Mercedes W03

Just to make everybody more nauseous, check out the visibility coming towards the end of Hangar Strait in to Stowe. Bloody 'ell.

[video=youtube;rCfN83QU1mY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCfN83QU1mY[/video]

 

Probably should have looked at the posts above before posting that....

*whistles*

*wonders off*


Nothing to see here.

 

To be fair, the camera makes it look worse than it is.

Whilst vibration and buffeting affect a camera directly (even when helmet mounted), one's brain takes care of such aberration, such that one is left with a 'smoothed out', fully comprehensible impression of what is going on. To put it bluntly, the real experience allows one's brain to compensate for almost all of the vibes and buffeting. This (or any helmet mounted video) makes it looks rather more difficult than it really is. That said, the general angle of view is obviously correct; but I say again that 'reality' is easier to make sense of.

 

I think my brain would be too preoccupied with thinking about jettisoning my lunch to sort all that lot out for me.

 

Err… Ah yes, there is that. Then again, it's a bit like sea-sickness in that it can be 'dialled out' through familiarity. I'm not a fisherman and not much use on the crest of a wave, but very few fishermen get sick in their little boats, even in the worst of storms.

 

Thankfully, I don't suffer from sea sickness, though I think I'd likely suffer from internal organ compression sickness.

 

It's odd isn't it? I mean that being able to cope with severe G-Forces does not make one immune from sea-sickness?

I remember a particularly bad channel crossing many years ago. The weather was so bad that there had been no crossing for three days; but luck was on my side: only hours after arriving at Dover and preparing to settle in for the night with a hotel at the ready, they suddenly announced that they would sail! Yippee! - We were still on schedule!

…More than three hours later* we approached Calais and, still wretching but with nothing more to give, I swear I'd lost 5% of my body weight by the time the ramps went down.

[Edit: In those days it was a 90 minute crossing. We'd had to detour north, then east, then, south to get down again…]

 

Bwahahahaha.... My mum had one like that a few years ago. Apparently the ferry was like a bath toy bouncing around in the channel. She was lucky though... Some of ferrys behind them couldn't dock and spent hours bouncing around in the channel until it was safe to dock.

I had a pretty bad ferry crossing from Rotterdam to Hull a few years back. It was bad enough that I was catapulted from a top bunk to the floor of a cabin. The whole boat smelled like vom. I was fine though. Must have been the Heineken

 

Dammit, the nose is almost out of shot.

 

Hahaha… happy days, what?
You've reminded me about the docking: that was a major problem on my trip too. I'll never forget the drive off a ramp that was almost as sea-sick as myself. I'd watched several failed attempts at lowering it into the right place. The truck driver wasn't too happy with the sideways movement as we straddled the sea either! And once back on dry land (actually it was very wet), my eyes (and whatever remained of my stomach) were still very much at sea…

 

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Simple cure to that... A full English.

 

Now there's a thing of beauty. And yeah, I'm with you on the breakfast thing: I think I finally faced it sometime around evening when we'd settled into the hotel at Le Mans!

 

Can't beat a good breakie to settle the ole Roger Mellie.

 

Last year's top four all seem to have radically different noses, which is a good thing in my opinion. Ignoring the step itself, the closest front-end comparison to the W03 seems to be Caterham's design.

 

Is that a good thing for Caterham, or a bad thing for mercedes though??

 

Impossible to tell at this stage. But starting with a blank canvass and (independently) ending up with a concept similar to Ross Brawn's team will work out more often than not.

I'm no aerodynamics expert, but while the Caterham is no looker it is an elegantly simple design.

 

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That nose looks almost square <puke>

 

Pictures from the launch:

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