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HOW DID MERC GET IT SO WRONG? Scarbs analysis by Peter Windsor
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- Опубліковано 15 сер 2024
- After two years in the relative wilderness, Mercedes are back in 2024 with a more conventional, larger-sweet-spot car that should enable Sir Lewis Hamilton and George Russell to apply serious pressure on Red Bull-Honda. Why, though - and having exhausted so many different aero solutions - has it taken the Mercedes design team so long to recover from the disaster that was 2022? Craig Scarborough in this video suggests that the underlying problem was not just aerodynamic: it came down, instead, to one of the most basic elements in racing car design - centre of gravity.
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Man, the aero numbers in the tunnel must’ve been massive for this sacrifice because we’ve now found out they sacrificed:
- ride quality
- drag
- driver feel
- engine cooling
- engine performance
- CoG
- weight
Among others, just to make this work. Crazy
yes its mind boggling and now think about red bull, going that sidepod design but probably not sacrificing these points. that would give them easily the most aero car. im curious how that plays out.
To me it´s especially scary to see Newey seemingly making this concept work, while the whole team of Mercedes, which certainly has some very capable engineers, couldn´t quite pull it of. This guy is a freakin wizard...
@@SchmitzelhausNewey doesn't work alone
@@ranchalita😂 love it
@@99cya this redbull is not a zeropod car. ffs its in the name, zeroPOD. there are still gigantic sidepods on the redbull, just because the inlets and shoulders exist, doesnt make it a zeropod. the merc had to create a unique chassis and cooling tech to make it work, and we have now seen under the bodywork of the redbull, and it does not exist.
This is the most sensible and believable F1 you tube channel out there... Thanks.
totally agree with you
I completely disagree. While Scarbs exudes confidence and appears to have answers for almost everything, those deeply involved in real race car development often approach discussions with a humility that contrasts with Scarbs' level of certainty. It's noteworthy how professionals in the field seldom express such unwavering confidence about even their own race cars as Scarbs does only by watching pictures and speculating.
@@BJS414 Agreed. Scarbs is at least still much more knowledgeable than someone like Sam Collins from F1 TV, but yes - exuding confidence does not necessarily define a good engineer/ technical analyst.
That actually makes a lot of sense, explaining why the Merc was always SO much better later in the race compared to at the start of the race. Once the fuel was burned out, the car's center of gravity moved down significantly more than its rivals, so suddenly the car came alive.
Right? How can it possible be that simple and merc messed it up
@@johnnychimpo7539they knew it.. the budget cap limited them to change everything right away.
@chimpo7539 At least the 2020/2021 Mercedes (if not earlier) already had that style of fuel tank though. It wasn't a new design for 2022, the cut-in for the radiators to sit tighter to the monocoque (and hence taller fuel tank) was on the Mercedes for a while -- it wasn't an issue before.
I don't know, it was always a decent race car, didn't do too well in quali.
4:49 love that point Peter. Despise that people now a days seem to forget every SMALL detail adds up. It’s not JUST the aero package.
Russell won a race and got 19 top 5's in that car.
@@mvd4436 How many championships? Or are Mercedes and their fans happy with being first of the losers?
Scarbs really needs a yt channel
And real 🎤
You're watching it unfold right in front of you.
I feel like he's too busy for that, unfortunately. Does too many consulting gigs ect.
He doesn't have time. What he does with Peter Windsor is fine.
He used to write a good number of articles online… I miss those days.
Another issue which the fuel tank influences is the weight distribution front to rear. Let’s say you have a car which wears down the rear tires faster than the front tires then it makes sense to push the fuel tank backwards and put a bit ballast at the front. In this scenario the car runs with the ideal weight distribution at the beginning of the race. When the rear tires starts to degrade during the race the weight distribution slowly starts to push the weight distribution forwards due to fuel usage hereby reducing the stress on the rear tires. Obviously if the front tires are the weak link one would need to do the opposite. Maybe the forward position of the tank in the zero pod cars gave an issue like this as well? Greetings from Denmark
You need to send Scarbs a nice microphone 😉
I've been saying the too far forward position played a huge role, it's like changing your mouse sensitivity, the rear feeling is amplified, you think you're losing the back when you're not so you can't push the car as far.
