A thing to remember is that the zero-pod is an evolution of the lineage of cars from the previous era. The trend there was to shrink the bodywork as tight as possible.
The 'zero-pod' design is easy to see and therefore the obvious candidate to blame. But the real issue with the Merc is it's floor and suspension geometry. The forward cockpit design is also somewhat of a fundamental problem for car balance... all of which is entirely independant and unrelated from the zero-pod design.
@@junyutan2172 NO. That's only 1 small issue compard to the massive, fundamental problems of the areas I highlighted. The floor and suspension are the worst aspects of the car, meaning it suffers on both high speed aero and low speed mechanical grip.
@@ThesocialmuteHDrather see a team almost undefeatable for 8 years, and then another 6 years for 14 years in total? Or a fresh face for the next 8 years?
@@Ruylopez778 Yeah i remember thinking the same thing until Steiner came out and said they had that design in the tunnel several months before and they didnt found much performance of it. And how shocked Newey was that they chose that direction lol
Williams no longer has the budget problems or limitations it used to have. First, there's a budget cap for all to respect, and second, the new owners, Dorilton capital, do have the money to spend. But they can't just throw money at this, though.
1 key element I am missing in why Mercedes has got it so wrong, is the impact of losing a lot of people to both AM and RBR and the effects of the cost cap.
Yes. Toto flat out said over the winter (I think it was) that if there was no cap, they'd simply build an entire new car right now, but they don't have the ability to do it with the cash limitations. They lost people because they couldn't pay them anymore.
Merc lost ENGINE ENGINEERS to the new Red Bull Powertrains 2026 factory....NOT to RBR. The former engineers arent working at the RB19 or for the current race team. They work at the engine factory for 2026
@@gealingeman8643 but RB has been running engines under RBPT badge. I know its still a Honda but its the 2nd year, I'm sure there's some tweaks by RBPT atm
That's why i'm so excited for the spanish gp, a test track and most top teams will have introduced their "b" spec cars by then, much to look forward to.
Let's all take the time to appreciate that Mercedes did something that many teams thought was impossible. Adrian newye said that it's not just about the aerodynamics or chassis, the Mercedes concept requires the level of PU DEVELOPMENT that I have never seen before. (Referencing to the cooling)
I know you have all the best intentions, I try to look at this from best intentions, but I can’t help but have a “Wow, the cope is high”-thought when reading your comment.
Fall of another dynasty looks like, happened with Mclaren in the 80's, Williams in the 90's and Ferrari in the 2000's. Even Red Bull had a similar downfall after their success with Vettel so I consider it a natural cycle of the sport. The current Verstappen-RB will also have their own meltdown sooner or later like the Merc did. If would be fun seeing who'll challenge for wins later down the season.
The cost cap killed Mercedes. They could have thrown another 100m to catch up last year without batting an eye lid. Now they cannot do that any more. The penalty for getting things wrong is much higher these days, especially for the better funded teams who used to be able to spend their way out of trouble.
FIA took away the 2 massive advantages Mercedes has. - introduction of the budget cap - engine freeze Mercedes enjoyed a massive engine and spending advantage for nearly a decade. The engine, which is likely the primary reason for the dominance, is now nul and void. Car design is the new goal and under budget. Mercedes is not going to claw this back
I'm sure Merc will see decent gains from the new parts as they roll out but yeah, having to introduce them at Monaco... ouch. Not a weekend you want to spend struggling to retune your car setup.
I doubt they will introduce them unless they have no choice because the Monaco suspension setups rely on the upgrades. Would be safer (and more Mercedes like) to hold out, use what they have, and just refine the upgrades till the Spanish GP.
@@philipbarton3456it's time to get them on the car and start using them. There is little advantage to waiting unless you are a big proponent of points for 5th and 6th being crucial in the fight against Aston Martin for 3rd.
@@monochromedout while I agree, the problem is that Monaco is such a weird track that teams often bring track specific components to Monaco as is, from suspension to wings and so on. So the question is, do you want to gamble and take a car and make it more unpredictable by changing it up so much to the point the car is a different animal then it was previously, throwing the drivers through a loop where they are spending all weekend learning the car? Or do you go with what you have, bring the Monaco specific parts only so the car is at least more predictable so the drivers can focus on qualifying because Monaco qualifying is so important. The car they have now they at least have some known predictability, and it gives them leeway where if anything gets damaged it’s stuff that was going to be ditched anyways which is integral in a budget cap season when you are racing on arguably the tightest track of the year. Especially since it’s going to be quite possibly in the wet again this year.
@@illegitimate0 That's true, though Mercedes were very insistent on not supplying customer engines to the Red Bull from 2016 onwards for some reason...
@@illegitimate0 to be honest, the engine was more of a limiting factor than the aero package. Redbull always had a good car, but the renault engine was horrible.
End of the day a team is bound to get a regulation change wrong and as a result fall behind someone else, Mercedes is no different. What should be a question is how it took them a while to realize the problem and deciding to make significant changes only during early this year, which isn't something anyone likely expected coming from a top team like others who can introduce solutions to problems quickly. Now it feels like they got lured into a sense of calm in the later half of 2022 then reality brought them back in 2023.
Maybe because this year’s regulation probably expanded the flaws of both the Ferrari and Mercedes concepts and maybe even covered for some of redbull’s ability to control their floor and airflow. Also I know Toto was one of the major backers for this year’s rule about raising the floor, but sometimes small adjustments can favour some teams, like in 2021 were redbull was able to catch-up to Mercedes.
Complacency and pride off the back of years of domination, combined with their spending power being eroded and losing key people to other teams (also part of complacency).
@@ibleminen It wasn't just Toto that wanted the floors raised. McLaren and Alpine did as well. There was talk that RBR was able to 'control' the height of the floor in an automated fashion based on the speed/downforce that would lower the car below the minimum ride height. The same was thought of Ferrari, but without the 'control' of it. Ferrari's was a natural effect of the downforce. The problem was 'how do you measure ride height while the car is at speed?' That's why they put the sensors on the plank to measure and that's why as soon as they did that, Ferrari fell off a cliff. They made the excuse of 'Oh, we stopped development to focus on next year' while they were still in the middle of a title fight, albeit slowly losing ground. No one with a chance to win the championship is going to say 'You know what? We'll just focus on next year.' when you're barely over halfway through the season. That's some Haas level scared thinking.
It never was: Mercedes had always had the better aero package of the turbo hybrid era even when its engine was way superior to the others', and that showed when Ferrari catched up in PU development
Mercedes arrogance and their past ability with the last F1 president allowed them to be able to ask for a change in the regulations when they needed to change a part of their car before. They would do the thing like Baku last season where they put on a show thay the pourpsing was so bad it was hurting the drivers and needed to be allowed to switch their suspension. Mercedes knew they messed up with the suspension and with the other suspension system would have gave them the benifits it needed to keep the ride hight low. So not only had Mercedes missed on the Zero-Side pod concept, they missed on the suspension. I am sure we will see the Mercedes looking like the Red Bull with sidepods when we see the car.
The fact that Aston Martin could be down near the back of the field one season, then semi switch to a red bull design and be up in 3rd place the next season really shows what team found the best path for these new regs.
@@WhiteG60 They use their parts, but not aero so they didn't really follow Merc, they only used their parts to optimize the engine and how it works since they are still getting the same engine and they don't have their own wind tunnel yet
Can we agree right now that we won't spend *all of 2024* talking about a midfield team searching for upgrades and enabling their exaggerations and accusations and excuses, because this has been the most repetitive and tedious story of the 2022/23 regulations? Undoubtedly, the remainder of this season will be about their 'upcoming upgrades' and eventually turning to accusations about other teams and requesting more changes to the regulations.
Not while the subject is the most discussed topic in the sport, meaning content creators are going to continue making these videos so long as they get the views.
@@soundscape26 By virtue of being way behind the top team on performance, but not as bad as slower teams like AT , Williams and McLaren. And having only one podium due to luck with the SC and restarts. If Ferrari hadn't had such bad luck and mistakes so far, Merc would have even less points.
