Mercedes AMG has announced it has signed two engineers from Red Bull Racing to strengthen the technical department following the departure of Ross Brawn as team principal.
This forum contains threads to discuss teams themselves. Anything not technical about the cars, including restructuring, performances etc belongs here.
Hamilton said the car lacks DF. Efficient DF rules all in this age of F1. The car is top of the midfield, if they can edge out Sauber before the season starts. The car was eating the tires more than the others. It needs more efficient DF.
Gary Anderson is often an idiot when it comes to the tech side of the cars, but surely he can see how they are behaving on track. The car oversteers on throttle out of the corner...it lacks DF and chews its tires. They can fix the symptoms, which is what they did with the W03, or they can fix the problem: find more DF.
This is a Q3 car and one that will fight for the last few points if the tires last.
Last year the W03 looked good on tracks where you could crank on the DF without much penalty, like Monaco. That is likely the same with the W04. This is likely one of the reasons the aero department was restructured.
I wouldn't necessarily say GA is an idiot, surely he's as good as any of the arm chair aerodynamicists in most forums.
He's been around F1 long enough to have fairly reasonable technobable.
I wouldn't pay much attention to what the drivers are saying at this stage. Any car will have criticism. Not enough downforce is not as bad as it turns out to be. The car is balanced so that is a good platform to work with.
All they have to do is copy and they're good. No team has a unique performance differentiator this year.
ringo wrote:I wouldn't necessarily say GA is an idiot, surely he's as good as any of the arm chair aerodynamicists in most forums.
He's been around F1 long enough to have fairly reasonable technobable.
I wouldn't pay much attention to what the drivers are saying at this stage. Any car will have criticism. Not enough downforce is not as bad as it turns out to be. The car is balanced so that is a good platform to work with.
All they have to do is copy and they're good. No team has a unique performance differentiator this year.
I'm sure Gary Anderson knows more than I do about the technical side of F1, but he has made some bad calls "arm chairing" it. Someone like Scarbs puts out reliable information. That is why so many of us follow him here. Gary Anderson gets it wrong more often than someone in his position should.
But as I stated on his observations on car behavior, I believe those.
Lack of downforce, bad use of the tyres, we must be inside a temporal vortex...
I hope to see a new front wing and nex exhaust for Barcelona, they must increase the downforce in both parts of the car and try to get an optimum balance. Something they have not achieved in 3 years but hey, hope is the last thing we can loose.
An F1 car is not like LEGO where you just bolt parts on to improve a design. W04 has a lot more grip and down-force than the W03 ( Nico's words SKY interview, also said the balance is good). This means that the car setup has changed a lot since the W03 where they we're pulling of front DF to balance out the lack of rear grip. This car has the opposite of the last year car. The run the new FW really soon as they found out that the front of the car was under-steering. For me this is positive because that means they found extra performance from the rear of the car (Coanda,Floor, Diffuser, Mechanical improvements). I think you will see much more new development coming to the front half of the car to balance out the lack of front DF. The team now know where to improve and Lewis obviously knows very well were the car lacks performance comparing it to the McLaren. So they have an understanding or a road-map if you will where the car needs to go.
Things will, I think we will see @Barcelona test:
- Aero/DF development on the body of the car (especially the rear bodywork needs tiding up).
- I really hope to see more improvement on the FW. And RW most teams have those vertical cuttings on the RW.
I think thats they aspect they are focusing on making to car neutral again without making compromises to the Aero setup. Last year debacle with the FW was really humiliating while everybody was adding DF Mercedes was taking off DF. Nico Hulkenberg was quoted saying that the Mercedes looked really good in corner 1 at Jerez. Comments like these give me hope. The car looks good to the eye I like the Coanda and Floor combination big improvement from last year. Only the rear is quite a mess of lot of bodywork and car parts blocking the flow, if you compare it to the Lotus or the Sauber.
Irvine:"If you don't have a good car you can't win it, unless you are Michael or Senna. Lots of guys won in Adrian Newey's cars, big deal. Adrian is the real genius out there, there is Senna, there is Michael and there is Newey.They were the three great talents."
German interview. You can find it under the head: Mercedes bestätigt Windkanal-Prognosen.
Irvine:"If you don't have a good car you can't win it, unless you are Michael or Senna. Lots of guys won in Adrian Newey's cars, big deal. Adrian is the real genius out there, there is Senna, there is Michael and there is Newey.They were the three great talents."
It´s funny how people dismiss GA. The guy have designed decent F1 cars that have won GP´s in not to distant past. I think that is more then all armchairers here and on the web.
Maybe he can´t tell/spot all new aero trix but i think he definitly can look at a car running live and give opinion how it behaves. With that there is nothin saying it can´t be fixed.
lillschumi wrote:It´s funny how people dismiss GA. The guy have designed decent F1 cars that have won GP´s in not to distant past. I think that is more then all armchairers here and on the web.
Maybe he can´t tell/spot all new aero trix but i think he definitly can look at a car running live and give opinion how it behaves. With that there is nothin saying it can´t be fixed.
Right...and that's exactly what I gave him credit for.
Seems like this guy can't make up his mind on whether or not he actually thinks the W04 is a decent car. This gives me hope it's not all fire and brimstone, but I've never been too keen on his opinions anyhow. We'll see if Lewis is still a lot slower than Nico after a few proper days in the car
"Winning is the most important. Everything is consequence of that."
-Ayrton Senna
otbsti wrote:Seems like this guy can't make up his mind on whether or not he actually thinks the W04 is a decent car. This gives me hope it's not all fire and brimstone, but I've never been too keen on his opinions anyhow. We'll see if Lewis is still a lot slower than Nico after a few proper days in the car
Yeah because setting fastest times matter in testing...
wesley123 wrote:Yeah because setting fastest times matter in testing...
Clearly that wasn't my point smart guy. We all know testing is worthless when it comes to trying to figure out a pecking order, especially the first test. I just think it's funny how GA was bashing W04 after the 3rd day of testing, and now all of the sudden he thinks it could be the third fastest car out there. And for clarification, I was being a bit facetious with the Lewis/Nico comparison... perhaps sarcasm should be put in italics or something so as to not confuse or anger you.
"Winning is the most important. Everything is consequence of that."
-Ayrton Senna