And you feel the g-forces more on high-speed corners, especially on your head and neck, since it's not in the center of rotation of the car.
@@The_Curious_Cat Those Merc drivers are really robust when you think of it
Thank you, that was very enlightening
Merc started out in 2022 one year behind in development, then started 2022 two years behind in development, now they're two years behind the RB19, which Red Bull already scrapped. The Turbo-Hybrid era was a blessing and a curse for Merc.
Red Bull haven’t scrapped anything.
Don't need a perfectly tuned car when you can blast past the entire grid with 120 horsepower surplus.
Grosjean said the Mercedes "Party Mode" engine setting was unbelievable.
@@3rdGenGuyMercedes were still building superb chassis thanks to Aldo Costa and James Allison from 2014-2021. How do you think they were outperforming Ferrari in 2017 & 2018 during their championship battles? Yes, the engine played a part in it. But, don’t try to discredit what they were doing aerodynamically wise. On top of that there was no budget cap. If there was still no budget cap now I’m sure they would’ve caught up to Red Bull by now.
@@3rdGenGuy “Red Bull boss Christian Horner reckons Ferrari's engine has replaced Mercedes as the benchmark engine in Formula One”
-ESPN Jul 11, 2018
@@Alumnikiidyou mean when Derrari was cheating with their engine?
If Red Bull's 24 design is any indication. Mercedes was right on general principles, but they failed in execution. The vertical inlets are on the new RB, and it has the very tall "shoulders" so the center of gravity is higher. But Newey just paired the good parts of the Mercedes design with the stability of an existing platform. This lets RB accomplish new concepts well within the buget cap. If the 24 RB is as fast as it seems, it's the crowning jewel in Newey's career. He literally said "I can fix her" and did.
They haven’t even had practice yet. Are you always so premature
The vertical inlets were not a central solution to the zero pod design, but a symptom to get around the rules about sidepod regulations. Kyle.engineers made a great video about it.
Additionally, the tall shoulders are nothing but empty space, you could see it in the RB and in the merc from last year when they took off the covers. It is not high center of gravity, since there’s nothing actually in the canons, its fundamental purpose is aerodynamic: it keeps cockpit losses in the middle of the car, and it also gives additional volume for heat internally to move into
Rb's design is completely different from MB. Its more closer to ferrari's s-duct from last year and the shoulder canon's from last year's design.
Okay, but Lewis always said they had a better race car than a qualifying car. I have to agree with that, which slightly contradicts the fuel tank hypthesis, as they would be running very low fuel during qualyfying, likely significantly lower than, say, the last 30% of the race.
Yeah fair point, but you have to setup the car for race pace also, so maybe when doing long runs with all the weight up high compromised their qualy setup. Hard to know
Solid point.
It could be like RB in qualy they have tire warm up issues. They can extend stops and still have tire life left at the end of the race.
What were they thinking? I didnt know about the fuel tank
Shows how important it is to get the concept right. Items that affect mass distribution, particularly where it changes through the race, need to be fo used on both keeping COG low, and not adding to pitching rotational inertia
I will never forget Michael Schumacher's quote: "the most important part of the body is your ass." You feel the track, what the car is doing primarily through your ass. And I assume Hamilton's critique that the cockpit is too forward is connected with Michael's observations. But after such dominance, I would never have guessed Mercedes would fail so hard two years in a row. What's even more impressive is that nobody could rival Red Bull the last two years. Let's hope this year they'll have more competent rivals and we'll see more action at the front of the pack.
Hans Schtuck called it "The Po-Po meter".
Even driving my street car i rely on that same old premise🤔 the filling of the tires
@@stephensegal5187 UA-cam censored my comment. We (sim racers) have telemetry app called po-po-m-e-t-e-r. (I hope this will go past youtube censoring.)
