2020 Spanish Grand Prix - Catalunya, August 14 - 16

[Mchamilton]

the only time you would see merc use DAS is on the warm up lap, or behind a safety car. given how slow they were doing the qualy prep laps then i doubt it necessary at all with a track temp of 45-50 degrees C

Interesting. I thought DAS allowed optimum toe in/out to be different for straights and corners so it would be used all the time, not just as a tyre warming instrument.

nope its not used for that

[Mchamilton]

yeah, that was the idea floating around when we were still guessing at its usage/importance. I have never heared they used it in race like that. Never been eagle eyed watching their in car footage either but I am sure someone did. For the moment it seems only to be used as a tire heating optimizer in pre race lap maybe and behind the safety car for the restart. Which is important. See Brazil last year.

I thought Mercedes dominance in 2020 was in part down to DAS improving both cornering and straight line. God helps us if they actually start using it with that effect.

nope, working out exactly how much toe you want for each corner or corner type would eat up crazy amounts of practice time, id suspect with a lesser benefit than just optimizing the actual set up of the car.

[ENGINE TUNER]

So I'm right. This is a Pu based formula. Best Pu means winning championship. With a less reliable and maybe less efficient Pu, vestappen can't win. I'm sorry for honda, they did great and beat anybody but mercedes.

Very poor logic, Racing Point and Williams have the Merc PU and finish behind RBR and Ferrari(weakest PU). This is an aero and tire usage formula, F1 has been so for quite some time.

[ispano6]

I agree with you that PU is a large part of the performance, but there is a lot more than that to it.
It's not as if the Mercedes cars just power past anything else like we saw in the beginning days of the current formula and places like Hungary where engine performance is less important, they were also miles ahead of the field.

In the hybrid aera engine power is relevant in Hungary. Without engine power you loose so much on the straight that you can not cover it in the corners anymore.

To Pany's point, even Mercedes cars were on their 1st PU of the season. In fact their PU has done a race more than the old PU that Max was using.

Hamilton has needed upgrades otherwise he might have suffered a dnf. Lucky for him that didn't happen. Might be on the original ice but if the mguk died for any reason that would likely have put him out of contention. Mercedes PU have issues too.

Lewis Hamilton has moved onto a brand new MGU-K for the British Grand Prix after his Mercedes Formula 1 team made reliability fixes to its engine.

[Moore77]

In the hybrid aera engine power is relevant in Hungary. Without engine power you loose so much on the straight that you can not cover it in the corners anymore.

To Pany's point, even Mercedes cars were on their 1st PU of the season. In fact their PU has done a race more than the old PU that Max was using.

Hamilton has needed upgrades otherwise he might have suffered a dnf. Lucky for him that didn't happen. Might be on the original ice but if the mguk died for any reason that would likely have put him out of contention. Mercedes PU have issues too.

Lewis Hamilton has moved onto a brand new MGU-K for the British Grand Prix after his Mercedes Formula 1 team made reliability fixes to its engine.

While Mercedes switched to new version of MGU-K in Silverstone, rest of the PU components remain the 1st set of the PU, whereas Red Bull had moved on to the full second set in Silverstone. So, their previous PU, had one race less mileage than Mercedes, except for MGU-K.

https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files ... to_now.pdf

[PlatinumZealot]

I do not disagree.... Just saying that he should have subdued Max on pace if possible to prove he is number 1

That's not how it works.

So what's the point of expecting a Mercedes or Ferrari seat? To go to those teams you either have to be a potential number 1, or a solid number 2. Danny has to chose what he wants to be, he is in the last half of his career.

[PlatinumZealot]

Yet in both 2017 & 2018 Mercedes wrapped up both titles with three or four races to go almost. 2018 took a bit longer I think. That summer break lead is always thrown around as if Ferrari were miles ahead...
Ferrari's failures always came after the summer break. Be it reliability in 2017 or updates that didn't work as designed in 2018. Merc go from strength to strength after the summer break with both team and driver. They were always close enough that Ferrari could not extend their advantage far enough at the start of the year to have some safety margin.

