Mercedes GP W02

[dren]

Maybe the endplate vanes work best with a rear blown diffuser?

Maybe fixing the reliability issues did increase car performance due to it being run in compromised configurations?

The team had KERS and rear wing issues early on. Both were fixed, both were performance issues.

I don't think it is as easy as slap on this part, slap on that part and go.

On the bright side, the big update in Silverstone worked right out of the box. That says a lot for a team that struggled with updates last year. Many teams are struggling with updates this year.

[jav]

Marcush,

Thats how you would play it. I would do it different, and Im sure Ferrari pilot and others would have their say in what to do first.

Bottom line is they were running compromised to keep the car cool. that in itself needs to be sorted first before you add fancy bits.

jet ...where is the logic? Brawn and Haug do not need 4th place finishes ,and even this is not really on with the car as it is right now.So working on reliability issues with a car lacking outright speed to reach the goals is complete and utter nonsense.
What if :they find out that even with all extra openings closed and all temps in check the car is still a second slow? Why sort this failure of a development?
First you need to prove the speed is there then you can work at making the speed
sustainable.Got 2 DNFs ? well so be it.
Better not see the finish fighting for top spots than sailing to the end outside the points.

To a degree they admit already doing a halfway house of this approach as AGAIN Mercedes had to conserve fuel to make it to the end.

Very clearly they trade in outright performance at the beginning of the race for
being able to push the complete distance.
It is impossible they gambled on a wet race and fueled for that one ,as the fuel load in the wet would not be critical methinks.


What I really don´t understand is :You got an aero department ,you got all the worlds prototyping tools and you got CAD-CAM facilities galore to create a flood of new parts that can be tried on Friday FP1.You got two closely matched drivers (as long as it is not Q3)so why not let Schumacher set completely on a development programme and let Rosberg be the benchmark..Schumacher is old enough and he is cool enough to be easy on this .And on top of it if he´s not matching Nico in Qualy you got the perfect reason for this being as it is as well..
thats 3hours of valuable track time ...
No Endplate vanes when MCL isd already on their second iteration...

I agree with this and will add that Brawn's team building philosophy was bolstered by his beleif that to finish first, you must first finish. Reliability had been a big part of builidng his lore becuase it was lacking in many of his teams...look at Ferrari when he entered the picture.

The problem today is, reliability is not the core failing towards achieving THIS teams goal of improving on being 4th. For that- I agree with Marcush that focusing on reliability more heavily than say outright pace, is probably mis-spending resources.

W01 lacked pace more so than reliabilty. W02 lacks pace more so than reliabilty. It seems to me that it would be easier to add reliabilty to fast car than it is to add pace to relaible car.

[marcush.]

my point is very simple:why waste recources on reliability when you cannot be sure if your concept is a wold beater?
Clearly the Mercedes boys had no reason to think their car was as fast as anyones in testing ...it was always a lame duck ...before that final day of testing with the seemingly final -not vanilla-configuration.
Sure they knew already then -that opening all those holes was killing their laptime ,so it was clear they needed to get on top of the temperature as not many races are held Nurburgring like 15°C conditions.

STILL fact is ...They looked on when Mclaren and Ferrari dropped their own exhaust ideas ,they looked on when Renault showed their Front exit exhaust and to me the fact that Newey officially stated he was NOT prepared to divert any recources into evaluating the competitors exhaust solutions was hint enough RedBull very well knew that their solution has better potential.

[Hemsy]

Hey guys! I am an avid Michael Schumacher fan and this is my first post here. I think the root cause of Mercedes' symptoms was the lack of a technical director. Remember that while Ross Brawn was technical director at Ferrari, he is team principal at Mercedes i.e he deals with the management side of things. In the absence of a true TD, the team had no clear direction since the its inception which is why the team hired Bob Bell. Not only does Bob Bell have championship winning experience but having worked for Renault who were one of the best when it came to in-season development (remember how many different front wing iterations they had last year!) he knows what it takes to guide Mercedes to championship winning ways. This is why we haven't seen him at races this years since he's busy organizing things back at the factory and I wouldn't be surprised if it was him who asked for an increase in manpower to enable Mercedes to fight with the top 3 teams.

