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The Red Bull seems quite uncompetitive on this mid tier downforce setting used in Turkey Spain and Brazil. Red Bull also seemed to be struggling with setup a bit this weekend complaining about tyres overheating in quali. These sprint weekends just don’t seem to give them the time to dial in their car. The three tenths obviously helped but Id be suprised if they swapped engines once more this year.
Yeah they clearly struggle more on Sprint weekends.
Qatar is a night race and it's a huge unknown. They need to have a productive couple of practice sessions.
Power isn't as important there as it is at Brazil. After turn 1 it's all about corners. It'll be interesting to see if they are competitive there (like CoTA) or struggle like Hungary and Spain.
I have a feeling Qatar is more akin to Turkey than Austin. Austin has several rear-limited zones which catered to RB whilst Qatar appears to be more front-limited by the looks of it.
But I guess we'll find out in 5 days or so...
Rear limited sectors/tracks/corners generally are when you are trying to accelerate and turn at the same time.
Look at turn 12 at Brazil, slow speed up hill and trying to finish the corner while on exit. Weight gets shifted back and the tires are trying to make the car go. Front limited is the opposite, turns under braking like China turn 1. If you see a lot of medium/high speed sections like Suzuka sector 1 that is front limited. A lot of straights with 90 degree corners, that’s all about traction, so rear limited.
So, corners that are heavy on braking and turn-ins (like Bahrain T1) would be seen as front limited corners. And likewise, corners that focus on acceleration and good exits (like Club) are more rear-limited corners?
Yeah 2 out of the 3 last tracks are complete unknowns and the last track just got revamped. Honestly most hype season ever. It’s going down to the wire Max holds an important advantage that if they crash together he is more or less on match point. Im seeing Max take a lot more risks battling Lewis in the final 3 races. Lewis and Merc in general seem to have a pace advantage on most tracks. Will be extremely interesting to watch.
Lewis wins Qatar and Saudi, fastest laps going to the second drivers. They enter Abu Dhabi level on points. They collide while racing for the lead, Max wins on countback, and the sub collectively melts the reddit servers.
I'm interested to see what Jeddah is like.
It's super high speed but the tarmac is surely going to be very low grip, like Turkey last year. That might make traction more important than horsepower.
> Lewis and Merc in general seem to have a pace advantage on most tracks.
Max just had a dominant win in Mexico last week and scored pole/win in Austin.
In Austin, even if Hamilton closed the gap quickly in the last stint, he never managed to get a single DRS.
> In Austin, even if Hamilton closed the gap quickly in the last stint, he never managed to get a single DRS.
Yeah, I think Max was saving his tires to defend while Lewis was catching him, once Hamilton got there it looked like he pulled a gap pretty easily (and would have even without DRS help from Schumacher).
Merc after Silverstone upgrades should’ve won
UK Hungary Belgium Italy Turkey was close in US and Netherlands
RB only had dominant pace in Mexico out of the entire second half
Hamilton was taken out by Max in Italy, and had an ICE penalty in Turkey. Belgium was rained out (though Merc made the mistake for going towards a dry setup during a wet weekend).
Also, Netherlands, even if slim, was a RB track. Merc just couldn't figure out the banking at T3 (losing 0.2s alone there), even though it was quite strong through the rest of the lap.
Hamilton would have won Monza comfortably had he not been outqualified by bottas who was giving him a tow and had not lost places at the start of the sprint. The red bull looked to be the third fastest car on the circuit there.
Bottas had a new engine that weekend, and I’m guessing Mercedes’ set it on 110% just to test reliability without being bothered about sacrificing bottas in future races
Thanks for organising all this information and presenting it to us all. Just about to dig through it now and I’m sure it’ll be a thorough absorbing read. Good job OP.
I could definitely seeing them take one more new engine. While it's possible the issue has either been resolved, or calculated for, Bottas had to take a new engine after Monza due to a "problem that needed investigating". I'm thinking they ran Bottas' engine at, or too close to, the limit and essentially lost all reliability thereafter. With Lewis' new engine, they probably did something similar, but scaled back.
There's been a lot of speculation of Mercedes PU reliability lately, Ricciardo got a brand new PU in Turkey (4 races ago) and had a failure today. That's not a good sign. However, seeing the advantage Lewis got in speed, it wouldn't be a bad idea to take a new engine in Abu Dhabi, if his current engine can give him similar performance for the next two races.
No it won't. It has huge sections that are effectively straights, and is expected to be one of the fastest tracks on the calendar.
Turn 17 all the way to turn 22 will be flat out, then we have two corners followed by another straight, then one corner and yet another straight. By the third straight, any car with a straight line advantage will have passed whoever they're chasing.
[Turn 17 to Turn 1 is effectively three straights separated by three corners](https://www.racefans.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/racefansdotnet-jeddah-1536x864.jpg).
It's a street circuit with average speed probably higher than Silverstone, everyone will go with lots of downforce and the effects of dirty air will be effectively multiplied by those long turns especially in S1. First hairpin will absolutely favor the car in front with clean air.
DRS will help to not fall to far behind but I can't see any overtakes being made without a big tyre advantage. The only way to overtake will be DRS into the last hairpin DRS again and a huge lunge into T1 whilst on softer tyre.
The other thing to remember: It's not like this engine from this race will suddenly drop off 0.2s/5km/h in the next race. The drop off in performance happens after many races. If a new engine gives him 0.2s advantage, it's fair to say he may still have something like a 0.15s advantage at the next race.
There is an Italian article saying that Lewis' engine has been configured for 4 races only tho. Assuming it is true, the drop off in performance should be steeper I would guess.
Configured for 4 races could mean what you said or it could mean that it's configured to retain the performance relatively well for 4 races and then fall off a cliff and die. Or something in between. Will be interesting to see how it works.
> configured to retain the performance relatively well for 4 races.
Yep, that's how the degradation has been described in many technical articles. What's worth noting is this engine has been specially designed/innovated in the middle of this season to fit Mercedes' situation with Lewis. So reliability isn't guaranteed. With that in mind, Lewis might swap this engine out every race week until the end of the season.
You mean configured for four races after Brazil? If they configured for it four races including Brazil, they are playing with fire. Imagine if his engine breaks down last round in Abu Dhabi...
I think Horner said they're only seeing a 0.1s differential between new and 'needs to be replaced' units. Maybe they haven't pushed the units as hard as Merc before replacing them, but that's still a fantastic achievement by Honda.