I can't fathom how Adrian Newy is so far ahead of his field. The guy always seems to get it right when he designs a car. What is it about him that makes him so uch better than the rest ?
@@soundscape26 Technically anyone that isn't Redbull can be argued mid field. Although if theres brackets it's: 1. Redbull, 2. AMR, Mercedes, Ferrari. 3. Alpine 4. Haas and the rest.
This new reg car shows that computer simulations do not always transfer to real world performance. I am not a Merc fan, but I respect Lewis Hamilton as a driver. Sure he won his titles with a far superior car, but so did Schumaker and Senna/Prost back in their heydays. I would be willing to bet, if Merc took this current car, and changed nothing but the cockpit position to give the car the proper balance feel...Hamilton (and Russell as well) could manhandle it to the front, much like Verstappen did the slightly inferior Red Bull in 2021. I am a Red Bull fan, but a part of me would like to see Merc get back to competitive, but it irks me to no end that no one screamed for change for 8 years of Merc dominance. Now everyone wants to try and dethrone Red Bull by changing the regulations, and it's ironic and to be honest quite hypocritical, that it's Mercedes leading the cries...you know, the team that dominated for 8 YEARS and always fought changes to bring the others forward during that period.
That's the Nature of F1 usually, we were luck to have such a good season in 2021 that Masi felt the need to interfere and create a title decider in the final round.
If you think you can easily change the seating position 😆 without ALL THE DESIGN AERO consequences 😆😆😆😆😆 Chassis cant be changed before 2024. And change of seating positiin means ALL areas of the car need to change cos the weight distribution has regulations too....which means internaly and externaly a hugh amount of changes have to be made too.
@@gealingeman8643 I never said it was easy, I said if they "could". Big difference. I know there is a lot of issues in moving the cockpit back, but I believe the driver's feel (or lack thereof) with this current layout is as big a restriction as the concept itself. That's why I don't think they're going to get the results they hope for, because the cockpit is still going to be too far forward to give the driver's the confidence to push it to it's limit.
They got it wrong for not having imagined the car would porpoised. Then they thought they could manage it better with the mid season change pressuring the FIA, which was a shot in their own foot, it made Redbull more dominant. As the suspension layout from Redbull allows for greater ride highs, and have more experience with raked car that fits Max's riding style, Mercedes will be up for a hard task to catch up with them.
I know that private testing has been cut to save money, but I think it's part of the reason why we are not having the more competitive season. IMHO, particularly in the first year of a new set of rules, each team should be allowed up to say, two days of such testing - perhaps one before the official test and another halfway through the season. If that doesn't work, the same arrangement could be made for the second year. I say "private" to allow teams to hide any bad as well as good parts from the other teams and the press. Each team should have identical conditions so as not to play favourites. A maximum of two days (three at a push if the teams deem it necessary) shouldn't increase spending too much, and it might even save money in the long run as the various teams wouldn't need to try this & that throughout the year. Only allowing it for the first two seasons of the new regulations should also put the onus directly onto all the teams to get their concepts right asap. Hopefully, this would increase the number of teams competing for podiums if not wins.
I agree. This is all because the CFD and computer stuff was flat out wrong. Adrian Newey knew what to do because he'd lived this stuff before. There's not a TON of guys still around from the last time ground effect was legal. It seems particularly bad to NOT let the teams test the cars in the real world. We would have known the porpoising was an issue. We would know the zero-pod wasn't working. We'd know Ferraris can't keep tires on the car when pushing. We'd know that McLaren went down the wrong path so did Alpha Tauri. Who knows? Maybe with real world data, Red Bull is even quicker, but the fact of the matter is that they're not letting the teams actually test their cars except for one track one time when the entire world is watching. They should set a flat budget 'cost' for a track rental day. Let some teams split the cost if they want to. IE: Red Bull and Alpha Tauri both rent out Silverstone for a day and they each get hit for half the cost. It seems so counterintuitive to say 'Hey, you need to build completely new cars with completely new rules, on a strict budget and limited CFD/aero, but also... you can't test them in the real world until a week before the first race.'
yeah, it would help mid fielders catch up to the top, but it also might give a bigger advantage to bigger teams as they can use testing better, the only way to introduce it would be to do like Wind tunnel time, the top 3 would not be able to do such tests, but the teams below would be able
@@WhiteG60 every single team was warned well in advance of the regs starting that their would be porpoising. You think Ross Brawn the guy who designed these regulations doesn’t know how ground effect works?
@@stevenst6337 If everyone KNEW porpoising was gonna happen, then why was it such a scandal when it did? Of course Ross Brawn knew. And Newey knew, but I guaran-damn-tee you that Brawn wasn't double checking everyone's work and saying THIS IS GONNA BOUNCE. Plus, if everyone was warned there'd be porpoising, then ... maybe the rules need to be tweaked to avoid that from the get go? Isn't it kinda silly to say 'These rules will cause problems with most team's designs, but it's the TEAMS who are wrong, not the rules and regs!'
Innovation sometimes requires sacrifice. And everyone laughs until you get it right. Even with the failures from last year (and this year) there is a lot of data to be gleaned. People for some reason think if you get it wrong that you are a failure. The only reason someone would ever think this is because they have never actually attempted anything demanding themselves. However, there is a fine line between determination and insanity. True genius is knowing the difference between the two. One “ultimately” leads to success and the other to the loss of everything.
Lol Newey knew immediately when the CLAY BLOB as Vettel called it, rolled out at Bahrain 2022 😊 Newey knows exactly what Mercs issues are and its not just the sidepods. His book How To Build A Car, his biography AND tecnical guide for us to understand what it truly means to design and build a car, will explain a lot to many who want to learn more. Im half way now and I recommend it as a read. Its hilarious, sad, informative and eye opening all at the same time.
Squeezing weight closer to the center also helps with reducing yaw inertia, but you can’t do that if that means your drivers feel like they’re driving a light truck where they’re too far forward and have to consciously decide to turn-in artificially late into each corner. They need to bring the cockpit back, use some kind of front-facing sidepod bluffs sculpted to direct air to a more complex floor front corner (with vortex generating winglets), have a massive cutout in their “sidepods” to just send air to the rest of the floor area, then bring the “sidepods” out to squeeze air into the gap between the rear tire and diffuser. That’s how they get everything Red Bull gets, and their shrunken body for weight distribution gains and the benefit of their increased floor area. I don’t know, I’m spitballing.
Mercedes are for the first time having to design a car with a capped budget. The multiple world championship car was build back when money was not capped. Then the actual developments teams were able to make were also locked to 1 or 2 major parts of the car per year so it essentially froze the grid. Well I am glad Mercedes are experiencing these rules for the first time.
The budget cap is what made them fall behind as they used to spend more than double the current budget cap. Also in they past they spent more than everyone else.
True...but that has ALWAYS been the case in F1 only Brawn won a championship on a short string but the car was developed by Honda plus a small team from Super Aguri before Ross & Nick bought the team... had that season been two or three races longer Reb Bull would have won the championship.
Mercedes needs more than a new sidepod concept. Like the whole field, they need to switch to RB's suspension concept to challenge for wins again. Not even thinking about titles....
Considering how most of the teams outside of Redbull and Aston Martin have taken a step backwards I don’t think 3rd is all that impressive especially when it’s a team that recently won 8 straight championships.
Yea it’s getting very tiresome hearing Lewis and Toto cry every week about how bad the car is and they talk about how slow they are you’d think they’re finishing 18th and 19th every race but they usually wind up finishing between 4-6 every race.
