2016 Singapore Grand Prix - Marina Bay, 16-18 September

[SectorOne]

I expect Mercedes to have around 1-2 tenths on everyone. I think last year was not a good representation of their capabilities around here.

[NL_Fer]

I remember in 2015 they were bad in colder weather. Like in China were Vettel took te win and also the start of Austin, with both Redbulls. We had some cold races in Europe this year, but they weren't a problem for Mercedes.

Like already been said, the cold and dirty track surface and short straiths will neutralize all engine advantages. Also no real aero advantage for those square corners. Expect the cars to be real close here, Vettel in front and even the McLarens and a Torro Rosso in q3.

[Pierce89]

I wonder who Toto is talking about....

“But you have teams that have outliers. You have a team that is doing extremely well on circuits like Singapore, with high downforce, but they are not competitive on a circuit like Monza.

“Then you can play the blame game and say the engine is not good enough. But if your car is draggy and has a rake like you are doing a handstand, then you cannot expect to go fast on the straights. It is about finding the best compromise and let’s see what happens in Singapore.”

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/merce ... ed-824740/

It's really pathetic the way Merc and Red Bull take petty cheap shots at each other. The reality is, Merc have the best PU and best overall package, but Red Bull does seemingly have a top chassis let down by the Renault(to a MUCH MUCH smaller extent than before), but it's probably only equal to Merc not better and obviously with different strengths and weaknesses.

[rscsr]

I wonder who Toto is talking about....

“But you have teams that have outliers. You have a team that is doing extremely well on circuits like Singapore, with high downforce, but they are not competitive on a circuit like Monza.

“Then you can play the blame game and say the engine is not good enough. But if your car is draggy and has a rake like you are doing a handstand, then you cannot expect to go fast on the straights. It is about finding the best compromise and let’s see what happens in Singapore.”

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/merce ... ed-824740/

It's really pathetic the way Merc and Red Bull take petty cheap shots at each other. The reality is, Merc have the best PU and best overall package, but Red Bull does seemingly have a top chassis let down by the Renault(to a MUCH MUCH smaller extent than before), but it's probably only equal to Merc not better and obviously with different strengths and weaknesses.

The Silverstone velocity traces have pretty much shown, that Mercedes has less drag at the same downforce level.

[bhall II]

The Silverstone velocity traces have pretty much shown, that Mercedes has less drag at the same downforce level.

How? I freely acknowledge my incredulity here, but I'm genuinely curious to understand how a performance characteristic among countless others (that frequently overlap) can nonetheless be extrapolated from data sets that don't exhibit a whole lot more than Quaker-like simplicity.

[ChrisDanger]

The Silverstone velocity traces have pretty much shown, that Mercedes has less drag at the same downforce level.

That's exactly what I think their No. 1 advantage is, that no-one ever mentions. Do you have more info on this?

[rscsr]

The Silverstone velocity traces have pretty much shown, that Mercedes has less drag at the same downforce level.

That's exactly what I think their No. 1 advantage is, that no-one ever mentions. Do you have more info on this?

Phil posted the velocity traces, for the Silverstone qualifying, which showed higher topspeeds for the Mercedes and the same acceleration(up to a point) and most importantly the same apex speeds as Red Bull. link

I tested the claim that Red Bull has significantly less power than Mercedes by plotting the velocity of a car with constant power and constant mass where the drag and power is tuned to be somewhat similar to what F1 sees.

The grey line has 20% more Drag and the orange line has 10% less power.

[Juzh]

I wonder who Toto is talking about....



http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/merce ... ed-824740/

It's really pathetic the way Merc and Red Bull take petty cheap shots at each other. The reality is, Merc have the best PU and best overall package, but Red Bull does seemingly have a top chassis let down by the Renault(to a MUCH MUCH smaller extent than before), but it's probably only equal to Merc not better and obviously with different strengths and weaknesses.

