Mercedes AMGW04

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Apparently Mercedes have got their passive active suspension working (according to Scarbs):

Revitalised for 2013, Mercedes had a bumpy start to testing with a gearbox failure for Nico Rosberg and a mechanical failure sending Lewis Hamilton off. Although testing then continued as a beacon of reliability, first practice had an eerie echo of the early days with Rosberg again stopped by gearbox problems and the Hamilton sent off the track by a loose splitter.

Technical maladies notwithstanding, the W04's pace seen in testing seems to be real. Visually the new car appears little changed from the 2012 car, so it seems the car has simply matured. A new front wing concept, Coanda exhausts and revised suspension appeared to have been targets for development.

To fully understand the effect of the exhaust flow, Mercedes has permanently fitted these three sensors in the floor to measure air pressure in the critical area ahead of the diffuser. This is where the exhaust flow passes and the better this area is understood, the better Mercedes can tailor the exhaust to create more downforce.

Already this year, one area much talked about is the Mercedes interconnected suspension. Termed FRIC by the German press (presumably for Front Rear Inter Connected) the system is in fact far more complex than that.

Equally the system is not as new as has been reported. In fact in 2011 Mercedes had already raced its car with suspension using complex hydraulic interconnections. A paddock source confirmed the car has this fully interconnected system fitted in Melbourne this weekend.

Renault had used a simple hydraulic link between its front and rear suspension since at least 2008. The engineer responsible was ex-bike racer/designer Dr Rob Tuluie, who had linked the front and rear suspension with a passive hydraulic link to reduce dive under braking.

Such systems had been used in the pre-active suspension era two decades ago, but were reinvented for the high-rake low-fronted set-up that makes the current cars work so well. Tuluie moved to Mercedes and has developed the system to replace conventional springs and dampers, to link not just the suspension front-to-rear, but also left-to-right to control roll as well as pitch (dive).

Effectively it replicates active suspension, although as an entirely passive system. A system of pipes alters the way fluid moves forwards-backwards and sideways as the car negotiates the track. It's possible to tune for each different change in attitude, but in doing so it's easy to get lost in set-up. It's likely that Mercedes has lost a lot of performance while perfecting this system over the past two years.

Aldo Costa has been hailed as the person to have helped Tuluie refine the system in the latter part of 2012. With the FRIC suspension fully optimised, the car can run the suspension soft for slow corner grip and a stiffer for fast corners, allied to being able to run more rake, with the front of the car lower for better front wing performance and a higher rear ride height.

If Mercedes has found a way to reliably tune this system other teams will need to re-engineer their simple front-to-rear interconnected systems.
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Interesting. I wonder how much Mercedes ran that last season. Their suspension was so soft in the early rounds, their outside endplate seemed to be constantly touching the ground during heavy cornering, Rosberg had some insane roll during turn 1 in China when he got pole. And their mechanical grip was excellent in Monaco. I wonder if this is part of the reason they have such a hard time understanding the tyres, if it's so easy to get lost in setup it must be impossible to understand the tyres; is it a purely mechanical issue causing problems or the way the tyres are responding to it?
 
Autosport understands that no other team has removed its mechanical suspension for front-to-rear interconnected suspension system, as anti roll bars and torsion springs are still evident. So Mercedes has the march on this technology. Its lap time advantage will vary by track but a couple of tenths is the likely gain. For many teams the investment is going to be hard to justify, compared to a relatively cheap proven mechanical suspension.

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AbsolutelyGlorious said:
Interesting. … I wonder if this is part of the reason they have such a hard time understanding the tyres, if it's so easy to get lost in setup it must be impossible to understand the tyres; is it a purely mechanical issue causing problems or the way the tyres are responding to it?
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Yes, I think this is very much part of Mercedes' recent difficulties.

It is important to remember that the tyres form an integral part of the whole 'suspension system' (although they are of course, not suspended!), in that they are the primary 'reactive' element to the track surface, and that this initial reaction is subsequently 'controlled' (or attempted to be controlled!) by various devices linking wheels to chassis, which fall under the common tag of 'suspension'.

Since this particular Mercedes' innovation is designed to feed back – and therefore also 'to' – all four wheels for every movement experienced by each tyre individually, I can see lots of headache potential. I would expect the car to feel rather 'wooden'* by comparison to more conventional systems, which enable a driver to more intuitively understand what is happening at each corner of the car.
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*Perhaps it should come as no surprise that it is Mercedes** who are pioneering this route? When one considers that Mercedes road cars have often been criticised for alienating the driver through mechanical wizardry (particularly with regard to suspension) and that subsequent generations of cars have tended to reinforce this tradition, one might conclude that Mercedes' corporate mentality is to try to reduce the need for a driver as much as possible, rather than see him or her as integral to the vehicle and its purpose of transporting all transported by it!

**The easiest comparison is their big domestic road car rival: BMW; who take pride in the philosophy of deliberately involving the driver.
 
ErnieBecclestone said:
Eternal, what pain, I feel no pain mate, take some of the Hamilton medicine you will feel much better !!!!
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Hamilton did well today to be honest. Now he has the whole team behind him I am sure he will be unstoppable, nothing wrong with that right?
 
I'm remaining cautious the acid test is whether or not they can actually develop this car through the year. We know that they can produce a quick car out of the box the bigger test is can they sustain this early season pace?
 
StoneRosesRam said:
I'm remaining cautious the acid test is whether or not they can actually develop this car through the year. We know that they can produce a quick car out of the box the bigger test is can they sustain this early season pace?
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I think they probably can. In previous years they've given up because the title has gone, but that's unlikely to happen with Hamilton there.
 
Nobody likes it when team orders come in to play, but they do serve a valuable purpose. Had Vettel/Webber taken each other out, or Hamilton/Rosberg raced and run out of fuel, those points could be what lose you a championship.

Using them to favor one driver for an entire season though isn't so good.
 
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