usage in qualy ...does speak volumes ,either on the ideas born in the company or on the decision takers voting wrongly on what to pursue.your choice.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

So please can you refer to me how you know of this "collective brainstorm"

It should also be noted that Rosberg had the second fastest lap of the race...for what its worth.
Mercedes are wll aware of the issue like i keep saying. They know its not an easy fix hence why the wheel base change and the need for more downforce....
The car wasnt designed to use its tyres the way its supposed to.
You cannot remedy this easily, and saying there is a problem with management isnt really a fact....

[autogyro]

I am surprised that there have been no sensible suggestions on this thread to help Merc cure their car.
Plenty of accusations against staff (including mine I am afraid).
Not very helpful realy.

[ggajic]

Unless someone is working inside Mercedes GP all we can do is speculate what real problem is. If they knew it - they would solve it. So, all we can do is speculate. RBR has superb aerodynamics and how it would cope with Mercedes GP suspension and weight distribution is purely fictional question..

[marcush.]

They changed but did it help much?

[Morteza]

They changed but did it help much?

To be honest, nothing really changed when Mercedes brought the LWB car!

[gcdugas]

Could the tire warm up issues that MGP is suffering from (as did Brawn last year) be as simple as not enough toe-in both F&R?

[marcush.]

Could the tire warm up issues that MGP is suffering from (as did Brawn last year) be as simple as not enough toe-in both F&R?

I´d be surprised if they had not taken this stuff already to the edge of what is possible and sensible.
I´d think you would have to resort to quite dramatic toe settings to get a serious effect on tyre temps as well..and that will inevitably lead to loss in speed ...and of course will erode the tyres too quick.

[Predator]

So please can you refer to me how you know of this "collective brainstorm"

It should also be noted that Rosberg had the second fastest lap of the race...for what its worth.
Mercedes are wll aware of the issue like i keep saying. They know its not an easy fix hence why the wheel base change and the need for more downforce....
The car wasnt designed to use its tyres the way its supposed to.
You cannot remedy this easily, and saying there is a problem with management isnt really a fact....

Nah, Nico had the third fastest time in Montreal. In Valencia Michael had the second fastest lap time, behind Jenson.

Anyway, if this article is true, Nico is not happy at all:

Rosberg 'angry' about Mercedes' 'backwards' progress

Nico Rosberg has described the W01 as a "disaster", as Mercedes moves closer to abandoning development of its 2010 car.

The 25-year-old German again outqualified his famous teammate Michael Schumacher at Valencia, but his prize was a mere twelfth on the grid.

He then scored no points in the race, despite the Brackley based team - winners of the 2009 world championship as Brawn GP - using a raft of improvements in Spain, including a Red Bull-like blown rear exhaust layout.

Rosberg was angry immediately after the race, and a week later has told the Cologne publication Express: "It's a disaster.

"The problem with the tyres is well known to the team. For weeks we have said we are coming to the front, but nothing happens -- actually we go backwards."

Rosberg admits he is "angry" with the situation.

"If you're twelfth, behind both Williams - who two weeks ago were nowhere - what do you expect? I went from Williams to Mercedes because I thought I would have a winning car."

Boss Ross Brawn said the team will continue to work on the W01, but admitted the time will come for a new approach.

"We have not done a good enough job," admitted the Briton.

"First we need to get our new aero package working properly, and depending on the result we will decide to what extent we then concentrate on next season," added Brawn.

I guess they don't know that Nico did score a point! Coming back to the car, I've noticed it performs better with lower track temperatures. I always watch the live timings throughout each race weekend and keep an eye on Mercedes' lap times based on track temps. Now obviously there are different factors to consider for each and every circuit, but the W01 seems to work well when temps are between 25 - 35°c. Around 30°c seems to be the optimum temp or 'opening' for them to be competitive. When temperatures climb, their performance drops off.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Okay,

So the picture after today has emerged that Mercedes GP are indeed stuck in a rubber hole.
From the AMuS site to autosport, they are all talking of this cars particular inability to get the most out of its tyre during qualifying.
During the race the car has demonstrated its pace, as we have discussed.

Could it be that Mercedes, aware of its issues with tyres, are favouring the race to qualifying? If they qualify well(top 8 as they were doing at the start of the year) they go backwards in the race.
And when slow in qualifying, we see them get more race pace.

This is clouded by the updates, but I think there is a general trend. If that is the case, then Mercedes are definatly trying to engineer their way around a problem than solving it. We know the season is over for them in terms of championship, but some of us Merc fans were maybe hoping for an upturn in fortunes.
I dont see this happening if the tyre issue is only getting papered over.

Maybe now the tyre specs are set in stone(thanks to the poster for the info) Brawn will shift attention to 2011. [-o<

[PlatinumZealot]

I just remembered that there was a thread sometime ago about the BGP01 and it's tyre problems and at the time nobody on here came up with a sure cause for it, so I will refrain from asking what you guys think is the cause for this MGP W01 tyre problem.
Not even MGP know themselves.

Was there ever a track when this car was working well all the way through the race?

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Ok, we are shedding slightly more light on Mercedes GP's tyre issues.
A very interesting article today on AMuS notes that McLaren and Red Bull are both very conservative on their outlaps when using the softer tyre. 2m20s for Lewis and 2mins for button round Montreal.
Whereas Mercedes have far faster outlaps than either of these teams.
Meaning they are getting too much heat into the tyre. Mercedes are aware of it, but they dont know what the best temp is to extract maximum from the tyre. Its like Brawn said in the link, "if its cold we get even less grip" but if heat is applied quickly they lose all the benefits of the softer tyre.
This has everything to do with suspension geometery, camber, toe in/out and most critical weight distribution.


Ferrari are also said to struggle alot with this issue. And this leads me to believe that there is no way back this year for Mercedes.
Sure, use the W01 as a test bed for some ideas but overall, the goose is cooked, now its time to look to next year.

http://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/form ... 14192.html

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Apologies wrong link


http://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/form ... 14192.html

[marcush.]

things like toe ,camber,trail,and caster can be adjusted ,and we have discussed the weight distribution theme endless ....and see all the effort Merc has made does not improve the situation.

May it be that Merc is not prepared to readjust suspension stiffness ..be it damping or springs to cope for changing conditions?

To me it would entirely make sense to adjust the setting towards soft when the temps are rising as the rise in temps will of course drag the tyre temps up as well .causing the tyre to react differently ,so if their tyre model is inaccurate for the track surface and temperature conditions ,of course they will stagnate instead of improve..in fact the advantage of a softer tire is erased by not being able to exploit it .
To me things are clearing up more and more.they basically lack a fundamental piece of the puzzle namely the means of how much to adjust the car and approach for changing conditions.
In times ago you could builld up this data base in testing but nowadays running is
restricted to the weekend and so it is absolutely important to run both cars on very different strategies in FP in terms of tire to make sure to get an idea of where the optimum operating window might be found.
As we have heard Brawn has chosen the opposite ...waiting for the conditions to come to them over time..with nothing but hope the window will be reached in time ...,wich seems unlikely to me...

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Marcush,

By setting soft setup to extract maximum one lap tyre performance would hamper the team during the race.
By having a harder setup, there is less rebound from the suspension which, if managed correctly will get you better and more predicatble tyre consumption.

Its a very plausible point though, as the fastest car in the paddock uses probably the softest setup in the paddock, the RB6.
Conversley Mclaren arent far off their pace and it appears their set up is rock hard at some tracks.