3415 replies to this topic

[geralt]

Can we talk about Hamilton's start for a second by the way? That was 2014esque, especially if you consider he was on the slower tyres. The last 4 races he's honestly driven to an unbelievable level, absolutely nailing everything from start to finish. He'll come back even stronger next season, of that I have no doubt

[sniper80]

I'm sure that was very hard for you to type haha.

Congratulations to Max for winning the one that counts.

Not hard at all, to me F1 is a mechanical sport and the constructor trophy is just as important as the driver trophy. Ask Frank Williams when you ever meet him in heaven ;-)

Edited by sniper80, 12 December 2021 - 15:59.

[ToniF1]

Yes, quicker reaction and no wheel spin.

 

I do remember a talk how that side is in the sun and tarmac is warmer and other side is in the shade.

[Pits]

Congratulations to a great season, I still think Merc cheated but that doesn't matter now

[grunf77]

Monster of a car, this last 3-4 races untouchable.

[Goron3]

In recent races the car has looked like last year's car. In hindsight, not spending their tokens was a huge oversight. I hope one day we'll find out the truth about what happened there.

[yolo]

It seems like they finally figured out how to set it up. Shame it took them 17 races to do so.

[NoDivergence]

Yes, quicker reaction and no wheel spin.

I do remember a talk how that side is in the sun and tarmac is warmer and other side is in the shade.

In every single F2 start, the second starting car got destroyed on launch. Hamilton was insane today

[w1Y]

What it proves is that this team can overcome a lot of problems.

1. Massive impact to them from floor changes
2. The pace difference to red bull.
3. The Race starts which were poor and gave been great the last 2 races.

Just hope they have got next year's car right from the get go.

[ARTGP]

Well done to Mercedes for winning the WCC. For a team that didn't even spend their development tokens, it goes to show how well they did last year to produce the W11.

 

I hope one day we find out the truth about the tokens. I've heard that they came up with a novel front wing that failed its crash test, but time will tell.

 

 

They tried, but they failed the front impact crash test.

 

 

Interesting. Is there a source for this?  I also saw this rumour posted in the Merc thread.  Nosecone would have required token spend. 

 

 

They revealed it on this weekend's F1TV tech talk show.

 

 

 

It has been claimed that Mercedes made an attempt to spend their tokens on a new nosecone but that the new nosecone failed it's crash test so it was scrapped (this would require 2 tokens,  Alfa Romeo used their 2 tokens on a nosecone as well).   I thought that was interesting because it implies Mercedes did spend resource on tokens, but that they were unable to successfully implement them. A significant setback.

Edited by ARTGP, 14 December 2021 - 16:46.

[w1Y]

Makes you wonder what it was like

[ferrarista]

It has been claimed that Mercedes made an attempt to spend their tokens on a new nosecone but that the new nosecone failed it's crash test so it was scrapped (this would require 2 tokens, Alfa Romeo used their 2 tokens on a nosecone as well). I thought that was interesting because it implies Mercedes did spend resource on tokens, but that they were unable to successfully implement them. A significant setback.

It would make sense if this setback happened in 2021, as soon as they realized they couldn’t implement them they shifted the resources towards 2022, explaining why Ellis said they made an evaluation and decided to concentrate on 2022, scrapping the tokens; then, they also had to correct some car issues they discovered in winter testing, developing new aero parts that would debut at Silverstone and then it took them a few weeks/months to successfully exploit the Silverstone upgrade (but I don’t know if this can count as resources subtracted to 2022, the understanding of the upgrade during an extremely difficult war against Red Bull must have taken some efforts from the engineers, simulations etc, but only they know how much this impacted for 2022).
All in all, I think they surely couldn’t dedicate the same time and resources for 2022 as Ferrari or Alpine, but they are Mercedes, I would be surprised if they are not at the front next year.

[ToniF1]

So it is confirmed that they wanted to spend tokens on a new nose, but after they seen how the new rules will affect them more, they wanted to go with new gearbox packaging and increased rear, but it was to late.

 

Aware of the implication of the changes, and how they would hurt the low rake cars more than the high rake models, the most obvious solution then would have been for Mercedes to alter its gearbox to help it raise the rear ride height to overcome the consequences.

However, this was not possible because the homologation restrictions had already forced teams to commit to any gearbox changes just five days after the end of the 2020 shutdown in June. So it was too late to go down that route.

Mercedes was instead locked in with its original plan to spend tokens on its nose, which it had opted for when it was not aware of the full implications of changes to the 2021 rules.

 

However, its plans for the nose ultimately changed when the consequences of the rule changes were made clear during a particularly difficult pre-season testing programme.

Elliott confirmed that it was the overall loss of downforce, rather than any particular balance problem with the car, that was its main concern during early running.

“I think when you've got a car that's dominant, which we've had previously, the balance you've got doesn't really matter so much to the drivers,” added Elliott. “So I don't think the issue we had at the beginning of season was so much balance, I think we just lost of lot of aerodynamic performance overall.

 

“Whether that hit us as hard as it hit other people, that's always impossible to judge because we don't know what the impact was on the other cars.

“All we know is by the time we'd done our work over the winter and turned up at the tracks, the sort of the advantage we had in the [2020] season, certainly advantages we had mid-season, had disappeared.”

Well aware of the work needed to recover, and with restricted wind tunnel time and the implications of the cost cap, Mercedes decided that it was better off focusing its 2021 efforts on sorting the basic package to overcome the downforce losses triggered by the new rules rather than pursuing the new nose.

That decision meant the plans for the nose were quietly shelved – so Mercedes never got around to running it and spending its tokens.

 

 

https://www.motorspo...tokens/6935169/

 

[MasterOfCoin]

Let's hope all the extra money and time was well spent on the W-13E...

[Bliman]

I think it is now quite clear that the new regulations hurt Mercedes a great deal. It is a miracle they normally would have won both championships this year.

[w1Y]

It was obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes it hurt merc more

What's impressive is that they still came back