[ForMuLaOne]

Welcome to the Forum.

I do agree with you AtOmIc. The car is a projection of a team`s work. As they have problems which roots we cannot follow to the core, it seems to be a slow developement compared to teams which run for years now.


On topic: Could it be that they had to save fuel this race simply because the tank is not designed for hot blowing mappings? Does Merc run with hot or cold blown diffusor?

[marcush.]

Maybe due to the shortbut wide and high tank the penalty for those last 20litres bumping the cofG height maybe the reason for lower fuel loads.It would kill their racespeed and more important the tyres quicker negating any advantage you´d get from being able to hotblowing the diffusser.?
There muat be strong reasons not to fill her up sufficiantly...and Norby the only one mentioning it is also raising suspicion..

[dren]

Maybe due to the shortbut wide and high tank the penalty for those last 20litres bumping the cofG height maybe the reason for lower fuel loads.It would kill their racespeed and more important the tyres quicker negating any advantage you´d get from being able to hotblowing the diffusser.?
There muat be strong reasons not to fill her up sufficiantly...and Norby the only one mentioning it is also raising suspicion..

yeah, I'm guessing if they are short fueling the car that it is the optimum amount of fuel for the quickest overall race.

[marcush.]

that´s the impression ..
maybe that is also the reason why Brawn is not really airing high hopes another big step can be made as the lap time is owed to the hot blowing requiring more fuel that cannot be accomodated?

well it could ..duplicating the RedBull solution and relocating the batteries to the gearboxbellhousing .this would enable them to have an additional 20? litres of fuel volume ...I´d think a worthwhile consideration anyways as they suffer high CofG woes anyways...

[jav]

once again the team has dashed any hope of credability. It was just about 2 weeks ago when the old exhaust was abandoned for having less future development potential than the new exhuast. Now we're back to the car being maxed out? So the new exhausts development potential was limited to one race?

[marcush.]

Judging by the many vacancies they opened and possibly plan to fill in the summerbreak it looks like they plan to push big time now.

[dren]

So Merc is paying for an increase in staff?

[marcush.]

someone has signed up for the increased budged, otherwise you could not go out and hire people.Mercedes has to increase the budget to make it happen..perhaps someone has signed additional sponsorship to finance it.

[Ferraripilot]

someone has signed up for the increased budged, otherwise you could not go out and hire people.Mercedes has to increase the budget to make it happen..perhaps someone has signed additional sponsorship to finance it.

MB is one of the most profitable car makers. I don't believe financing is going to be much of an issue. 100 more people = ? $20-25m more a year? That's probably at the high end.

[marcush.]

Mercedes has to be cautious about this as they announced the Formula 1 team would be cost neutral.Sure the question is how you would count this and all the voices from the union are silenced now and will be redirected towards potential payment rise discussions ...

[Adamski]

In the last weekend I noticed that Schumacher and Nico using different chassis in qualifying.
Schumacher uses the old one with lot of vanes around the rear suspension.


His car also had the two tower exits on the top of the side-pods:


Rosberg's Saturday configuration was like in Silverstone. New chassis, with a big bulge around the rear suspension and less vanes:



But there was no tower exits:


In top of that, in Sunday, Rosberg's car is reverted (or upgraded?) to the one like Schumacher's Saturday configuration. How is it possible under the so called parc fermé rule?


They also played with the KERS cooling vanes. Sometimes they used it, sometimes they won't. For example, in Saturday, Rosberg's configuration doesn't feature it.

And one more question:
Can anybody explain the differences between the two chassis configuration?
What is the more aero efficient from these options?
If there's still overheating issues, it's not a good news, especially as the weather was not so warm (around 15 c° if I'm good).

Sorry for the length