Mercedes W14

[organic]

[PlatinumZealot]

Andi, anonymous Mercedes engineer doesn't have to mean anything. They could have made everything up, including the engineer. The car clearly has the cockpit in the same place as W13. Let's please move on

You know what's funny. A photographer at the track set his camera up to take all ten cars in the exact same spot more or less and it was pretty clear that most of the cars took the maximum distance allowed for front wheel to cockpit. It's a no brainer really! The dreaded front wheel wake is something you want far away from the most sensitive areas of the car.

Hard to believe that people were using skewed digital photos taken from different cameras at different spots to compare cars.

[organic]

Andi, anonymous Mercedes engineer doesn't have to mean anything. They could have made everything up, including the engineer. The car clearly has the cockpit in the same place as W13. Let's please move on

You know what's funny. A photographer at the track set his camera up to take all ten cars in the exact same spot more or less and it was pretty clear that most of the cars took the maximum distance allowed for front wheel to cockpit. It's a no brainer really! The dreaded front wheel wake is something you want far away from the most sensitive areas of the car.

Hard to believe that people were using skewed digital photos taken from different cameras at different spots to compare cars.

People on this forum have shown comparisons of 10 photos from the same spot, same distance, same camera, same angle of cars, and they are clearly not all the same. You might have to dig into 2022 to find this.

[PlatinumZealot]

https://twitter.com/f1motospogp/status/ ... 36545?s=20

Shows an interesting comparison between the W14 and the RB19. Obviously the tyre smoke will not perfect represent the tyre wake but it does show how much better the RB19 is at keeping wake from reaching the beam wing and diffuser

The Red bull is turning in and the Mercedes is running straight so I'm not sure this is a true comparison. Very interesting image though and speaks a thousand words.

The RB turning in makes it even more impressive !

By turning in you would expect more of the tyre smoke to move towards the beam wing & diffuser area !

Also note the impact of rear tyre drag.

It shows how much worse the w14 concept is at front tyre wake management and drag on the rear tyre.

You know.... I thought deeply about this effect when I saw the new Ferrari which I compared to cars with the canon exhaust... And then it occured to me that there are two trains of thought with side pod to rear wing flow....

Think in three dimensions....

The Ferrari is a general minor-upwashing and high in-washing side pod.... The inwash doesn't come from the front wheel wake though. The front wheel wakes goes to the side and up... Then there is a clean air flow inwash from in front of the rear wheels.. This clean inwash comes undenreath the front wheel wake.... Which is curled up and out as i said before..

So the Ferrari then links this general inward and upward wash with the rear wing.. It creates good "body downforce".


The RedBull sidepode to rear wing concept is a major downwashing concept that blockades all froms of inwash and the front wheel wake. It doesn't link an upward flow to the rear wing. It focuses on clean straight air to the rear wing. Which turns it upward after that to link with diffuser wake.

The Mercedes side pod concept is a half-way house. It uses downwash and clean inwash. Tricker to manage.

I haven't done CFD in a while because i don't have much time these days. (I manage near a hundred people at work)... But this is my hypothesis of the side pod concepts.


You will need to see a video of the smoke entering the Merces coke bottle to really say if it's bad air or not. Based on my hypothesis I highly doubt it would be bad front wheel wake. Which anyone who does CFD/windtunnel knows tends to go upwards. What he see is inwash air from the road..

[Big Tea]

A friend of mine mentioned this crazy idea. He apparently is convinced that whatever Merc's are doing, it's going to go down the history as the biggest sandbagging scheme ever performed as they have something in line for W14 which will annihilate the field and they intentionally don't want to put in the car until Azerbaycan so that nobody will have any chance to copy what they've done at earliest at the summer break.

I like this batsheet crazy idea, but I think the chances of it being real are slim to none.

To do that they do not need to be really really bad, just not quite as good as RBR and Ferrari.
They would have a more representative record of how the 'other or fixed car' would actually run then too.

[PlatinumZealot]

Andi, anonymous Mercedes engineer doesn't have to mean anything. They could have made everything up, including the engineer. The car clearly has the cockpit in the same place as W13. Let's please move on

You know what's funny. A photographer at the track set his camera up to take all ten cars in the exact same spot more or less and it was pretty clear that most of the cars took the maximum distance allowed for front wheel to cockpit. It's a no brainer really! The dreaded front wheel wake is something you want far away from the most sensitive areas of the car.

Hard to believe that people were using skewed digital photos taken from different cameras at different spots to compare cars.

People on this forum have shown comparisons of 10 photos from the same spot, same distance, same camera, same angle of cars, and they are clearly not all the same. You might have to dig into 2022 to find this.