Ferrari did until the TD changed the floor.
Up until that point only unreliability and driver error prevented Ferrari being quite far ahead in both championships:
Baku - engine failure whilst leading the race
Barcelona - engine failure whilst leading the race
Austria - engine failure prevented a 1/2 finish
France - Driver error whilst leading the race
The Ferrari was never the same post TD and I’m not even going to mention their strategy errors.
Some of it, I think, was that they got their only win (a 1/2!) late in 2022, so they started thinking they could refine their way out of the zero-pod issues. If they hadn’t done that, they might have done more radical changes in 2023. That said, 2022 also suffered badly from a demoralized Lewis Hamilton. Between being robbed of his 8th championship and getting stuck in a car that was miserable to drive, he just wasn’t himself that year. We saw him come back in 2023, which was how he got third in the championship (and nearly got second) despite being in what was usually the fourth-fastest car on the grid.
There would be a centre of gravity in downforce pressure too. was probably way out. Like how aston martin kept adding downforce and going slower last year then they reverted to the old aero package and alonso got on podium because the balance came back
This needed to be discussed. Mercedes was probably seeing so much downforce in the simulation from zero pod. It's not that they didn't know about the high center of gravity. But it probably didn't matter. Like how early fan cars were often very boxy. The advantages of making the biggest fan box you could outweighed everything else.
One thing I always found weird was people who dislike when Hamilton critiques the feel of a car and I don’t get it. There are few people in the world who have driven as many high quality vehicles as he has. Sure his opinion is just one persons… but he has more than earned the right to give it.
Wow! You have to wonder what they were thinking. Center of gravity should never be an afterthought. Look at rally, where the co- driver sits lower than the driver to buy them a few millimeters of CG drop.
Great video, PW and Scarbs!!
Bizarrely, they put all their eggs into a low drag concept, despite the fact that it negatively impacted center of gravity, driver placement, roll center...not at all a balanced concept.
There is the center of gravity and the center of pressure. Between them you can have a hefty moment. If that moment shifts with fuel load it can affect stability a lot.
The rules are to blame. If the rules allowed teams to redesign build and test, it would be so much better for the racing
@@david-joeklotz9558 they all agreed that having endless spending only benefited the rich teams like Mercedes and the poor teams like Williams could never catch up.
@@LewytheflyI honestly don't see the benefits. The rich teams are still in front, the poor teams are still behind. Maybe 3 years of cost cap in effect is not enough to see big changes but I dont think it will help a lot
@@FelipeBorgesJFThe Qualifying times are much closer together than the ever were
@@FelipeBorgesJFWhat do you mean? Mercedes got outperformed by Aston Martin and McLaren, both Mercedes customers teams, at different times last year. That would be unthinkable without a cost cap. The midfield teams have essentially caught up to the front of the field now, a top team qualifying a few 10ths slower than normal can find themselves 10th on the grid, it never used to be this close in qualifying.
What a knowledgeable pair of guys
@Kev79 They are guessing...
These guys are to F1 engineers, what bookkeepers are to chartered accountants...
Are the new perelli tyres this year all the same diameters ?
This seems to be an odd question but here is the problem...
The use of different tyre compounds on the Birhan track at different times of day have thrown up a lot of teams bottoming the cars which could get penalties by the FIA. The track is bumpy due to temperature diernel ranges so setting the ride height may effecting this fine torrerence during qualifying and the race.
What has happened to cause these bottoming events since last year ? It is thought that each of the different compounds are actually changing diameters in use, teams might complain that they will have to set higher ride heights on their cars at speed and temperature due to a variation in ride height during the lap.
Will the teams have to set higher ride height for the race compromising their race performance?
I think there must be a good amount of engineering hubris that resulted from years of success.
I'm hoping they've got things back on track and can be more competitive this year. Anything to break the monotony of RB total domination. All props to RB, but it's really far more interesting when multiple teams have a chance.
