Spare Parts (F1 odds and ends)

I'm not going to feel bad about Mercedes engine not being on top anymore. They've had by far the best engine for years, the others have just done a better job.

 

its the other teams that are most affected.

Aston design might be good, might not but it looked on the right track. Unfortunately yits not dead slow.

Williams are toast again

Mclaren who looked hopefully have multiple issues.

Meanwhile all the ferrari power teams look hot.

 

That's kinda the name of the game, out engineering your opponents. Something Merc have been doing for a long time. They're going to have work hard to get out of this mess.

 

I was reading up on this earlier today because like everyone else I am thinking the Merc engine seems to have problems since all the Merc powered cars are struggling. Merc themselves seem to be 5th or 6th fastest in quali so does suggest the other Merc teams have failed in aero design or have been complacent, thinking it was the best engine. Freezing the development for 3 years seems a little nuts if the racing is to be unpredictable. Also makes Lewis and his 8th seem an unlikely outcome but that itself is not an argument. It can't all be aero, a new floor in Aus will inform us of that perhaps. Merc themselves have used space technology for the cooling requirements whereas their customers presumably have not gone to that extreme.
My understanding is an appeal can be made to allow a further upgrade to the engine if a team or teams are to be disadvantaged for the next 3 years.
Let's hope this is resolvable without requesting a bending of the intended rules. At the moment I am loving the season with it's new generation of drivers being able to come to the fore. Even with the issues fixed, Lewis has some serious challengers who are also very entertaining.

 

I do presume the factory team gets the best engine and the customer engines are slightly lower powered just to ensure they are second best. the point on the space age cooling is probably a great one as it might explain some difference between being absolutely last and being midfield.

melbourne is not going to be fun for merc as its a fairly aero intense track with a lot of old tarmac and is quasi street etc. I think they are in for a wolrd of hurt here.

The ferrari for me is red hot favourite going into melbourne, for all the same reasons the mercedes is not. stability, traction, tyre management etc etc.

 

What they supply has to be exact as far as I'm aware, but I guess that doesn't come with all the information they could use to extract the absolute best from them... I would imagine at least.

 

Freezing engine development is stupid. If Merc or any other team that wants to spend most of their budget on the engine to the detriment of aero etc let them. Isn’t that the point of having a cap, teams have a set amount they can spend each year to spend on what they want? What penalties do they have for spending over budget? What ever they spend over budget gets taken away from next years budget is what should happen.

 

Makes sense. Although Merc say there is unlikely to be engine performance differences that matter between the manufacturers but that then says only the Merc teams messed up on the aero, which I find hard to believe. Might be cooling as has been said. Australia and Imola may give us some more facts to go on.

 

I personally think merc don't want to admit yet that it is the engine and fuel.

They seem to want to talk about aero but the whole design approach they have gone for was supposed to hugely reduce drag.

Last week they were blaming rear wing but they came to the saudi race and were still slower.

The questions that i have read are:

a) minimal side pods v outwashing of front tyre wake? are Mercedes suffering as they've bot a rear tyre drag issue due to not enough outwash?

b) If the merc engine is slow then why is russel at 327kmph alongside le clerc in the speed tap at Jeddah. yes 5 of the bottom 6 are merc but its williams mercs, poor performing mclarens and hamilton who messed it up.

c) the quality speed trap time last year was 326kmph. hamilton. this year verstappen was 335. massively up on his own top speed but the rest were in and around that 326/327 max speed.

Somehow rusell managed to be decently quick through the speed trap and that suggests if you drive the car a certain way to get it flowing through conrers or have a certain set up you'll find the power? Or is russell just the new Lewis hamilton and wringing things he has no right to out of a car?

there is something fundamentally there in terms of how the teams have approached thing in ground effect, suspension, outwash for drag reduction and wing design that makes one car quick and stable and the others absolutely the pits.

I think ferrari are the best out of corners and most stable through the mid and slow speeds stuff so will win most races but red bull are the quickest car on the straights.

the commonalities between the ferrari powered cars are easily explained aren't they? alpha and the haas are relatively similar and follow the template laid down by the part supplier (ferrari)

 

Former F1 boss Max Mosley shot himself after terminal cancer diagnosis


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-60919994

 

Horrible way to go but at least he went out on his own terms and not the way the disease would have made him.

 

The pain of terminal cancer can be too much and I can understand why he did that.

 

For all his faults he was a man who knew his own mind and never put up with any ****, including from his own body.

 

Chassis and aero efficiency makes up a bigger part of the Powertrain performance than you’d initially think, especially outside of qualifying. With a fixed amount of fuel, if you’re unstable and unable to carry speed through part load corners, or spending energy overcoming drag, you’re going to have less deployment due to less energy recovery. Fastest speeds won’t be the best measure for this as it’s going to show more in the average across the race, rather than an overtake mode, with DRS and a tow instance that might set the top figure.

Merc PU might not be the best any more (and I’m not sure I believe that even if the gap might be the smallest it’s ever been), it’s definitely in the ballpark. It’s shocking to fans, because most probably feared the worst (from a competitive point of view) and expected a season long reliable version of the “Brazil screamer”, to turn up this year. Hopefully they can follow through with the rules as intended and not have loads of political arguments about this - it’s still dragging a clearly sub optimal car to 3rd best, which is nowhere near the definition of uncompetitive.

What I think is more interesting and likely, is that the PU architecture seems to have been optimised to enable the no pods concept, probably with some compromises including CoG height. If it turns out it’s the wrong way to go vs. the outwash inducing designs, they can fix the aero, but might not be able to fully re-optimise the installation. Conversely, if no pods eventually proves the right route the other non-Merc teams will struggle to fully optimise that.

 

I thinknoyu are right about the high centre of gravity. And probably the engine power.

At this point they are unstable for sure

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/60932994

Las Vegas GP in 2023. Track looks…..basic!!

 

Bahrain oval vibes

 

Guenther Steiner is loving K-Mag's points-scoring run...

"Last year, for two points, I would have f**ked the whole paddock. It’s a good place to be."

 

why didnt he?