Mercedes AMG F1 W06

[Jordan44]

Did they used the new rear wing in Free Practice one?

Think Nico had it but Lewis didn't and they wanted to compare between the two.

[mclaren111]

Both used it

[ChrisM40]

Of course pressure changes as you load the tire. If it didn't the only reason would be that the tire expands in a perfectly linear way to the pressure applied to its surface, that's obviously not true, otherwise it would go completely flat on the contact area and there would never be any heat generated by tire deformation, which is also clearly not the case. Its breaks several physical laws and would basically mean a tire was a 100% efficient system.

[Owen.C93]

Heat from tyre deformation is mostly from the twisting of the rubber. Pressure changes are isochoric so wont affect heat over a cycle. Otherwise yeah.

[Sevach]

Endplate on this wing is very different from the high downforce one.

[michaelclarke]

The exploding tyre did quite a lot of damage to the engine cover/sidepod! That's more dangerous than I thought.

[JesperA]

The new rear wing design was said to lower the drag, is there someone that can explain that to an aerodynamic novice like myself on how it does that? To my eyes, it looks so fat and big with kinda high AOA (both down and up), it looks like it would energize the air downwards first and then change the air in an upward direction, so yeah, to me it seems to interact with the air more than a "traditional" rear wing, so how that can result in lower drag is a mystery to me

[f1316]

Very beautiful rear wing. Nice to see that back, even if just for aesthetic reasons

What was the last convex rear wing like this we saw?

I remember this concave one from Williams in 2012:



But was Sauber's 2013 one the last of this type (albeit to a much smaller degree of curve)?



Edit: reminds me most of this though

[theWPTformula]

The new rear wing design was said to lower the drag, is there someone that can explain that to an aerodynamic novice like myself on how it does that? To my eyes, it looks so fat and big with kinda high AOA (both down and up), it looks like it would energize the air downwards first and then change the air in an upward direction, so yeah, to me it seems to interact with the air more than a "traditional" rear wing, so how that can result in lower drag is a mystery to me

The central section still has quite a high AoA, but where the wing meets the endplates the profile is quite shallow. Shallow profile at the wing tips = lower induced drag and less powerful wingtip vortices formed due to lower pressure delta. Downforce is retained at the centre.

Hope this helps!

[bhall II]

It reduces frontal area, and the shallower AoA at the wing tips reduce the strength of wingtip vortices.



It's also a pretty good sign that the aero dep't in Brackley is bored.

[DiogoBrand]

I'm pretty sure tire pressure doesn't change when it's "squeezed." In a closed system, pressure is the result of temperature and volume.

It's simple: Pressure is the result of weight, temperature and volume. When the tyres are "squeezed" because of mechanical or aerodynamical load, rolling, pitch, or whatever, the volume decreases while weight and temperature stay the same and therefore, although not very much, pressure rises.

What you're saying is that the form of the tire is rigid everywhere on the tire except on the contact patch, which is not true - the question is how much of a pressure change is necessaary to change the form (i.e. increase the volume) of the tire in regards to the fact that it is a flexible material.

Owen.C93 explained it very well just before your post. It's a lot easier to compress a tyre than to expand it. So when you compress the contact patch there probaly is some expansion everywhere else, but the expansion goes to a smaller volume than the compression, therefore there is pressure build up.

I was gonna ask about this one:

What's the difference between this one to Merc's inverted concave wing? Is one better than the other?
I'd say the advantage of the Williams one is that the air on the higher AoA sections is cleaner, due to not having so much interference of bodywork. Which is the reason they also use this kind of wing on GT cars.
While on Mercedes they reduce the vortices on the wingtips, therefore reducing drag, but I'd like someone with more knowledge on the subject to talk about this.

[bhall II]

Renault also used a similar profile.



Where the Mercedes' spoon is about reducing drag, even at the expense of downforce, this is about improving L/D ratio, or maintaining as much downforce as possible while also appreciably reducing drag at the same time.

If we put the wings on a downforce/drag continuum, it would look something like this...

[SectorOne]

The Mercedes rear wing is simply a continuation of the medium downforce rear wing concept they´ve been running at SPA for a while now.
Slight modifications to a high DF wing and this is simply the latest and greatest from the Merc engineers.

In 2013 they had a different idea to counter the challenges of SPA.



In 2014 they introduced a new concept (for them i suppose)



And now a year later it´s a spoon wing that the data says is the best option, which if you ask me, is specific for this track, possibly might be seen in Russia or similar places though.

But i´m literally drunk so i might be wrong

[Blackout]

Very beautiful rear wing. Nice to see that back, even if just for aesthetic reasons

What was the last convex rear wing like this we saw?

I remember this concave one from Williams in 2012:

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/wp-content/u ... 70x313.jpg

But was Sauber's 2013 one the last of this type (albeit to a much smaller degree of curve)?

https://formula1techandart.files.wordpr ... =400&h=229

Edit: reminds me most of this though

http://f1tcdn.net/f1db/cars/images/2007 ... mp4-22.jpg

Spa 2011

[Chuckjr]

Simple phone video rendering the superb control of the Merc's front pushrod. It freely moves while cornering, but under braking it is an absolute stone. I made it black and white to increase the contrast and make the pushrods movements easier to discern. [youtube]http://youtu.be/Tn4ANkn_Oq0