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Team: Toto Wolff (Executive Director), James Allison (Technical Director), Andy Cowell (Executive Director of Mercedes AMG Powertrains), Aldo Costa (Technical advisor), Mike Elliot (Technology Director), Mark Ellis (PD), Geoffrey Willis (Director of Digital Engineering Transformation), Ron Meadows (SD), Andrew Shovlin (Trackside Engineering Director), Simon Cole (CTE), Matthew Deane (CM), Loic Serra (HVD), John Owen (CD), Ashley Way (DCD), Rob Thomas (COO), Loic Serra (Performance Director), Jarrod Murphy (HA), Eric Blandin (CA)
Drivers: Lewis Hamilton (44), Valtteri Bottas (77), Stoffel Vandoorne (reserve), Esteban Gutierrez (reserve)
Team name: Mercedes AMG F1 Petronas
Major partners: Petronas, Ineos, UBS, Epson, Bose, Tommy Hilfiger, IWS Schaffhausen, Hewlet Packard, Pure Storage, Crowdstrike, Tibco, AMD
Agreed. Mileage will be even more important with 2 less days this year.Just_a_fan wrote: ↑14 Feb 2020, 12:23I think Mercedes will run the car we see today in testing. They'll probably bolt on a new nose on the last day to check the effect on the car's aero performance - does it match what the CFD and tunnel predict? Then in Oz they'll turn up with something else as well, knowing that the design tools are matched by the on-track results in testing. Most the test sessions will be reliability and aero-mapping at given speeds, tyre life modelling, that sort of thing. I doubt they'll be setting the timing screens alight with fastest laps.
Especially after the ban of the garage screens, they will not show their most advanced stuff during testingJust_a_fan wrote: ↑14 Feb 2020, 12:23I think Mercedes will run the car we see today in testing. They'll probably bolt on a new nose on the last day to check the effect on the car's aero performance - does it match what the CFD and tunnel predict? Then in Oz they'll turn up with something else as well, knowing that the design tools are matched by the on-track results in testing. Most the test sessions will be reliability and aero-mapping at given speeds, tyre life modelling, that sort of thing. I doubt they'll be setting the timing screens alight with fastest laps.
god they are so similar, just tiny differences, and then on top of that they're going to evolve even more towards each other probably, during the year. And the photos are ever so slightly different perspective each time so it's hard to be surezibby43 wrote: ↑14 Feb 2020, 11:11An interesting comparison shot:
https://i.imgur.com/DR7Paz7.jpg
Credit: @Gianludale27
Poor Petronas Logo. Looks like someone really big sat at that portion of a car
James Allison wrote:“The regulations stayed largely the same for the new year, so for us it was all about trying to make sure that we don’t run out of development steam on a package that worked pretty well for us last year,” said James. “We wanted to change aspects of the concept of the car – aspects that would be completely impossible to change within a season – to give us a more fertile platform for the new season. We tried to make a few well-chosen architectural changes to keep the development slope strong even though the regulations are now a little bit longer in the tooth.”
In addition to many detail changes and smaller improvements, the team has introduced three larger changes – one at the front, one at the middle and one at the back of the car.
“At the front we have accepted more structural complexity around the uprights and wheel rims in order to provide a higher performance assembly overall,” said James. “In the middle of the car we have followed the pitlane trend by moving our upper side impact tube to the lower position and banking the aerodynamic gain that comes with this layout. At the rear of the car we have gone for an adventurous suspension layout in order to free up aerodynamic development opportunity. All three investments were improvements in their own right, but their real effect is to mobilize a raft of secondary aerodynamic gains both during the winter and, we hope, across the season to come.”
In 2019, the team brought a significant upgrade to the car after the first week of testing that changed the look of the Melbourne car quite significantly compared to the launch car. This year, the race trim will be much closer to the car that is running at Silverstone today.
“We will still have upgrades for Melbourne that will come in the second week of testing, but the ‘entire new car’ approach of 2019 won’t feature,” said James. “Last year, the regulations were changed quite significantly, and they were decided quite late in the year. Under those circumstances, doing a launch car and a week two car gave us the chance to build the maximum amount of learning into our Melbourne car. With the regulations being more mature this year and with the opening stab of the 2020 development already being at the same level as the finish of last year’s car, repeating last year’s approach would not make sense.”
Yep, one can imagine the mass-flow towards the floor and "coke bottle" from the undercut and that massive indentation on the top of the sidepod.AMG.Tzan wrote: ↑14 Feb 2020, 13:12Wow...although the radiator opening seems big from the front, you then have a look from side-rear view and realize there is no sidepod at all!
Looks even smaller than Red Bull's and Ferrari's sidepods!
But again other than the sidepods everything else is from last year's car!
Wondering what Mercedes may bring in the second Barcelona test!
The current W11 bargeboard area and front wing, look very similar to the configuration Mercedes ran on the W10 at the back end of 2019.