After 8 years of Merc Constructors and 7 Merc drivers Championships……you now complain abt 2 RBR Championships…..🙄
@@Redlingsteineveryone was also complaining about Merc’s dominance, so nothing is unusual or hypocritical here
And as much as Merc consistently win championships, the seasons were competitive most times
@AZWings Two words... James Allison.
James Allison inherited the W08 platform from Aldo Costa...a platform that remained low take throughout those regulations...
James Allison led the W13 team, and Mike Elliott was the fall guy for its failure.
@@Redlingstein Sure, Merc was dominant, but at least they were beatable. RB, especially last year, was simply untouchable.
@@AZWings Not true. Remember Hamilton (AND Bottas) lapping more than half the field every other race? Verstappen never had that kind of gap last season. He just was so scarely consistent.
Also with downforce cars you need to consider the centre of pressure. The changes will move that also
That's interesting, it makes a lot of sense about when they'd be lower on fuel they'd have much better pace at the end of the race, very interesting delve into what's going on with their previous car.
The biggest problem merc had was the car hitting the track and unsealing the floor, and not having enough suspension or downforce to keep the car sealed, vs bucking up and down sealing/unsealing. So they had to raise the car and killed the underbody downforce. In addition merc had a disproportionate HP advantage for a long time, and they sculpted their downforce/drag to suit that. But when they went to the bio fuel merc lost more than others found, so they also had a top speed issue to compound the drag issues.
Thank you!
Merc got it so wrong because Toto is no Ross Brawn. Ross is a technical genius and turned 4 teams in title winning teams, two in dominated form. Ross set the technical direction and worked directly with the engineers to develop this cars. Toto is a finance guy with no engineering experience. He was totally at the mercy of the engineers to do everything. The ‘14 car was developed under Brawn and Toto had nothing to do with it. He just inherited that monster and got all the credit. When the new ‘22 regs came along Toto was totally out of his league. He had no experience or knowledge to read the technical regs and set up a direction, like Brawn had done multiple times before.
Toto is the team principal, not the chief technical officer.
@@jstoli996c4s Ross was also team principal at Merc, but that’s exactly my point about Toto. Without Ross there they are lost. There’s no one on the tech side as good as Ross Brawn to guide them like he did in ‘10 - ‘13.
I’m shocked frankly, that no teams took the RB19 concept further. Only RB dared to pursue the concept radically further and it’s disappointing especially since some teams didn’t spend the budget allotted. Red Bull retained the inherent qualities of RB19 and looked further assuming the other teams would nail the RB-19 and many teams haven’t even accomplished that. Very disappointing :-(
When do you predict in future will we learn the real reason bihaind Merc’s poor fortunes? As an engineer, I’m really intrigued to know !
Thanks for bringing us Scarbs 🎉 This would have lots of knock-on effects such as the need for suspension necessities (to compensate for raised CofG) over the niceties such as the aero of the suspension.
A very good analysis, thanks!
Maybe because Mercedes being a big organisation is the reason it took them longer to twig the problem.
RB are a tight ship with Newey who calls the shots on aero presumably.
your videos are always so quite. could you please turn the overall volume up please? ty
Four inches back is everything for Lewis. He told them that two years ago and was ignored
Nothing like a good 4 inches
I agree, four inches is huge
I'd imagine it has something to do with going to Ferrari next year.
Yeh and that Hamilton guy never talks bollox. 🤔
@@fullenglish3371 Your user name says enough.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like just a poor understanding of the new regs, it also sounds like poor engineering choices, compromising the CoM and allowing other detriments to affect driver positioning/feel, weight distribution and tyre wear, to facilitate the zero pods which Merc admitted were not *that* impactful on performance last year. Would getting this right have fixed the rest of the car? Probably not to the degree of being able to challenge RB, with the other issues they'd faced with suspension and aero/drag reduction, but it could have been one less area to have to fix over the winter...
