Mercedes GP W02

[madly]

@bot6 - I proposed to select drivers who were relatively in free air and without any damages, nor fighting each other (at least at some laps).

From your and Macxtor calculations we have WTC car! IF it happens. That's speculation. Add flexi here and there, better exhaust and... let's other teams rest to the end of the season.

I still think, that MGP and F150 has more to show, but for some reasons they didn't deliver it in Oz.

[bot6]

madly -> my comment about Schumacher's times weren't directed towards your analysis of the race times. Quite the opposite in fact since you had already taken those facts into account. It was just a general comment.

As you say, if all the issues on the car were solved in the next 24 hours, it would become a championship car. But that's true for quite a few cars on the grid, and it's not really a possibility. It's going to take a while for Mercedes to sort all of this out, and I doubt Red Bull are going to sit there doing nothing in the meantime. They will probably claw back three tenths just with the KERS.

I do think however that the Mercedes has a lot more room for improvement. The RB7 is already an evolution of a one-year-old (and very good) concept. So a lot of parts are already close to optimal within the concept. Mercedes have a brand new and quite different concept, and they have shown in testing that said concept has a lot of potential. The double decker radiators, not-quite-front-not-quite-back exiting exhausts and various other solutions on the car are specific to them, and I think they show promise. But a new concept is always a bit more temperamental at first.

[Formula None]

That's one hell of a gurney. (on the beam wing)

[raymondu999]

Dry humour's great. As long as you can still tell it is humour

[ringo]

the car is fine. It's just the team. I think something similar is to blame for ferrari. They just were shabby over the weekend.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/90329

Speaking about what happened, Brawn said the team did have the potential to do better - but things just had not clicked in Australia.

"We took an approach over the winter which culminated in the final spec of car in Barcelona [testing]," explained Brawn. "Barcelona is a track that we've never been super strong on, but the car was very good there.

"Michael was very happy with the car on the last day, we swapped around the drivers to give Nico an hour or two in the car and he thought it was quite a different car to what he had been experiencing up until then. So we came into this weekend with reasonable confidence that we could do a good job.

"But we had a very messy weekend. Cars these days have got a lot of interesting systems on and we had a job keeping everything running, which means that we haven't done the fundamental work of getting the car balanced and finding the right set-up.

"It has been a disappointing weekend and we should have been able to do better than we achieved."

[raymondu999]

I wonder though. Once they hit the setup sweet spot, will it be a frontrunner, or a top midfielder? Remember they also took quite late to find a setup sweet spot last year.

[marcush.]

last year and the year before i was rather surprised that the likes of Button,Barrichello.Schumacher and Rosberg plus Jock Clear and Andrew Shovlin were unable to put the car cosnsistantly into the working window.It was all there already in 2009 at the beginning when they rarely set the world on fire at the start of the weekend but it took them till FP3 and qualy to hit the sweet spot..so to me this is definitely a Honda/Brawn /Mercedes weakness to arrive at the track without a suitable base setup.combine this with loads of upgrades/changes to the car at short notice and then decide which is what and causes you to struggle when things deviate from what you thought would happen.
they seem to have very unreliable predictions for what the car will need for most of the tracks.And how often we heard ..We will not change but wait till the track comes to us.. which did more often than not happen.
to me you have to hit the ground running with a setup ideally suited for a green track and adjust the car to the improving grip over the weekend.Only this will assure that deviations from the expected development of track conditions are detected early and you build knowledge for circumstances.
Does German leadership help ? no.

[BrawnGP]

Bored of the badge!!!!!

I still think Mercedes pace can be up there chasing behind the bendy Bulls (Can’t believe with over a year to think about it, these teams can’t copy it!!!!!)

First Rosberg’s Q3 quali lap time was marred by a mistake in the first sector replacing his first sector time from his first attempt in Q3 he would have qualified around Alonso’s time. Not brilliant i know but its a bit more pace.

We can’t assess race pace from either of the Mercs, Schumi’s for obvious reasons but Rosberg’s top speeds in the trap left him second from bottom only above H. KOVALAINEN 292.7, 8 N. ROSBERG 294.5, and Schumi ended 3rd from top M. SCHUMACHER 309.7. Rosberg also ranked last in the finish line speed trap!! Surely they’re was something else wrong with Rosberg’s car??