A lot of people seem to complain about the amount of content related to mercedes but I think it’s completely normal. It’s always a big talking point when a extremely dominant team loses its place at the front and struggles to improve. Yes the car is not as horrible as they make it out to be but it’s still bad by their standards. It’s kinda like 2014 rb or 2020 ferrari
I feel like Merc knew their concept was meh last year, but purposefully kept it this year, even though they had a regular sidepod concept car ready, which we saw in testing last year, solely to intensify the the pressure on Fia to nerf Rbr. bc it's only been a couple of races in and never have I seen such a huge the amount of "should Fia adjust the rules bc rbr is so far ahead" type questions and vids during the whole Merc domination era! Coupled with comments from Toto, Russell and Hamilton about how the rbr car is 1 min faster than the rest, which isn't true, meanwhile the Merc actually was for several years! Toto already got Fia to raise the floor, which didn't really effect anybody as hard as Merc, bc they all figured out how to combat that, which coincidentally also made it harder to follow again, as the rules before the adjustment seemingly had worked in terms of being able to follow more closely. merc had the chance to fully change their concept and go back to the other concept during the winter, but they kept it, even though everybody and their grandma knew it was a shitty concept. make 0 sense, especially since Hamilton outright said they should abandon the 0 sidepod concept
The part I'm loving most... Is how Mercedes put on such a damn show last year running their car so low breaking their drivers backs in order to lobby the FIA to mandate a raise in ride height for safety when everyone else had largely solved the bouncing problem. But the FIA caved to Toto's politics and gave him what he wanted... They got their raised ride height hoping that would let Mercedes fix their suspension issue, which would fix their aero issue, but also penalize everyone else in the process who had just fixed the bouncing. And look how it well deservedly BACKFIRED. God damn glorious, now they're forced to change concepts mid season and I hope that car sucks ass for the amount of politics they play.
It’s truly comical, teams had to deal with Mercedes for 7-8 years. Mercedes couldn’t even last 7 races before having a mental breakdown and Toto threatning other team principles he’s going to come after them all financially 😂
@@OK-fi4yq lol only cos RBR had a bad tyre deg that weekend due to not optimal set up. That Brazil weekend was what fooled Merc in keeping the no pods design lol
Thank you for a brilliant video as always. This one especially shows the array of engineering complexities we F1 fans “understand”. If someone wants to get an idea of how much work goes into just one car for one season they should study and watch this video until it makes sense. 🧐
merc got the rules changed to increase the ride height as their car was crap. Now as a result we have utterly gash races as the guys cant overtake due to the lack of ground effect. F1 is a total mess
Merc’s zero pod concept is high-risk, high-reward. They gambled on something radical and it just doesn’t work. My thought is that if ground effects are based on the car being at a specific ride height, seems to me that you should build the car around the suspension.
The most important thing on the cars right now is the underfloor that is aside from their beam wing the reason redbull is so fast because they are able to generate more downforce with their floor than other teams and thus use less wing angle decreasing drag
Ferrari and Red Bull sidepods also did a bit of front tire wake deflection, and curving the airflow between the wheels and frontal chassis down towards the vortex generating elements at the front corners of the floor edges. Plus the back of the sidepods also shoot air at the gap between the rear tires and diffuser vanes to make a vortex seal there. You need those vortices and the airflow to the right parts. There’s many ways to get this and maximize it, but do so in a way that doesn’t reduce your ability to maintain good tire contact patch area in various conditions of driving (dive in braking, not choking underbody flow while taking kerbs etc). I’m keen to see if the Ferrari concept can be maximized by another team (perhaps Mercedes). But it’s the Red Bull concept that works on all tracks except Singapore (Mercedes, McLaren and Ferrari seemed quicker than Red Bull there).
easy they dont have engine advantage like they had most of the time , second they can't spend 100s of milions more then others, their personal is leaving them and they have problem of having high quality staff and their operational issues are now visible when they haven't got competitive advantage of 1 second to others.
The amount of bad luck of not being able to run a new monocoque/chassis at Imola and having to do it in Monaco, is hilarious beyond. I’m not a Merc fan, but it almost makes me feel bad for them. 😂
Pretty hilarious to state that HAD it worked Mercedes would have left Ferrari and RB in the dust. I could show you some simulations that show Haas has the fastest car on the grid. Tells you absolutely nothing. Mercedes themselves are living proof of that.
I believe till 2026 rule change no one can beat RBR. Don't expect anything from Ferrari and AMR. The only team that can challenge RBR in all terms is Mercs and like said by toto everything is progressive in F1 so if Merc progess so will RBR, until rule change that will make field even for them.
All Professional Engineers have experienced this to some level in their career. This is a particularly extreme example, but one which is mirrored a million times a year in the UK alone. It's one of the main skills of an Engineer.
Martin Brundle mentioned that Merc use to build 9 different cars in a season from 2014 - 2020 and just picked the less draggy one. Unfortunately you cant do that if you don't have a 500 mil budget and a overpowered locked PU. See you in 2026 Merc !!!!!! ( If you figured out how to do it with 1/4 that budget by then )
One thing all these handling vs power gurus neglect to point out is the symbiotic relationship between the two. If you exit a corner faster, you gain speed quicker down straight. If your car has major power, as it increases speed on the straight, it needs to brake sooner at the corner.
Merc were extremely innovative for the 2022 season. The depth of innovation was considerable. It obviously didn't pay off and it's baffling that they're still digging the same hole well over a year later.
Yes exactly. The turbo hybrid era was always a Mercedes coup of the whole sport. The only other team that was able to build a good engine (after 4 seasons) was Ferrari because they had the cash and experience. Ferrari being Ferrari, this still left Mercedes to keep dominating until Red Bull finally got Honda to build them a competitive PU for '21
Mercedes fans complain about how these regs are made for Redbull, but yet Mercedes literally invented the 1.6L hybrid concept and lobbied to the FIA to use their blue prints for a baseline of the regulations. They designed hybrid engines for 4+ years before other teams even had a clue what was coming.
@@pe-peron8441 lol nope. Ross Brawn and co literally designed the hybrid concept and then lobbied for it. Renault had nothing to do with designing the hybrid not sure why they would lobby for it, especially considering their V8 engines were top of the class, would make zero sense for them too.
Zero pods is a flawed concept for these regulations. It was very noticeable in Baku when Lewis got past Stroll it was like he hit a wall when he left Lance's slipstream. Sidepod shape allows a laminar flow around it so that air is efficiently directed towards the rear of the wall. Merc no pod design stalls the air, making it turbulent when it hits the rear tires, creating insane amounts of drag. The point of concern is that Mercedes entire engineering team keeps saying that they don't know why it isn't working. I think the team's pride got the better of them over the winter, that's why they didn't abandon the entire concept even though Lewis and Toto were pushing for it.
Ironically if you do a fusion of the front sidepods of Ferrari and Williams’s 2022 starter sidepod and then the rear parts of the Aston sidepods, then you can get the front tire wake deflection, vortex sealing of underfloor, diffuser sealing from rear tire wake and the increased floor area as every team intended.
I bet that the sidepod is kind of a wing producing slight lift. I know that sounds counter intuitive, but look at their rate of porpoising oscillation compared to others. The lift fights the downforce just enough that the ground effect isnt able to stall the diffuser and isnt able to make the car bottom out, but also allow it to get low enough so that the ground effect still remains highly effective. Not saying this is the ONLY reason for redbulls performance or less porpoising compared to everyone else, but i bet it does play a significant factor.
You know, I am waiting for this update, but IF it doesn't work IMO it will show that this team is a lot more Ineos than Mercedes-AMG, unlike their golden age and lack of overwhelming budget advantage means that they can not replicate what it once did.
The one thing with all these comparison videos that bugs me, is that they don't look at the front wing. The 2022 Mercedes had a very curved wing and both Ferrari and Red Bull have far straighter ones. The Porpoising surely must come from an imbalance between the front and rear wings and, to some extent the uneven disturbance being generated above the Car by the curvy front wing, particularly in a ground effect Car. To me, that is the other obvious difference (after the side pods) between the Mercedes and Red Bull and Ferrari.
All the big teams spent years preparing for the budget cap and have a significant advantage in facilities and personnel. It will be years before the field has levelled out. Being third is about the worst they could be. And preseason several teams pushed for a weight increase and then the floor stays because of flexing floors. If not for those floor stays, and the weight increase that shafted Alpine (stiff, heavy floor) and Sauber/Alfa (light car) it would have been far worse.
Remember when Mercedes first unveiled the zero pod and the race said hit will have a much higher performance ceiling than all the other cars? It is almost as if the race doesn’t know that Mercedes only dominated their era because of their locked in engine advantage.
