Mercedes W11 Speculation Thread

[izzy]

I generally agree with the cooling concern mentioned here.
How could the mighty Mercedes team have gotten it so wrong? Toto claimed it was a calculation error. Yeah sure. How did that go unnoticed in all the dyno sessions and simulations. But anyway. Hope the mistake is not repeated.

I wonder if a sort of artificial mercury - a sort of liquid metal if you will - or even heat pipe technology - could be used to help the main cooling systems? Any one remember Ferraris radiator floor?

i'd love to know more about the cooling systems in F1 cars. Ferrari said they use 3 different fluids, what are they? One uses graphene doesn't it even. But with Mercedes, i remember Paddy saying basically the fastest car has brakes that overheat! It's all so marginal with the aero tradeoff, I think Mercedes design the car to be fastest over the season and settle for 3rd-6th places at 2 or 3 circuits. Then in Austria I'm not sure if they actually got it a bit wrong or if they didn't really quite want to admit they'd more or less thrown that race before the season even started

[PlatinumZealot]

I generally agree with the cooling concern mentioned here.
How could the mighty Mercedes team have gotten it so wrong? Toto claimed it was a calculation error. Yeah sure. How did that go unnoticed in all the dyno sessions and simulations. But anyway. Hope the mistake is not repeated.

I wonder if a sort of artificial mercury - a sort of liquid metal if you will - or even heat pipe technology - could be used to help the main cooling systems? Any one remember Ferraris radiator floor?

i'd love to know more about the cooling systems in F1 cars. Ferrari said they use 3 different fluids, what are they? One uses graphene doesn't it even. But with Mercedes, i remember Paddy saying basically the fastest car has brakes that overheat! It's all so marginal with the aero tradeoff, I think Mercedes design the car to be fastest over the season and settle for 3rd-6th places at 2 or 3 circuits. Then in Austria I'm not sure if they actually got it a bit wrong or if they didn't really quite want to admit they'd more or less thrown that race before the season even started

3 different fluids is nothing unexpected. Even a street car has three different fluids. (coolant, oil, atf for example)

Engine coolant
Engine Oil cooling circuit (likely also cooled by engine coolant)
Gearbox oil cooling circuit
Battery cooling circuit (electrics use a different coolant)
Hydraulics cooling circuit (not sure here what is used)
Charge air cooling circuit) different coolant

[piast9]

Ferrari said they use 3 different fluids, what are they?

Water, oil and air?

[Just_a_fan]

I think Mercedes design the car to be fastest over the season and settle for 3rd-6th places at 2 or 3 circuits.

Which is exactly the right thing to do. No car is perfect at every circuit, there will always be an outlier or two - Monza, for example.

[izzy]

3 different fluids is nothing unexpected. Even a street car has three different fluids. (coolant, oil, atf for example)

Engine coolant
Engine Oil cooling circuit (likely also cooled by engine coolant)
Gearbox oil cooling circuit
Battery cooling circuit (electrics use a different coolant)
Hydraulics cooling circuit (not sure here what is used)
Charge air cooling circuit) different coolant

oil isn't a great coolant tho, you'd only use it to do something else as well as cooling, and if you're cooling it direct to air that doesn't count that goes for hydraulic oil and transmission oil, they're not coolants primarily they get cooled.

this is the point really, or it was, that if you ONLY want to cool with it, you just use the fluid with the best characteristics don't you, of specific heat, viscosity or whatever, for transporting heat. So what else are you doing? Or you might have something lighter for a high-mounted radiator like ammonia or something. Batteries yes i suppose non-conducting might be good lol. Anyway it'd count as interesting for me, if we knew more about it

[izzy]

I think Mercedes design the car to be fastest over the season and settle for 3rd-6th places at 2 or 3 circuits.

Which is exactly the right thing to do. No car is perfect at every circuit, there will always be an outlier or two - Monza, for example.

yes exactly, exactly!! they think better, is a big part of their secret

[MtthsMlw]

High sidepods finally? Last team yet to adopt this solution.
https://twitter.com/ScarbsTech/status/1 ... 3213262848

[siskue2005]

High sidepods finally? Last team yet to adopt this solution.
https://twitter.com/ScarbsTech/status/1 ... 3213262848

Yup seems like it

[dans79]

Here is the video Mercedes posted of it.

https://twitter.com/MercedesAMGF1/statu ... 7495625729

[LM10]

High sidepods finally? Last team yet to adopt this solution.
https://twitter.com/ScarbsTech/status/1 ... 3213262848

Probably there is no more big gain potential in the conventional sidepod concept. So sooner or later they needed to go this way.

[Morteza]

The air box looks very different too. Are we sure that really is the 2020 car?

[MtthsMlw]

The air box looks very different too. Are we sure that really is the 2020 car?

It surely is some kind of a mockup but in the past years they all had the standard sidepod config.
This is different now.

[LM10]

The air box looks very different too. Are we sure that really is the 2020 car?

Sidepod style pioneered by Ferrari and 2019 Ferrari style air box. Looks like the italian team does not do that bad of a job.

[izzy]

The air box looks very different too. Are we sure that really is the 2020 car?

Sidepod style pioneered by Ferrari and 2019 Ferrari style air box. Looks like the italian team does not do that bad of a job.

Mercedes must have massive respect for Ferrari's engineering. And what exactly has Lorenzo Sassi been doing? That i'd love to know. 3D printed pistons??

[SiLo]

What should worry people is that Mercedes were so fast with a seemingly inferior sided design.