The Silverstone velocity traces have pretty much shown, that Mercedes has less drag at the same downforce level.

Silverstone traces confirmed mercedes has the ability to deploy ERS for MUCH longer on the straights, manifesting itself looking like RB has more drag. This is literally the most obvious thing and was even mentioned in the article itself you're trying to reference.

[Juzh]

The Silverstone velocity traces have pretty much shown, that Mercedes has less drag at the same downforce level.

That's exactly what I think their No. 1 advantage is, that no-one ever mentions.

Keyword "think". Compared to who exactly? Other merc powered teams? The ones with 1/4 the budget?

[ChrisDanger]

The Silverstone velocity traces have pretty much shown, that Mercedes has less drag at the same downforce level.

Silverstone traces confirmed mercedes has the ability to deploy ERS for MUCH longer on the straights, manifesting itself looking like RB has more drag. This is literally the most obvious thing and was even mentioned in the article itself you're trying to reference.

That would require deployment on every single straight to explain the grpahs we are seeing, which is certainly not the best ERS tactic.

“You end up with graphs where there are ten different straights around the circuit and you haven’t got an infinite amount of energy to deploy through the MGU-K, so you do need to work out on which straight you’re going to deploy the MGU-K for two seconds and on which straight you’re going to deploy it for only one second.

“So we do the analysis looking at the ten straights and we can see that [on some] we are getting good lap time benefit for even longer deployment. As opposed to [another] straight where there’s just no point. For example we’ll select a 0.2s MGU-K burst and then turn it off, save the energy for another straight where we’ll get a greater reward on the lap time.”

And yes, the Mercedes engine is more powerful. Everyone always talks about this. But the Merc aero is also really good, and no-one ever mentions this. I think this is much more of an advantage that people give them credit for.

BTW: Thanks for the info rscsr. I've been thinking about doing a similar analysis comparing an engine power advantage to a drag advantage so your graph is interesting.

[Juzh]

The Silverstone velocity traces have pretty much shown, that Mercedes has less drag at the same downforce level.

Silverstone traces confirmed mercedes has the ability to deploy ERS for MUCH longer on the straights, manifesting itself looking like RB has more drag. This is literally the most obvious thing and was even mentioned in the article itself you're trying to reference.

That would require deployment on every single straight to explain the grpahs we are seeing, which is certainly not the best ERS tactic.

“You end up with graphs where there are ten different straights around the circuit and you haven’t got an infinite amount of energy to deploy through the MGU-K, so you do need to work out on which straight you’re going to deploy the MGU-K for two seconds and on which straight you’re going to deploy it for only one second.

“So we do the analysis looking at the ten straights and we can see that [on some] we are getting good lap time benefit for even longer deployment. As opposed to [another] straight where there’s just no point. For example we’ll select a 0.2s MGU-K burst and then turn it off, save the energy for another straight where we’ll get a greater reward on the lap time.”

Man, if you believe they're deploying for 2s or 0.2s then... Yes, they might do this on a straight that is 3s off full throttle. But on longer straights they (merc) pretty much deploy for almost entire straights (with perhaps some exceptions), whereas renault and even ferrari do not.

I mean just look at this difference between ferrari and merc in baku:
https://streamable.com/mlyc
look at the speedo. Merc is in the league of their own on the amount of ERS they're able to deploy.

[sosic2121]

I mean just look at this difference between ferrari and merc in baku:
https://streamable.com/mlyc
look at the speedo. Merc is in the league of their own on the amount of ERS they're able to deploy.

and Ferrari think they have PU comparable to Mercedes!?

[rscsr]

Silverstone traces confirmed mercedes has the ability to deploy ERS for MUCH longer on the straights, manifesting itself looking like RB has more drag. This is literally the most obvious thing and was even mentioned in the article itself you're trying to reference.

That would require deployment on every single straight to explain the grpahs we are seeing, which is certainly not the best ERS tactic.

