Mercedes AMG F1 W06 Speculation

[Moose]

Mercedes invested hugely in 2014, and it played dividend. However, it's not like 2014 was without (telltale) erros. Reliability proved to be the biggest issue for Mercedes. As strong as Mercedes seemed, they arguably have lost a lot down to their reliability issues, too. Frankly, reliability issues cost' Rosberg his try on his WDC. Not delving in any way into that though, the point is, Merc's biggest 'opponent' was their own reliability.

I'm not really sure I see your argument that reliability cost Rosberg his attempt at the WDC - both drivers had 3 races where a reliability issue pushed them out of the top 10, and one where it pushed them out of the top 3. Hamilton additionally had two reliability issues in qualifying. That said, your general point that Mercedes's main weakness was reliability certainly holds true, I expect the W06 to be a slightly improved W05, with bullet proof reliability.

Now, having the Merc engine being so immensely powerfull, the downside might be that it goes at the cost of reliability. The 'room' for improving the engine might be 'smaller' compared to other manufacturers. It seemed to me Williams had not nearly as much reliability issues/dangers compared to Mercedes.

Most of Merc's reliability issues weren't issues with the engine. They only had two (IIRC) engine failures, one of which was in qualifying. The rest were majority ERS (cooling?) or gearbox issues. I expect Merc to have fixed all of the above issues in time for 2015.

So, if Mercedes is already running on their very edge/limit, and the competition might improve coming 2015, then there is a great possibility that Merc is in for a harder time coming season than it had this year.

I agree, at very least, Williams were very close to Merc by the end of 2015, which implies that next year they'll be right on Merc at any high speed circuit. I can also believe that McLaren will be getting up there, and that RedBull will have a much improved engine for 2015. I can see all of them being closer.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

I don't think they'll have the 'privilidge' of doing a Newey-RedBull for the coming 4 years or so.

It's hard not to believe that they can't do it. With the kind of budget, technical strength and the momentum they have, there is every reason to believe they can do it.

Frankly, reliability issues cost' Rosberg his try on his WDC. Not delving in any way into that though, the point is, Merc's biggest 'opponent' was their own reliability.

I feel your pain of being a Rosberg fan here. Understandable that you ignore the problems that Lewis went through.

The 'room' for improving the engine might be 'smaller' compared to other manufacturers. It seemed to me Williams had not nearly as much reliability issues/dangers compared to Mercedes. So, if Mercedes is already running on their very edge/limit, and the competition might improve coming 2015, then there is a great possibility that Merc is in for a harder time coming season than it had this year.

Is there an official from Merc, who have raised his hand and said, "Oh yeah, we have reached optimum and the "Room" for any more development on engine is now "Smaller""? Frankly, I hate this BS, whenever someone says that "So and So has reached their optimum, just because the So and So is leading. It is the imagination of engineers that has to run out for development to stall and as long as there are engineers who keep exploring their imagination, there is no END. It was just the first year of development and there are few more, until final engine freeze kicks in.

Not just that, but if Honda's statements are genuinly true about their engine - and frankly, i don't see why it wouldn't - then we have another team with a powerfull but less reliable engine. In other words, I'd not be surprised to see Mclaren engage the mighty Mercedes in 2015.

Didn't lotus said, at the beginning of 2014 that they have a "Super Car"? If you analyze the trend that goes on in competition, when someone has genuine pace, they keep quite, keep down playing the things and keep keep on sand bagging until the time it matters. When someone is in deep ---, they keep telling the world how good they are going to be.

Obviously, the Renault and Ferrari-powered teams will have less of a defecit in 2015 compared to 2014 clearly remembering the huge issues the Renaults had in pre-season testing, but whether that'll be enough to climb up to Merc? doubt so.

Nothing really suggests that any of these guys can catch Merc. By their own admission (Horner and Matticci), the best they can do is come closer to Merc's current PU performance, by next year. So, its left to anyone's imagination about where Merc could be.

I can only see Honda being a genuine threat to Mercedes in 2015. If they aren't, then expect 2015 to have a just as dominant Mercedes year but with a 'edgier' Rosberg and an even stronger Hamilton.

I believe neither will happen. If anything, Hamilton would improve his qualifying form to comprehensively beat Rosberg.