That's the point he is making, that it was in fact, "Close", not that Mercedes was just saying it was close.

It was "close" before the summer break. But not because the cars were close, but because one of Bot, Ham or the Mercedes team were each race underpreforming and gifting points to Vettel in 2017.
Oz: Strategy error
China: Bot rotating
Bahrain: Tire pressure wrong, unnecessary penalty
Rus: Merc car vastly stronger, but Ham underperforming
Spa: Bot car failure and crash
Mon: Ham underperforming in first Q2 run...out in Q2
Aze: Headrest loose
Aus: Gearbox

It is very strange, that this personal underperformance is now accounted to the car performance...whenever they did not make big faults, Merc was miles away, but mostly only with one car. On the other side, the swing in the other direction would have not been that strong if Ferrari and Vet would not have been similarly error prone starting Azer. But this is also not attributed to the car strength, as there was no strong 3rd car, it was only RedBull stealing much points when the others underperformed.

You failed to make one very important point. In 2017 the Mercedes car was a "Diva." It had problems turning the tyres on and inconsitent performance. When it was bad it was off the pace, when it was good, it was a monster. Vettel duly took advantage of those times like any top driver would. He was doing great until he cracked later in the season.

[NathanOlder]

And boy did he crack

[henry]

the only time you would see merc use DAS is on the warm up lap, or behind a safety car. given how slow they were doing the qualy prep laps then i doubt it necessary at all with a track temp of 45-50 degrees C

Interesting. I thought DAS allowed optimum toe in/out to be different for straights and corners so it would be used all the time, not just as a tyre warming instrument.

Personally I think the optimising of toe is done by a mechanism in the steering and DAS is a supplementary input to that mechanism that overrides the automatic setting to put more heat in the tyres.

[Mchamilton]

the only time you would see merc use DAS is on the warm up lap, or behind a safety car. given how slow they were doing the qualy prep laps then i doubt it necessary at all with a track temp of 45-50 degrees C

Interesting. I thought DAS allowed optimum toe in/out to be different for straights and corners so it would be used all the time, not just as a tyre warming instrument.

Personally I think the optimising of toe is done by a mechanism in the steering and DAS is a supplementary input to that mechanism that overrides the automatic setting to put more heat in the tyres.

The only optimising of the toe that the steering does is to steer left and right.

[sosic2121]

And boy did he crack

I thought he slipped on some oil.
1.2 litres of cheating oil to be precise.

[Sieper]

the only time you would see merc use DAS is on the warm up lap, or behind a safety car. given how slow they were doing the qualy prep laps then i doubt it necessary at all with a track temp of 45-50 degrees C

Interesting. I thought DAS allowed optimum toe in/out to be different for straights and corners so it would be used all the time, not just as a tyre warming instrument.

Personally I think the optimising of toe is done by a mechanism in the steering and DAS is a supplementary input to that mechanism that overrides the automatic setting to put more heat in the tyres.

Wouldn’t that be illegal. The steering set-up must remain unchanged. If you push and pull and it that way influence toe-in that is considered steering, but if this system could adjust (Optimize) toe in automatically wouldn’t that be illegal?

[dans79]

Interesting. I thought DAS allowed optimum toe in/out to be different for straights and corners so it would be used all the time, not just as a tyre warming instrument.

Personally I think the optimising of toe is done by a mechanism in the steering and DAS is a supplementary input to that mechanism that overrides the automatic setting to put more heat in the tyres.

Wouldn’t that be illegal. The steering set-up must remain unchanged. If you push and pull and it that way influence toe-in that is considered steering, but if this system could adjust (Optimize) toe in automatically wouldn’t that be illegal?

Yes it would be 100% illegal without question.

However, I suspect 'automatic' was just a poor word choice by henry. I assume he means, default, configured, predefined or other similar word.

[Ringleheim]

Rosberg was too good, not as good as Hamilton, but too good to be a defacto number 2. But Rosberg stopped and they chose Bottas.