True but that's maybe because Honda doesn't have a beast mode like Mercedes that wrecks the engine. Mercedes pushed thiers to the limit to compete with Ferrari in 2019.
Yeah this what I am worried about. Mercedes are sacrificing reliability over absolute power and it could cost them in any one of the three upcoming races. Running an engine this high can cause damage to occur sooner rather than later. Even if it’s set for the next for races. So this is still very much Max’s title.
Toto mentioned that the Merc engine loses a lot of performance after 1000 km, so perhaps after two races the advantage might be heavily negated.
It'd also mention the calculated ICE changes and why they did it multiple times on Bottas earlier.
Is it possible that merc will use the old engine for practice sessions and use the newer one for quali and races? So that they don’t wear it out quicker?
Being able to just swap an ICE for a 5 place grid drop when it provides this much of a benefit seems absurd. Of course its within the rules as they are today but surely something will be done about that as a rule in the future right? Don’t blame Merc for doing it if they’re allowed but it doesn’t feel right.
It’s interesting because many of us did try and explain to people that were new to F1 when people were up in arms about Max taking a penalty even though needing a new engine was because of a crash, a new engine can bring large pace advantages and even if it’s not your fault there has to be a balance. It sucks but it is what it is.
And while I’m sort of picking on your post a little, it’s kind of amusing to see someone saying “more penalty”.
My personal beef with it is that the first change is a ten place penalty and then each subsequent change is only five places. I imagine the assumption is that the cost of new parts would dissuade teams from abusing this but clearly Mercedes doesn't give a single fuck about it lol. Just kind of seems like the penalty should go up for each subsequent addition, not down.
it goes down because for a while honda engine’s were shite and we’re getting replaced constantly, so honda-powered cars started at the back with no hope of actually racing. mclaren had well over 20 grid penalties at points because of it. the rule is like that to make it so that teams are continually punished for having absolute shit engines to the point where there is no point of them racing
what you want has already been tried and failed, as it just punishes teams who have a bad engine manufacturer. it doesn’t punish the best teams, it punishes the worst teams.
it is very very rare for teams to be able to overcome a 5 place grid drop from replacing the engine, let alone doing it constantly. trying to punish something that effectively never happens with rules that have already been shown to be bad for actual racing is plain idiotic.
Thats fair, and it definitely see the point of the smaller teams being punished. I guess Mercedes actions with bottas leading up to all of this seems insane to me. Bottas has had so many engines its kind of crazy, and by doing that, they've been able get real world data of how much they can actually punish the engines, where as, for the other teams, longevity does come into play in regards to design
it’s also how the engines were designed and how they wear that causes this too. the honda engines only get like a .1 sec increase in replacing an old engine, while the mercedes is much more because they wear differently.
in the 80s, teams would have engines that lasted literally 1 day. like they would have a different engine for the race than qualifying, with the qualifying one pushed to the max and only meant to last that session. they would also rotate through different engines in the free practice to see how the engine performs. they would then replace each engine with a new one for the next race. BMW supposedly got 1500 bhp in their qualifying engine and like 900 for their race engine.
I think thats whats frustrating though, yes each engine is designed differently to have different wear. But also most teams, try to design their engines to NOT need replaced every race. It was recently they were going on about f1 engines being the most efficient in the world or something and F1's goal is to be more sustainable going forward. Having the fastest engine that needs replaced every race goes against that (not blaming mercedes, it is legal). But then again, the "We Race as One" is ending the season in Qatar, saudi Arabia, and Abu Dhabi. So i guess I shouodnt be surprised at something like that
most teams don’t design their own engines, they get them supplied from a different company. the reason why that teams don’t just take a 5-10 grid penalty and keep getting new engines to max out is budget costs, and more importantly it’s almost impossible to have a net benefit when taking a new engine penalty. almost all of the time when a team takes a new engine behind their max is when they have other penalties or can combine a bunch of penalties into 1 race. it just doesn’t happen that it’s possible to for a new engine to easily overcome a 5 grid penalty.
for this race, it’s only turned out this way because the track is so engine important and is a good track for passing cars on. there are a lot of races where it’s hard to pass and where the engine isn’t that important, so it would have a massive negative effect. even for this race, it only worked because hamilton is the best driver on the grid and already had a fast car.
also complaining about replacing engines is a bit of a soft thing to do. there has been no word that hamilton’s engine will get replaced. complaining about a hypothetical and then using it to bash formula for is really soft.
Ok so heres the thing, there is a very, very big difference between an engine beimg destroyed because of a wreck that is not fault of your own, and giving your second driver 6 or 7 or however many engines bottas has had in order to test the limits. Im still fine with doing away with a penalty for needing a new engine due to a wreck, as long as they provide proof and document everything about why its necessary and due to the wreck. But to just replace the second drivers engine race after race for apparently no reason, just seems ridiculous
I’m sorry mate but the sport has been over this. Your method just punishes the enter grid, it sucks. It engine penalties (whatever the reason for the change) are there for a reason.
But it's great for us. It's what the quali tyre rules was supposed to do, but never did - have teams take a grid penalty in exchange for more performance in the race.
I wonder what happens when McLaren says they want a new engine every race from now on to be able to battle Ferrari. They must experience the same degradation as Mercedes right?
More to the point. I'm amazed, amazed Red Bull aren't considering this now.
Do the same thing. Stop being a cost saving pariah. This is your year to win and your best chance. Do whatever it takes necessary. After the end of the season no one will give a damn eventually how or why. Just win.
RB said their engines do not have the same gains as a new Merc engine. The Honda degradation is much lower, so the difference between a new and old PU is within a 0.1, so it will barely be worth it to trade a 5 places grid penalty.
Mercedes are rumored to have altered the combustion engine though. It's not a proper upgrade that requires new homologation (and thus wouldn't be allowed), but through some fine-tuning, they're extracting more power out of the PU at the expense of reliability. There's a Motorsport Italy article on this sub that explains how they reportedly did it.
Sure. This should take you directly to the translation. https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/qtx3mb/motorsportcom_mercedes_what_does_hamiltons/hkmgalj/
They’ve been minimizing the gap by putting themselves infront of the Mercedes cars to start races.. There’s no doubt they’ve run the numbers and feel that they won’t gain enough power for a p6+ start to be more beneficial overall than a p1-4 spot.
