Mercedes AMG F1 W03

[Adamski]

Interesting to see Merc doing the opposite what most teams are doing. In the middle of the season they were removed the cascades from the frontwing, but from race to race they just can't go well.

Now it's Monza time, a very low downforce track and everybody remove the cascades and normally people think it's a good way to make the car easily faster in the straights. But suddenly Merc get them back on the car and what? They are very fast.

I know two piece of cascades don't make the car a front runner, but for me, it is a bit interesting, that until they run it, they were up in the front. If they do not run it, they are nowhere.

And one more thing. Brawn said in an interview that maybe set-up flaws make their dip in performance. Maybe we can see some results of going back to basics and it's work for them. Maybe the return of the original front wing is also a step to go backward in terms of car setup. Just like McLaren's Button did it.

Tomorrow will be a very-very interesting day. I bet the two Merc for the first or second row.

[techF1LES]

Photo courtesy of: Sutton Images
■ Copyright © Sutton Images 2012. All rights reserved.
■ Hosted at The Official F1™ Website

[dren]

This team has always had some nice packaging.

[Mestrades]

These are the times that the principal drivers have done today in their long respective simulations.
X-Axis: The time per lap - 60 seconds (for convenience)
Y-Axis: Number of laps (Aprox all of them have done 15 laps, the lines are trendlines)

The best times are for Michael with a descent tire degradation. I think that he and Rosberg are the favorites for this GP.

[marcush.]

quite interesting for a topteam to adopt a minnow strategy-building a competive car for the extreme tracks....as did Force india a few years back -almost winning in spa with fisichella...if only kimi was not there..

Or can we believe they just forgot how to setup a car for a few months ...maybe they are all getting old a bit ...

maybe the bigggest problem was the limited dry running? and MGP is just a lot worse than everyone else in predicting anything in advance but have demon race engineers who can with just 2 fps aquire all data to derive a perfect setup -and this just did not happen for a long haul of races ...

[NonNewtonic]

These are the times that the principal drivers have done today in their long respective simulations.
X-Axis: The time per lap - 60 seconds (for convenience)
Y-Axis: Number of laps (Aprox all of them have done 15 laps, the lines are trendlines)

The best times are for Michael with a descent tire degradation. I think that he and Rosberg are the favorites for this GP.

http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/8551/monzaf.png

Can't read too much into that because there is no indication on what fuel load cars are running on but one thing for sure Michael and Nico is running on a 20 lap stint while Kimi was running on a 23 lap stint

[Crucial_Xtreme]

Great picture showing the difference between the two wings.

[ismail1991]

Looks like cascades are back, but the r shape thing is gone. In addition there are also some changes on front wing as well

Did they use the old one during practises? I haven't seen it on both of the cars so far.

[stefan_]

[Ferraripilot]

Can anyone explain the benefit in having the areas where the diffuser housing joins the air directing fins radiused at their respective apexes? At first glance, I'd guess such a design would appear to provide more volume in the form of having more surface area on the fins themselves. Red Bull I believe were the first to run such a design and of course others have followed.

I also notice W03 has always runs without the currently-popular extended and separated gurney flap, but rather it has sort of a half-baked design in comparison to others.

[Timstr]

Coanda type exhaust to be tested tomorrow at Magny Cours.
The team has recently increased there model size from 50% to 60%.
This gave them insight into the positive effects of the coanda type exhaust.
So the 50% model explains why they did not see the benefit before.
Source: Autosport.com

[zyphro]

Coanda type exhaust to be tested tomorrow at Magny Cours.
The team has recently increased there model size from 50% to 60%.
This gave them insight into the positive effects of the coanda type exhaust.
So the 50% model explains why they did not see the benefit before.

Is it possible to quantify how much gain the coanda type exhausts will bring?

[Timstr]

No numbers as can be expected. But this is a quote from Brawn:

"We think that's quite significant in low speed traction," he said. "The effect of the exhaust is more significant at lower speeds than higher speeds, and also brings you the balance perhaps you need for the rear tyre."

[Ferraripilot]

Is it possible to quantify how much gain the coanda type exhausts will bring?

Mercedes W03 has an excellent front wing which I believe they introduced post-Monaco, but they have been unable to run the cascades and much rake on this wing due to balance issues with the rear end (not enough rear end DF). A Coanda-type exhaust could yield a 5% gain in rear DF which should (one must use that word carefully) yield enough to allow the front end to run cascades and a reasonable wing rake angle as well. .300-.400 I believe is the maximum benefit this upgrade could have combined front and back, and if successful this could make Mercedes a possible winner depending on the track not to mention substantially benefit their rear tire wear issues of late.

Bravo to Mercedes if they make this fly as it should though.

[zyphro]

Is it possible to quantify how much gain the coanda type exhausts will bring?

Mercedes W03 has an excellent front wing which I believe they introduced post-Monaco, but they have been unable to run the cascades and much rake on this wing due to balance issues with the rear end (not enough rear end DF). A Coanda-type exhaust could yield a 5% gain in rear DF which should (one must use that word carefully) yield enough to allow the front end to run cascades and a reasonable wing rake angle as well. .300-.400 I believe is the maximum benefit this upgrade could have combined front and back, and if successful this could make Mercedes a possible winner depending on the track not to mention substantially benefit their rear tire wear issues of late.

Bravo to Mercedes if they make this fly as it should though.

Interesting, +1 .