Simply that James Allison wasn’t there. There’s different interpretations of what counts as the most dominant car in the history of F1. A lot of people view this as the number of 1 and 2 finishes for cars from a particular year, and I believes it’s the James Allison Ferrari from 2003 or 2004 that takes that title. This year has been Max dominance, but it hasn’t been Red Bull dominance due to the gap to Perez.
Do you all honestly believe Mercedes changed their mind after one race and have used their wind tunnel and cfd allocation so efficiently that they’ve been able to bring 3 new major components??? No, w14a external surfaces are extremely basic and just a facelift of w13. They waited for more cfd and tunnel time to refine w14b further (from winter allocation) making the gap to red bull smaller to close.
The problem for Merc was that in 2022 they designed 2 cars based on their arrogance that they can beat anyone with what they got because they are so good and they failed to put all of their efforts on a great design rather than showing off. Let them sink to oblivion for all I care and better luck for 2026.
Lol how they fooled themselves with the win in Brazil….. not realizing the others didn’t bring updates anymore and RBR had a wrong set up there. They kept fooling themselves in multiple races claiming to be fastest on track lol while others were driving a pre set laptime and not their fastest laptime lol
I'm not an aerodynamicist but upon seeing last year's car I thought cool, but I wonder how they are going to keep the front wheel wake outside with those narrow sidepods. Since then, all photo and video evidence in wet conditions or under locked front wheels clearly show that indeed, wake ends up at the edges of the diffuser. So it seems baffling to me that any simulation data would have shown otherwise, or that that they would think their design offered any significant advantage to offset this. It's like you saw it with your naked eye as a hobbyist and they didn't.
Its almost as if they thought, less sidepod = less drag but then failed to figure out how the sidepod functions aerodynamically and how downforce can help you corner or provide grip. It's like someone who designs top fuel dragsters was in charge or something. It is all slightly baffling.
@@masattac Exactly. It's like something collectively between the ears of the designers stopped working at a critical moment and nobody questioned it. Every pro to the no sidepod setup seems to have at least an equalizing if not negating side effect in reality. They can't go faster because as you said above they haven't actually reduced drag and they have taken away massive amounts of downforce at key periods the car doesn't stick and can't corner and when it does stick especially last year the porpoising ruins it, leading to the rear wing changes or having to raise ride height and essentially ruining the whole concept of the car.
@@phightinphil25 I find it hard to believe that a team of very talented engineers don't understand how a sidepod functions or how downforce increases performance. My guess is they had a theory that the benefits would greater than the negative effects of the small sidepod. Now, that doesn't seem to be the case in reality, but I'm also fairly sure anyone with actual knowledge of designing a F1 race car, isn't watching The Race videos on UA-cam.
@@spauldingjones5763 Good points! It is telling though that McLaren made their (initially slim) sidepods a bit wider, then a bit wider again, then a bit wider again in multiple steps. Like there were gains to be found by iterating in that direction.
One clear difference with other card is their pull rod rear suspension. Where interlinks need to pass under the gear box. Taking up space in the area of the tunnel floor. Though McLaren is doing this with a Mercedes engine.
Hindsight asset management is the best performing hedge fund in the world. Remember the reactions when the pundits first saw the W13, who could have imitated them?
But I watch The Race videos on UA-cam. So, I know more than an entire team of engineers. All they need to do is put new sidepods on and they will be faster. Problem solved. It's so easy!
Producing a second underperforming car this year (relative to the competition) following last year's debacle is nothing less than a simply huge Management Failure. It is astonishing that Toto gets such very easy treatment from the motoring press instead of rightly having to take full responsibility, as the buck surely stops with him!
Honestly Mercedes have always been to reliant on simulations. People forget just how bad their strategy has been at times because their previous cars and drivers could overcome it
lulu is a disgrace: his team mate has fared much better overall than him since they were paired together, and both the Ferrari and the green team have their drivers as far forward as the mercs and they are doing ok, and are not complaining (Ferrari has other problems).
A thing to remember is that the zero-pod is an evolution of the lineage of cars from the previous era. The trend there was to shrink the bodywork as tight as possible.
The 'zero-pod' design is easy to see and therefore the obvious candidate to blame. But the real issue with the Merc is it's floor and suspension geometry. The forward cockpit design is also somewhat of a fundamental problem for car balance... all of which is entirely independant and unrelated from the zero-pod design.
Making excuses for a consept that failed 😂
@@Nemoticon no sidepods also means front wheel wake isnt as effectively kept outboard as can be seen in many shots of the w13/14 locking up
@@junyutan2172 NO. That's only 1 small issue compard to the massive, fundamental problems of the areas I highlighted. The floor and suspension are the worst aspects of the car, meaning it suffers on both high speed aero and low speed mechanical grip.
@@Nemoticon the tire wake affects the rear wing, beam wing, diffuser how is that a small issue.
Remember when Mercedes first unveiled their zero sidepod w13 and we all panicked about how Mercedes will dominate f1 again for the next 6 years?😂
You was worried about the wrong team my guy
All of the "GENIUS!" comments and, 'I hope Mercedes aren't punished for innovation!' LMAO
@@ThesocialmuteHDrather see a team almost undefeatable for 8 years, and then another 6 years for 14 years in total? Or a fresh face for the next 8 years?
@@Ruylopez778 Yeah i remember thinking the same thing until Steiner came out and said they had that design in the tunnel several months before and they didnt found much performance of it. And how shocked Newey was that they chose that direction lol
@@BlissifiedHH Yeah, the 'Newey is overrated' comments aged like milk. But now there's the constant whining from all the Merc fans.
When even williams has the budget to redesign their car away from your concept you know youve fucked up 😅
You know you fucked up, right?
“It was that point they knew they F$&’d Up” 😂
@@adamannear Mercedes always know they always MESSED UP.
Williams no longer has the budget problems or limitations it used to have. First, there's a budget cap for all to respect, and second, the new owners, Dorilton capital, do have the money to spend. But they can't just throw money at this, though.
your brain is undeveloped
1 key element I am missing in why Mercedes has got it so wrong, is the impact of losing a lot of people to both AM and RBR and the effects of the cost cap.
The cost cap lead to them losing many employees to RB & Aston, they always had $40-$90 M more on their budget than the rest
I approve it.
Yes. Toto flat out said over the winter (I think it was) that if there was no cap, they'd simply build an entire new car right now, but they don't have the ability to do it with the cash limitations. They lost people because they couldn't pay them anymore.
Merc lost ENGINE ENGINEERS to the new Red Bull Powertrains 2026 factory....NOT to RBR. The former engineers arent working at the RB19 or for the current race team. They work at the engine factory for 2026
@@gealingeman8643 but RB has been running engines under RBPT badge. I know its still a Honda but its the 2nd year, I'm sure there's some tweaks by RBPT atm
That's why i'm so excited for the spanish gp, a test track and most top teams will have introduced their "b" spec cars by then, much to look forward to.
I’ve got mixed excitement and worries.
Both worries the other teams won’t have caught up much, and the worry that they did.
@@Ticklestein Yeah we're in the same boat xD
@@Ticklestein Tessa Ticklestein, Mercedes 2023 suffered a slow decline right now. Ferrari 2020 also got total decline before.
Lol they will be experimenting updates at Barcelona, ALL TEAMS.
The Mercedes fans and social media admin hyping up the W13 and 14 got me creasing
Bro said creasing 💀💀
Let's all take the time to appreciate that Mercedes did something that many teams thought was impossible. Adrian newye said that it's not just about the aerodynamics or chassis, the Mercedes concept requires the level of PU DEVELOPMENT that I have never seen before. (Referencing to the cooling)
I know you have all the best intentions, I try to look at this from best intentions, but I can’t help but have a “Wow, the cope is high”-thought when reading your comment.
Newey was flattering them
The truth is the truth, no matter how minor it may seem to some... 8 straight drivers & constructor titles says enough (lolol)... IJS
@@A2906-o8q yep. So did Toto.