My sentiments exactly , the floor design especially and the lack of surface area around the car to direct air as needed 🤔 but not listening to the drivers regarding certain issues 🤔
Do you think shrinking the wheelbase of the car while still keeping what you need be a better option.like packaging everything in the size of a 2005 footprint?
If true it is absolutely crazy it has taken them 2 years to get to the bottom of this. I wonder what RB are going to do about their CoG if they are heading to the zeropod design.
If the car was porpoising because of the ground effect followed by bouncing with the fuel tank that high. The harmonic behaviour of the fuel (the oscillations) sitting up that high would be a contributing factor to the bouncing. The fuel in end becomes its own damper, as the oscillation’s decay.
I can still remember the look on Hamiltons face and the sense of foreboding in his voice when asking ‘why does our car look so different’ at the start of 2022.
I know Lewis isn't an engineer, but he was asking all the right questions, and Mercedes wasn't listening.
All of this getting it wrong at Merc, and specifically taking so long to correct it (yet to see this year) has clearly been a big factor in Lewis leaving
if the higher center of gravity issue is so obvious with the narrow sidepods, how come a factory of 900 people with technical know how didn't see it. It's baffling how they kept that concept for 18 months before changing. I thought Mercedes were not a stubborn outfit.
Here are my thoughts on this. Mercedes had so much success. Their core successful team leads were drafted by other teams. They hired and promoted but they lost some of that championship identity. Couple that with the hubris that comes from winning so much they even ignored the most successful driver of all time for two years straight. Imagine that lol
Tunnel vision I'm guessing. It looks like all their technical leads were only interested in data from the wind tunnel and forgot the basics which is why Hamilton was so infuriated when they completely ignored his input and ultimately left the team.
Well RB now have the high centre of gravity, it's just balanced better
A wind tunnel or engine dynamic have never won a race.
Too many engineers = a lost Full Concept Design.
Analogy being: "too many cooks in the kitchen..."
That's easy, the computer model and the wind tunnel model said it should work, so they kept trying to make it work. They thought they had an outstanding solution if they could just work out the kinks. They wouldn't be the first team to lose heaps of time chasing something that was almost working, look at Mclaren and the MP4-18, 18 months in development and they never even raced it.
The question shouldn't be pointed towards Mercedes, specifically. It should be asked towards Redbull for how they got it so right and how their project was in Newey's drawer 7 years ago...
If this was such a massive effect, Merc wouldve been a beast in quali. Which they weren't.
Yip, that's the obvious question...
you're ignoring the part about the forward cockpit and the "feel" (or relative lack thereof) of the car by the driver.
sandbagging maybe?
@@S0ulinth3machin3 What does that have to do with them supposedly gaining speed relative to others towards the end of the race because their center of gravity was lowering?
I think the merc couldn't fire up the tires properly causing the car to slide around early on in the race. Fuel tank being lower should help out alot, but good luck keeping with Max. That dude is in.the zone.
That
Hey Peter, so when is Albon going to Red Bull? In 2025 or 2026 or 2027? And what is percentage, 70% 80% 90% 99%? Thank you
Merc had issues when the team principal wasn’t there last year..so what that tells you is there is a trust issue within the program. It could be due to an insecurity of loosing too many people to other teams or a product of they didn’t learn anything from all those years of success. Ferrari is still reeling from loosing Michael. RB had to learn how to build up to this success the other two just spent their way out of problems rather than be creative
A Because lulu gives great feedback;
B Because Allison has returned;
C Because toto is such an inspiring leader;
D none of the above.
"Cars can't beat max, only a driver can, and that driver hasn't been born yet"
Bro acting like lewis didn't beat him in 2021 had the race director not changed the rules on the last lap 🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@andrewmelton2686 27 months. And counting. Sour luluboy loser.
@@andrewmelton2686 What about Silverstone 2021 when Max was crashed out of the race by Lulu, since we revisiting the 20201 season.
@beanot2622 you mean when hamilton had the apex and therefore commanded the apex and then max cut accross him and crashed himself out?
@@andrewmelton2686 How funny. So the stewards got it all wrong there? Get your knob out of lulu’s behind.
