StyrianGP 2021 Pre-Race Thread - Part 2 of a double header

Weather appears wet for the next GP:

Fri 7/2
https://www.accuweather.com/images/weathericons/6.svg
23° /11°
Mostly cloudy
https://www.accuweather.com/images/components/weather/daily-forecast-card-nfl/drop-icon.svg 25%



Sat 7/3
https://www.accuweather.com/images/weathericons/12.svg
25° /13°
Some rain and a thunderstorm
https://www.accuweather.com/images/components/weather/daily-forecast-card-nfl/drop-icon.svg 56%



Sun 7/4
https://www.accuweather.com/images/weathericons/12.svg
24° /13°
Some rain and a thunderstorm
https://www.accuweather.com/images/components/weather/daily-forecast-card-nfl/drop-icon.svg 58%

 

Be interesting to see if this will overcome the .25 deficit. Mercedes appears a bit confused overall with this car.

Mercedes investigating if ‘wacky’ set-up contributed to Styrian GP struggles
By: Luke Smith
Jun 28, 2021, 3:31 AM
Mercedes is set to investigate if opting for a “wacky” set-up direction with its Formula 1 car contributed to its defeat to Red Bull in the Styrian Grand Prix.

Max Verstappen scored Red Bull’s fourth consecutive victory as Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas were left to settle for second and third place, respectively.


Verstappen led every single lap and rarely looked troubled at the front of the pack, with Hamilton saying after the race that it was “impossible” to keep up. He had fallen over 17 seconds behind before a late pitstop to grab the fastest lap saw the final margin stand at 35.7 seconds.

Mercedes has just four days off before hitting the track once again at the Red Bull Ring for the Austrian Grand Prix, but it has already identified a key area to explore that may explain its struggles.

Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin revealed after the race that Mercedes had pursued quite a radical set-up for the Styria weekend that could have contributed to its inability to compete with Verstappen on race day.

“We were exploring a fairly wacky direction with the set-up, a radical approach which I think was maybe a bit better on a single lap,” Shovlin explained.

“The question that remains is whether we’ve hurt our degradation, and we need to look at that in the next day or two.

“I don’t really want to go into details. Essentially, the window that we work in was much, much wider. We were sort of going further than we’ve ever gone, and just really understanding the effects of that.

“Lewis, before he came here, was doing a lot of work in the driver-in-loop simulator, and it looked like an interesting direction.

“But an important part of this year for us is adapting well to every track. We do need to be a bit brave and original with set-up direction to do that.”

Hamilton said after the race that Mercedes needed to find more performance and bring an upgrade for its car if it wanted to fight Red Bull, only for team boss Toto Wolff to reveal that development had stopped on the W12.

Hamilton now sits 18 points behind Verstappen at the top of the drivers’ championship heading into this weekend’s race.

Image Unavailable, Please Login
Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes, 3rd position, in Parc Ferme

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Shovlin felt that digging into the set-up direction would give Mercedes a chance to strike back at Red Bull, hoping it could help solve some of the tyre degradation struggles both drivers faced.

“One big area is understanding this set-up departure that we’ve taken, and whether or not that has made life more difficult for the rear tyres on the long run,” Shovlin said.

“Some of that we can just do by data. But we’ll see whether or not that is work that can carry into the Friday of the race weekend.

“But fundamentally, the car is very similar. There are additional challenges of extracting the grip out of that C5 compound, the very softest rubber, on a single lap. That might be quite challenging if it is very hot here.

"The other thing is, we’re not looking for massive margins. I think we were down by a couple of tenths in the race, and there was a bit of degradation. But the solution to both of those problems might be the same thing.

“We’ll just try to get the rears running a bit cooler, and look after the rubber a bit better, and you may find that both of those things come our way.

“So we’ll focus on those areas, and it’ll just be a case of seeing if we can come back a bit stronger in a few days’ time.”

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/mercedes-investigating-if-wacky-set-up-contributed-to-styrian-gp-struggles/6617706/

 

This is interesting!

--Binotto also does not back up Mercedes' views that Red Bull's straightline speed gain has been helped by a step forward in engine performance.

He suggests that Red Bull partner Honda may have been forced to wind down its engine in the opening rounds of the season because of reliability concerns, and only now has unleashed its full performance which it could show at limited times earlier in the campaign.

"I don't share [the view] of what I hear and read about, because the performance of the Honda engine, looking at the GPS data, corresponds to the performance they had at the beginning of the season in Bahrain," he explained.

"Then, they had to reduce performance due to reliability issues. I think by solving that, they're back to the standards they had at the start of the season.--

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/ferrari-mercedes-distracted-by-lack-of-team-stability/6621231/

 

Now this is offered lol! Apparent the aero change is affecting Mercedes overall.

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/mercedes-still-planning-car-and-engine-upgrades-to-boost-f1-hopes/6621736/

Mercedes still planning car and engine upgrades to boost F1 hopes
By: Jonathan Noble
Jun 29, 2021, 7:10 AM
Mercedes has revealed it is planning to bring aerodynamic and engine improvements for the next races that it hopes can help it close the gap to Formula 1 rival Red Bull.

While team boss Toto Wolff said after its defeat in last weekend’s Styrian Grand Prix that the outfit’s development focus was fully on 2022’s rules, it has clarified that it does not mean that developments to the current W12 have stopped completely.

Technical director James Allison has revealed that Mercedes still has upgrades that have been under development for some time, plus the German manufacturer’s engine division is also looking at what tweaks it can make to power unit management to help there too.

Speaking to the F1 Nation Podcast, Allison said: “We have a reasonable number of things that are going to make our car faster in the coming races, and let's hope they prove sufficient.”

Asked how his remarks contrasted with Wolff’s comments regarding there being no further upgrades to the current car, Allison said: “I don't think those two things are at odds with each other. And I don’t think Toto has said precisely that.

“What Toto points out is that next year's rules are a big and hairy affair, and that they demand a huge amount of our attention. So most of the focus of our factory has switched over to next year, the performance discovery for next year.

“But that doesn't mean that there aren't things still in the food-chain from prior to that focus switch. And furthermore, it isn't all of the factory. And furthermore, we're only one of two factories, there's also the PU factory and there is a little bit more to come also from the PU.

“So there's some more aerodynamic change in the offing. A little bit on the PU, we hope, on the delivery side, and just a few things that are not quite as tidy as we would wish, that we still have got the opportunity to put right while this season is still very much alive and hot.”

Allison added that Mercedes’ challenge in finding performance gains with its current car had been made more difficult by the new floor rules for this year, which had cut back on downforce.

“Ever since the rule changes that were introduced aerodynamically for looking after the tyres, we have found it hellishly hard to find the sort of performance gain rate that we did previously prior to those rules," he explained. "So that has made our life trickier than we wished it to be.”

Allison also revealed that the 'wacky' set-up which trackside engineering chief Andrew Shovlin talked about after Styria was related to a mechanical aspect aimed at making the car performance better over both single lap and long runs.

“It was probably just sort of a bit of a colourful expression on Shov's part,” he said about it being 'wacky'. “It is a little different to how we normally run a car, mechanically. Aerodynamically it was very similar, ride height wise very similar.

“But [it was] just changing the roll distribution front to rear. That was different to how we normally would do it, seeking a better balance between single lap performance and long run performance.

“Whether we have got that compromise exactly as we would wish it, that sort of goes towards the list of unanswered questions that we're going to have an opportunity to answer by going back to the same track a second weekend running.”

He added: “We think it's quicker, but it's not without its compromises. So whether there is a better mousetrap, we'll find out.”