2019 Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team

[dans79]

From all the testing we've seen so far, it seems like 70 to 80% of what Mercedes has been doing is tire exploration.

1. How do the tires degrade over a stint when holding consistent lap times.
2. How do the tires degrade when you start a stint fast and end slow.
3. How do the tires degrade when you start a stint slow and end fast.
4. Change a suspension setting or aero component and redo 1-3.
5. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.......

[F1Krof]

Bottas C4 time doesn't look particularly good.

[Phil]

How good or not, depends on various factors. Engine-mode, fuel-load, tire in ideal range?

Mercedes did seem to hint though (according to AMuS) that they believe that Leclerc was using a less potent power-mode on his C5 1.16.x time yesterday than on some of his slower runs.

[zibby43]

Pretty interesting Merc analysis in this video. Marc’s content is some of the best out there, IMHO.

[dans79]

So what does people think we will see for AUS?

I think we will see a minor aero update, tweaks to the RF, FW, nose, floor, and cape.

[Morteza]

Mercedes completes a total of 1,190 laps during pre-season testing

Valtteri Bottas
"That’s the final day of testing done, next time we’ll drive the W10, it will be in Melbourne. We’ve used our time on track here in Barcelona efficiently, learning a lot and improving our performance over the past two weeks. We’ve also learned that the competition is going to be very, very tough this year, but we’re looking forward to the challenge. We need to keep pushing and find more performance if we want to be competitive in Melbourne, but we have a strong team and have made good progress in the last days. We have a few days left to work on the car, so we will give it everything. I’m looking forward to Melbourne!"

Lewis Hamilton
"The last couple of days have been very positive: it felt like the changes we were making helped us progress and gave us clear feedback of when we were moving in the right or the wrong direction. Today, it was nice to feel the car on lighter fuel and to discover it a little better; I really enjoyed the day and got a good feel for the tyres as well. I’m not the biggest fan of testing, as everybody knows, but it has been a positive week overall. Even so, there is still a lot to do and we are not there yet; there are lots of areas that we are working on and we are heading in the right direction."

James Allison
"It was a nice final day. We’ve waited for a number of days to run on the softer rubber and have a look at the car in its Melbourne spec. We’re reasonably pleased because we had a good balance with both drivers and both set competitive lap times. But we’ve got plenty of work ahead of us before Melbourne. We can look back on eight days of testing where the car has been very reliable, where we’ve made steady progress throughout those two weeks with the performance and the set-up, we’ve run through a huge range of the procedures and tests that we need to complete in order to be ready for the first race of the season. All in all, it’s been a very long, very tiring but successful test."

[zibby43]

https://twitter.com/MercedesAMGF1/statu ... 15906:orig

[sri1031raj]

James Allison seems to be the weak link in Mercedes. minute he left Ferrari they became more competitive, Hopefully for Mercedes sake it was just a blip

[zibby43]

James Allison seems to be the weak link in Mercedes. minute he left Ferrari they became more competitive, Hopefully for Mercedes sake it was just a blip

Ah, the good old correlation proves causation logical fallacy.

While we're at it, let's also just disregard the fact that Ferrari's competitiveness in the past few years of the hybrid era has increased a great deal thanks to major progress with their PU, which was arguably the best in the field last year.

Aside from all that, I'd say Mercedes have done fairly decently with James the past two years, in which they secured back-to-back "double" championships.

[Sierra117]

James Allison seems to be the weak link in Mercedes. minute he left Ferrari they became more competitive, Hopefully for Mercedes sake it was just a blip

Ah, the good old correlation proves causation logical fallacy.

While we're at it, let's also just disregard the fact that Ferrari's competitiveness in the past few years of the hybrid era has increased a great deal thanks to major progress with their PU, which was arguably the best in the field last year.

Aside from all that, I'd say Mercedes have done fairly decently with James the past two years, in which they secured back-to-back "double" championships.

James' arrival also showed the car getting better where it was weak like slow corners. I used to think that James was the cause of some sort of downfall but when you review things, his record and take into account that the opposition won't remain stagnant, it quickly becomes apparent that James has made a superb addition to the team. There was only so much the engine advantage could do to hide the handling issues.

[zibby43]

James Allison seems to be the weak link in Mercedes. minute he left Ferrari they became more competitive, Hopefully for Mercedes sake it was just a blip

Ah, the good old correlation proves causation logical fallacy.

While we're at it, let's also just disregard the fact that Ferrari's competitiveness in the past few years of the hybrid era has increased a great deal thanks to major progress with their PU, which was arguably the best in the field last year.

Aside from all that, I'd say Mercedes have done fairly decently with James the past two years, in which they secured back-to-back "double" championships.

James' arrival also showed the car getting better where it was weak like slow corners. I used to think that James was the cause of some sort of downfall but when you review things, his record and take into account that the opposition won't remain stagnant, it quickly becomes apparent that James has made a superb addition to the team. There was only so much the engine advantage could do to hide the handling issues.

Very well said. The Merc chassis has improved tremendously since Mr. Allison's arrival. He has the perfect personality fit for the team as well. Guy is a serious competitor.

[zibby43]

Lewis doesn't look too concerned for supposedly being down anywhere from 3-5 tenths to Ferrari heading into the opening round of the season.

https://twitter.com/MercedesAMGF1/statu ... 2057833473

[GPR-A]

From all the testing we've seen so far, it seems like 70 to 80% of what Mercedes has been doing is tire exploration.

1. How do the tires degrade over a stint when holding consistent lap times.
2. How do the tires degrade when you start a stint fast and end slow.
3. How do the tires degrade when you start a stint slow and end fast.
4. Change a suspension setting or aero component and redo 1-3.
5. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.......

I had expected that to be the case.
viewtopic.php?p=816441#p816441

[Bill_Kar]

They only thing that is somewhat worrying is the instability in the back which is clearly visible.
But I think that Mercedes will be close, nothing like 3 or 5 tenths adrift.

[GrandAxe]

They only thing that is somewhat worrying is the instability in the back which is clearly visible.
But I think that Mercedes will be close, nothing like 3 or 5 tenths adrift.

Fuel load?