Brilliant commentary
Obviously not an aerodynamist nor physicist myself, but wouldn't the Merc have done well in low-fuel quali runs if they had a fast car under low fuel?
*Q Scarbs:* RB20 runs amazing on C3. Day 1 on (heavy fuel load?) C1 hards it's rear end flopped about like a fishtail. RB20 best thing since sliced 🍞 or _over the top 🏎 "unsinkable" Titanic?_
intelligent and entertaining. Thank you.
I think it clear that once you commit to the package like mercedes did an found out it doesn't perform it difficult to bring a overall change to the entire platform. The package layout took all the investment along with the teams idea , so while everyone is saying this and that remember as Totto said the budget didn't allow them to change radically from what they had 🤔 the ability to package the mechanicals the way they did to use the reduce side concept is engineering on its own 🤔 that was the undoing of the car from lack of surface area to direct air in some way are another.
True, the budget cap didn't allow them make radical changes in-season. However, after the 2022 season, with a fresh budget, they should have either correctly optimized the concept (which they tried and failed at) or changed it---which they've finally done this year.
There's no question that they dropped the ball because they had issues not only with the concept and the execution, they also had wrongly built scale models for wind tunnel testing. That's an unforgivable error for engineers of the elite class.
Mike Elliot just wasn't up to the task.
Not having their huge, locked in engine and advantage is really hurting them
Also questionable how they actually got this huge leg up in engine development to begin with. Glossed over these days.
@@hh-jy1ldBernie Ecclestone said Mercedes knew more than any other team going into the regulations because they helped the fia come up with the regs
@hh-jy1ld you have to understand Merc F1 and Merc HPP power trains are separate entities. Merc HPP are funded by Merc corporate, and they spent (Google it) 1.4 Billion dollars from 2012-16 developing the F1 engine.
Now compare that to Example Ferrari who spent 300 million a year on F1 INCLUDING the engines. There's no way anyone could ever compete with that.
@@ajegelinmerc F1 pushed for the MGU-H back in 2011 because merc corporate had one available as a gift to the F1 team. It had already been ironed out and 100s of millions spent on it. The split turbo also was already developed by Merc head office. It took everyone 5 years to catch up with the MGU-H and split turbo.
@@robh9577 yeah, and then that advantage was locked in via engine freeze and token systems. And all of the British press hailed Hamilton and Mercedes for great engineering but never talked about how it was to the detriment of the sport. Now Red Bull are ahead, the slower teams get MORE development time and all the British media do is complain about Red Bull. I bet their tune would be different if Lewis was driving for Red Bull. It’s also funny to note how they British press is now talking about Ferrari positively too a complete turnaround to years past. It’s pretty sad.
Thanks a lot 👍
No Ross Brown around to put a starting point on a car design….
As a Ferrari fan I actually quite enjoyed how badly the core design decision making was at Merc these last two years 👍
It made 2014-2020 totally worth it to see toto and the gang sad every week. Lol
Yeah, I completely understood all that.
Do you feel that because Newey was designing cars during the previous ground-effects car era it gave him a step up on the rest of the teams?
No. He wrote the book on it and the others could have bought it and read it and improved on the idea's. It's not for Newey to ensure the competition keeps up with their education.
Adrian Newey has spent his entire life designing a car. Yes, that's "car" and not "cars." He has been evolving a concept from his earliest days and refining it with each iteration. He is always keeping an eye on what everyone else is doing, what works for them and what doesn't, and integrates it into his concept if it proves beneficial. Nobody else has been doing what Newey has, which is why they're all playing catch up to last year's car.
Yes, he said as much about the blown diffuser days.
@@FrancisFjordCupola That's like expecting to be great at something by watching tutorials without actually building stuff. Newey faced the challenges of the ground-effect rules under the immense pressure of F1 competition and, therefore, has gained invaluable first-hand experience of the process while most other designer on the grid did/have not. You can read all you want, if you haven't gone season after season dealing with similar challenges, you can't be (as) great at designing cars for the regs.