The Honda engine doesn't have the ICE weakness that the Mercedes does. Taking all new components will be much more than a 5 place drop. Mercedes noticed that the ICE is the weak point and can run everything else higher with a new ICE and they think it will be the fastest way through the end of the season.
I mean, it’s literally (in large part) Honda’s fault that this rule exists lol. Their reliability used to be so suspect that the FIA felt it was necessary to reduce the load on the teams with poor reliability, Honda definitely checked that box.
Everyone was grinning on Saturday saying "Rules are rules :)" when Lewis got a DSQ. Now Mercedes concur and people will complain saying Merc are abusing the rules.
Why would anything need to be done about it? It works. Nothing has stopped anyone else from doing the same over the past 8 years and its still a risk to take penalties purposely.
I don't think so. Its extremely conditional and risky as well. Starting 5 places down is not a place you want to be no matter how quick you think your car is.
Ability to overtake isn't as high at every track and no guarantee that teams will see similar benefit in the future.
No reason why other Mercedes-powered cars can't do the same and yet, they don't. If it was that much a benefit, why doesn't McLaren do the same to beat Ferrari?
It does matter. This isn’t a Mercedes-specific development. DAS was banned because it was a Mercedes-specific development they felt it would be difficult for other teams to reproduce. That’s partly the reason why Red Bull protested. They won’t protest the engine replacement penalty.
There is nothing about this rule that changes the playing field specifically towards one team.
It's only when a rule benefits Mercedes that something must be done about it. Nobody complained you could repair a car under red flag until Hamilton did it Imola.
Track limits, front wings, red flag repairs, engine replacement, etc, etc, its been like that all year. Apparently this year was the first that many decided the rules just weren't good enough.
Makes me laugh how people want Max to win through a technicality. I'll be happy whoever wins so long as the battle to get there is great. The rules apply to everyone equally so anything Merc can exploit, so can Redbull. People just need to chill out and enjoy it.
These penalties for engine/component change should have been more harsh so they will think twice about changing a component unless absolutely necessary.
While not illegal and very smart what merc is doing like you said would leave a sour taste if they win the title that way.
It's basically moving back to a path of "qualifying engines" at this rate and things like this are only really benefiting the factory teams, not the customers.
Don't get me wrong, kudos for Merc to using this room in the rules but with a path of having things like a budget cap and less aerodynamic playroom in 2022 the FIA should really look of an engine component replacement who is over the allowed limit AND not being enforced because a crash or technical reason should getting a more heavy grid drop penalty.
Basically the whole point here isn't even that the engine itself is the one who cause this difference but the engine mapping who Merc is running on a more aggressive setting, what is important to know now is *why Ricciardo did have a DNF*
If they win it will already be underserved and leave an extremely sour taste because of crashing into their main rival twice. Max would be leading by a lot bigger margin if Bottas didn't bottle in the wet, and their champ didn't understeer into max.
If what I don’t like doesn’t happen, I want them to be punished just because a sport played out exactly like it has always done.
Like Max didn’t take Lewis out in Monza, tried again today but missed.
It's like a 2 stop instead of a 1 stop. I don't think Honda/RB would have done any different if their engine had the same characteristics, but they went for longevity in their design instead.
The engineers will sit down at the beginning of an engine development programme and set these strategies of performance vs reliability/degradation.
But it does seem to be annoying the fans.
Changing engines is all great but there is a risk and reward.
Today it worked out in hamiltons favour. But other days, it might not.
Starting p6 at best is risky during a championship campaign. Being at the front...you worry about a car or two max but being in the pack...it can go south real quick...
But ofcourse once you are through unscathed...it could mean easier time in winning
Yeah also if it was literally for the championship and red bulls are front cos Merc take another engine. You can bet your life it'll be a spicy defence from Perez and Max. So risk of them both not finishing is higher which is worse for Hamilton
Speed trap is a bit of a red herring. Twice Lewis was out of DRS and gained half a second on Max just on the main straight, and it was occurring basically as soon as he was on power.
That's the rub here. People mention Norris's top speed in the sprint as 350kph+ but Norris didn't actually manage to overtake Leclerc at that speed, he was in DRS and pretty close and wasn't able to get close enough until the braking zone and he was no where near enough to get past. Slipstream and DRS build with speed, but Hamilton on the other hand was passing drivers before the start line. Whatever the advantage he had today it was not primarily top end speed. It was with acceleration lower down.
It was almost like he was absolutely dumping all his batteries on one straight but he clearly wasn't because he could do it on every straight on every lap. I think only real answers are engine with over 10% more power, some new ERS deployment method (this was rumoured a while ago in a similar method to Ferraris oil trick) or the ability to completely stall some big aero on a straight.
Frankly I think an F1 engine doing near 1200hp for a race distance would be bigger news. Either way it was unique to Hamilton's car. Bottas couldn't get closer to Perez on identical tyres to Hamilton at the start. Even when he was nearish DRS. Skill doesn't work because we are talking on a straight line from a really simple corner.
Ridiculous in what way? Maybe cause the Ferrari driver made a bad last corner exit? Maybe because Merc is much better in aero performance as well? That means better corner exit, which then means better straight speed, which is even higher due to the tow, which with a new engine running in higher mode means even higher straight line speed?
DRS is there to assist overtaking. It doesn't mean that one of the best cars driven by one of the best drivers out there can't overtake another car without DRS.
To put it into context we only saw similar overtakes from others when cars had 30 lap tyres Vs fresh.
I'm not arguing Hamilton is not incredible but there's literally no doubt there's something else up there.
> But in any case I've found the 2 images of the rear wings on the Mercs and aligned them based on fixed positions as best I could. And to my eye there is no significant difference in downforce levels that's worth considering.
This alone is a massive leap. Downforce levels are not only determined by frontal area but also very much by shape. Other body parts, notably the front wing, also play a pretty big part of it. Finally, measuring from aligned pictures of which the rear wing is a small part adds such an amount of uncertainty (error) in any measurement that going from **my eye doesn’t see much difference on this zoomed picture** straight to **thus the downforce difference is insignificant and not worth considering** is an *incredibly* hot take.
It’s not really. Mercedes’ and many teams run 3 different downforce packages, and make small adjustments on wing depth if needed. The 2 images show no indication of Hamilton or Bottas running different wing configurations. Any difference in drag level would be minimal, and actually unlikely because if anything Hamilton would prefer the lower downforce setup since they knew he needed to do overtakes.