Already did!

[GrizzleBoy]

I think a lot of people have forgotten that the W13s biggest practical hindrance was its tyre warmup which required more fuel in quali and tyres being fresh for quali runs. Race strategy options also suffered too.

Is there anything weve seen on the W14 data to suggest this issue has been fixed?

[hollus]

Clearly, this needs repeating: No sandbagging and no lap times in the car thread. There are other threads for that.

A reminder to everyone but specially to the new people (welcome!).
The car threads are specially strictly moderated in this forum. Stick to this car and to hardware in the car threads.
Team politics and other team things, please in the team threads.
Lap times, happy faces, sensations and will they be faster/slower than XYZ, either in the team threads, in the testing thread or in the race threads.

If your post is in this thread and is not centering on this car, the physical car, it might have been or might be deleted or moved.
Let's keep the awesome car threads on this forum
a) focused on the hardware and
b) awesome.

Thanks.

[organic]

Ted Kravitz explains that he will be on a show with Elliott later and they delve into the W14: the w14 is at the weight limit or under, the upgrade (due to come at the beginning of European season) will make it look quite different but it will not just copy the RB concept, and they will be bringing a couple of wings to hopefully shed some of the drag they're carrying

[GrizzleBoy]

Ted Kravitz explains that he will be on a show with Elliott later and they delve into the W14: the w14 is at the weight limit or under, the upgrade will make it look quite different but it will not just copy the RB concept, and they will be bringing a couple of wings to hopefully shed some of the drag they're carrying

Yeah, and Ted confirmed earlier that Elliot told him the rear wing they are using now will not be what is on the car next weekend.

[organic]

I think you are going off topic Organic. Mods will delete it.

Ted's speculations don't count as car development.

It's not Ted's speculations. He's already recorded this segment with Elliott and is explaining to the viewers why we should tune in using information that Elliott has already told him - how is this speculation. You don't need to tell me I'm going off topic; it just derails a thread further. Report and move on - simple

[De Jokke]

Ted Kravitz explains that he will be on a show with Elliott later and they delve into the W14: the w14 is at the weight limit or under, the upgrade (due to come at the beginning of European season) will make it look quite different but it will not just copy the RB concept, and they will be bringing a couple of wings to hopefully shed some of the drag they're carrying

21th of May, oh boy , that's the 6th race already
Why didn't they went for this in the first place. Now they've put time and ressources in a concept they will ditch. I just don't get it.

[organic]

Ted Kravitz explains that he will be on a show with Elliott later and they delve into the W14: the w14 is at the weight limit or under, the upgrade (due to come at the beginning of European season) will make it look quite different but it will not just copy the RB concept, and they will be bringing a couple of wings to hopefully shed some of the drag they're carrying

21th of May, oh boy , that's the 6th race already
Why didn't they went for this in the first place. Now they've put time and ressources in a concept they will ditch. I just don't get it.

I believe Baku is the 4th race and I believe it is a European race. It's also just after a long gap on the calendar so it's likely to be when the team brings the upgrade IMO

[mkay]

Ted Kravitz explains that he will be on a show with Elliott later and they delve into the W14: the w14 is at the weight limit or under, the upgrade (due to come at the beginning of European season) will make it look quite different but it will not just copy the RB concept, and they will be bringing a couple of wings to hopefully shed some of the drag they're carrying

21th of May, oh boy , that's the 6th race already
Why didn't they went for this in the first place. Now they've put time and ressources in a concept they will ditch. I just don't get it.

I assume they've designed the W14 to be more easily adjustable depending on the path they're going to take.

European season really begins at Baku in late April (4th race).

[ringo]

Can someone explain why the "zero pod" concept has any advantage over the RB concept ?

It is clear on the RB that their sidepods:
- help outwash the aero damaging front tyre wake with the high and wide upper section of the pods
- helps reduce drag on rear tyres give higher top speed
- takes the lovely clean air lower down but above the underfloor entry and scoops it under the side pod and towards the rear diffuser and beam wing to help generate downforce from that area.

By contrast the Merc pods don't outwash the tyre wake as well and all that lovely clean air just above the entry to the floor goes into the radiators rather than use for aero optimisation.

What are the advantages of the "zero pods" other than a lower centre of gravity which in this ground effects era is less critical.

Because a lot of those benefits you mentioned are not necessarily true. They are just repeated often enough then spun by everyone with a youtube channel to appear to be true.
It's really difficult to assume what one concept does over the other, or to assume stuff like drag reduction from doing x or y.