Mercedes-Benz W01

[icegirljenni]

Very strange car design from Mercedes, am bit of disappointed. Strange nose...will have lots down force on top, but diffuser? i dont think it will get much flow like this dunno what their rear is like, very strange the rear end if not that well shaped, MP4-25 is better but the front is good.Need to read more details.. what do you think tension. their engine cover is even better than Mclaren, very thin ,nice but the botton rear mclarne is better.these two wil be close for sure... very interesting...

[Tension_36th]

Yes notice these air channels for centerline cooling like Mclaren have probably done, moving the bulk of the weight of cooling elements in the engine cover centerline.

[harrisv48]

Detail Front Wind



Mercedes Diffuser

[Tension_36th]

The Brawn diffuser is decent enough, an evolution of their 2009 work. But it also figures since their nose isn't high like the redbulls it isnt going to drive that much air to the rear. Their work is concentrated more around the engine cover and the almost "invincible" body work behind the back of the car. Very clever piece of engineering.

But the Mclaren is still the one who is sporting the most developed diffuser till date.

[harrisv48]

Mecedes gp W01 engine airflow

[Tension_36th]

Mercedes GP are working on their version of the rear wing stalling mechanism. They are not sure when they'll introduce it but the target is by the Spanish GP.

[Tension_36th]

They are going to increase the wheelbase of the car to gain a better weight distribution. Right now they seem to be not able to take advantage of the short wheelbase and provide a more agile car to both drivers to tweak it to the driver's respective needs. The car is more understeery.

Usually you loose out a small bit in terms of driveability as the increased wheelbase forces drivers to take slightly different racing lines into and out of corners. According to Ross Brawn they mis-calculated on the weight distribution figures. so now in-order to balance it out they need to lengthen the car's wheelbase rearwards.

This actually looks rather simple story, but there is more than what they are letting on.

1) They can reduce weights of components to balance out weight distribution. They don't have to lengthen the car to move around existing weighing components. The fact that they are unable to do this shows they are already very close to the limits of their components and cannot reduce them any further in mass. It will raise reliability issues.

2) They are going to increase on the wheelbase rearwards, which means they have a new double diffuser and the sidepods will be shaped into tight air channeling paths to aid this revised diffuser. That rumored super diffuser might finally make its appearance since Mercedes havent really changed their diffusers from last year's in comparison. They had left lot of room for something big, they might have taken time to introduce one. Now they plan to race it. Even without these chane they have been giving Mclaren and Ferrari a run for their money.

3) Shoe's preference for a neutral car can be aided by the lengthening of the wheelbase. This also means Nico who prefers understeer will have to work with his engineers to find a new setup that pleases him.

This will be the car that will be making the biggest improvements come spain. The rest no matter what they find will all be relatively making the same leaps. Which is why if some team made a 0.5sec improvement it wont be so obvious.

[Tension_36th]

Mercedes has a new engine air box intake which is no longer head on but on the sides of the engine cover. They are confident in getting enough air to their engines with this design plus supplying enough air to their new duct rear wing like the Mclaren's base concept. The car's wheelbase is also longer as they said it would be.





This will reduce drag and change the airflow profile around the back, infact the back is now so low drag it is probably the most efficient rear end for a F1 car. But how this affects cooling will have to be seen over the course of this weekend and the next 2 races.

[Tension_36th]

Mercedes are running their blown rear wing and boundary charged Redbull style exhausts. And they are going backwards in terms of development. Its like the F1 world has their brain cells when they go out on a mad rush to copy rival tech to no end and no gains.