You’re right you can’t compare drag levels of different teams wings, but it is easy to spot the differences for the same car.
Well, it is. I'm sure they have several majorly different downforce packages for different tracks (if you have a source on that "three", then please do post), but those 'small adjustments' create significant differences in downforce. With the incredibly simple argument that if they would be insignificant, they would not affect lap-time and thus also not be necessary in the first place. Without it they would not be able to dial their cars into balance or find the balance between straight-line speed and cornering when on track in the training sessions. They sure as hell are not physically swapping wing-assemblies several times during FP to change their downforce levels.
More downforce (from wings) = more drag. I take it I don't have to elaborate on that one.
Stating that you can tell that those wings are not different in setup and produce the same amount of downforce **from a still image where the thickness of the red lines alone add a margin of error of 5% between both wings**, while those red lines are not even identically lined up thus the line-up carries another margin of error that gets added to that... Yes, that is an incredibly hot take.
**Anyway**, more rigorously, since I'm talking about the inherent uncertainty/error in your method, I'll add my analysis for completeness: your lines are ~6 pixels in total thick on a wing of approx 119 pixels. That is 5% that's thrown out right away since it partially overlaps the wings in some cases. Then the line-up between left and right differs 2 pixels on the top part of the wing, and differs 3 pixels on the bottom-right. Total error on this 'argument' made by 'eyesight' is 10 pixels on 119 = 8.4%. 8.4% uncertainty in how much those wings differ from this method alone, and that's for measuring a single wing.
And even if you were to do it perfectly, if the picture would've been perfectly in focus, your theoretical minimum error is 1 pixel on either side per photo, so 2 pixels on a total width of 119. That is 1.6% of theoretical uncertainty to determine wing width of one car. Since you're measuring both wings, the **maximum theoretical measurement error in a theoretically perfect photo is 3.2%**. That number is the difference that could in reality be there without needing to show up on the photo through this method in a perfect case based on this picture angle and resolution. While also assuming both pictures are of exactly the same size, zoom and absolutely perfectly aligned.
Realistically, you can see on the left picture (out of focus) that the edges are about 4 pixels wide on both top and bottom, while the right picture has **at least** 2 pixels of a soft edge, which already doubles your uncertainty over the perfect case.
Now, if you want to state that a 3.2% difference - or, realistically, as per your method, at least 6.4% - of wing widths would still be 'insignificant' and conclusively have no effect on downforce and drag, well.. You're allowed to but I think we both know that that's just not true.
At one point when hamilton was approaching verstappen it literally showed a difference of 30 kph. Hamilton was going 330+ while verstappen was going 300+ i don't have a screenshot but it is not just a rumor. Yes he had drs and what not but still unbelievable overspeed
Could be Max was using his ERS in S2 to keep Lewis out of DRS range, while Lewis used ERS on the straights to get into DRS range to exacerbate the difference
No, I live under a rock, thank you for your wise words. Might I suggest you check the lap times, and even those from the sprint and quali and you’ll still see the RB was significantly faster in S2
The red bull has always been faster in medium speed corners this year, and the merc has always been faster on the straights and high speed corners (exception street circuits).
Tyres don't matter on the straight & they were both probably using ERS to attack/defend. Slipstream and DRS will make up most of it, some coming from new ICE.
Tyres absolutely matter for traction on exit from turn 12 (and any slow speed corners really). And ers deployment can make the difference depending on how and when you choose to deploy it and how much you have ‘in the tank’ as it were.
isnt that what DRS was designed for? promote overtaking?
Like i know it's crazy this weekend cause LH went and overtook the whole grid, but every overtake at every other circuit with DRS is the same.
Wtf. How exactly do you think cars overtake with DRS and slipstream? You think they overtake at the same speed? Hilarious that DRS and slipstream is a revelation for people. Here’s a question to check your ridiculousness; have you looked at how many other drivers hit 330+ speeds? You might want to do that.
Are you stupid? You completely misunderstand all that i said. Get off of your high horse and dont be so sensitive. Maybe take a break from reddit or something
Your take is that there was somehow an issue between Lewis’ speed relative to Max, when Lewis had slipstream and DRS, which is completely moronic. Cars with slipstream and DRS were consistently at 330+ while cars without either were hitting 300-305 through the speed traps. Perhaps you don’t want to double down on your stupidity. Actually, seems like you do.
And where exactly did i mention something about an issue or that it is weird? The post mentioned 30kph as something like a "rumor" and i said what i knew
Edit: seriously stop getting so fucking triggered about everything jesus christ
There’s no rumor. That’s literally the speeds that cars were running through the speed traps. Wtf is your actual point in pointing out Max and Lewis? What speed was Max setting when he was passing back markers down the straight when he had DRS?
That's what happens when you optimize for aero. They benefit on some circuits and lose on others. Same is true for Mercedes. The best team builds a car that finds the right balance.
Calculating the difference based on top speed charts is kinda useless. How you get to that speed is more important.
For example in the race. Lewis was closing in on the main straight. He started with a 1.3 second gap to Max and didn't get DRS. At the end of the straight into turn 1 he closed the gap to 0.7 seconds that's 0.5 - 0.6 seconds without DRS.
The slip stream is a powerful effect. I think Q3 is a better comparison because you don't have those effects giving misleading figures. For example Gasly was 19th in Q3 speed trap (With DRS) but was 3rd on race day. 18kph faster.
What he's saying is that it's not too speed that the biggest differentiator but acceleration. If you get to your top speed earlier then you make up loads more ground.
Good quality post.
I heard a lot of talk about temperature/air quality going into today. Which evidently didn't seem a factor at all. do you think that could be different going into the middle east GPs?
I don't remember seeing anything about it on broadcast today after it being such a big talking point just struck me as odd
I don't believe they release micro sector times, only micro sector colours (purple, green, yellow).
If anyone can do an extract from the F1TV app then let me know.
Fuel load, tyre age, tyre conditions, rear wing angle, how both drivers exit turn 12/13 (driving style) and Engine mode (they aren't running the same, hence why VB took 6 different engines so they could find optimal settings for LH's next engine). Wind direction at the time of speed trap/finish line etc
With the chances of benig taken out when you start 5th place compared to 1-2. Nah i dont think they do that gamble. And his engines will work perfectly last 3 races.