[Moose]

Is there an official from Merc, who have raised his hand and said, "Oh yeah, we have reached optimum and the "Room" for any more development on engine is now "Smaller""? Frankly, I hate this BS, whenever someone says that "So and So has reached their optimum, just because the So and So is leading. It is the imagination of engineers that has to run out for development to stall and as long as there are engineers who keep exploring their imagination, there is no END. It was just the first year of development and there are few more, until final engine freeze kicks in.

It's not really imagination, it's just fact. There is somewhere out there, an absolutely perfect engine. Lets say that the perfect PU is 50% efficient (something most current engineers would cum in their pants over). Lets assume Merc have a 41% efficient PU, and Renault have a 39% efficient one. That means that Merc have only 9% (roughly 150hp) to chase, while Renault have 11% (roughly 190hp) to chase. Inherently, it becomes harder and harder to find more as you get closer and closer to the best possible engine/car/anything.

That said, this doesn't mean that Merc doesn't have an easy way of finding 60hp (as they're rumoured to have found already), and it certainly doesn't mean that Renault/Ferrari will catch up at all, it just means that it's easier for Renault/Ferrari to find 60hp than it is for Merc to.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Is there an official from Merc, who have raised his hand and said, "Oh yeah, we have reached optimum and the "Room" for any more development on engine is now "Smaller""? Frankly, I hate this BS, whenever someone says that "So and So has reached their optimum, just because the So and So is leading. It is the imagination of engineers that has to run out for development to stall and as long as there are engineers who keep exploring their imagination, there is no END. It was just the first year of development and there are few more, until final engine freeze kicks in.

It's not really imagination, it's just fact. There is somewhere out there, an absolutely perfect engine. Lets say that the perfect PU is 50% efficient (something most current engineers would cum in their pants over). Lets assume Merc have a 41% efficient PU, and Renault have a 39% efficient one. That means that Merc have only 9% (roughly 150hp) to chase, while Renault have 11% (roughly 190hp) to chase. Inherently, it becomes harder and harder to find more as you get closer and closer to the best possible engine/car/anything.

That said, this doesn't mean that Merc doesn't have an easy way of finding 60hp (as they're rumoured to have found already), and it certainly doesn't mean that Renault/Ferrari will catch up at all, it just means that it's easier for Renault/Ferrari to find 60hp than it is for Merc to.

The problem with your explanation is, it is all assumptions and nothing can be established as a fact. If Merc engineers would have thought the same way you did, they would have ended up creating another slouch like Renault and Ferrari PU and Bingo, there would have been great competition and everyone would have thought, that was all it was possible in terms of PU power. Guess what, someone really thought differently and went for an architecture, which they thought is the best for overall design and indeed it was. If they can do it once, what makes you feel they can't do it again, in terms of improvisation.

My point of contention is people's assumption about "Oh this is now optimum and cannot be better OR there is only small margin". If one remembers, a Sauber C31 was a competitive machinery in 2012 and when Sauber team came with C32, they believed that its hard to further improvise from C31 as rules were stagnant from 2012 to 2013 and they thought they are still contenders for podiums. They got utterly surprised to see RBR and Merc had gained over a second in the winter. They admitted that, they didn't realized it was possible to gain so big in such a static framework. Everyone thought RBR would suck after taking away the EBD, but they found new ways ways doing the same. You believe you can do it, you can do it. You don't, you don't. That's it.

[Moose]

The problem with your explanation is, it is all assumptions and nothing can be established as a fact. If Merc engineers would have thought the same way you did, they would have ended up creating another slouch like Renault and Ferrari PU and Bingo, there would have been great competition and everyone would have thought, that was all it was possible in terms of PU power.

Pardon? Why on earth would anyone think that way. Thinking "there is an upper limit to how good a power unit can be" is not the same as thinking "we're at the upper limit" or "we're close to the upper limit, we should stop trying".

As I said - the fact that Mercedes are closer to the upper limit than Renault or Ferrari does not imply that they won't find yet more power than Renault or Ferrari - it just implies that it's harder for Mercedes to find more power.

Guess what, someone really thought differently and went for an architecture, which they thought is the best for overall design and indeed it was. If they can do it once, what makes you feel they can't do it again, in terms of improvisation.

Great, you're right - they indeed did find more power. I didn't say they couldn't, and I didn't say they couldn't do it again - only that it's harder for them than it is for Renault.

My point of contention is people's assumption about "Oh this is now optimum and cannot be better OR there is only small margin".

Indeed, both of those are flawed assumptions, just being better than everyone else does not mean it's close to the optimum. Only that it's closer to the optimum than everyone else.