@@BigMic69 W14 is as disappointing as W13 imo.
Fall of another dynasty looks like, happened with Mclaren in the 80's, Williams in the 90's and Ferrari in the 2000's. Even Red Bull had a similar downfall after their success with Vettel so I consider it a natural cycle of the sport. The current Verstappen-RB will also have their own meltdown sooner or later like the Merc did. If would be fun seeing who'll challenge for wins later down the season.
The cost cap killed Mercedes. They could have thrown another 100m to catch up last year without batting an eye lid. Now they cannot do that any more. The penalty for getting things wrong is much higher these days, especially for the better funded teams who used to be able to spend their way out of trouble.
FIA took away the 2 massive advantages Mercedes has.
- introduction of the budget cap
- engine freeze
Mercedes enjoyed a massive engine and spending advantage for nearly a decade. The engine, which is likely the primary reason for the dominance, is now nul and void. Car design is the new goal and under budget. Mercedes is not going to claw this back
I'm sure Merc will see decent gains from the new parts as they roll out but yeah, having to introduce them at Monaco... ouch. Not a weekend you want to spend struggling to retune your car setup.
I doubt they will introduce them unless they have no choice because the Monaco suspension setups rely on the upgrades. Would be safer (and more Mercedes like) to hold out, use what they have, and just refine the upgrades till the Spanish GP.
@@philipbarton3456it's time to get them on the car and start using them. There is little advantage to waiting unless you are a big proponent of points for 5th and 6th being crucial in the fight against Aston Martin for 3rd.
@@monochromedout while I agree, the problem is that Monaco is such a weird track that teams often bring track specific components to Monaco as is, from suspension to wings and so on. So the question is, do you want to gamble and take a car and make it more unpredictable by changing it up so much to the point the car is a different animal then it was previously, throwing the drivers through a loop where they are spending all weekend learning the car? Or do you go with what you have, bring the Monaco specific parts only so the car is at least more predictable so the drivers can focus on qualifying because Monaco qualifying is so important. The car they have now they at least have some known predictability, and it gives them leeway where if anything gets damaged it’s stuff that was going to be ditched anyways which is integral in a budget cap season when you are racing on arguably the tightest track of the year. Especially since it’s going to be quite possibly in the wet again this year.
Basically, if your F1 car does not look like the one that Adrian Newey designed, chances are you've got it wrong.
Except of course, for the 8 years of Mercedes dominance.
@@illegitimate0 And the MP4-18, although we don't talk about that here...
@@illegitimate0 That's true, though Mercedes were very insistent on not supplying customer engines to the Red Bull from 2016 onwards for some reason...
@@illegitimate0 that was to do with having a way better engine than everyone else and nothing else
@@illegitimate0 to be honest, the engine was more of a limiting factor than the aero package. Redbull always had a good car, but the renault engine was horrible.
It is like racing a car after enveloping a mask around the body work. It is a miracle they r still more competitive than most of the teams.
End of the day a team is bound to get a regulation change wrong and as a result fall behind someone else, Mercedes is no different. What should be a question is how it took them a while to realize the problem and deciding to make significant changes only during early this year, which isn't something anyone likely expected coming from a top team like others who can introduce solutions to problems quickly. Now it feels like they got lured into a sense of calm in the later half of 2022 then reality brought them back in 2023.
Maybe because this year’s regulation probably expanded the flaws of both the Ferrari and Mercedes concepts and maybe even covered for some of redbull’s ability to control their floor and airflow.
Also I know Toto was one of the major backers for this year’s rule about raising the floor, but sometimes small adjustments can favour some teams, like in 2021 were redbull was able to catch-up to Mercedes.
Complacency and pride off the back of years of domination, combined with their spending power being eroded and losing key people to other teams (also part of complacency).
I am doubting it...
Yep I agree. The reluctance to change trajectory is liken to insanity and not a trait of a top team. That is concerning.
@@ibleminen It wasn't just Toto that wanted the floors raised. McLaren and Alpine did as well. There was talk that RBR was able to 'control' the height of the floor in an automated fashion based on the speed/downforce that would lower the car below the minimum ride height. The same was thought of Ferrari, but without the 'control' of it. Ferrari's was a natural effect of the downforce. The problem was 'how do you measure ride height while the car is at speed?' That's why they put the sensors on the plank to measure and that's why as soon as they did that, Ferrari fell off a cliff. They made the excuse of 'Oh, we stopped development to focus on next year' while they were still in the middle of a title fight, albeit slowly losing ground. No one with a chance to win the championship is going to say 'You know what? We'll just focus on next year.' when you're barely over halfway through the season. That's some Haas level scared thinking.
Adrian Newey King of Aerodynamics. That's why Redbull is doing so well. It's not all about having a dominant engine anymore.
It never was: Mercedes had always had the better aero package of the turbo hybrid era even when its engine was way superior to the others', and that showed when Ferrari catched up in PU development
Not be following much past few years, in Newey back?
I mean let's not pretend that the Honda engine isn't literally the best PU on the grid right now
I can't see Mercedes catching up Red Bull anytime before 2025.
or even after.. their time is up.
Agreed, as long as the cost cap exist they can't
2026*
redbull will dominate till 2026 , as huge amount of new regs will be added then
@@felopateer-n9y this didn't aged well i guess
Mercedes arrogance and their past ability with the last F1 president allowed them to be able to ask for a change in the regulations when they needed to change a part of their car before. They would do the thing like Baku last season where they put on a show thay the pourpsing was so bad it was hurting the drivers and needed to be allowed to switch their suspension.
Mercedes knew they messed up with the suspension and with the other suspension system would have gave them the benifits it needed to keep the ride hight low.
So not only had Mercedes missed on the Zero-Side pod concept, they missed on the suspension.
I am sure we will see the Mercedes looking like the Red Bull with sidepods when we see the car.
This is a very well made and informed video documenting the topic, thanks for making it
The fact that Aston Martin could be down near the back of the field one season, then semi switch to a red bull design and be up in 3rd place the next season really shows what team found the best path for these new regs.
Aston Martin 2023 seemingly had gone completely evolved.
AM is a mix between RB and Ferrari
@@dylanburston7453 And Merc. They use Merc engines/transmissions/rear suspension and designed the car in Merc's wind tunnel.
@@WhiteG60 They use their parts, but not aero so they didn't really follow Merc, they only used their parts to optimize the engine and how it works since they are still getting the same engine and they don't have their own wind tunnel yet
@@WhiteG60 Not aero/chassis wise.
Thats where the performance deficit is, all the cars are pretty much equal in terms of power over a lap.
Can we agree right now that we won't spend *all of 2024* talking about a midfield team searching for upgrades and enabling their exaggerations and accusations and excuses, because this has been the most repetitive and tedious story of the 2022/23 regulations? Undoubtedly, the remainder of this season will be about their 'upcoming upgrades' and eventually turning to accusations about other teams and requesting more changes to the regulations.
Not while the subject is the most discussed topic in the sport, meaning content creators are going to continue making these videos so long as they get the views.
How is Mercedes a midfield team though?
@@soundscape26 By virtue of being way behind the top team on performance, but not as bad as slower teams like AT , Williams and McLaren. And having only one podium due to luck with the SC and restarts. If Ferrari hadn't had such bad luck and mistakes so far, Merc would have even less points.
I can't fathom how Adrian Newy is so far ahead of his field. The guy always seems to get it right when he designs a car. What is it about him that makes him so uch better than the rest ?
@@soundscape26 Technically anyone that isn't Redbull can be argued mid field. Although if theres brackets it's: 1. Redbull, 2. AMR, Mercedes, Ferrari. 3. Alpine 4. Haas and the rest.
