2022 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[Hammerfist]

The deficit in straight line speed is alarming. I have my fingers crossed they were running the prior spec pu in free practice today and tomorrow when they bolt on the spec 2 it should be more competitive. Otherwise it looks like they have taken 2 steps back after a promising outing in Barcelona.

[Big Tea]

The deficit in straight line speed is alarming. I have my fingers crossed they were running the prior spec pu in free practice today and tomorrow when they bolt on the spec 2 it should be more competitive. Otherwise it looks like they have taken 2 steps back after a promising outing in Barcelona.

I don't think its power that is the problem. They seem unable to use what they have at the moment.

[siskue2005]

The deficit in straight line speed is alarming. I have my fingers crossed they were running the prior spec pu in free practice today and tomorrow when they bolt on the spec 2 it should be more competitive. Otherwise it looks like they have taken 2 steps back after a promising outing in Barcelona.

Their straight line speed was the best at Barcelona. So that's not the issue here, let's wait for q3 to see how fast they are in straight line coz I guess all we're on old PU in fp1,2

[Big Tea]

The deficit in straight line speed is alarming. I have my fingers crossed they were running the prior spec pu in free practice today and tomorrow when they bolt on the spec 2 it should be more competitive. Otherwise it looks like they have taken 2 steps back after a promising outing in Barcelona.

Their straight line speed was the best at Barcelona. So that's not the issue here, let's wait for q3 to see how fast they are in straight line coz I guess all we're on old PU in fp1,2

If they are expecting a fix, it makes sense to keep the engine situation as good as they can until needed.

[GrizzleBoy]

They don't seem to be able to actually navigate the corners before the straight at full speed due to lots of bouncing which will be killing their speed on the straight too.

[PlatinumZealot]

The bouncing seems to be the cause of all their problems. I really don't think Mercedes has done enough with their floor and suspension. I hear them talking about Silverstone, like that will be the track when they roll out their big upgrade. That's how many races from now?! The year is screwed.

[Andi76]

They don't seem to be able to actually navigate the corners before the straight at full speed due to lots of bouncing which will be killing their speed on the straight too.

I do not think bouncing is the problem. Almost every team has bouncing, in Baku, but they are able to get through the corners at full speed. And they did not have bouncing/porpoising recently and still they were not really much closer to Ferrari/RBR or much faster like they were before in relation to Alpha/Alpine. So porpoising/bouncing is not the problem. Mercedes problem in Baku is about the rear suspension. And thats because of the cars other problems. and it was a trade off for aero reasons. But anyway - on a track like Baku you have a lot of bumps and a lot of camber variations. Mercedes have changed their rear suspension for aero reasons in order to suffer less from porpoising and to be able to run the car low(to not loose performance because of less downforce when you run the car higher and not to have more drag) and it seems like they actually achieved this(in Baku its back, but every team has this problem and Merc did not experience porpoising since the suspension change untill Baku). They did this with a very stiff suspension with less travel. But now they cannot run the car softer and porpoising would probably return in general if they would do it and be catastrophic in Baku. But whatever the reason is - the result is a lack of grip at the rear because of a stiff suspension set-up with less travel. That of course makes you suffer almost everywhere on a track like Baku because of the bumps and chamber changes you now cannot control like you need to. But all this is only an indicator of fundamental problems with the car itself(a team does not restrict themselves like that if they would not need to solve an even bigger problem elsewhere) if we are honest and i do not expect them to be much better elsewhere. They probably will have less problems on a regular track, but they still will be far away from RBR and Ferrari.

[Swed3120]

Considering that in sector 3 merc is loosing +0.56 sec , McLaren +0.50 , Williams +0.46 and Aston Martin + 0.12.

Im starting to wonder if the Straight line speed issue I more to do with the rear Side-pod design than the Mercedes PU, I’m not claiming the PU isn’t a problem but considering that McLaren, Williams and Mercedes are the only teams with a very narrow rear side-pod section ( I.e a lot of exposed floor) , is it possible this is somehow linked to drag, as AMR who also have the same PU , but a wider and longer Side-pod are massively faster on the straits.

What is worrying me massively about the race is that we may be able to qualify 5-7 but will drop like a rock when alpine and others come with DRS on main straight

[siskue2005]

Considering that in sector 3 merc is loosing +0.56 sec , McLaren +0.50 , Williams +0.46 and Aston Martin + 0.12.

Im starting to wonder if the Straight line speed issue I more to do with the rear Side-pod design than the Mercedes PU, I’m not claiming the PU isn’t a problem but considering that McLaren, Williams and Mercedes are the only teams with a very narrow rear side-pod section ( I.e a lot of exposed floor) , is it possible this is somehow linked to drag, as AMR who also have the same PU , but a wider and longer Side-pod are massively faster on the straits.

What is worrying me massively about the race is that we may be able to qualify 5-7 but will drop like a rock when alpine and others come with DRS on main straight

Yes indeed the wider side pods reduce drag.
So that could be one of the contributing factors

[taperoo2k]

The bouncing seems to be the cause of all their problems. I really don't think Mercedes has done enough with their floor and suspension.

They've made some progress with the car, probably not as much as Mercedes fans would like. I guess the bumpiness of the track isn't helping Mercedes with the bouncing this weekend. It did like look Lewis's car was bottoming out quite severely during qualifying.

I hear them talking about Silverstone, like that will be the track when they roll out their big upgrade. That's how many races from now?!

After this race it's Canada than Silverstone. If they've got a big upgrade coming at Silverstone that make sense as the distance between the factory and Silverstone isn't that far, around 10 miles. I expect the factory will be working flatout for Silverstone.

The year is screwed.