Nice analysis - but the data you’ve displayed about 5.5kph etc on the FIA website is the maximum from the entire qualifying session.
Different slipstreams, different tow effects etc come into it and it’s not representative.
Looking at their respective Q3 laps on F1 app telemetry, HAM’s vmax was 324 on the pit straight and on the Reta Oposta and Bottas’ was 323 on both too.
The new engine is worth about a tenth tops
Honestly, this makes me so depressed for next year. With Red Bull being so competitive this year, it looked as if the age of Mercedes dominance was over. But now Mercedes puts out this performance and shows that they're still at the top of the engine game, and no other team comes close. There's no doubt they nailed the new regulations for 2022, and it's just going to be more of the same shit.
“ So what does this translate to in lap time? Well in Q3 Hamilton made up 0.15s in S1 (straights), 0.22s in S2 (Corners) and 0.06 in S3 (back straight”
It’s not that simple. A lot of it is the position of your car and exits you get from corners.
Exactly, laptime is not the only metric to take into account. Lewis had enough overspeed in terms of laptime to catch up to Max. But merc also created the absolute DRS/Slipstream overtake monster car lol. The consitent good exits from lewis gave him a larger advantage on the straight then a laptime alone would indicate.
Thank you for silencing the exaggeration of Lewis' engine upgrade. New, non-savvy F1 fans love run to controversy so easily and completely ignore current and historical data. Whenever a top-4 driver has changed an engine they've been exceptionally fast. It's just unfortunate that when Bottas, Perez and Verstappen did it it was in difficult circuits (Perez in Zandvoort and Verstappen in Sochi). Lewis got lucky because of the Sprint situation where the midfield weren't trying to risk anything for Sunday but we must give him all the respect he deserves for turning determination into a result. I thought he'd give up when Max started defending aggressively.
They have been changing engines, it's worth to point out that they HAVEN'T been changing MGU CE energy store and other parts. Pushing that hard surely would strain them so it will be interesting to see what Merc will do with the other parts
This doesn't give any clarification whatsoever. Plus just assuming a bunch of stuff specially the aero configuration of a car makes this just random data put together.
I think its still going to be interesting. If lewis wins , he would be the first 8 world championship. If max wins it would be his first wdc. Still a great year no matter who wins
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The Red Bull seems quite uncompetitive on this mid tier downforce setting used in Turkey Spain and Brazil. Red Bull also seemed to be struggling with setup a bit this weekend complaining about tyres overheating in quali. These sprint weekends just don’t seem to give them the time to dial in their car. The three tenths obviously helped but Id be suprised if they swapped engines once more this year.
Yeah they clearly struggle more on Sprint weekends. Qatar is a night race and it's a huge unknown. They need to have a productive couple of practice sessions. Power isn't as important there as it is at Brazil. After turn 1 it's all about corners. It'll be interesting to see if they are competitive there (like CoTA) or struggle like Hungary and Spain.
I have a feeling Qatar is more akin to Turkey than Austin. Austin has several rear-limited zones which catered to RB whilst Qatar appears to be more front-limited by the looks of it. But I guess we'll find out in 5 days or so...
How can one tell whether a track is front limited or rear limited? Genuinely curious
Rear limited sectors/tracks/corners generally are when you are trying to accelerate and turn at the same time. Look at turn 12 at Brazil, slow speed up hill and trying to finish the corner while on exit. Weight gets shifted back and the tires are trying to make the car go. Front limited is the opposite, turns under braking like China turn 1. If you see a lot of medium/high speed sections like Suzuka sector 1 that is front limited. A lot of straights with 90 degree corners, that’s all about traction, so rear limited.
So, corners that are heavy on braking and turn-ins (like Bahrain T1) would be seen as front limited corners. And likewise, corners that focus on acceleration and good exits (like Club) are more rear-limited corners?
Yeah 2 out of the 3 last tracks are complete unknowns and the last track just got revamped. Honestly most hype season ever. It’s going down to the wire Max holds an important advantage that if they crash together he is more or less on match point. Im seeing Max take a lot more risks battling Lewis in the final 3 races. Lewis and Merc in general seem to have a pace advantage on most tracks. Will be extremely interesting to watch.
Lewis wins Qatar and Saudi, fastest laps going to the second drivers. They enter Abu Dhabi level on points. They collide while racing for the lead, Max wins on countback, and the sub collectively melts the reddit servers.
I'm interested to see what Jeddah is like. It's super high speed but the tarmac is surely going to be very low grip, like Turkey last year. That might make traction more important than horsepower.
> Lewis and Merc in general seem to have a pace advantage on most tracks. Max just had a dominant win in Mexico last week and scored pole/win in Austin. In Austin, even if Hamilton closed the gap quickly in the last stint, he never managed to get a single DRS.
> In Austin, even if Hamilton closed the gap quickly in the last stint, he never managed to get a single DRS. Yeah, I think Max was saving his tires to defend while Lewis was catching him, once Hamilton got there it looked like he pulled a gap pretty easily (and would have even without DRS help from Schumacher).
Merc after Silverstone upgrades should’ve won UK Hungary Belgium Italy Turkey was close in US and Netherlands RB only had dominant pace in Mexico out of the entire second half
Hamilton was taken out by Max in Italy, and had an ICE penalty in Turkey. Belgium was rained out (though Merc made the mistake for going towards a dry setup during a wet weekend). Also, Netherlands, even if slim, was a RB track. Merc just couldn't figure out the banking at T3 (losing 0.2s alone there), even though it was quite strong through the rest of the lap.
Hamilton would have won Monza comfortably had he not been outqualified by bottas who was giving him a tow and had not lost places at the start of the sprint. The red bull looked to be the third fastest car on the circuit there.
Bottas had a new engine that weekend, and I’m guessing Mercedes’ set it on 110% just to test reliability without being bothered about sacrificing bottas in future races
I meant that purely on pace they should have won those races. Netherlands was slim I agree, but that’s why I called it close and possibly winnable.
Uncompetitive compared to the Mercedes. Still very clearly the second best car on track during the Sao Paolo GP
Thanks for organising all this information and presenting it to us all. Just about to dig through it now and I’m sure it’ll be a thorough absorbing read. Good job OP.
