dans79 wrote: ↑29 Nov 2017, 17:59
I think next years car will be an evolution of this years car. If you look at the poles and wins Merc took this year, they where still pretty dominant, they just had a harder time getting both cars to work well all the time.
I think the car will be a little shorter, and have a little more rake. For all we know the tire compounds for next year could work amazingly well for Merc, and they could be back to 4 and 5 tenthsfaster than everyone else again.
The fact that 2018 tyres will be softer maybe will play into Ferrari`s hands knowing how easy their car was on them, don`t you think?
W08 main issue was that on certain tracks/track temps or both all 4 tyres have had uneven tyre core temps and they were more than that puzzled by knowing the upper/first layer of tyre rubber was evenly heated on all of them ... This led to overheat some tyres – especially rear ones - thus surpassing their optimum operation window, forcing the car to slide more than usual and drivers ending to struggle for grip in the corners (especially in low speed ones)
SH70, by contrast, having that novel sidepod air intake they gained more than they are saying: a clean path & more air towards diffuser. They also gained DF in the central area of the car for having this structure placed as closed as possible to the car`s CoG and CoP and this helped them big time in their strategy to heat tyres evenly, their main philosophy by the fact …
And from my understanding these two above points ideally has to be as close as possible and this fact dictate which car wheelbase must be when they design the car … thus, they ended with a car which was easy on tyres, easy to set up, handling very well on most tracks but exceptionally only on high DF ones …
In contrast, Merc philosophy from the last 4 years was just opposite: they build a car which excelled on majority of the tracks having blips basically on Singapore and doing well on Budapest and Mexico City … and in the end, we know who prevailed, isn`t it?
