wowgr8 wrote: ↑13 May 2021, 04:27
gordonthegun wrote: ↑12 May 2021, 00:31
The gap to Mercedes and Red Bull becomes much greater considering aero and suspensions, in my opinion.
The engine is the less critical of all the areas and I think Ferrari has a kind of obsession for overheating, not only about the engine.
Even in the very short time of a pit stop, for example, Mercedes brakes smoke, Ferrari's never.
Ferrari might be overcooled in many areas for reliability fears, becoming in this way slower.
It's good that Ferrari are always thinking of protecting reliability I like that safety first approach, but when you compare it to Mercedes where everything is so on the limit its incredible. When you compare the hot air exits the Mercs always run theirs incredibly tiny and they never have reliability issues it's amazing. And how tight their engine cover is. The Merc cars from the W10 to the W12 are just works of art. Shows the difference between them and a team like Ferrari who spend as much as Merc but are nowhere near as good
I don't understand how people can look at the rear air outlets completely isolated from the whole car concept. Every car has a different engine cover. Look at how early the cover starts to drop down on the Ferrari, right after the roll hoop. No other car has it that extreme. For that reason their shark fin is the biggest on the field. Last year it was even bigger, a monster of a shark fin, but this year they changed the design on that part of the cover a bit because they came up with a downwash style sidepod area like Mercedes and Redbull have already had.
What's more, last year they significantly slimmed down the middle part of the engine cover, sort of RedBull style. That was even though they had that extreme drop down after the roll hoop. And it's still like that on the SF21.
As for Mercedes running everything to it's extreme and not having any reliability issues. You might have missed the constant news of them having engine heat issues in the last couple of seasons. They seem to choose to run the engines turned down instead of adjusting the engine cover.
Maybe you'll think differently when you look at the best Ferrari of recent years, the SF70H. A masterpiece of a car with a big air outlet at the back.
So to sum it up, I highly doubt that you can tell that a team is "nowhere near as good" by simply looking at the rear air outlet.