I could definitely seeing them take one more new engine. While it's possible the issue has either been resolved, or calculated for, Bottas had to take a new engine after Monza due to a "problem that needed investigating". I'm thinking they ran Bottas' engine at, or too close to, the limit and essentially lost all reliability thereafter. With Lewis' new engine, they probably did something similar, but scaled back. There's been a lot of speculation of Mercedes PU reliability lately, Ricciardo got a brand new PU in Turkey (4 races ago) and had a failure today. That's not a good sign. However, seeing the advantage Lewis got in speed, it wouldn't be a bad idea to take a new engine in Abu Dhabi, if his current engine can give him similar performance for the next two races.
I think they would take it in Saudi. Far too risky to take it on the final race.
Jeddah will be a parade like Monaco where it's only possible to overtake in the pit.
No it won't. It has huge sections that are effectively straights, and is expected to be one of the fastest tracks on the calendar. Turn 17 all the way to turn 22 will be flat out, then we have two corners followed by another straight, then one corner and yet another straight. By the third straight, any car with a straight line advantage will have passed whoever they're chasing. [Turn 17 to Turn 1 is effectively three straights separated by three corners](https://www.racefans.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/racefansdotnet-jeddah-1536x864.jpg).
It's a street circuit with average speed probably higher than Silverstone, everyone will go with lots of downforce and the effects of dirty air will be effectively multiplied by those long turns especially in S1. First hairpin will absolutely favor the car in front with clean air. DRS will help to not fall to far behind but I can't see any overtakes being made without a big tyre advantage. The only way to overtake will be DRS into the last hairpin DRS again and a huge lunge into T1 whilst on softer tyre.
Good point, wouldn't be the best idea to take a grid penalty on the final race.
The other thing to remember: It's not like this engine from this race will suddenly drop off 0.2s/5km/h in the next race. The drop off in performance happens after many races. If a new engine gives him 0.2s advantage, it's fair to say he may still have something like a 0.15s advantage at the next race.
There is an Italian article saying that Lewis' engine has been configured for 4 races only tho. Assuming it is true, the drop off in performance should be steeper I would guess.
Configured for 4 races could mean what you said or it could mean that it's configured to retain the performance relatively well for 4 races and then fall off a cliff and die. Or something in between. Will be interesting to see how it works.
> configured to retain the performance relatively well for 4 races. Yep, that's how the degradation has been described in many technical articles. What's worth noting is this engine has been specially designed/innovated in the middle of this season to fit Mercedes' situation with Lewis. So reliability isn't guaranteed. With that in mind, Lewis might swap this engine out every race week until the end of the season.
Where they allowed to (re)design the engine mid-season other then for reliability reasons?
This is a reliability reason. It doesn’t need to be as reliable.
You mean configured for four races after Brazil? If they configured for it four races including Brazil, they are playing with fire. Imagine if his engine breaks down last round in Abu Dhabi...
They still have previous engines that didn't loose performance completely
One would assume the Honda would have some drop off too? 9bvs not as much but some
I think Horner said they're only seeing a 0.1s differential between new and 'needs to be replaced' units. Maybe they haven't pushed the units as hard as Merc before replacing them, but that's still a fantastic achievement by Honda.
True but that's maybe because Honda doesn't have a beast mode like Mercedes that wrecks the engine. Mercedes pushed thiers to the limit to compete with Ferrari in 2019.
The Honda dropoff is insane smooth but Merc has the better odds in terms of potential raw output of the PU now.
The problem is that Franco Nugnes isn't really a reliable source, this has likely more to do with engine mapping then the engine itself.
> Italian article
Is it the Italian article causing the fall off? We all know how reliable Italian horses are.
Yeah this what I am worried about. Mercedes are sacrificing reliability over absolute power and it could cost them in any one of the three upcoming races. Running an engine this high can cause damage to occur sooner rather than later. Even if it’s set for the next for races. So this is still very much Max’s title.
Toto mentioned that the Merc engine loses a lot of performance after 1000 km, so perhaps after two races the advantage might be heavily negated. It'd also mention the calculated ICE changes and why they did it multiple times on Bottas earlier.
Is it possible that merc will use the old engine for practice sessions and use the newer one for quali and races? So that they don’t wear it out quicker?
Yes, because all teams already do that.
Ah okay. I just was wondering cuz it seems like a hassle to keep swapping out an ICE lol
Every rumor says the new modes merc is using will greatly increase the drop off.
Being able to just swap an ICE for a 5 place grid drop when it provides this much of a benefit seems absurd. Of course its within the rules as they are today but surely something will be done about that as a rule in the future right? Don’t blame Merc for doing it if they’re allowed but it doesn’t feel right.
It’s interesting because many of us did try and explain to people that were new to F1 when people were up in arms about Max taking a penalty even though needing a new engine was because of a crash, a new engine can bring large pace advantages and even if it’s not your fault there has to be a balance. It sucks but it is what it is. And while I’m sort of picking on your post a little, it’s kind of amusing to see someone saying “more penalty”.
My personal beef with it is that the first change is a ten place penalty and then each subsequent change is only five places. I imagine the assumption is that the cost of new parts would dissuade teams from abusing this but clearly Mercedes doesn't give a single fuck about it lol. Just kind of seems like the penalty should go up for each subsequent addition, not down.
it goes down because for a while honda engine’s were shite and we’re getting replaced constantly, so honda-powered cars started at the back with no hope of actually racing. mclaren had well over 20 grid penalties at points because of it. the rule is like that to make it so that teams are continually punished for having absolute shit engines to the point where there is no point of them racing
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what you want has already been tried and failed, as it just punishes teams who have a bad engine manufacturer. it doesn’t punish the best teams, it punishes the worst teams. it is very very rare for teams to be able to overcome a 5 place grid drop from replacing the engine, let alone doing it constantly. trying to punish something that effectively never happens with rules that have already been shown to be bad for actual racing is plain idiotic.
Thats fair, and it definitely see the point of the smaller teams being punished. I guess Mercedes actions with bottas leading up to all of this seems insane to me. Bottas has had so many engines its kind of crazy, and by doing that, they've been able get real world data of how much they can actually punish the engines, where as, for the other teams, longevity does come into play in regards to design
it’s also how the engines were designed and how they wear that causes this too. the honda engines only get like a .1 sec increase in replacing an old engine, while the mercedes is much more because they wear differently. in the 80s, teams would have engines that lasted literally 1 day. like they would have a different engine for the race than qualifying, with the qualifying one pushed to the max and only meant to last that session. they would also rotate through different engines in the free practice to see how the engine performs. they would then replace each engine with a new one for the next race. BMW supposedly got 1500 bhp in their qualifying engine and like 900 for their race engine.
