That's certainly a fair possibility, but I would expect their traction then to be universally bad under all circumstances. When the tyres are reasonably fresh that doesn't quite seem to happen. What's really striking to me is how fast they seem to be initially in qualifying and on fresh tyres but how in sometimes less than ten laps their performance is awful versus other teams at the same point. They seem to lose all traction when the tyres go and that's a big clue they're shortening their life severely. I was willing to tip my hat to them after China, but something just didn't ring true as usual.marcush. wrote:Could it be they have compromised their mechanical setup to be able to carry more rake at higher speeds?(eg morte spring rate rear)...this would help their high speed downforce but surely compromise grip /traction at lower speeds..
What I suspect they've done is played about with the mechanical set up of the car to gain more mechanical grip (stiffening what they can and various other tricks) at the expense of short term gain in terms of tyre longevity in order to make up for their terrible lack of aerodynamic grip. The behaviour of the car over bumps, under braking and its performance in the wet would seem to support something like that.
Thanks to the inimitable JET's pictures we can confirm that Mercedes were running *a lot* more wing than just about any other team, so you can only draw the conclusion that their aerodynamic grip is woefully lacking. It also only adds fuel to the fire as to how they're achieving their straight line speeds in qualifying and early on compared to other Mercedes powered teams because they're not turning a disadvantage into an advantage simply with a flappy rear wing.