Newey had the experience to know that porposing was a thing. So he designed the suspensions personally to keep the ride height/attitude locked in. They had like 5 laps of porposing in the first test in 22, and boom it was fixed. Other teams were still dealing with it and bottoming out at the end of last year.
Iþ will forever mistify me why mercedes in effect copied the general shape of the "rokit" williams Russell had to fight with for years at the back of the field, last year.
However, after testing last week, i wonder how many teams, especially outside the big 4 at least, will turn up on thursday or race 2 with versions of redbulls genius zero sidepod design? Typical that Adrian Newy came up with the massive overbite start of the sidepods and that genius vertical slit air intake, maximizing the sidepods front tip aero, and in effect having a separate zero sidepod. The aero efficiency for both must be incredible.
James Allison led the W13 team...
Mike Elliott was the fall guy...
It will come out why Hamilton left the team and the impact his relationships with Allison and Elliott had on his departure.
I like Allison but I do wonder if he led a bold risk taking strategy for the change of regulations and put himself in a position where if he failed, it wasn’t all on him . Now he’s coming back to “save the day” . That said , Elliot never ever filled me with confidence .
This is an interesting but if this really is a correct assumption I am curious why they struggled as well in quali with super low fuel.Any which way i do agree with the assumption that they focused to much on aero and neglected the way the car and the weight of the car influences the relation between the car and the surface.
I heard a black aero engineer was the one who came up with the zero pod idea and Merc bosses didn't want to say it was bad in case they got accused of racism 🤣
I hear you with the fuel etc but then why were Merc only on pole once? It wasn’t just the start of races where they struggled.
Hamilton might not be an engineer, but boy does he know the basics from his 20 years in F1. And they dismissed his comments smh
Mercedes has always done things differently. They got it right with the spilt turbo, interconnected suspension, das and the low rake concept. They didn’t with zero pod design, but they were still the second best team. They know you won’t beat Newey by copying him. That being said, they’re not the powerhouse they used to be, several key players have left. Red Bull now has that strength of staff that Mercedes once had.
The problem was not the fuel tank. The problem was the aero, car balance and suspension, and underfloor. Fuel tank played a minor role.
Problem with w13 and w14 was the suspension the suspension setup they were using was not able to handle the bleeding off downforce I believe rbr has managed to make a me a mechanical version mercs fric plus diff magic
They thought the downforce gains for zero pod where going to be massive, if it had worked we would have called them geniuses. Now they have to restart with a new idea and play catch up. With the cost cap teams cant spend there way out of a hole. And Redbull can keep putting more and more time into bext years and next regs car. So cost cap will keep cars apart. We need stable regs for a long time to bring cars together.
Thanks :)
No lie I fully support scraps. Legit analysis all day. ❤
Whilst the wind tunnel aero numbers may have crunched downforce-wise, with a high fuel tank it must have been awful to drive...No wonder why Lewis was so fed up with last season's car in particular...
Yeah, it helps explain why he was so frustrated at the start of the season. He knew regardless of downforce they built a bathtub of a race car that couldn't be fixed in the wind tunnel.
Dude was mad at the 2nd fastest car on race pace.
@@3rdGenGuy they were over a second slower than Redbull in race trim over the entire season. When the gap is that comfortable it's almost impossible to measure because Redbull won't push the car when they have a pitstop margin.
The farther the merc team gets from Ross Braun, the farther they will fall.
The lesson here is that a finance bozo will never build and outperform a life long engineer that grew up around massive talent.
They got it wrong due lack of knowledge and quality in their design team. This problem is not taken away and will continue to show in different areas.
It will be a long season for Mercedes fans, and Lewis…
The resr of the car seems to be suffering a little still in the corners, but other than that, it is a tremendous improvement.
It seems crazy that the team cannot have looked at all the trade offs and understood the sensitivity of the car performance to c of g given the simulation tools available.