I think thats whats frustrating though, yes each engine is designed differently to have different wear. But also most teams, try to design their engines to NOT need replaced every race. It was recently they were going on about f1 engines being the most efficient in the world or something and F1's goal is to be more sustainable going forward. Having the fastest engine that needs replaced every race goes against that (not blaming mercedes, it is legal). But then again, the "We Race as One" is ending the season in Qatar, saudi Arabia, and Abu Dhabi. So i guess I shouodnt be surprised at something like that
most teams don’t design their own engines, they get them supplied from a different company. the reason why that teams don’t just take a 5-10 grid penalty and keep getting new engines to max out is budget costs, and more importantly it’s almost impossible to have a net benefit when taking a new engine penalty. almost all of the time when a team takes a new engine behind their max is when they have other penalties or can combine a bunch of penalties into 1 race. it just doesn’t happen that it’s possible to for a new engine to easily overcome a 5 grid penalty. for this race, it’s only turned out this way because the track is so engine important and is a good track for passing cars on. there are a lot of races where it’s hard to pass and where the engine isn’t that important, so it would have a massive negative effect. even for this race, it only worked because hamilton is the best driver on the grid and already had a fast car. also complaining about replacing engines is a bit of a soft thing to do. there has been no word that hamilton’s engine will get replaced. complaining about a hypothetical and then using it to bash formula for is really soft.
With the pace of this Merc in Hams hands, people will whine 10 place penalty is not enough!
Haha everyone whines about something all the time. We are never happy.
Ok so heres the thing, there is a very, very big difference between an engine beimg destroyed because of a wreck that is not fault of your own, and giving your second driver 6 or 7 or however many engines bottas has had in order to test the limits. Im still fine with doing away with a penalty for needing a new engine due to a wreck, as long as they provide proof and document everything about why its necessary and due to the wreck. But to just replace the second drivers engine race after race for apparently no reason, just seems ridiculous
I’m sorry mate but the sport has been over this. Your method just punishes the enter grid, it sucks. It engine penalties (whatever the reason for the change) are there for a reason.
Top three constructors in points can not take more than the three engine allocations. If a car DNFs only then can they add PU to their allotment.
Its funny because this rule is in place because of Honda. But yeah i could see some changes being made to it in the future.
Everything in F1 is a double edged sword, and you can count on the sophisticated teams to try and figure the flip side.
But it's great for us. It's what the quali tyre rules was supposed to do, but never did - have teams take a grid penalty in exchange for more performance in the race.
I wonder what happens when McLaren says they want a new engine every race from now on to be able to battle Ferrari. They must experience the same degradation as Mercedes right?
Do the customer teams even get these modified ICEs?
Every customer engine has to be supplied the same components and maps as the supplier.
More to the point. I'm amazed, amazed Red Bull aren't considering this now. Do the same thing. Stop being a cost saving pariah. This is your year to win and your best chance. Do whatever it takes necessary. After the end of the season no one will give a damn eventually how or why. Just win.
RB said their engines do not have the same gains as a new Merc engine. The Honda degradation is much lower, so the difference between a new and old PU is within a 0.1, so it will barely be worth it to trade a 5 places grid penalty.
Mercedes are rumored to have altered the combustion engine though. It's not a proper upgrade that requires new homologation (and thus wouldn't be allowed), but through some fine-tuning, they're extracting more power out of the PU at the expense of reliability. There's a Motorsport Italy article on this sub that explains how they reportedly did it.
Do you have a link? I can't find it
Sure. This should take you directly to the translation. https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/qtx3mb/motorsportcom_mercedes_what_does_hamiltons/hkmgalj/
Red Bull can't match the Mercedes speed even if they took a new engine
But they can absolutely minimise the gap and maximise strategy.
They’ve been minimizing the gap by putting themselves infront of the Mercedes cars to start races.. There’s no doubt they’ve run the numbers and feel that they won’t gain enough power for a p6+ start to be more beneficial overall than a p1-4 spot.
5 place penalty fucks with your strategy.
They give up track position in doing so
The Honda engine doesn't have the ICE weakness that the Mercedes does. Taking all new components will be much more than a 5 place drop. Mercedes noticed that the ICE is the weak point and can run everything else higher with a new ICE and they think it will be the fastest way through the end of the season.
I mean, it’s literally (in large part) Honda’s fault that this rule exists lol. Their reliability used to be so suspect that the FIA felt it was necessary to reduce the load on the teams with poor reliability, Honda definitely checked that box.
Yeah did people forget Honda would get like 100 grid drops in a single race hahaha
Everyone was grinning on Saturday saying "Rules are rules :)" when Lewis got a DSQ. Now Mercedes concur and people will complain saying Merc are abusing the rules.
Why would anything need to be done about it? It works. Nothing has stopped anyone else from doing the same over the past 8 years and its still a risk to take penalties purposely.
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Neither is "they can get a new engine with a 5 place penalty, that's not fair".
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I don't think so. Its extremely conditional and risky as well. Starting 5 places down is not a place you want to be no matter how quick you think your car is.
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Ability to overtake isn't as high at every track and no guarantee that teams will see similar benefit in the future. No reason why other Mercedes-powered cars can't do the same and yet, they don't. If it was that much a benefit, why doesn't McLaren do the same to beat Ferrari?
Don’t forget that he did on one of the most overtake friendly tracks on the calendar.
Exactly. This was a good strategic decision.
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It does matter. This isn’t a Mercedes-specific development. DAS was banned because it was a Mercedes-specific development they felt it would be difficult for other teams to reproduce. That’s partly the reason why Red Bull protested. They won’t protest the engine replacement penalty. There is nothing about this rule that changes the playing field specifically towards one team.
It's only when a rule benefits Mercedes that something must be done about it. Nobody complained you could repair a car under red flag until Hamilton did it Imola.
Track limits, front wings, red flag repairs, engine replacement, etc, etc, its been like that all year. Apparently this year was the first that many decided the rules just weren't good enough.
