Mercedes AMG F1 W03

[Vasconia]

Wait a second, this car wasnt a podium contender, only in China and Monaco was fast, the rest of the season the race pace has been awful. In the first races it was fast in Qualy but not in the race(remember Australia, Malaysia or Bahrein), so the only difference has been that they have lost the edge on Saturdays.

And now they are building a new car(as Lauda has confirmed) for 2013, I expect another tyre eating monster.

So what's so surprising about that?
With different people (Costa, Elliott) now leading car design, it should not be a surprise to anyone.
It would actually be disappointing if they were to follow the same concept.
If something doesn't work you try to find a different direction. That's the adagium of F1 racing.

Yes, what you say is logic and I would do the same, I am only highlighting that it would be the third year in a row that they do the same, so it seems that something doesn’t work in this team.

[Vasconia]

Wait a second, this car wasnt a podium contender, only in China and Monaco was fast, the rest of the season the race pace has been awful. In the first races it was fast in Qualy but not in the race(remember Australia, Malaysia or Bahrein), so the only difference has been that they have lost the edge on Saturdays.

This jusdgment is unfair. At the beginning of the season the pace was in the car for top positions, it just needed honing for consistency which they achieved in China. However, the pace:conisistency ratio of their competitors continued to improve whereas they stood still and I believe that is because they weren't spending any money on the car for a few months.

Lets face it, the DDRS is probably a bag of crap and had the team had unrestricted financial freedom to develop they would've binned it and done something else. Instead they raced the Vanilla version of the car until UDT and now they will spend the next 4 races getting their coanda exhaust to where Mclaren, Sauber, Ferrari and Red Bull had theirs by Barcelona this year.

I think is quite fair, take a look to the race pace in Australia of both drivers and you will see the diference between them and the top teams, the same happened in Bahrein and the same in Barcelona. Only under a very specific conditions and tracks the car looked fast. Later, as you have correctly mentioned, they lack any important update and consequently the WO3 lost ground with the rest of the cars which introduced new parts in a reasonable pace.

The DDRS may have its problems but it helped the car to get top positions int he first qualis. And the packcage of Monaco was very suitable to this track so it worked very well(and the temperatures were lower than expected). There is nothing more to point out this season, its sad but true.

[MercAMGF1Fans]

I guess this should go in the W04 Thread
http://www.totalf1.com/full_story/view/ ... _2013_car/
Lauda is saying that next year's car is gonna be a completely new car

[elf341]

If so, I believe that would be a mistake. Success is earned by a continual process of identifying weaknesses and fixing them, and identifying edges and further exploiting them. Evolution not revolution.

Both myself and others have mentioned this before regarding their tire issues. It's starting to become fairly clear now that they have a problem with their process - that is, the mechanism they use to determine whether a change they make is an improvement or not. I think their engineers are actually very good, and are generating good ideas - but remember that a lack of development is not a lack of idea generation. The engineers in Formula 1 spit out ideas at an incredible rate of knots. I believe their idea evaluation process has a flaw which is also confounding their confusion and whenever they think they start to understand the issues from a fundamental perspective, parts which should fix the issue do not appear to evaluate to an improvement, and hence the lack of developments we have seen. The flaw can often be a very small and subtle issue that is has been overlooked - perhaps because it is not usually thought to be of big influence - but one which is clearly pushing their development far from optimality. I am actually expecting a bit of a eureka moment when it is finally found.

[Cocles]

Could the reason for the car being hard on its tyres be a remnant of the team building cars to suit Jenson's for years? His gentle style would need a more aggressive chassis setup to generate heat in the tyres so perhaps that philosophy is still echoing today unessesarily? My thinking being that aggressive chassis design plus aggressive drivers could just be a bridge too far for the tyres?

Or could it be that the W01, W02, & W03 are all evolutions of a car that was built from the ground up for a double diffuser, the BGP 001? They've been trying to claw back the rear downforce ever since.

[Cocles]

If so, I believe that would be a mistake. Success is earned by a continual process of identifying weaknesses and fixing them, and identifying edges and further exploiting them. Evolution not revolution.

Well, hold on. That might often be true, but Ferrari would disagree with you at the moment.

[elf341]

Well, hold on. That might often be true, but Ferrari would disagree with you at the moment.

I actually think Ferrari might agree with me. They were the only team from the "top 3" last year to take a stab in the dark and be really revolutionary. They have by their own admission, on average over the year, been the 4th fastest car - so did their plan work? I believe Ferrari felt the need to be very revolutionary for another reason, which is that they identified themselves as not being innovative enough and were becoming too conservative and reactionary, essentially looking to others for ideas. I do not believe Mercedes have this problem - they clearly strive to be different.
I take my hat off to Ferrari, they have rescued what what looked like a complete dud of a car. But I sometimes do wonder what could've been if the 2012 had been more traditionally evolved from the 150-Italia? (a car from a lineage clearly much faster than the Lotus/Renault lineage)

[marcush.]

haha now we have FSAE slang and ethos creeping into MGPs work ..W03 as the ultimate in" LEGACY" car.Get over it, they simply don´t know have NO clue why their car is slow .End of story .It is not some freakin preparation for 2020 it´s not money ,facility .There are teams with more and less recource doing a better job then them.Banggh for buck they easily make the worst job.

[Chuckjr]

I guess this should go in the W04 Thread
http://www.totalf1.com/full_story/view/ ... _2013_car/
Lauda is saying that next year's car is gonna be a completely new car

Holy smokes. That's amazing they would go to the trouble of a complete car redesign with the vast reg changes coming in 2014. What an incredible risk to take. Is that a wise use of resources for essentially a one off, single year car? Hmmm. I'm starting to believe the comments questioning who's making these decisions from such an immense empire as Merc.

[bill shoe]

they simply don´t know have NO clue why their car is slow .End of story .

Do the fast teams always know why they're fast? Fast vs Slow for a semi-frontrunner like Mercedes is maybe one second a lap.

[wunderkind]

I guess this should go in the W04 Thread
http://www.totalf1.com/full_story/view/ ... _2013_car/
Lauda is saying that next year's car is gonna be a completely new car

Holy smokes. That's amazing they would go to the trouble of a complete car redesign with the vast reg changes coming in 2014. What an incredible risk to take. Is that a wise use of resources for essentially a one off, single year car? Hmmm. I'm starting to believe the comments questioning who's making these decisions from such an immense empire as Merc.

What's the harm in designing an all new car when the current car is simply not fast enough?

[MercAMGF1Fans]

Front wing - today in India

[Forza]

India - Thursday

[MercAMGF1Fans]

[Forza]

India FP1 & FP2