“You end up with graphs where there are ten different straights around the circuit and you haven’t got an infinite amount of energy to deploy through the MGU-K, so you do need to work out on which straight you’re going to deploy the MGU-K for two seconds and on which straight you’re going to deploy it for only one second.

“So we do the analysis looking at the ten straights and we can see that [on some] we are getting good lap time benefit for even longer deployment. As opposed to [another] straight where there’s just no point. For example we’ll select a 0.2s MGU-K burst and then turn it off, save the energy for another straight where we’ll get a greater reward on the lap time.”

Man, if you believe they're deploying for 2s or 0.2s then... Yes, they might do this on a straight that is 3s off full throttle. But on longer straights they (merc) pretty much deploy for almost entire straights (with perhaps some exceptions), whereas renault and even ferrari do not.
Mercedes doesn't accelerate any more from the beginning of the pit entry. Ferrari becomes slower from the beginning of the pit entry. So to me it looks like both stop deploying at pretty much the same time. The Mercedes has to lift during the corners beforehand, while the Ferrari just drives full throttle with about 295km/h, instead of 285km/h of the Mercedes at the same position. So this indicates that Ferrari used more downforce. Therefore they most likely had (even if both had the same efficiency) more induced drag.

I mean just look at this difference between ferrari and merc in baku:
https://streamable.com/mlyc
look at the speedo. Merc is in the league of their own on the amount of ERS they're able to deploy.

[rscsr]

Silverstone traces confirmed mercedes has the ability to deploy ERS for MUCH longer on the straights, manifesting itself looking like RB has more drag. This is literally the most obvious thing and was even mentioned in the article itself you're trying to reference.

That would require deployment on every single straight to explain the grpahs we are seeing, which is certainly not the best ERS tactic.

“You end up with graphs where there are ten different straights around the circuit and you haven’t got an infinite amount of energy to deploy through the MGU-K, so you do need to work out on which straight you’re going to deploy the MGU-K for two seconds and on which straight you’re going to deploy it for only one second.

“So we do the analysis looking at the ten straights and we can see that [on some] we are getting good lap time benefit for even longer deployment. As opposed to [another] straight where there’s just no point. For example we’ll select a 0.2s MGU-K burst and then turn it off, save the energy for another straight where we’ll get a greater reward on the lap time.”

Man, if you believe they're deploying for 2s or 0.2s then... Yes, they might do this on a straight that is 3s off full throttle. But on longer straights they (merc) pretty much deploy for almost entire straights (with perhaps some exceptions), whereas renault and even ferrari do not.

I mean just look at this difference between ferrari and merc in baku:
https://streamable.com/mlyc
look at the speedo. Merc is in the league of their own on the amount of ERS they're able to deploy.

Mercedes doesn't accelerate any more from the beginning of the pit entry. Ferrari becomes slower from the beginning of the pit entry. So to me it looks like both stop deploying at pretty much the same time. The Mercedes has to lift during the corners beforehand, while the Ferrari just drives full throttle with about 295km/h, instead of 285km/h of the Mercedes at the same position. So this indicates that Ferrari used more downforce. Therefore they most likely had (even if both had the same efficiency) more induced drag.

[iotar__]

A lot of this Merc will be 3rd best is assuming that (1) they didn't do their homework from Singapore 2015;

What homework, redesigning the car? Mercedes performance predictions depend on if you believe Lowe's post Singapore report aka 99 reasons we sucked but the tyre pressure limits was not one of them, Frankly it didn't exist, even though it was the race after Mercedes broke the rules at Monza and got away with it. Main conclusion was that 'car was not designed for this particular track' which was and still is a bit of mystery because:
A. They didn't know how they car was designed before the race.
B. It seems they still don't know in 2016 as their uncertainty before current GP shows
If above reasons and Monaco - RB benchmark are of any value '16 should not be any different. It would be a shocking development if they were fine now. Fine meaning: not clearly behind Ferrari and Red Bull but close 1-2.