They makes it 3 in a row now
And even more flawed than previous two too
@@swidr5626Won 3 races
@@NotAcvp3lla It had 0 3 months ago and only one sprint podium, but it is insanely impressive how Mercedes brought a super dead car back to life
This new reg car shows that computer simulations do not always transfer to real world performance. I am not a Merc fan, but I respect Lewis Hamilton as a driver. Sure he won his titles with a far superior car, but so did Schumaker and Senna/Prost back in their heydays. I would be willing to bet, if Merc took this current car, and changed nothing but the cockpit position to give the car the proper balance feel...Hamilton (and Russell as well) could manhandle it to the front, much like Verstappen did the slightly inferior Red Bull in 2021. I am a Red Bull fan, but a part of me would like to see Merc get back to competitive, but it irks me to no end that no one screamed for change for 8 years of Merc dominance. Now everyone wants to try and dethrone Red Bull by changing the regulations, and it's ironic and to be honest quite hypocritical, that it's Mercedes leading the cries...you know, the team that dominated for 8 YEARS and always fought changes to bring the others forward during that period.
That's the Nature of F1 usually, we were luck to have such a good season in 2021 that Masi felt the need to interfere and create a title decider in the final round.
If you think you can easily change the seating position 😆 without ALL THE DESIGN AERO consequences 😆😆😆😆😆 Chassis cant be changed before 2024. And change of seating positiin means ALL areas of the car need to change cos the weight distribution has regulations too....which means internaly and externaly a hugh amount of changes have to be made too.
@@gealingeman8643 I never said it was easy, I said if they "could". Big difference. I know there is a lot of issues in moving the cockpit back, but I believe the driver's feel (or lack thereof) with this current layout is as big a restriction as the concept itself. That's why I don't think they're going to get the results they hope for, because the cockpit is still going to be too far forward to give the driver's the confidence to push it to it's limit.
two *floored* cars, to be fair
They got it wrong for not having imagined the car would porpoised. Then they thought they could manage it better with the mid season change pressuring the FIA, which was a shot in their own foot, it made Redbull more dominant. As the suspension layout from Redbull allows for greater ride highs, and have more experience with raked car that fits Max's riding style, Mercedes will be up for a hard task to catch up with them.
I know that private testing has been cut to save money, but I think it's part of the reason why we are not having the more competitive season.
IMHO, particularly in the first year of a new set of rules, each team should be allowed up to say, two days of such testing - perhaps one before the official test and another halfway through the season. If that doesn't work, the same arrangement could be made for the second year.
I say "private" to allow teams to hide any bad as well as good parts from the other teams and the press. Each team should have identical conditions so as not to play favourites.
A maximum of two days (three at a push if the teams deem it necessary) shouldn't increase spending too much, and it might even save money in the long run as the various teams wouldn't need to try this & that throughout the year. Only allowing it for the first two seasons of the new regulations should also put the onus directly onto all the teams to get their concepts right asap.
Hopefully, this would increase the number of teams competing for podiums if not wins.
W13 and W14 are a big dissapointments.
I agree. This is all because the CFD and computer stuff was flat out wrong. Adrian Newey knew what to do because he'd lived this stuff before. There's not a TON of guys still around from the last time ground effect was legal. It seems particularly bad to NOT let the teams test the cars in the real world. We would have known the porpoising was an issue. We would know the zero-pod wasn't working. We'd know Ferraris can't keep tires on the car when pushing. We'd know that McLaren went down the wrong path so did Alpha Tauri. Who knows? Maybe with real world data, Red Bull is even quicker, but the fact of the matter is that they're not letting the teams actually test their cars except for one track one time when the entire world is watching. They should set a flat budget 'cost' for a track rental day. Let some teams split the cost if they want to. IE: Red Bull and Alpha Tauri both rent out Silverstone for a day and they each get hit for half the cost.
It seems so counterintuitive to say 'Hey, you need to build completely new cars with completely new rules, on a strict budget and limited CFD/aero, but also... you can't test them in the real world until a week before the first race.'
yeah, it would help mid fielders catch up to the top, but it also might give a bigger advantage to bigger teams as they can use testing better, the only way to introduce it would be to do like Wind tunnel time, the top 3 would not be able to do such tests, but the teams below would be able
@@WhiteG60 every single team was warned well in advance of the regs starting that their would be porpoising. You think Ross Brawn the guy who designed these regulations doesn’t know how ground effect works?
@@stevenst6337 If everyone KNEW porpoising was gonna happen, then why was it such a scandal when it did? Of course Ross Brawn knew. And Newey knew, but I guaran-damn-tee you that Brawn wasn't double checking everyone's work and saying THIS IS GONNA BOUNCE.
Plus, if everyone was warned there'd be porpoising, then ... maybe the rules need to be tweaked to avoid that from the get go? Isn't it kinda silly to say 'These rules will cause problems with most team's designs, but it's the TEAMS who are wrong, not the rules and regs!'
It's awful when you can't lobby for engine dominance and build in a generation defining advantage
Innovation sometimes requires sacrifice. And everyone laughs until you get it right. Even with the failures from last year (and this year) there is a lot of data to be gleaned. People for some reason think if you get it wrong that you are a failure.
The only reason someone would ever think this is because they have never actually attempted anything demanding themselves. However, there is a fine line between determination and insanity. True genius is knowing the difference between the two. One “ultimately” leads to success and the other to the loss of everything.
Lol Newey knew immediately when the CLAY BLOB as Vettel called it, rolled out at Bahrain 2022 😊 Newey knows exactly what Mercs issues are and its not just the sidepods. His book How To Build A Car, his biography AND tecnical guide for us to understand what it truly means to design and build a car, will explain a lot to many who want to learn more. Im half way now and I recommend it as a read. Its hilarious, sad, informative and eye opening all at the same time.
Squeezing weight closer to the center also helps with reducing yaw inertia, but you can’t do that if that means your drivers feel like they’re driving a light truck where they’re too far forward and have to consciously decide to turn-in artificially late into each corner. They need to bring the cockpit back, use some kind of front-facing sidepod bluffs sculpted to direct air to a more complex floor front corner (with vortex generating winglets), have a massive cutout in their “sidepods” to just send air to the rest of the floor area, then bring the “sidepods” out to squeeze air into the gap between the rear tire and diffuser. That’s how they get everything Red Bull gets, and their shrunken body for weight distribution gains and the benefit of their increased floor area. I don’t know, I’m spitballing.
Mercedes are for the first time having to design a car with a capped budget.
The multiple world championship car was build back when money was not capped.
Then the actual developments teams were able to make were also locked to 1 or 2 major parts of the car per year so it essentially froze the grid.
Well I am glad Mercedes are experiencing these rules for the first time.
Are we forgetting the only team that overspent during the cost cap era was Redbull?! 🧐
The budget cap is what made them fall behind as they used to spend more than double the current budget cap.
Also in they past they spent more than everyone else.
100% correct. They were cheque book champions and are finding it much more difficult to build a dominant car under the budget cap.
True...but that has ALWAYS been the case in F1 only Brawn won a championship on a short string but the car was developed by Honda plus a small team from Super Aguri before Ross & Nick bought the team... had that season been two or three races longer Reb Bull would have won the championship.
@@sej8806 Nope, Ferrari had bigger budgets in the past, and Red Bull and Honda also had enormous budgets.
Another thing you are forgetting is, Adrian Newey was born -as engineer- in ground effect cars, the others are only adapting to it...
Mercedes needs more than a new sidepod concept. Like the whole field, they need to switch to RB's suspension concept to challenge for wins again. Not even thinking about titles....
3rd in constructor’s doesn’t scream getting it “so wrong” to me
Considering how most of the teams outside of Redbull and Aston Martin have taken a step backwards I don’t think 3rd is all that impressive especially when it’s a team that recently won 8 straight championships.
By an 8time championship winning team it is. Same was when ferrari was nowhere in 2005
Yea it’s getting very tiresome hearing Lewis and Toto cry every week about how bad the car is and they talk about how slow they are you’d think they’re finishing 18th and 19th every race but they usually wind up finishing between 4-6 every race.
A lot of people seem to complain about the amount of content related to mercedes but I think it’s completely normal. It’s always a big talking point when a extremely dominant team loses its place at the front and struggles to improve. Yes the car is not as horrible as they make it out to be but it’s still bad by their standards. It’s kinda like 2014 rb or 2020 ferrari
Its funny that they are complaining yet they still clicked on the video 😂😂😂😂
We design jet engines; whilst computer technology is awesome, there are _always_ surprises when hardware is tested.
