Mercedes W03

Although it is possible that they are stalling the front wing, it would be a lot easier to stall the front end of the flat bottom--which also reduces drag and would not have to duct the airflow through the cabin.

 

I'm going to try and find the picture I saw, but it was from FP3 earlier today when Michael's car was being lifted from the gravel trap. Someone snapped a pic of the underside of the wing and the front wing f-duct slot is very fine and wide and exits from the second wing element towards the trailing edge

 

Interesting comment by Matchett during the race stating that W03 still lacks competitive pace: He acknowledges that it is fast for a quick lap in qualifying but eats up its rear tires too fast under fuel load to be a front runner.

 

W03 ate its tires today due to a bad setup which overheated the tires. They will figure it out. The car is as a whole good though, great CoG, suspension, top speed, downforce, it just might take a few races to figure out a setup. Not worried.

 

Thanks for the update.

I'm getting worried when you're not worried.

 

+1

 

It's the same situation with Ferrari last year. They just needed to figure out their rear suspension, which they did but it took a few races. I'm not expecting any more than that this year. The car is a pretty good qualifier for sure though which helps.

 

Air pressure on the bottom of an inverted wing is lower than on the top so your assumption stands to reason.

 

I would be OK with Merc winning the season.
Mix it up.

 

So was MS gearbox failure the result of driving off the road or was it when he went to downshift he had no gears and thus no engine braking and flew off?

Also does this mean they are going to have to replace his box for next race and he will incur a penalty??

 

Sounded to me that the box caused the off.

All the teams are learning to cope with the loss of rear grip. Some better than others.

 

Box caused the off. He started losing it on the straight just before the turn, and when he went to downshift it was all over.

 

Just heard from my unnamed 'source' overseas and was told all 4 tires were graining laterally due to none of the tires reaching correct operating temperature which is 100-120C. They were all below operating temp by 10-20C. This is why W03 was having issues in slower corners yet not higher speed corners. Easily fixable.

 

According to new BBC analyst, former F1 designer, Gary Anderson: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/17421227 , the rear wing end plate opening is an inlet:

 

The money cited is small potatoes for the big teams.

 

10X the money sited is still chicken feed to any big team.

 

The bigger teams are probably just not wanting to put themselves on any kind of back foot in developing this technology, which was the ultimate goal for Brawn to do. RB is quick and would rather spend the time catching up to Mclaren. Make something that forces other teams to develop which in turn provides MB more time to essentially catch up and win, hopefully. Also, if any of these modifications require crash testing then the development time/cost would go up quite a bit. This is all tons easier for them to just request the tech to be banned. This is a foul game of chess Brawn played, but a move necessary to being them closer to the front. And a game Newey and others know all too well which further gives them no right to whine so much.

 

True.
In F1 money is cheap but time is dear.
Time copying tech is time not developing tech

 

First port of call complain, whilst busy copying the design..

 

Now that's what I call a business plan

 

+1

FWIW, it seems Lotus & RBR are the only ones whining - Publicly at least.

According to Autosport, they're hoping for a famous Charlie "clarification" before this coming weekend. Personally, I hope he stays with what he said before......

Cheers,
Ian
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/98184

 

Posted on the F1 site - My emphasis added, comments to follow;

Cheers,
Ian
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Indeed. However, this hole is above the main-plane (a "high" pressure area) and, more significantly, perpendicular to the airflow. It's that it's sitting "next" to high speed (low pressure) air whizzing by that leads me to believe air is being sucked out from it rather than fed into it - I just can't get my head around air flowing in, then all thru the car and out under the front wing - OK, that's a low pressure area, but the pressure differential between there and the hole can't be big enough IMO to overcome all the drag that's gonna be in the piping.

I think rather it's allowing air to be sucked out from somewhere - Possibly the main plane (as Autosport suggested) or even under the beam wing.

Or, it's not doing a damn thing and Ross is laughing his ass off at all the speculation!..... [Not for the first time.]

Or, I could just be plain wrong!

Cheers,
Ian

 

You mean like the time Foyt changed the color of the dots on his Goodyears?

It seemed that Michael was anxious to prevent his car from being hoisted too high during its post excursion extraction lest some secret furbelows be revealed. So who knows.

 

Indeed.

+1 Gotta add furbelows to my vocabulary [Closely related, but subtly different from doohickeys.....]

Cheers,
Ian