Agree, I would rank Bottas along the likes of Barichello and Coulthard, whereas Rosberg could share a class with say, Hakkinen, Raikkonen and Button. (not in having the same driving style, but similar overall performance)

Nico Rosberg is not in the same class as Mika Hakkinen!

Maybe Kimi. Button is a class below Kimi and Rosberg.

Mika Hakkinen was going toe to toe--and beating---Schumi at the absolute height of Schumi's powers and when Ferrari had outstanding cars.

I would put Mika Hakkinen in a pretty special tier of driver, actually.

[drunkf1fan]

Russell could potentially lead the team but he needs time in a competitive car, making on track passes, fighting in Q3, learning his race craft and tire wear with a real benchmark to improve against. Right now Russell barely does any racing and his tire wear, who knows because he's had weak team mates so his tire wear could be good or if he stepped into Merc tomorrow it might be drastically worse than Bottas.

Right now that second seat is wasted on Bottas, with a dominant car anyone can achieve what he's doing but in a championship season he's proven he isn't good enough. Merc need to be cycling people through that second seat till they get someone who can show the potential to match Hamilton and take over when he retires. That seat should have Russell in it either proving he has the potential or proving he doesn't then going forwards from there.

Other than the fact that he seems to be a good qualifier, I haven't seen anything showing he deserves a seat at a top team. For example in the Styrian Grand Prix, he qualified 12 and started 11th because of Leclerc's penalty, but through it all away on lap 4, and he knows it.

https://www.gpfans.com/en/articles/5432 ... -gp-error/

"I had Lando [Norris] and [Lance] Stroll ahead of me [at the restart]. I was tucked up behind Lando, I had the inside line out of [turn] three, but Kevin [Magnussen] was on my outside, and he managed to overtake me on the brakes into four.

He went wide, I kept it on the inside of the exit of the corner and was planning to try and hold it on the outside into turn six, but I went in too deep, I locked the rears which put me off line, and there was just zero grip there.

"It was complete driver error, I completely hold my hands up to that, and I apologise to the team. It wasn't good enough from my side. It was a very difficult race from then on in, with a huge lack of pace in comparison to our qualifying speed."

The markerboard incident from last year in france is another example.


This is the kind of stuff that costs you the chance at a seat in a top team.

Mistakes happen, that's part of racing, even Hamilton still makes mistakes. Mistakes don't mean you don't deserve a seat any more or don't deserve a chance to prove yourself. Max made a bunch of mistakes in 2018 and he's better for them. You can't learn anything if you don't push and again as said, mistakes don't cost you chances at top teams in the slightest. Every single driver makes mistakes and they'll usually make more in the first few years than later years. Rosberg, Bottas, leclerc, Alonso, Massa, they all made big mistakes before also moving up to a top team.


It's his raw pace, his previous achievements and the performance he's been able to produce in qualifying that shows us he MIGHT have the potential to be good, he needs a real seat to actually show us if he can or can't step up. As said Bottas is wasting the seat, he's not taken the opportunity and improved and closed the race pace gap to Hamilton, he hasn't improved his on track defending or overtaking. Again today when he got close to Verstappen there was just no hints of anything happening and same in other races.

Ideally Russell would get a seat in a non awful Williams or FI but those aren't options. Considering Ham is probably only a few years from retirement now and that Bottas hasn't improved really at all then Merc need to give him a shot now, if he looks good he has another 2-3 seasons to keep improving and learning from Hamilton, if he doesn't Merc have found that out and can start looking to make a deal with Verstappen or whoever they deem the right choice.

The other obvious issue is, who else? Ocon had two years and I think showed no signs of superstar potential pace. Solid driver but constantly put his car in a bad position. They have few youngsters coming through, Russell is literally their highest and best achieving Merc driver. He's their best easy to bring in choice to give a chance. Besides him then you're looking at as said, trying to do an expensive and difficult deal to get Verstappen, maybe leclerc if he got fed up at Ferrari, etc.