Mercedes W15 Speculation Thread

[Henk_v]

What signal are you hoping to find in a speculation thread?

Or are you trying to differentiate between extrapolations, rumours and educated guesses?

Nothing like that, there has been way too much W13-W14 talk.

So less extrapolation.....



On the suspension; I am really puzzled. As an engineer I fail to see the mechanical significance. I keep reading there are practical reasons (easy access for setup) and aero reasons, but somehow I keep reading here it has a different suspension characteristic. Can anybody point me to somewhere I can read up on that?

[taperoo2k]

What signal are you hoping to find in a speculation thread?

Or are you trying to differentiate between extrapolations, rumours and educated guesses?

Nothing like that, there has been way too much W13-W14 talk.

So less extrapolation.....



On the suspension; I am really puzzled. As an engineer I fail to see the mechanical significance. I keep reading there are practical reasons (easy access for setup) and aero reasons, but somehow I keep reading here it has a different suspension characteristic. Can anybody point me to somewhere I can read up on that?

This is probably a good place to start.

[Venturiation]

[maygun]

engineers that spent 10k hours studying aerodynamics with phd degrees: "why haven't we thought about what Lewis said to us "

[NoDivergence]

engineers that spent 10k hours studying aerodynamics with phd degrees: "why haven't we thought about what Lewis said to us "

You would be surprised. Very few cars are perfectly setup right out of the box. A lifetime of car setup, driving preferences, and driver input is extremely valuable. These are things us engineers tunnel vision out, but are necessary to extract the most out of the car

[maygun]

engineers that spent 10k hours studying aerodynamics with phd degrees: "why haven't we thought about what Lewis said to us "

You would be surprised. Very few cars are perfectly setup right out of the box. A lifetime of car setup, driving preferences, and driver input is extremely valuable. These are things us engineers tunnel vision out, but are necessary to extract the most out of the car

I dont discard the importance of the driver feedback, but it is off-season and the car is only in the simulator.

"show them where we need to improve and what direction we need to go in"- I love Lewis and his attitude toward his team (mostly), sorry but this is a ridiculous statement, if it is exactly in this form. Lewis was complaining all the time about rear downforce in the previous season, and below was James Allison's answer to that,

“So if a driver says they are lacking rear downforce - bang, I’ve solved it. Go to the rear downforce shop, get me some rear downforce. That’s the point it becomes slightly less helpful. But at that point you just have accept the car is lacking in a certain thing and it’s our job, as Lewis points out, he doesn’t design the car, it’s our job to respond with the solutions that bring that."

[Henk_v]

Nothing like that, there has been way too much W13-W14 talk.

So less extrapolation.....



On the suspension; I am really puzzled. As an engineer I fail to see the mechanical significance. I keep reading there are practical reasons (easy access for setup) and aero reasons, but somehow I keep reading here it has a different suspension characteristic. Can anybody point me to somewhere I can read up on that?

This is probably a good place to start.

Thank you for taking the time to find and post it, but I was referring to the difference between pushrod and pullrod.

[Zynerji]

engineers that spent 10k hours studying aerodynamics with phd degrees: "why haven't we thought about what Lewis said to us "

You would be surprised. Very few cars are perfectly setup right out of the box. A lifetime of car setup, driving preferences, and driver input is extremely valuable. These are things us engineers tunnel vision out, but are necessary to extract the most out of the car

I dont discard the importance of the driver feedback, but it is off-season and the car is only in the simulator.

"show them where we need to improve and what direction we need to go in"- I love Lewis and his attitude toward his team (mostly), sorry but this is a ridiculous statement, if it is exactly in this form. Lewis was complaining all the time about rear downforce in the previous season, and below was James Allison's answer to that,

“So if a driver says they are lacking rear downforce - bang, I’ve solved it. Go to the rear downforce shop, get me some rear downforce. That’s the point it becomes slightly less helpful. But at that point you just have accept the car is lacking in a certain thing and it’s our job, as Lewis points out, he doesn’t design the car, it’s our job to respond with the solutions that bring that."

I think it's more transitional. Like "When I downshift quickly, and I am hard on the brakes, I need the front wing to scrape the track, and slowly rebound after I reapply power so I can take a tighter line...".

I don't think it's like Lewis saying "Maybe we could get away with a 74.998 radius on the bodywork?"

[chrisc90]

I dare bet that the vast majority of changes and design changes needed were decided between the summer break and end of season.
I mean your not going to change the front suspension geometry/style with 1and a bit months left before the start of the season. Especially given the big effect if has downstream. Id imagine at this stage, the build of any team is going through the finer finessing of aero details trying to get optimisation of the design they are going to use.

