Mercedes AMG F1 W04

[beelsebob]

Front wings, rear wings etc don't so much concern me as much as the RB9 brake ducts do. The upper element to the RB9 brake duct just over the upper control arm pickup point MUST be copied by other teams, until then no one will touch RB9. That element is about half or more the surface area of a beam wing and no one else is running anything like it. Season is over until that is copied.

W04 may have a wild card with its mechanical grip advantage, but otherwise we and everyone else are whistling in the wind while RB9 has those mesmerizing brake ducts.

+11ty million!

It beats me why other teams have not copied this... Its just a free area to have a huge freaking wing disguised as a brake duct mounted DIRECTLY over the rear wheels. If that it is not free downforce I do not know what is.

Oh dear,

It's amazing how you lot actually genuinely think that you can pick out the exact part of an F1 car that makes a performance difference, without a) knowing what performance characteristics the cars have or b) any clue how they actually work in detail.

[bhall]

[...]

W04 may have a wild card with its mechanical grip advantage, but otherwise we and everyone else are whistling in the wind while RB9 has those mesmerizing brake ducts.

Why? However unlikely, it's entirely possible those "brake ducts," which is a rather cynical way to describe what are really "hub wings," mask a deficiency elsewhere on their car.

If you can do something sans component that your rivals can only do with a component, your solution is better.

Think about exhaust tunnels for instance. Red Bull won the championship with them last year, yet only Renault-equipped teams copied them over the offseason. Does that suggest other teams are foolish to have chosen spartan Coke bottles, or rather that the famously fuel-efficient Renault engine might just lack the "exhaust power" to "seal" the diffuser under the current regulations without a crutch?

Everything is relative, yanno?

[Ferraripilot]

[...]

W04 may have a wild card with its mechanical grip advantage, but otherwise we and everyone else are whistling in the wind while RB9 has those mesmerizing brake ducts.

Why? However unlikely, it's entirely possible those "brake ducts," which is a rather cynical way to describe what are really "hub wings," mask a deficiency elsewhere on their car.

If you can do something sans component that your rivals can only do with a component, your solution is better.

Think about exhaust tunnels for instance. Red Bull won the championship with them last year, yet only Renault-equipped teams copied them over the offseason. Does that suggest other teams are foolish to have chosen spartan Coke bottles, or rather that the famously fuel-efficient Renault engine might just lack the "exhaust power" to "seal" the diffuser under the current regulations without a crutch?

I see your reasoning, but those wings attached to the wheels RB9 has are not like comparing exhausts whereas one solution may or may not be better than the other depending on the situation (let's not go over that massive topic again right!). The wings RB9 have are just that, wings, and no one else has them there and they are a third to half the size of a beam wing albeit they are probably not as efficient. Still, they have a wing in a place others simply haven't.

That being said, if W04 has an ace that RB9 certainly does not have it's W04s partial 'U' sidepods and 3 winglets attaching the air to the U pods. No one else has gone so far in shaping the top of their sidepods to accommodate such flow.

[bhall]

I think I've said this before elsewhere, but the first team to develop some legal trick to produce rear-wing equivalent downforce without actually using a rear wing will win that year's championship in such a dominant fashion that, unless other teams also figure out that legal trick, the season will effectively be over after the first race. Such a scenario is extremely unlikely, yet it underscores the fact that the aero game, if you will, is not about downforce as much as it's about efficient downforce. Every team on the grid can make as much downforce as they like; only the best teams do it more efficiently than others.

So, again, if you can do something without a wing that other teams can only do with a wing, your solution is better.

(For what it's worth, I think maybe both the tunnels and the hub wings on the Red Bull are required to achieve the same goals with Renault exhaust that other teams manage to achieve with Mercedes/Ferrari exhaust without the aid of tunnels and hub wings. That's the price Red Bull and other Renault teams pay for a very fuel-efficient and "driveable" engine with minimal cooling requirements.)

[PlatinumZealot]

Here we have a clear view of the wings in question..



The flow paths to these wings are relatively clean too.

[PlatinumZealot]

Mercedes...

[dren]

Red Bull:

[NathanOlder]

Sauber run wings like this dont they ?



If this is the case, Expect a close battle between Seb & Hulk for the title. Or.... Wings here are not as important as some people are making out ?

[NathanOlder]

A close up, thanks to Nando i think it was. (in the C32 thread)




Anyway back to the W04. If these brake ducts are that good, it doesnt look hard to copy or make something similar. If all cars have them by the time we get to Catalunya, then I'd say that yes, they are strong parts. Only time will tell

[dren]

Merc:

[dren]

What Sauber has looks more like a flow conditioner. The same for the Red Bull. Although the back part of the Red Bull looks like it has a wing shape.

[Ferraripilot]

A close up, thanks to Nando i think it was. (in the C32 thread)

http://img5.uploadhouse.com/fileuploads ... 8f73ce.jpg


Anyway back to the W04. If these brake ducts are that good, it doesnt look hard to copy or make something similar. If all cars have them by the time we get to Catalunya, then I'd say that yes, they are strong parts. Only time will tell

Sauber's isn't nearly as large as red bull's and their brake ducts aren't quite as detailed as other in general either. Also, the tail of that car is quite snappy so I conjecture they're not planted as they'd like on the back.

[bhall]

OK, fellas, I'm posting this with the hope we can use it as a rough guide instead of an excuse to break out our best pedantic arguments. I hope that's not too lofty a goal.

I've scaled it according to the size of the Red Bull wheel being held by the Red Bull mechanic, who subsequently got left on my editing room floor. I placed his arm and its work on top of the Mercedes wheel for the hell of it.

The images are roughly aligned along both cars' driveshafts.



Frankly, I think the Red Bull "hub wing" is more like a "hub shield" that seeks to guard the exhaust plume from the effects of the airflow around the rotating wheel.

[Ferraripilot]

(For what it's worth, I think maybe both the tunnels and the hub wings on the Red Bull are required to achieve the same goals with Renault exhaust that other teams manage to achieve with Mercedes/Ferrari exhaust without the aid of tunnels and hub wings. That's the price Red Bull and other Renault teams pay for a very fuel-efficient and "driveable" engine with minimal cooling requirements.)

So you're saying their solution possibly is an answer to their exhaust solutions inherent braking instability. That's a valid argument which possibly supports an argument that such brake ducts are just a band aid for a more paramount issue.

[dren]

Frankly, I think the Red Bull "hub wing" is more like a "hub shield" that seeks to guard the exhaust plume from the effects of the airflow around the rotating wheel.

That and I think it conditions the flow for the brake cooling and brake wings at the rear. Red Bull's floviz shows the flow stays nicely attached on the brake wings. You can also see the cutout on the W04 in your picture.