It might well be screwed, but if they can figure out what went wrong with the 2022 car, it should bode well
for the 2023 car, even if they change the design concept for 2023. Silverstone or bust for the current car design is
what it looks like to me.

[pursue_one's]

Speaking to the media after Saturday’s Baku action, Wolff clarified that the pair were running slightly different specifications of the W13 in qualifying.

“Lewis has been trying some quite experimental parts of the car, and there was a different floor solution on his car that didn’t work,” he explained.

“The car was porpoising more and bottoming out to a degree that it became dangerous, and couldn’t extract the performance, so yes, it was a different spec.”

https://the-race.com/formula-1/mercedes ... s-russell/

[chrisc90]

How many experimental changes/parts has Lewis tried now? Must be pushing the budget if they are experimenting with major stuff like floors which arent working.

[Andi76]

Like i said - Barcelona is a well known track. As one of the two or three best teams Mercedes knows exactly what to do there, thats the reason why they were so good there.

This is the case for every team, which cancels it out.

When the zero-pod concept is such a great concept - why did they have problems on any other track?

This can be due to a variety of things.

This argumentation is also incredibly flawed when you consider that they released the big update in Barcelona. So you have exactly one reference to draw your conclusion, and this conclusion even contradicts what actually happened.

You conclude that the zeropod design is flawed, yet at THE aero-dependent track on the calendar, the car has performed best thus far. It doesn't really take much to realize how that makes no sense. If the zeropod was flawed and the cause of all problems, they would have fared worse at Barcelona.

And why got all the teams with similar concepts got worse and all teams with other concepts did improve?

Is that actually the case to begin with?

And why do all the micro/zeropod concept cars have drag problems?

How can you ever conclude that to begin with? Apart from "drag problems" not really being a thing in F1 due to the power these cars have and it being a downforce-dominated formula, there is little evidence to suggest it being the case.

I will not start this discussion again. We had this several times in this forum already. So i will just reply to your arguements. Its not true that i only have one track to draw my conclusion about zeropods. Its race-nr. 8 now. So its almost 8 different tracks i draw my conclusions from. But anyway - lets take a lot at Barcelona and the arguements :

But first lets start from the beginning and lets take a look at the teams with Micropods/Zeropods :

Mercedes, McLaren, Williams. Mercedes is worse than last year. McLaren, too. Williams is still the worst team.

Then you have the teams with "big sidepods" - Ferrari, Red Bull, Haas, Alfa, Alpine, Alpha - Ferrari and Red Bull are by far the two fastest teams, so to say that they improved is surely not wrong, even as Red Bull was great last year, too. Haas improved without a doubt, as did Alfa. Alpine and Alpha - its track dependant, but they can challenge the Nr. 3 team sometimes, which they were not really able to do last year, so its a small improvement. Then we have Aston Martin, who has changed their concept recently to big sidepods and they seem to improve now, too. So yes - it really is the case that teams with different concepts did improve and teams with similar concepts got worse.

There is no conclusion needed to say that Zeropod design has a drag problem. Toto Wolf said it in public. In every single race at the beginning of the season he said they have too much drag...and sorry, i will not even comment the sentence "drag problems not really being a thing in F1 due to the power these cars have". This is good news for aerodynamicists as L/D numbers have no importance any more and maximum downforce is all they have to focus on from now. Come on....you know this is...but you obviously do not know that the 1000 bhp is the overall power of the system. But they do not have this power all the time. In 2003, when BMW and Ferrari had 920-940 bhp, cars were probably had power as they had this power all the time. And drag was very important back then....

Also all the other teams knowing Barcelona very well, too, does not cancel it out that a team with better engineers and driver performs better than another team with less talented drivers and engineers. You basically say that there is no difference between teams and drivers in F1, what is just horribly wrong. What you also know exactly if you just think a millisecond about it.

Anyway, its obvious Mercedes has more than one fundamental issue with the car.
And to be honest - who has not realised that zero-pods have more than a few problems - is far from reality. Its just two obvious. With 8 races almost, and only one with an acceptable performance - a car like that definetely has not a "good concept". The suspension is one of the biggest problems of the car, but the zero-pods are second with aerodyamics just wrong for the ground effect cars. Zero pods are reducing floor-edge vortices as their intakes go all the way down to the floor. Pressurisation zone under the sidepod inlets, protruding forwards, "feeding" the floor are missing, too, because of the same reason. The massive floor area will always make more trouble with bouncing and overall performance, as floor flexing is a well known reason for this. But i said i do not start this discussion again, so i won't add the other disadvantages of this concept.

So i conclude with - 8 races almost and the car is far from being good on most tracks. Teams with similar concepts also went down the pecking order. Teams with "different comcepts" improved. There can be no discussion about this. Also all teams had "micropods" and zeropods are just an evolution of this very concept. And there is a reason why almost every team went away from that. And this alone says everything about zeropod-concept. Its wrong and Mercedes just got the new regulary totally wrong. That is something that can happen. Its easy to go down a wrong path. The leading team often does not want to take big risks. Thats also the reason why big regulation changes often end a teams era of sucess. This happened to Ferrari in 2005. It was not only the tyres. They went for maximum downforce when aerodynamic efficiency was the way to go. As Ferrari corrected their mistake in 2006, Mercedes will in 2023 and we will not see zeropods next year.

[PlatinumZealot]

It could be that the floor with zero-pods is more floppy than without, and the additional vibration it is subjected to forces the teams to use a draggier setting. There are too many variables. If we look at rival teams, yes Mercedes has failed to match its rivals, but McLaren hasn't. McLaren is clearly ahead of Alpine even though it had a dud start to the year.

[mvfad]

Mercedes is more lost than a blind person in the middle of a firefight.