Mercedes GP W02

[Rob01]

Yes, my math was wrong..thanks for the help.

[ESPImperium]

They are limted to 8 engines a year I believe. So they only have to produce 24 for the entire year. I would say they are handing out the best of the best to all their teams.

Each car has a limit of 8 engines, so as HPE are supplying six cars with engines, that makes 48. Factor in the fact that there may be a blow up or two in each team, that adds another 12 engines as spares. Again add an engine or two that is used for testing on the bench, and never fitted to a car. That makes a possible minimum of 70 engines.

Youll find that most engine manufacturers will produce close to 100 to 120 engines a season as there is generally one every week used for Dyno testing of new parts, as well as testing engines, and spares for each car.

Each engine manufacturer gives each car 8 for the season, and a couple of spares, make that nice round 12 total going on 2006 to 2009 data for race engines. As for testing engines, there is usually a engine per test, or in the case of Ferarri, a engine every 2 days for all their cars for testing. That makes 8 pre season per team. Post season they use a engine for those 4 days, and for Ferarri thats 2 generally. Each team also has a specified engine for shakedown purposes/TV days/Straightline days as well.

So take that, thats 12 per car for the season, 8 pre season and 2 post season, with the Shakedown engine thats, 35 per team roughly. So id recon that Mercedes will produce arround 95 a season, minimum.

Heres what each manufacturer had last season, for race engines:

Mercedes: 48 (3 Teams)
Renault: 32 (2 Teams)
Ferrari: 50 (3 Teams)
Cosworth: 64 (4 Teams)
TOTAL: 194 (12 Teams)

It was suggested once that BMW produced 2 new engines a week for Dyno Testing alone in 2007/2008, outwith their race/test allocations. Someone suggested they made arround 200 engines a year at their height of production in that period. But that figure, even today is still gaurded as the FIA would love to empose Dyno limits and the other manufacturers would also see how much development they could do to their engines to test them to destruction. There is also a myth surrounding one BMW engine that was Dyno tested that went for 12,000km before giving up the will to live.

[xpensive]

So, if Mercedes HPE is supplying some 60 engines per year, there will still be a normal distribution between them power-wise, there's simply no way to get around that, unless they produce 300 of them and scrap the 240 least performing units.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Yes of course x, and mercedes will benefit and the rest won't... Yawn.

[ESPImperium]

On average there will be about a 5% power differencial between all engines. So if the Mercedes engines are at 800Hp for example, it will be on average 40HP between the best and worst performing on average, if the engine freeze rules are kept to. But since they arnt, and they usually gain about 5% in power each year, from the start of they year to end of they year, that means there will be another 40HP on the engine for the end of they year.

In reality the power differencial between all engines should be ideally between 7 and 8% usually. But thats why there are engines for the start of they year, middle and end of they year as well. So in the batches they produce, there should on,y be about 2% of diffrence within that batch.

Basically, all engines arnt as equal as others, but within the batch, they are more equal than other batches. In each batch, of whitch there is usually 4 batches per year, there will be 9 make there way to be in the back of race cars and up to double that go to Dyno Testing, if a engine does 5,000km in a dyno test, depending on manufacturer. I know that for every engine that goes racing there is 2 that dont for Renault.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

I wouldn't think the difference is as much as 2%.

When you think that they pump out 750bhp, you are talking 15hp difference which is big considering it's the same engine. Production car engines may vary as much, but F1 engines are fine pieces of work built to much higher spec. As such the difference will be no more than 0.5% maximum. Especially when customers are paying up to 6 million a year for your engines, they would demand evidence of parity.

I would say that the bench would test the units to reach "advertised" figures, then ship them out with all manner of info and printouts to back it up. No doubt, I have yet to hear of an unhappy Mercedes-Benz engine customer using the 108X.

[adrianjordan]

I thought I read a while ago that the FiA policed the distribution of the engines and that it was basically done in such a way that the customer team stood just as good a chance of getting the best engine as the factory team?

[xpensive]

You are really a piece of work JET, you just make things up as you go to suit your agenda, is it? Why don't you claim that your beloved Mercedes HPE engines are all within 0.05% right away and claim the discussion is over?

[Ferraripilot]

I wouldn't think the difference is as much as 2%.

F1 motors are all blueprinted. Ferrari blueprinted F40 motors for 'extra special' clients and I know for a fact those motors were all within a couple bhp from one another. Of the 1200 or so F40s, maybe 50 had blueprinted motors. Blueprinting is the only way for ultimate consistency and potential from the motor and I would expect nothing less from MB's F1 motor department.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

X

What amuses me is you say that with no hint of irony to your own dross.

[marcush.]

so now i understand why and on which base Horner is blowing the low on power horn for RedBull.He´s looking at the very best of Mercedes and is comparing it with the worst crap they receive from Renault...
Following your logic at some weekends the Renault engine could be more powerful than Mercedes...didn´t we have a thread about the no doubt the Renault engine is low on power just recently? How does that relate in this context?

[i70q7m7ghw]

I think we are all forgetting the most important question here...
Where is Micheal's big joy?

[andrew]

I have an even better question. Why the massive space?

Actually as far as Schumachers "big joy" thing that was some media hacks taking what was said so far out of context that the true context was a tiny dot on the horizon.

[NewtonMeter]

I have a bad feeling about this weekend. Rosberg saying the updates worth merely about 0.1 sec.

I expected A LOT more and I suspect the other teams gained a lot more as well... If anything it appears that they increased the amount of cooling fins as well.

Here's hoping for the best but expecting the worst...

[xpensive]

so now i understand why and on which base Horner is blowing the low on power horn for RedBull.He´s looking at the very best of Mercedes and is comparing it with the worst crap they receive from Renault...
Following your logic at some weekends the Renault engine could be more powerful than Mercedes...didn´t we have a thread about the no doubt the Renault engine is low on power just recently? How does that relate in this context?

I guess it all depends what criteria Mercedes is applying to the dyno-test, there must obviously be a minimum number for the output, but what do you do with the distribution of the remaining engines, shipping the best to McLaren as they have a chance to win and stick with units having 2-3% less power? I doubt that very much...