F1 Fanatic

“completely new” … well, so was the F2012, and Last years Lotus (Renault) with forward blowing exausts.

Im sure they know what they’re doing .. but to me it seems it’s better to staditly progress and improve the car between seasons, rather that go all nuts with the design. Just look what Lotus has done this year. They’ve cut the crazy ideas, and actually come up with a very nice all-round car.
If Mercedes is able to do just thát and provide Lewis with a decent car next year, they’ll be in a much much better position then they’re currently at.

Another factor is reliability. This year has been terrible for them. By designing a totally new concept, they risk to again struggle and lose points with DNF’s. Besides, bad reliability is an enormous spirit killer, which is not was Hamilton needs in his first year at the team.

To be honest I still think the issue is too many chefs in the kitchen. I mean, they have an engineering, R&D, and technical director. How on earth do you differentiate their jobs?

You need one guy at the top deciding the concept, then how the guys below that work on that is a different issue. But when you have many chefs, then you have the real possibility of them not managing to find a consensus on the conceptual direction they should take, let alone a favorable outcome.

Bell is a decent TD. Costa maybe slightly less, but he’s not bad. Willis is… well… I wouldn’t call him the worst TD around, let’s leave it at that. But you almost need a dictator at the top who stamps his authority and forces the entire design team around a single concept.

With regards to the current car, I’m not too surprised it was strong at Monaco. I am somewhat surprised it went well in China however. It was always going to go well at a circuit where all the corners were short and sweet, or all the corners were smooth, flowing and fast.

Monaco has been strong for them since 2009 to be honest – they clearly have had good mechanical grip since 2009-2012. A large part of their problems with the W01-W03 has been their aerodynamics under yaw – basically the aerodynamics when the steering wheel isn’t straight, which has (again since 2010) lead to balance issues, with the car’s balance changing between entry, apex and exit. If you sorted one out you’d make the other two parts worse, etc etc.

@robbie I’d say from the team, rather than teams. The other teams all seemed to have less trouble. Merc were the ones who really were hurt when Friday practice didn’t match up with the temps on Saturday and Sunday

The issue was Pirelli was taking their test data at face value – and they shouldn’t have. They were driving a test car made for tyres that could’ve been branded Everlast, and a car that had odles more downforce than the cars today have, especially in the slower corners (due to the exhaust blown double diffuser)

@Calum you have to be careful. You have no way of knowing that they will collaborate ideas. I’m not convinced that these three have collaborated ideas. Development in 2012 has been mighty slow, and they initially went on a quest of understanding tyres for half a season, then went and tried on a new upgrade package. To be honest that upgrade package looked nowhere like it took half a season to design – which would mean they probably thought of doing it.

My personal gut feel is that the Three Kings had arguments, and finally decided on an approach at understanding tyres first. Then the other two Kings who put forth other ideas said, “I told you so” – before embarking on upgrading.

Based on what we have seen in terms of how Mercedes has approached the season – I do not believe that the Three Kings are working in unison

I’m guessing that the W04 will be a lot like the McLaren MP4-27 in that it wll have a much lower nose, and the team is going to try and get a head-start on the 2014 regulations.

High noses are popular at the moment because they allow more air under the front of the car to produce more downforce over the front splitter. This is how we ended up with the stepped noses – the FIA wanted to reduce the height of the nose, but the teams were unwilling to give up the advantage of high noses, mostly because the 2012 regulation changes came late in the 2011 season and the teams didn’t want to rush into low noses because they fundamentally alter the front-end aerodynamics. McLaren, however, started moving towards low noses in 2010. If you look at the MP4-25, -26 and -27, the noses have been getting progressively lower.

The 2014 regulations, however (which have been available for over a year now), mandate lower noses. This means that McLaren have an advantage in that they already know how the cars behave. I’m guessing that Mercedes want to get a similar headstart, so I would expect that the W04 launches with a similar design. In fact, I’m expecting most of the 2013 cars to start the season with a high nose and gradually lower them over the course of the season.