You believe you can do it, you can do it. You don't, you don't. That's it.

Not quite - You believe you can do it, and it's physically possible, you may be smart enough to do it. If you don't believe you can do it, you almost certainly won't.

What's become clear is we're talking at cross purposes - what you are talking about is the team's motivation, which is certainly something they should keep up. What I am talking about is the physical limit of how good an engine can actually be. Like it or not, Mercedes can not produces a 4000 horse power engine. They also can't produce a 2000 horse power one. They probably can't produce a 1000 horse power one. Where the absolute upper limit is, we don't know, but Mercedes are closer to it than Renault and Ferrari.

Again - this doesn't mean that they can't, or won't find more power than Renault or Ferrari over the winter, but it does mean that it's harder for them.

[GrandAxe]

Talk about one teams engine being closer to optimum than another's is just nonsense.
The engines have different designs and different components, so you can't tell how much improvement each tem has without detailed knowledge of their engine designs. Well, except with a little voodoo, that is.

[NoDivergence]

^Correct. The analogy is more akin to that of a tree with tens of thousands of little branches. All these different architectures will max out somewhere, but you can't say which one leads to the exit of the maze.

[trinidefender]

Talk about one teams engine being closer to optimum than another's is just nonsense.
The engines have different designs and different components, so you can't tell how much improvement each tem has without detailed knowledge of their engine designs. Well, except with a little voodoo, that is.

Pardon me for being crass but what you are talking is "just nonsense." The merc engine was clearly superior his year and therefore is closer to optimum for the type of racing done by the 2014 F1 car.

On the subject of improvement, people should look up the law of diminishing returns. It basically means that the closer you get to optimum, the harder it is to find improvements. Pretty simple and straightforward if you ask me.

[turbof1]

These engine are all very similar to one another infact. There's a set of regulations in place that limit what manufacturers can do. Essentially they all are pushed into one single direction, and will converge to one another.

There's an optimum, and it isn't nonsense.

[NewtonMeter]

Bear in mind though, that a fairly substantial portion of the engine is opened for development next season. If Mercedes optimise those bits better than the rest, they may still have big advantage.

There's obviously an absolute optimum beyond which an ICE cannot be developed. but there's also an optimum of what the rules allow you to do. Every time the engine rules get revised that optimum will move and whoever comes closest to it will have the most powerful engine. The ERS part of the equation opens things up even more.

Furthermore, absolute power output is not the only parameter that needs to be taken into account, as red bull so powerfully demonstrated in the twilight years of the V8 era (despite the heart wrenching plights of Horner).

This year, I do get the impression that mercedes had the best of both worlds. Most powerful coupled with most drive-able, which proved to be a deadly for the opposition.

[Harry_F1Fan]

First things first they're certainly is an optimum that can be reached under these regulations. If there wasn't then theoretically you'd be able to produced a power unit with infinite horse power, you don't need a Phd to know that's impossible. You also can't say is that it'll be harder for Mercedes to find an extra 80bhp than Ferrari and Renault because these engines are in the early stages of their development and are therefore not even close to the so called 'optimum'. Mercedes' advantage this year has been largely down to the compressor-turbo configuration, allowing them to mount a larger compressor at the front of the engine near the air intake, providing cooler (higher oxygen density) air and therefore producing more power. This also had knock on benefits such as aero and weight distribution. This design gave mercedes a significant advantage and required a lot of R&D to develop and therefore is hard to copy. I don't know a lot about the respective ICEs or electrical energy storage systems, but I assume this is where most bhp will be found, and there's nothing to suggest mercs is any better/worse than it's competitors. I'd expect mercedes to keep their advantage because from what i've read Renault and Ferrari won't be able to copy the mercedes compressor-turbo so soon and is why they are looking for in season development. Furthermore, Mercedes could stretch their advantage because another source has suggested they're electrical energy storage is set for a big improvement.

Sources: http://www1.skysports.com/f1/report/220 ... er-in-2015
http://plus.autosport.com/premium/featu ... 1389975349

[NoDivergence]

There may be an ideal optimum, but as i said before, not all engine architectures can get there. Some designs inherently are more limited than others. Considering that you are pretty boxed in by regulations, aero packaging constraints, etc, no one knows where the heck the true limit is.

Look at Redbull, everyone always said they were closer to optimum so they could be outdeveloped in aero.

