Afterburner wrote:ForMuLaOne wrote:And for those who dont understand my earlier comment. Step back means building a car less sophisticated than the season before....which they did if you watch the sidepots. And why? Cause they can.....they will show a different one once they`re done with reliability testing. PLEASE GET IT!
Let's say you're correct (i doubt), why are they hidding their game? If it's something radical they're stupid not testing it now, the only excuse i can see is if they found something clever and don't want rival copy the ideias.
Well it appears you have run a testing programme ( either reliability o performance) for an F1 team in the past. Please apply for Ross Brawn's job since you clearly know enough to call him and all the other folk back at Brackley and Stuttgart stupid.
Just because YOU don't understand something, does not make the other guy stupid.
Its been explained in this thread over and over, If you still don;t understand how testing systems in a mule and testing a complete car differs then you should rather still and listen rather than comment. Chassis can be tested with in a software package. With modern CADCAM, the results coming out of the mould are within 0.1% of what is designed. What you predict in the model translates to the track.
With modern CFD, its 98% accurate in predicting aewrodynamic performance of integrated structures inside a computer.
What cannot be rpedicted with reasonable accuracy is the effect on under cover heat on hydraulics, vibration on new systems and tyre "feel" for the driver.
If one wants to understand tyre performance you build a car that serves as a baseline for establishing that performance.
You want something with more adjustment points than you would normally use on a race car in order to make nmore drastic changes to suspension geometry and performance.
You build the car so it has aerodynamics that is relatively simple and consistent through various envelopes of speed pitch and yaw. It does not have to be very high numbers for downforce just exhibit consist performance so it does not skew the data you want to collect. Then you run the car and gather data to build a model that will help you understand the tyre's behaviour and can verify the models performance for accuracy.
Now you can integrate that into your simulator and you can start to model the car effectively in that environment where you will be testing any future upgrades since testing is banned.
Remember that Merc have few issues on their plate to resolve so they can sustain a development program effectively over the coming seasons.
Yet despite all of this I still don;t know exactly what they are doing, only speculate on where they need to be, what they need to get there and how they could go about achieving that.
Its irrational to write them off before they have raced the car and without understanding how they are implementing thier plans to get to the top.
But hey, the armchair pundits always know better than the folk in the trenches