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Mercedes’ ”completely new” W04 (27 posts)

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mclaren said 6 months, 3 weeks ago:

“”Mercedes designing ‘completely new’ 2013 car says Lauda – Mercedes is working on a “completely new car” for the 2013 Formula One season, Niki Lauda has revealed. We are working on a concept for a completely new car. The current one is simply not fast enough,” he said.”" Source RTL

Given the stability of the regulations going into 2013, this is not such a bad idea given how much of a speed deemon the current machine is.

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raymondu999 said 6 months, 3 weeks ago:

“completely new” is “revolutionary,” not “evolutionary”

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Kingshark said 6 months, 3 weeks ago:

From an evolutionary perceptive I hope it evolved from a Spinosaurus to a T-Rex. That’d be handy.

On a more serious note, let’s just hope it actually works this time rather than fail.

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matt90 said 6 months, 3 weeks ago:

I assumed this would be the case. I found it hard to believe that Hamilton would leave McLaren without them having something special for 2013- it seemed that going to Mercedes and expecting a dud year before a good 2014 would be out of character.

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raymondu999 said 6 months, 3 weeks ago:

@Kingshark Now that just reminds me…

Let’s hope it’s not going to happen like this :P

@matt90 Is it really? A large part of their problems this year seem to be misunderstanding their car. A new package will just exacerbate that.

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Michael said 6 months, 3 weeks ago:

It sounds like the Mercedes board is not too happy about the team’s performance. I’m sure they were expecting much better results after 2009 and the impressive start of the 2012 season. In another topic, we touched on addressing the weak areas of the team and it sounds like they simply decided that the entire car was too weak – it’s hard to disagree with that decision when you see its performance against the top teams’ cars and the undeserving farewell it has bestowed on Michael Schumacher.

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mclaren said 6 months, 3 weeks ago:

@Michael agree,
IMO, the mercedes was the fastest car for the first 3 races, is just that underperforming in qualifying and eating up rear tires hurt them; i think it was Mark Hughes who said that mercs struggles this year were due to the DDRS leading the team the wrong way in terms of development. i think rather than struggling along with a car that seems to be generally slow, a brand new package might be the solution.

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Michael said 6 months, 3 weeks ago:

@Raymondu999,

The W04 Rooster Edition – I like the sound of that!

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Bob said 6 months, 3 weeks ago:

Considering that the W03 gave Mercedes their first victory, and got Schumacher a pre-penalty pole position in Monaco, it was obviously not too shabby of a package, in terms of raw pace, in the early stages of this season. It’s clear that Mercedes then lost the plot in the mid-season development race, and now they have a car that’s sitting in the gulf between the frontrunners and the midfield, unable to live up to it’s potential.

Remember when Ferrari announced that they would be “revolutionary” with the F2012? They ended up with a shopping trolley for the first few races, and only got to their current level of performance with extensive redesigns from Spain onward. Seeing how they’ve fumbled with the W03, can Mercedes manage a similar turnaround if the situation arises?

Like @raymondu999 mentioned, a new car would just lead to more problems. With a “revolutionary” redesign, the team would have to contend with technical gripes, adapt to the new car’s setup characteristics, handling and aerodynamic quirks.

Ross Brawn must surely remember Rory Byrne’s old motto: Evolution, not revolution.

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Michael said 6 months, 3 weeks ago:

@Bob I was wondering what happened to Merc – like you said they had a car that gave them their 1st victory and pole at Monaco and all of us expected them to do well. Yet they have had subpar performance in the last 9+ races. I just cannot see them stopping the development of the W03 to focus on the W04 when they just won their 1st race and 2nd pole. However the bigger the risk, the bigger the maximum payoff. I wonder if Merc is taking a “no prisoners” approach and saying we’ll either dominate or go out in a bang. It might not be a bad move to re-invent the car in 2013 so that they can work out the kinks for 2014 when the new engines are introduced. This way there will be fewer unknown variables in 2014. I hope this makes some sense or I’m just talking out of my posterior…:-)

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Bob said 6 months, 3 weeks ago:

@freelittlebirds – Just a theory I have, expounded from what @mclaren mentioned – Merc didn’t manage the W03′s development all that well. They poured resources into researching DDRS, which went nowhere, and as a result neglected to develop other aspects of the car (aerodynamics, tire management) to the extent that they should have. Thus, other teams were close the gap and overtake them performance-wise.

At the moment, here are two hypotheses as to the nature of the W04:

1 – As you suggested, the W04 is a testbed for the 2014 car. The team gets experience with the car and works out all the gremlins, putting them in an advantageous position when the new regulations take effect.

2 – Alternatively, the W04 is an all-or-nothing attempt at building the fastest car possible within the current V8 formula, before the 2014 regulation changes; much like what McLaren did with the 1988 MP4/4.

At the moment, option 1 seems far more likely.

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Journeyer said 6 months, 3 weeks ago:

I think Merc was really trying to fix their tyre degradation issues (partly caused by the DDRS), but never found the solution for it. Given how bad it was (remember Malaysia), they couldn’t really do anything else until they had sorted it out. There were some new parts that lessened the pain somewhat, but it seems to have come at the expense of their overall pace (less heat in the tyres = less grip). In that sense, a new car would help them get rid of that problem altogether. But for that approach to work, they have to at least have figured out what was causing it (DDRS? Something else?) and make sure to avoid making the same mistake again.

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Nicholas Sunderland said 6 months, 3 weeks ago:

@kingshark Spinosaurus was both bigger and faster than the Tyrannosaurus, so I don’t know what you’re on about :P

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DaveF1 said 6 months, 3 weeks ago:

@kingshark Aside from the fact that T-Rex and Spinosaurus were both theropods, they had very little in common so how you got to the conclusion that Spinosaurus evolved into Rex is odd to say the least :P

Anyway to the topic at hand, I personally believe Mercedes is main problem is car development throughout at season. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who’s noticed that there seems be a recurring trend where they start the season fairly strongly but then seem to drop off. It also happened during the Brawn days but on a much smaller scale. Perhaps if the focused more on staying consistent throughout 2013 and bring updates that help the cars performance they’ll find themselves in a much better position than they are now. Especially considering they have Hamilton, who no doubt wants to be competing at the top.

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Kingshark said 6 months, 3 weeks ago:

From an evolutionary perceptive I hope it evolved from a Spinosaurus to a T-Rex. That’d be handy.

Never mind. I take that back after watching this.

:P

That being said, with Mercedes being such a poor car at the moment I doubt if even next season Mercedes could make a ridiculous leap of faith and somehow become a race winner, especially considering that at the moment they aren’t even remotely close to the podium and can barely collect a small handful of points. At least the cars they made in 2010 and 2011 were fourth best on the grid. The W03 is a total shambles.

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