Not a realistic viewpoint

[trinidefender]

First things first they're certainly is an optimum that can be reached under these regulations. If there wasn't then theoretically you'd be able to produced a power unit with infinite horse power, you don't need a Phd to know that's impossible. You also can't say is that it'll be harder for Mercedes to find an extra 80bhp than Ferrari and Renault because these engines are in the early stages of their development and are therefore not even close to the so called 'optimum'. Mercedes' advantage this year has been largely down to the compressor-turbo configuration, allowing them to mount a larger compressor at the front of the engine near the air intake, providing cooler (higher oxygen density) air and therefore producing more power. This also had knock on benefits such as aero and weight distribution. This design gave mercedes a significant advantage and required a lot of R&D to develop and therefore is hard to copy. I don't know a lot about the respective ICEs or electrical energy storage systems, but I assume this is where most bhp will be found, and there's nothing to suggest mercs is any better/worse than it's competitors. I'd expect mercedes to keep their advantage because from what i've read Renault and Ferrari won't be able to copy the mercedes compressor-turbo so soon and is why they are looking for in season development. Furthermore, Mercedes could stretch their advantage because another source has suggested they're electrical energy storage is set for a big improvement.

Sources: http://www1.skysports.com/f1/report/220 ... er-in-2015
http://plus.autosport.com/premium/featu ... 1389975349

Thanks for a laugh but seriously that is only one small piece of a very large puzzle. If you did all of 5 minutes of research on engine design then you would know that cooler air does not mean more power. All cooler air means is higher density and more resistance to knocking. As long as there is enough air to burn the fuel which is limited this year and it is cool enough that the engine runs stable then making the air cooler isn't actually helping.

Point No.2, moving the compressor away from the turbine actually doesn't do to much for the temperature of the airflow. All it does is really put the ERS close to the turbine which was a big gamble for Mercedes in terms of if the ERS unit can handle it. Reliability and efficiency loss with increasing heat wise. Probably less than 3% of the temperature increase in the air leaving the compressor is from the heat absorption of a close by turbocharger turbine. The other 97% comes from the act of actually compressing the air and inefficiencies in the turbocharger compressor.

People like to dwell on this idea of the split turbocharger design (and the log manifold) being why Mercedes are so dominant when in actuality people are only saying that because that is all they can see with their own eyes that is really That is like trying to say how much power an engine produces just from looking at it from the outside, I.e. ludicrous and nonsensical.

People please stop this propagation of impulse theories on why something is the "best." It really doesn't make us as a community look very smart. *rant over*

[Nickel]

All cooler air means is higher density and more resistance to knocking. As long as there is enough air to burn the fuel which is limited this year and it is cool enough that the engine runs stable then making the air cooler isn't actually helping.

I'm no expert, nor do I pretend to know or assume this is related to Mercedes' advantage, but if cooler air allowed you to burn your limited allotment of fuel at a lower boost pressure, would you not be able to begin converting energy from the turbo into electricity via MGU-H at a slightly earlier rpm? Perhaps I'm missing something, but with the current rules, it would seem to me that anything which allows the turbo & compressor to be excessive for it's purpose of burning 100kg/h of fuel, is actually of benefit as energy from MGU-H is not nearly so restrained by the regulations?

[TAG]

you would know that cooler air does not mean more power. All cooler air means is higher density and more resistance to knocking. As long as there is enough air to burn the fuel which is limited this year and it is cool enough that the engine runs stable then making the air cooler isn't actually helping.

Point No.2, moving the compressor away from the turbine actually doesn't do to much for the temperature of the airflow. All it does is really put the ERS close to the turbine which was a big gamble for Mercedes in terms of if the ERS unit can handle it.

You're stating things as facts without looking at the big picture. Allow me to enlighten you a bit on the associated benefits. On your point 1, cooler air doesn't mean more power but it does mean cooler air which is a supreme importance when you have to then run that compressed air through an intercooler to cool it further. So having the air cooler in the first place even if it's only marginally so means having to cool it less which translates to smaller intakes and less drag, by you calculations then, imagine the difference of having a 3% smaller sidepod opening. So that's a big advantage to Mercedes.

On your point 2, you're greatly oversimplifying things. Moving the compressor forward, has a huge add on effect. it requires shorter and less ducting to get the compressed air to the front of the car where the intakes are. Again allowing for a more compact, more aero-friendly packaging of the back end, greatly helping to maximize rear grip which was so important this year due to the smaller rear wings and loss of the blown diffuser.

You're welcome!