Even they simulations where wrong. Their scale model for the wind tunnel had the wrong dimensions so the data in the sim wasn't correlating to the track.
At the beginning of last year Scarbs was praising the Merc designers to death because of their brilliant car design.As he did the year before.
And that's totally fair. Noone, not even the engineers who built the damned thing, knows how the cars will perform. So praising the engineers, especially considering that their design was radically different than the rest of the grid, is completely acceptable. Nothing wrong with that.
@@william_chidube He is there to provide insight based on his experience. You and I could also see that the car was radically different, so we did not need Scarbs to tell us that and sing the praises of Merc based on it.
The answer to the final note might just be the cost cap.
Gosh I had no idea the fuel tank was mounted slightly high last few years. This is a very basic racing fundamental - I cannot believe a team like Mercedes could be so far out with this...even if it is only marginally higher. This and the cockpit slightly forward would definitely account for imbalance and pendulum effect. This definitely smells of Aero dept having final say over chassis dept. Fundamentals Should Never being ignored.
Well….to be fair, looking at the Red Bull…they were close.😂
It's not a productive direction to sacrifice weight distribution for aero gains.
Then why Mercedes didn't have a good qualifying pace?
Wait a sec how come a full fuel car have cog higher than empty fuel car ?
Car burns of fuel becomes lighter and raises the car upwards in slow speed corners
my guess would be they changed the internal structure/ working environment, Right around their no blame business culture change is when they started failing.
The audio from Scarbs is always so bad that it is hard to sit through any video which features him.
Merc has a great car…this will be like ‘21 though…where they have the best car, but not a good enough driver to beat Max, it’s a sad reality🥺
Scarbs looks like he's had his glasses Photoshopped out...
AI corrected...
You can't beat physics.
in the RBR F1 team technical department, is it really just the brains of one guy, like Adrian Newey, that creates a masterpiece of a car?
if so, do other teams have their own version of a Newey? or is it more of a team effort.
are other engineer/designers hands tied? or are they really so far away from what Adrian Newey can do each year with an F1 car?
It's not one guy. But the genius and experience of that "one guy" helps protect the team from bad design and engineering challenges. Aston Martin benefited immensely from the arrival of Dan Fallows from RedBull where he was an important member of the team but still subordinate to Newey therefore enjoying some level of protection from bad design and engineering choices. At Aston Martin, he built a great platform termed the GreenBull and based very closely on the RB18. But all of his attempts to improve the concept fell flat because he lacked the depth and genius of Newey.
In the case of ground effects, yes absolutely. Newey had already been down that road with indycar and early 80s F1. So he knew porposing was a thing, and built the car in a way that it was a non issue, while the other teams spent 1 ot 2 years trying to fix it, before they could even thinking about high level aero or improving their platform.
This makes little sense. If the fuel tank was the problem, then W13 and W14 would have been much better in quali than in the race, which is completely the inverse to what was actually going on.
I think you should touch on the subject of Christian Horner. Why was his name dragged through the mud but finally cleared yet the name of the woman accuser was not realized. What type of fair play and justice is that. If F1 wants to be fair and transparent then it's necessary if Christian Horner is named so should the woman accuse.
Why does F1 not mandate narrow simple front wings?
"My team dont make mistakes".
Bye 😂
dude how am i not subbed yet my bad
Terrible vision and management . Time to re build as most teams cycle of the years
They knew this since last year. 100%😂 But were stubborn
I think Mercedes didn't get it wrong but built a fast car their drivers couldn't drive.
Wow… that’s a brilliant fantasy.
@@bigt6359 : Yeah ... One driver probably knew better than 200 engineers. My bad.
typical loyalty lol lewis
Mercedes should just place Lewis on the front wing and call it a day.
The ferraris cockpit is as far forward as the 23 merc!! Whats ham going to do in 2025
The engineering decisions made must have played a part in Lewis going to Ferrari
So Merc fcuked up really. As RB got their down force from a clever floor and didnt compromise CoG
That’s why Elliot got the soft boot
zero pod side pod