Mercedes AMG F1 W05

[BorisTheBlade]

Yes, that's indeed a bit disturbing. More so if you look at Williams and FI. But then again they might want to play it safe. It's a long season and they will have all the time in the world to shrink it back down.
But having a car that can make it to the chequered flag consistently right from the start will be a decisive factor I'm sure.

[Nicola11]

Did Mercedes already introduced their new Nose or i am just too dumb too see the it

[henra]

Are you kidding us?
Better having mileage and big openings than small openings and no mileage!

Exactly.
Compared to the Renault powered cars they have the luxury that by putting on a slightly bigger hot air exit you can buy mileage.
Over in the Renault camp even that simple trade didn't work often enough. Even cars with copious amounts of sidepod volume and hot air exits start to burn and can't get the mileage. In that camp this equation: Big exits = big mileage doesn't work reliably. That's a really sh*tty place to be.
Making these exits smaller somewhere down the road is easy and has been done before.
So the overriding condition : If Big exits = No Smoke => Small Worries applies.

[OO7]

Did Mercedes already introduced their new Nose or i am just too dumb too see the it

No, it failed the crash test so it will need a redesign. We won't see it until Melbourne.

[ACJJ619]

I think maybe Mercedes have acknowledged that they probably have some pace in hand so can afford to go for a safer but slower configuration. No point going for a more extreme cooling solution to be 1 second quicker when you can use a safer cooling solution and remain on the pace.

[Callum]

Isn't it a bit worring how much more cooling the Mercedes need compared to e.g. the Sauber, the RB and Ferrari? The others just seem to be so much more compact packed at the rear while Mercedes need the HUGE opening at the rear.
There must be some kind of penalty drag and interference with the airflow?

If you have the ability to add up all the exit cross sectional areas and tell me that they're dramatically different i'd be impressed. And as far as we know, the RB team have got their cooling requirements wrong.

[JDC123]

I'm really surprised by the lack of major updates by everyone. I thought in this last test we would see teams with totally new noses, sidepods, front wings, etc. Instead they seem to be very small like added vanes on the side of the cockpit and minor changes to bargeboards etc. I guess thats due to the aero being relatively similar to last year?

[BorisTheBlade]

Well, seeing a huge amount of substantial updates would mean that they got it all wrong in the first place.
So I'm quite happy to see only minor refinements. But I'm a bit disappointed about the non-appeareance of the new nose.

[smlbstcbr]

Aha! Autosport just confirmed that Mercedes were using the same engine since the first Bahrain test. Very interesting.

[BorisTheBlade]

Yes, in the testing topic I quoted AMuS in the morning. According to the team they changed it as a precautionary measure and its mileage was almost 3000km.

/edit:
And right now Aldo Costa said that the engine change took them 10 hours. The integration is as fast as ever. But if you want to take over components from the previous engine you need to pre-assemble the whole thing which takes a lot of time.
So engine breakdowns at race weekends will indeed be highly critical.

[beelsebob]

Aha! Autosport just confirmed that Mercedes were using the same engine since the first Bahrain test. Very interesting.

Sweet, so that engine's done 4 full race distances now – that's enough to make the limit on engines for the year, and a little more. Bahrain is hardly an easy circuit on the engine either.

[Owen.C93]

They of course have to do Fridays and Saturdays on top of that.

[theformula]

Wait, so how many Km's has the Merc engine done since the FIRST Bahrain test? Also, isn't the engine supposed to last 5 races and therefore how many Km does the engine have to last for?

[gingernibbler]

Have you heard the Merc engine firing order? It sounds a bit like a Ducati V twin. Is this to help rear traction/tyre wear by reducing power pulse regularity as per moto gp engines? Do you think They'll have the best rear traction at slow/street circuits?

[Owen.C93]

Say 140 laps per weekend is 700 laps per engine. And it looks like they've done ~800 laps so far?