I feel like Merc knew their concept was meh last year, but purposefully kept it this year, even though they had a regular sidepod concept car ready, which we saw in testing last year, solely to intensify the the pressure on Fia to nerf Rbr. bc it's only been a couple of races in and never have I seen such a huge the amount of "should Fia adjust the rules bc rbr is so far ahead" type questions and vids during the whole Merc domination era!
Coupled with comments from Toto, Russell and Hamilton about how the rbr car is 1 min faster than the rest, which isn't true, meanwhile the Merc actually was for several years!
Toto already got Fia to raise the floor, which didn't really effect anybody as hard as Merc, bc they all figured out how to combat that, which coincidentally also made it harder to follow again, as the rules before the adjustment seemingly had worked in terms of being able to follow more closely.
merc had the chance to fully change their concept and go back to the other concept during the winter, but they kept it, even though everybody and their grandma knew it was a shitty concept. make 0 sense, especially since Hamilton outright said they should abandon the 0 sidepod concept
Mercedes won’t be competitive until 2025 at this rate. Especially now they can’t dump $500M into development each season
The part I'm loving most... Is how Mercedes put on such a damn show last year running their car so low breaking their drivers backs in order to lobby the FIA to mandate a raise in ride height for safety when everyone else had largely solved the bouncing problem.
But the FIA caved to Toto's politics and gave him what he wanted... They got their raised ride height hoping that would let Mercedes fix their suspension issue, which would fix their aero issue, but also penalize everyone else in the process who had just fixed the bouncing.
And look how it well deservedly BACKFIRED. God damn glorious, now they're forced to change concepts mid season and I hope that car sucks ass for the amount of politics they play.
It’s truly comical, teams had to deal with Mercedes for 7-8 years. Mercedes couldn’t even last 7 races before having a mental breakdown and Toto threatning other team principles he’s going to come after them all financially 😂
I seem to remember the W13 being a race winning car..
Just the one 😂
@@britishfilmguy was still the quickest package at that race weekend and multiple others.
@@OK-fi4yq occasionally yeah still suffered alot of other issues mainly porpoising and drag so abit slow on race pace.
😆
@@OK-fi4yq lol only cos RBR had a bad tyre deg that weekend due to not optimal set up. That Brazil weekend was what fooled Merc in keeping the no pods design lol
Thank you for a brilliant video as always. This one especially shows the array of engineering complexities we F1 fans “understand”. If someone wants to get an idea of how much work goes into just one car for one season they should study and watch this video until it makes sense. 🧐
merc got the rules changed to increase the ride height as their car was crap. Now as a result we have utterly gash races as the guys cant overtake due to the lack of ground effect. F1 is a total mess
Merc’s zero pod concept is high-risk, high-reward. They gambled on something radical and it just doesn’t work.
My thought is that if ground effects are based on the car being at a specific ride height, seems to me that you should build the car around the suspension.
The most important thing on the cars right now is the underfloor that is aside from their beam wing the reason redbull is so fast because they are able to generate more downforce with their floor than other teams and thus use less wing angle decreasing drag
@@soul0rison536 Well says you, I'm a dude on the internet! 🤣🤣🤣
Ferrari and Red Bull sidepods also did a bit of front tire wake deflection, and curving the airflow between the wheels and frontal chassis down towards the vortex generating elements at the front corners of the floor edges. Plus the back of the sidepods also shoot air at the gap between the rear tires and diffuser vanes to make a vortex seal there. You need those vortices and the airflow to the right parts. There’s many ways to get this and maximize it, but do so in a way that doesn’t reduce your ability to maintain good tire contact patch area in various conditions of driving (dive in braking, not choking underbody flow while taking kerbs etc). I’m keen to see if the Ferrari concept can be maximized by another team (perhaps Mercedes). But it’s the Red Bull concept that works on all tracks except Singapore (Mercedes, McLaren and Ferrari seemed quicker than Red Bull there).
easy they dont have engine advantage like they had most of the time , second they can't spend 100s of milions more then others, their personal is leaving them and they have problem of having high quality staff and their operational issues are now visible when they haven't got competitive advantage of 1 second to others.
Aka a sinking ship. They still make a very solid car in the end. That should speak volumes
The amount of bad luck of not being able to run a new monocoque/chassis at Imola and having to do it in Monaco, is hilarious beyond.
I’m not a Merc fan, but it almost makes me feel bad for them. 😂
Guess I’m meaner because I’m really enjoying this. It’s the only interesting entertainment left in F1 right now.
Mercedes 2023 started to mimick Ferrari 2020. 😂
@@dogger37JC James, Mercedes 2023 seems like suffered slow decline.
This is honestly amazing
The new chassis is in 2024..... not this season due to budget cap.... Merc is only bringing other updates NO CHASSIS
Pretty hilarious to state that HAD it worked Mercedes would have left Ferrari and RB in the dust. I could show you some simulations that show Haas has the fastest car on the grid. Tells you absolutely nothing. Mercedes themselves are living proof of that.
Stop crying
@@andrewmelton2686 Move along.
Mercedes can't just throw money at problems like the previous years.
It was probably also worth adding that the reason their simulations were so off was due to them messing up measurements in their models...
Do you have a source for that. Sounds like an interesting read.
I believe till 2026 rule change no one can beat RBR. Don't expect anything from Ferrari and AMR. The only team that can challenge RBR in all terms is Mercs and like said by toto everything is progressive in F1 so if Merc progess so will RBR, until rule change that will make field even for them.
Yep
All Professional Engineers have experienced this to some level in their career.
This is a particularly extreme example, but one which is mirrored a million times a year in the UK alone.
It's one of the main skills of an Engineer.
Martin Brundle mentioned that Merc use to build 9 different cars in a season from 2014 - 2020 and just picked the less draggy one. Unfortunately you cant do that if you don't have a 500 mil budget and a overpowered locked PU. See you in 2026 Merc !!!!!! ( If you figured out how to do it with 1/4 that budget by then )
One thing all these handling vs power gurus neglect to point out is the symbiotic relationship between the two. If you exit a corner faster, you gain speed quicker down straight. If your car has major power, as it increases speed on the straight, it needs to brake sooner at the corner.
Merc were extremely innovative for the 2022 season. The depth of innovation was considerable.
It obviously didn't pay off and it's baffling that they're still digging the same hole well over a year later.
I think Mercedes just don’t understand this generation of cars.
This didn't age so well.
Why
It really all comes down to them not having their enormous locked in engine advantage.
Exactly
Yes exactly. The turbo hybrid era was always a Mercedes coup of the whole sport. The only other team that was able to build a good engine (after 4 seasons) was Ferrari because they had the cash and experience. Ferrari being Ferrari, this still left Mercedes to keep dominating until Red Bull finally got Honda to build them a competitive PU for '21
Mercedes fans complain about how these regs are made for Redbull, but yet Mercedes literally invented the 1.6L hybrid concept and lobbied to the FIA to use their blue prints for a baseline of the regulations. They designed hybrid engines for 4+ years before other teams even had a clue what was coming.
@@stevenst6337Renault was the one that lobbied for the concept
@@pe-peron8441 lol nope. Ross Brawn and co literally designed the hybrid concept and then lobbied for it. Renault had nothing to do with designing the hybrid not sure why they would lobby for it, especially considering their V8 engines were top of the class, would make zero sense for them too.
Zero pods is a flawed concept for these regulations. It was very noticeable in Baku when Lewis got past Stroll it was like he hit a wall when he left Lance's slipstream.
Sidepod shape allows a laminar flow around it so that air is efficiently directed towards the rear of the wall. Merc no pod design stalls the air, making it turbulent when it hits the rear tires, creating insane amounts of drag.
The point of concern is that Mercedes entire engineering team keeps saying that they don't know why it isn't working. I think the team's pride got the better of them over the winter, that's why they didn't abandon the entire concept even though Lewis and Toto were pushing for it.