Then if you can believe Haug, he has said that on top of all the other problems over the weekend the rear wing was stalling in certain turns. Not sure if it has been mis translated but if true it’s a terrible fail from the team. Translated quote from Haug.

“The rear wing creates confusion. In cornering, it came back and again to uncontrolled stall. "Maybe he's designed a bit too sharp, " suspects Haug. "But we want to reduce also the flats as much resistance. The top speeds show that at least it works." Summary of the Mercedes racing manager: "We have not genereriert the output at which the car is normally capable of when everything fits, can drive Rosberg in training time, the Button.."

http://bit.ly/eSO5ry

Anyone heard anything else about this stalling rear wing?

[bot6]

Apparently, according to the article (sourced from Brawn), they had KERS sensors going bonkers, which made the thing turn on and off all the time uncontrollably. This made the brake balance inconsistent, making the car difficult to drive.
They also had some issues with the rear wing giving inconsistent downforce in some corners, but they say at least the drag reduction was working.

They say that Rosberg could match McLaren's times during the race on the rare laps when everything worked.

[Ferraripilot]

Bored of the badge!!!!!

I still think Mercedes pace can be up there chasing behind the bendy Bulls (Can’t believe with over a year to think about it, these teams can’t copy it!!!!!)

First Rosberg’s Q3 quali lap time was marred by a mistake in the first sector replacing his first sector time from his first attempt in Q3 he would have qualified around Alonso’s time. Not brilliant i know but its a bit more pace.

We can’t assess race pace from either of the Mercs, Schumi’s for obvious reasons but Rosberg’s top speeds in the trap left him second from bottom only above H. KOVALAINEN 292.7, 8 N. ROSBERG 294.5, and Schumi ended 3rd from top M. SCHUMACHER 309.7. Rosberg also ranked last in the finish line speed trap!! Surely they’re was something else wrong with Rosberg’s car??

Then if you can believe Haug, he has said that on top of all the other problems over the weekend the rear wing was stalling in certain turns. Not sure if it has been mis translated but if true it’s a terrible fail from the team. Translated quote from Haug.

“The rear wing creates confusion. In cornering, it came back and again to uncontrolled stall. "Maybe he's designed a bit too sharp, " suspects Haug. "But we want to reduce also the flats as much resistance. The top speeds show that at least it works." Summary of the Mercedes racing manager: "We have not genereriert the output at which the car is normally capable of when everything fits, can drive Rosberg in training time, the Button.."

http://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/form ... 67018.html

Anyone heard anything else about this stalling rear wing?????????

The stalling wing could help explain what was going on with their rear tires, while their front tires are a mystery to me. Exactly 0.000 gained going to soft tires from hards in qualy. Totally mystified. I was fully expecting a mid 1:24 qualy lap from both of them, but if the car is not right it's not right.

[mep]

Why do they have sensors at all that are able to switch the device on and off?
I thought it would be a driver activated system.

[andrew]

The stalling wing could help explain what was going on with their rear tires, while their front tires are a mystery to me. Exactly 0.000 gained going to soft tires from hards in qualy. Totally mystified. I was fully expecting a mid 1:24 qualy lap from both of them, but if the car is not right it's not right.

The KERS takes its energy from the rear axle which causes it to affect the braking. If their KERS unit wasn't working properly, the braking bias could have been screwed up (nice technial term there) casusing the front end to slide about more and ruining the tyres - I think.

[ringo]

http://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/form ... 67018.html

Anyone heard anything else about this stalling rear wing?????????

main element is too big. It's stalling on the back side, the flow can't stay attached to the back of the wing.
Having a smaller main element would ensure the slot between it and the flap would provide flow energy lower down before separation takes place.

[Ferraripilot]

Good explanation for the rear wing. Makes sense. MB really needs to take advantage of the thin nose structure they have and get the thing flexing like Red Bull has, or before the Fia outlaws the thing.

[LegendaryM]

http://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/form ... 67018.html

Anyone heard anything else about this stalling rear wing?????????

main element is too big. It's stalling on the back side, the flow can't stay attached to the back of the wing.
Having a smaller main element would ensure the slot between it and the flap would provide flow energy lower down before separation takes place.

The idea behind their rear wing is that the main plane stalls when the drs is activated, so the drag is reduced even further, so i think its just a case of optimizing their design as i think at the moment it is stalling too easy