2024 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[Lasssept]

- Hamilton has suggested the drop off in form is related to the major updates installed on the W15 challenger prior to the summer break.

I think there's lots of question marks on a lot of it, I think we're just trying to understand it.

It could be a number of things. It could be track-dependent. It could be the upgrade - my gut is telling me that it's probably the upgrade. It's hard to see the difference between the two.

- Hamilton confirmed Mercedes will attempt to get to the crux of the issue this weekend in Azerbaijan.

But we're going to try this weekend roll back on some of it and see whether or not we can spot it,

There's a lot of work going on just to analyse it, because it really gives the team a direction of where they're going in development.

This is the car for next year as well.

https://racingnews365.com/hamilton-shar ... des-f1-woe

[Quantum]

- Hamilton

I think there's lots of question marks on a lot of it, I think we're just trying to understand it.

It could be a number of things. It could be track-dependent. It could be the upgrade - my gut is telling me that it's probably the upgrade. It's hard to see the difference between the two.

[Henri]

- Hamilton has suggested the drop off in form is related to the major updates installed on the W15 challenger prior to the summer break.

I think there's lots of question marks on a lot of it, I think we're just trying to understand it.

It could be a number of things. It could be track-dependent. It could be the upgrade - my gut is telling me that it's probably the upgrade. It's hard to see the difference between the two.

- Hamilton confirmed Mercedes will attempt to get to the crux of the issue this weekend in Azerbaijan.

But we're going to try this weekend roll back on some of it and see whether or not we can spot it,

There's a lot of work going on just to analyse it, because it really gives the team a direction of where they're going in development.

This is the car for next year as well.

https://racingnews365.com/hamilton-shar ... des-f1-woe

The new floor is bad

[Luscion]

Motorsport saying Merc will be ditching the new floor for this weekend. Russell on the upgrade
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/merc ... /10653530/

"The upgrade wasn't a substantial performance improvement and sometimes you've got to look at things just objectively.

"And we brought a new floor, we dropped in performance, and that was the main thing that that changed.

"We knew the upgrade wasn't kind of going to set the world on fire. It was just sort of another step in the direction that we've been pursuing.

"So, reverting to the pre-Spa iteration of floor, if everything were to be absolutely correct on paper, it's a small delta.

"It's better the devil you know sometimes. We know what that floor offers. We know exactly where the setup needs to be, and sometimes with a new upgrade it takes a number of races to sort of learn and understand.

"So, yeah, maybe that gut feeling [Hamilton referenced] is correct."

[AR3-GP]

and there it is.

[Lasssept]

Motorsport saying Merc will be ditching the new floor for this weekend. Russell on the upgrade
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/merc ... /10653530/

+

Autosport/Motorsport.com understands that Mercedes has decided not to run the Spa floor at all in Baku to gain a full weekend of data on how the car – which had upgrades to its diffuser, beam wing, front wing and halo that remain fitted, meaning Mercedes has not reverted to its full pre-Spa Hungarian GP specification – performs without it.

[AR3-GP]

A science project.

[dren]

This goes to show you that aerodynamics is still not a fully unsterstood field with several teams in these regs getting it wrong. I wonder if the performance they see in the tunnel doesn't scale proportionally to the larger race car. Wings may scale differently than the floor, etc, or have nonlinear scaling.

[PlatinumZealot]

Mercedes sucks at making floors. They should seriously consider doping the resin with mercury. Should help the damping and vibration charatistics. Probably crazy enough to work. Half a second is no joke.

[Sevach]

This generation of cars made upgrading your car waaaay more tricky than with flat floors, i'll miss this once the new 26 rules come(i suspect we will be back to more complexity=better).
Sometimes upgrades backfired and teams lost their way, but not nearly as much as now.

This goes to show you that aerodynamics is still not a fully unsterstood field with several teams in these regs getting it wrong. I wonder if the performance they see in the tunnel doesn't scale proportionally to the larger race car. Wings may scale differently than the floor, etc, or have nonlinear scaling.

Is it scaling or other limitations to wind tunnels?
For example i think maximum speed is currently limited to 180 KM/H.
Also the wind tunnel models have no suspension whatsoever(as far as i understand), it must be hard to simulate the range of ride heights cars have to work and reactions to bumps, scrapping the ground...

[johnnycesup]

For example i think maximum speed is currently limited to 180 KM/H.
Also the wind tunnel models have no suspension whatsoever(as far as i understand), it must be hard to simulate the range of ride heights cars have to work and reactions to bumps, scrapping the ground...

The max airspeed is indeed limited, but so is the vehicle scale. Considering a simulation for the same Reynolds number, a 60% scale model running at 180 kph is equivalent to a full scale model at 300kph, which is closer to the limit of the usefulness of the wind tunnel test.

As for the lack of suspension, it's actually very important that it doesn't have it, because it separates aero performance from suspension performance. The teams will lock the ride heights before each run, and create an aero map they use to do their other simulations, including suspension.

[Luscion]

Merc looks good on Lewis' end, car seems pretty quick in S3, wonder if others are hiding their speed in that sector. George complaining about understeer

[atanatizante]

1. It seems they either have a vanity panel (the photo is in the car thread) or just a fairing where the chassis ends before the driver's head, that is just an aero track-specific update
2. They split the setup, HAM went for the low DF setup and RUS for the high DF one
3. Ted Cravitz said that both drivers are running the Silverstone spec floor ...

[cplchanb]

Mercedes sucks at making floors. They should seriously consider doping the resin with mercury. Should help the damping and vibration charatistics. Probably crazy enough to work. Half a second is no joke.

and meanwhile RB cut up their latest iterations of floors and sewed a franken floor together for this race... what makes them then?

[AR3-GP]

Lots of problems on Russell's car. Precautionary engine change and then session ended early.