Ironically if you do a fusion of the front sidepods of Ferrari and Williams’s 2022 starter sidepod and then the rear parts of the Aston sidepods, then you can get the front tire wake deflection, vortex sealing of underfloor, diffuser sealing from rear tire wake and the increased floor area as every team intended.
I think the zero pods had a chance but Mike Elliott did not not concentrate on the front, rear suspension and floor. He focused on the aero.
I bet that the sidepod is kind of a wing producing slight lift.
I know that sounds counter intuitive, but look at their rate of porpoising oscillation compared to others.
The lift fights the downforce just enough that the ground effect isnt able to stall the diffuser and isnt able to make the car bottom out, but also allow it to get low enough so that the ground effect still remains highly effective.
Not saying this is the ONLY reason for redbulls performance or less porpoising compared to everyone else, but i bet it does play a significant factor.
You know, I am waiting for this update, but IF it doesn't work IMO it will show that this team is a lot more Ineos than Mercedes-AMG, unlike their golden age and lack of overwhelming budget advantage means that they can not replicate what it once did.
2024 we may see Mercedes fighting Williams at this rate. 😂
Easy to build a fast car when they had enough money and engineers to just brute force it till it worked.
The banned of J Damper in the suspension affect the car performance the most as the rear become so unstable and so oversteery.
Seems like Mercedes cars in 2022 & 2023 are equally a nightmare.
The one thing with all these comparison videos that bugs me, is that they don't look at the front wing. The 2022 Mercedes had a very curved wing and both Ferrari and Red Bull have far straighter ones. The Porpoising surely must come from an imbalance between the front and rear wings and, to some extent the uneven disturbance being generated above the Car by the curvy front wing, particularly in a ground effect Car.
To me, that is the other obvious difference (after the side pods) between the Mercedes and Red Bull and Ferrari.
Haven’t you guys made like 8 videos about this already?
They love to simp
Definitely. I lost count at how many videos The Race has made about the Mercedes car.
And its they forgot Mercedes are introducing a brand new concept this week 😩😂
why is the audio sped up? sounds normal if you custom slow to .95x
They've been the third force of the grid since 2022, saying they got it wrong is quite a stretch
All the big teams spent years preparing for the budget cap and have a significant advantage in facilities and personnel. It will be years before the field has levelled out. Being third is about the worst they could be. And preseason several teams pushed for a weight increase and then the floor stays because of flexing floors. If not for those floor stays, and the weight increase that shafted Alpine (stiff, heavy floor) and Sauber/Alfa (light car) it would have been far worse.
Not really when they were the dominant team for 8 years and a majority of the teams have been horrible as well outside of RBR and AMR.
I'm still trying to find the video with Toto smiling when they unveiled the sidepods to their competitors.
Remember when Mercedes first unveiled the zero pod and the race said hit will have a much higher performance ceiling than all the other cars? It is almost as if the race doesn’t know that Mercedes only dominated their era because of their locked in engine advantage.
They should've gotten at least a hint when their customer teams changed their sidepods last season..
Simply that James Allison wasn’t there.
There’s different interpretations of what counts as the most dominant car in the history of F1. A lot of people view this as the number of 1 and 2 finishes for cars from a particular year, and I believes it’s the James Allison Ferrari from 2003 or 2004 that takes that title.
This year has been Max dominance, but it hasn’t been Red Bull dominance due to the gap to Perez.
We’re so back!
Do you all honestly believe Mercedes changed their mind after one race and have used their wind tunnel and cfd allocation so efficiently that they’ve been able to bring 3 new major components???
No, w14a external surfaces are extremely basic and just a facelift of w13.
They waited for more cfd and tunnel time to refine w14b further (from winter allocation) making the gap to red bull smaller to close.
They should decrease the difference in points in higher postions in order to have closer championships
The problem for Merc was that in 2022 they designed 2 cars based on their arrogance that they can beat anyone with what they got because they are so good and they failed to put all of their efforts on a great design rather than showing off. Let them sink to oblivion for all I care and better luck for 2026.
Lol how they fooled themselves with the win in Brazil….. not realizing the others didn’t bring updates anymore and RBR had a wrong set up there. They kept fooling themselves in multiple races claiming to be fastest on track lol while others were driving a pre set laptime and not their fastest laptime lol
What kinda saved mercedez was the porpoising rules changes
I'm not an aerodynamicist but upon seeing last year's car I thought cool, but I wonder how they are going to keep the front wheel wake outside with those narrow sidepods. Since then, all photo and video evidence in wet conditions or under locked front wheels clearly show that indeed, wake ends up at the edges of the diffuser. So it seems baffling to me that any simulation data would have shown otherwise, or that that they would think their design offered any significant advantage to offset this. It's like you saw it with your naked eye as a hobbyist and they didn't.
Its almost as if they thought, less sidepod = less drag but then failed to figure out how the sidepod functions aerodynamically and how downforce can help you corner or provide grip. It's like someone who designs top fuel dragsters was in charge or something. It is all slightly baffling.
@@phightinphil25 their sidepods actually produce more drag because the rear wheels are more exposed.
@@masattac Exactly. It's like something collectively between the ears of the designers stopped working at a critical moment and nobody questioned it. Every pro to the no sidepod setup seems to have at least an equalizing if not negating side effect in reality. They can't go faster because as you said above they haven't actually reduced drag and they have taken away massive amounts of downforce at key periods the car doesn't stick and can't corner and when it does stick especially last year the porpoising ruins it, leading to the rear wing changes or having to raise ride height and essentially ruining the whole concept of the car.
@@phightinphil25 I find it hard to believe that a team of very talented engineers don't understand how a sidepod functions or how downforce increases performance. My guess is they had a theory that the benefits would greater than the negative effects of the small sidepod. Now, that doesn't seem to be the case in reality, but I'm also fairly sure anyone with actual knowledge of designing a F1 race car, isn't watching The Race videos on UA-cam.
@@spauldingjones5763 Good points! It is telling though that McLaren made their (initially slim) sidepods a bit wider, then a bit wider again, then a bit wider again in multiple steps. Like there were gains to be found by iterating in that direction.
Imo, the silver merc looks much nicer than black.
1:27 that is an airplane wing on the side of that Red Bull😮
At least they tried something with the w13 design, too bad they were so stubborn with it. Time for a change now.
SO WRONG? I don't think so. McLaren is fitting and deserving that video title much more
One clear difference with other card is their pull rod rear suspension. Where interlinks need to pass under the gear box. Taking up space in the area of the tunnel floor. Though McLaren is doing this with a Mercedes engine.
0:31 very interesting and helpful graph!
Hindsight asset management is the best performing hedge fund in the world. Remember the reactions when the pundits first saw the W13, who could have imitated them?
But I watch The Race videos on UA-cam. So, I know more than an entire team of engineers. All they need to do is put new sidepods on and they will be faster. Problem solved. It's so easy!
The cost cap, they can’t throw stacks upon stacks of money at car development
F1 is about 1 dominant team - Alonso
My thoughts as someone with no engineering experience: “Hah! Those fools!”
Producing a second underperforming car this year (relative to the competition) following last year's debacle is nothing less than a simply huge Management Failure. It is astonishing that Toto gets such very easy treatment from the motoring press instead of rightly having to take full responsibility, as the buck surely stops with him!
4:53 the porpoising was under control but it was bouncing too much...? huh?
That's some drama for the third fastest car on the grid.
in the word of christian horner "change your fucking car"
I mean is it really "so wrong"? RB just got it so right, Mercedes are with the rest of the upper teams
nobody doing it as well as the race right now keep it up!
Honestly Mercedes have always been to reliant on simulations. People forget just how bad their strategy has been at times because their previous cars and drivers could overcome it
So hundreds of miscalculation from brilliant experienced engineers who seemed over confidence. Let's blame Toto for this one.
lulu is a disgrace: his team mate has fared much better overall than him since they were paired together, and both the Ferrari and the green team have their drivers as far forward as the mercs and they are doing ok, and are not complaining (Ferrari has other problems).
In my opinion W14 was so much better than W13
Ahhhhh Zero Pod. Why have you forsaken me
They need to fix the position of the driver seat and a better high-speed