[AMG.Tzan]

If they don’t go for anti dive and anti lift suspensions again this year, they better not show up at all!

I really don’t know what to expect from Allison this time around! At first I thought of the Aston Martin route but then I thought this team never copies a whole concept from others! Sure they’ll copy some ideas from Red Bull but I still expect something original…

The gearbox might be another talking point! For sure they’ll have to redesign it so that they can get more expansion in the diffuser! So all in all I expect big mechanical changes instead of aero changes…

[Venturiation]

Speaking to select media including Motorsport.com, Russell said he felt “more confident going into this [2023-2024 winter] break” because Mercedes has been “working on the new [W15] concept for a long time and there’s been so much due diligence gone into that concept”.

“Whereas I think last year it was all a little bit rushed,” he added.

“We didn’t have all the information to hand, we may have jumped to a couple of conclusions without thoroughly going through the consequences.

“And we learned when the car hit the ground this year that we made a step forward in some regards, but it came with a lot of baggage and we hadn’t taken that into consideration.

“So, I think we’ve done a great job to truly understand what we need.

“We’ve obviously had a further 12 months’ experience to further understand the car and what brings the performance.

“I think last year we put all our eggs in one basket and that wasn’t a basket that provided the performance we were expecting.

“[But], the fact is we’ve got to close a huge gap.

“The Red Bull dominance this year is probably the greatest - I think statistically it is the most dominant car ever, so we’ve all got a huge task on our hands.

“But I’m going into next year with an open mind.

“I don’t think anyone’s expecting either us, McLaren, Aston Martin or Ferrari to make that step straightaway.

“But [I’m] definitely confident we won’t fall into some of the same traps we did this [last] year.”
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/russ ... /10561923/

[K1Plus]

This to me seems that the W14 could have been a good car if it were designed with a lower ride height, but not too low like the W13, rather than the "conservative" approach with a high ride James Allison said.

Still, doesn't change the fact they need to change the chassis and layout of the internals if they want to change the concept, as I've said the car of 2024 was a Frankenstein. It was still good for what it was, the Frankencar.

I have faith in the W15, hopefully at least a few wins for the car, 3-4 would be considered a good step up.

[DinkLv]

I just found out Mercedes leaked a very interesting piece of CpT cut section in one of their recent videos:





Seems like the front tyre wake is involved in some significant circulation due to outwash happening only in the lower part, and the only mitigation measure during the "Zero Sidepod" era was the tip vortex from the side pod wing? I guess the top left part of the low CpT area is probably from this vortex but that really doesn't seem like a robust solution to make sure clean air reaches the inner side of the rear wheel in a controllable manner, especially under yaw

[BassVirolla]

I just found out Mercedes leaked a very interesting piece of CpT cut section in one of their recent videos:



https://i.imgur.com/mJNFXeX.png

Seems like the front tyre wake is involved in some significant circulation due to outwash happening only in the lower part, and the only mitigation measure during the "Zero Sidepod" era was the tip vortex from the side pod wing? I guess the top left part of the low CpT area is probably from this vortex but that really doesn't seem like a robust solution to make sure clean air reaches the inner side of the rear wheel in a controllable manner, especially under yaw

Look at the front wing pictured in the screenshot. They've not leaked anything.

[Gabriox]

Toto had mentioned that with the w13, they went too low with the ride height. After lobbying for the 15mm raise in floor edge. He stated that they were too cautious with the w14 ride height and ran it too high. I hope they get it right with the w15 because there will be no excuses this time. I believe that in Texas and Brazil they were experimenting with the ride height. As far as the suspension goes, I won't be suprise if mercedes keep the push rod - pull rod and change other mechanical aspects of it.

Well there in lies the problem along with this statement from Toto in the recent podcast post Abu Dhabi:

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cH ... HQAAAAAQFA

Two cars that had very little bouncing straight away were Redbull and McLaren, guess what suspension they are using. From the outset Newey who was aware of ground effect issues designed a car with the best solution to have a stable platform throughout and this is what is now in the top 2 cars. If Merc are going to stick to same push pull config then it will be another zero pod deja vu. They will most likely pull Aston and Williams down if they stick to the same philosophy with the rear.

According to motorsport IT, they seem to be sticking with the pull rod in the rear. But I will take this news with a grain of salt. I am no engineer but can you run a pull rod suspension or push rod in both front and rear?