Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team 2013

[Richard]

What circuit is that with blue & white kerbs?

[bhall]

Jerez

[Kiril Varbanov]

Back on Monaco, I thought this one belong here.
Peter Bonnington was informing Lewis Hamilton couple of times over the radio about something which I, while on air, heard initially in the headphones as "Traction matrix". Then I realized he was rather talking about "Traction metrics" and the cited numbers were 2500 and 3800, for example.

What I'm not 100% sure about is whether this is wheel spin or not. I suppose the numbers are actually a percentage ratio, respectively 25 and 38%, as he was warned on Lap #55: "Think about traction, 3800 that lap".
Since maximum tractive force is typically generated between 10% and 30% longitudinal slip (in acceleration) I'd assume that this is what was actually been talked about.
At the same time, I was wondering if this is just an extra level of radio messages obfuscation - I'd love to hear your thoughts.

[Vasconia]

Exactly - the tires will run 5-10 cooler for the same amount of work...the operating window isn't mentioned anywhere, the operational temp is not the same as operating window...one is the temp tire avgs for a certain amount of work and the other is the range below and above which tire characteristics suffer.

But if Mercedes puts a greater amount of work on the tyres than other teams he could have more tyre degradation, is this posible?

And in this case it would be important to see if the operating windows of these "new " tyres is bigger or smaller.

Perhaps I am wrong because I am far from being an expert...

[mantikos]

Exactly - the tires will run 5-10 cooler for the same amount of work...the operating window isn't mentioned anywhere, the operational temp is not the same as operating window...one is the temp tire avgs for a certain amount of work and the other is the range below and above which tire characteristics suffer.

But if Mercedes puts a greater amount of work on the tyres than other teams he could have more tyre degradation, is this posible?

And in this case it would be important to see if the operating windows of these "new " tyres is bigger or smaller.

Perhaps I am wrong because I am far from being an expert...

If they continue to put the same work as they do now they will be 10 degrees cooler...this coupled with the new brake ducts in the rear add up to a 20 degree drop...which is what Bell was tasked with to begin with according to most reports.

The windows aren't going to change significantly after the FIA asked the changes to be safety related only.

[marcush.]

sorry guys ,there is no linearity in the tyre working window for each and everyone who is using it-otherwise all could and would stay inside the famous operating window -which some do and some just cannot.
a new tyre construction designed to run cooler is not synomymous to a tyre that fits better to MGPs car- if it were that easy ...
The tyre may still be overworked by W04 or it may fit like a glove -who knows.

But thinking about recent tyre tests one can be almost sure which teams will have cars that suit the new tyre....those who had "relevant " testing time with Pirelli.... bad times for Mateschitz.Let´s hope he is not getting grumpy or shrugs and just leaves the BS behind...one may remind himself what happened with A1 ..but that´s a different topic ..

[Vasconia]

Exactly - the tires will run 5-10 cooler for the same amount of work...the operating window isn't mentioned anywhere, the operational temp is not the same as operating window...one is the temp tire avgs for a certain amount of work and the other is the range below and above which tire characteristics suffer.

But if Mercedes puts a greater amount of work on the tyres than other teams he could have more tyre degradation, is this posible?

And in this case it would be important to see if the operating windows of these "new " tyres is bigger or smaller.

Perhaps I am wrong because I am far from being an expert...

If they continue to put the same work as they do now they will be 10 degrees cooler...this coupled with the new brake ducts in the rear add up to a 20 degree drop...which is what Bell was tasked with to begin with according to most reports.

The windows aren't going to change significantly after the FIA asked the changes to be safety related only.

Ok thanks for the info, lets see if Bell has done it.

[Cocles]

Ok thanks for the info, lets see if Bell has done it.

Unfortunately we won't know until Silverstone.

[Cocles]

Third in the constructor's championship. Very nice.

[liveforf1]

anyone know what Paddy Lowe is up to, officially, this test nonsense is the media's sole preoccupation right now.

[FoxHound]

Some nice words from Toto regarding Ross.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWJYUiWdSqE[/youtube]

[Vasconia]

anyone know what Paddy Lowe is up to, officially, this test nonsense is the media's sole preoccupation right now.

And it will continue to be if Mercedes performs in Silverstone as good(or better) as in Canada.

[stefan_]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2JUuZq50uc[/youtube]

[Ferraripilot]

Lewis mentioning in an article that he notices features present on Red Bull or Ferrari which he asks his engineers about specifically asking why W04 doesn't have these features. His reply from them as Lewis relayed it is, "oh we're testing that in 2-3 weeks", and of course Lewis asks, "why aren't we testing it now".

I'm not sure if this is a team posting or something specific to W04, but what I gather circumstantially from Lewis' comments is one of two possibilities: W04 may be a difficult car to design upgrades for because of its suspension sensitivity which is of course related to how it treats tires, or MB as a team are in some sort of cost analysis situation where an upgrade must be reviewed and analysed for approval prior to ever being tested let alone built. If the latter is at all true, I cannot imagine a team winning championships with too much of this. I certainly hope that is not the case but from the comments Lewis made I cannot deduce much else other than the slight possibility for not testing an interesting upgrade right away being staffing relating, as in insufficient numbers of staff.

anyone have any other theories as to what goes into the process to review an upgrade and why it might take a while to get it on CFD?

[Richard]

Lets say Merc have 10 items in development. Nine of them go on the car. Then Hamilton says “why don’t we have x” and the response is “we’re working on that, it’ll be ready 2 weeks”.

Clearly that doesn’t mean Merc are behind in development because they hit success on 9 out of 10 things, but the press pick up on “Hamilton demands part x”. Also part x might make the Merc worse, so they might be better off not adopting it.

Finally, we can’t say this reflects on Merc because Hamilton used to say the same things at McLaren. No offence to Hamilton, but I’d expect teams to have people looking at competitors’ cars who are far more skilled at observing technical details than Hamilton. The only exception is when drivers have an opportunity to look inside the cockpit at parc ferme.