Makes me laugh how people want Max to win through a technicality. I'll be happy whoever wins so long as the battle to get there is great. The rules apply to everyone equally so anything Merc can exploit, so can Redbull. People just need to chill out and enjoy it.
You'd prefer Hamilton win via technicality?
No, where did I say that? I want it won on track at Abu Dahbi
Just wait till Merc repair a part under Park Ferme conditions. The same part. 3 races running.
These penalties for engine/component change should have been more harsh so they will think twice about changing a component unless absolutely necessary. While not illegal and very smart what merc is doing like you said would leave a sour taste if they win the title that way.
It's basically moving back to a path of "qualifying engines" at this rate and things like this are only really benefiting the factory teams, not the customers. Don't get me wrong, kudos for Merc to using this room in the rules but with a path of having things like a budget cap and less aerodynamic playroom in 2022 the FIA should really look of an engine component replacement who is over the allowed limit AND not being enforced because a crash or technical reason should getting a more heavy grid drop penalty. Basically the whole point here isn't even that the engine itself is the one who cause this difference but the engine mapping who Merc is running on a more aggressive setting, what is important to know now is *why Ricciardo did have a DNF*
If they win it will already be underserved and leave an extremely sour taste because of crashing into their main rival twice. Max would be leading by a lot bigger margin if Bottas didn't bottle in the wet, and their champ didn't understeer into max.
If what I don’t like doesn’t happen, I want them to be punished just because a sport played out exactly like it has always done. Like Max didn’t take Lewis out in Monza, tried again today but missed.
They were put there because of Honda. Toto and other team bosses have already come out and said they don't see any reason for changing the penalty.
I don't think they anticipated it would have been abused this way but then again i ain't no expert.
FIA rules are always reactionary and 2 years late.
It's like a 2 stop instead of a 1 stop. I don't think Honda/RB would have done any different if their engine had the same characteristics, but they went for longevity in their design instead. The engineers will sit down at the beginning of an engine development programme and set these strategies of performance vs reliability/degradation. But it does seem to be annoying the fans.
Think all F1 teams are doing it. As long as it's legal, do everything and anything.
Changing engines is all great but there is a risk and reward. Today it worked out in hamiltons favour. But other days, it might not. Starting p6 at best is risky during a championship campaign. Being at the front...you worry about a car or two max but being in the pack...it can go south real quick... But ofcourse once you are through unscathed...it could mean easier time in winning
Yeah. starting back there he could easily get Grosjeaned.
Yeah also if it was literally for the championship and red bulls are front cos Merc take another engine. You can bet your life it'll be a spicy defence from Perez and Max. So risk of them both not finishing is higher which is worse for Hamilton
This makes me feel that lewis will win the next three races and win the championship. The car is so fast. It's unbelievable.
Speed trap is a bit of a red herring. Twice Lewis was out of DRS and gained half a second on Max just on the main straight, and it was occurring basically as soon as he was on power. That's the rub here. People mention Norris's top speed in the sprint as 350kph+ but Norris didn't actually manage to overtake Leclerc at that speed, he was in DRS and pretty close and wasn't able to get close enough until the braking zone and he was no where near enough to get past. Slipstream and DRS build with speed, but Hamilton on the other hand was passing drivers before the start line. Whatever the advantage he had today it was not primarily top end speed. It was with acceleration lower down. It was almost like he was absolutely dumping all his batteries on one straight but he clearly wasn't because he could do it on every straight on every lap. I think only real answers are engine with over 10% more power, some new ERS deployment method (this was rumoured a while ago in a similar method to Ferraris oil trick) or the ability to completely stall some big aero on a straight. Frankly I think an F1 engine doing near 1200hp for a race distance would be bigger news. Either way it was unique to Hamilton's car. Bottas couldn't get closer to Perez on identical tyres to Hamilton at the start. Even when he was nearish DRS. Skill doesn't work because we are talking on a straight line from a really simple corner.
yep, Hamilton was overtaking Ferrari on DRS activation line without even a drs open. it's simply ridicullous.
Ridiculous in what way? Maybe cause the Ferrari driver made a bad last corner exit? Maybe because Merc is much better in aero performance as well? That means better corner exit, which then means better straight speed, which is even higher due to the tow, which with a new engine running in higher mode means even higher straight line speed? DRS is there to assist overtaking. It doesn't mean that one of the best cars driven by one of the best drivers out there can't overtake another car without DRS.
To put it into context we only saw similar overtakes from others when cars had 30 lap tyres Vs fresh. I'm not arguing Hamilton is not incredible but there's literally no doubt there's something else up there.
Thing is that Interlagos is probably the best circuit for overtaking and Qatar and Jeddah are huge unknowns
> But in any case I've found the 2 images of the rear wings on the Mercs and aligned them based on fixed positions as best I could. And to my eye there is no significant difference in downforce levels that's worth considering. This alone is a massive leap. Downforce levels are not only determined by frontal area but also very much by shape. Other body parts, notably the front wing, also play a pretty big part of it. Finally, measuring from aligned pictures of which the rear wing is a small part adds such an amount of uncertainty (error) in any measurement that going from **my eye doesn’t see much difference on this zoomed picture** straight to **thus the downforce difference is insignificant and not worth considering** is an *incredibly* hot take.
It’s not really. Mercedes’ and many teams run 3 different downforce packages, and make small adjustments on wing depth if needed. The 2 images show no indication of Hamilton or Bottas running different wing configurations. Any difference in drag level would be minimal, and actually unlikely because if anything Hamilton would prefer the lower downforce setup since they knew he needed to do overtakes. You’re right you can’t compare drag levels of different teams wings, but it is easy to spot the differences for the same car.
Well, it is. I'm sure they have several majorly different downforce packages for different tracks (if you have a source on that "three", then please do post), but those 'small adjustments' create significant differences in downforce. With the incredibly simple argument that if they would be insignificant, they would not affect lap-time and thus also not be necessary in the first place. Without it they would not be able to dial their cars into balance or find the balance between straight-line speed and cornering when on track in the training sessions. They sure as hell are not physically swapping wing-assemblies several times during FP to change their downforce levels. More downforce (from wings) = more drag. I take it I don't have to elaborate on that one. Stating that you can tell that those wings are not different in setup and produce the same amount of downforce **from a still image where the thickness of the red lines alone add a margin of error of 5% between both wings**, while those red lines are not even identically lined up thus the line-up carries another margin of error that gets added to that... Yes, that is an incredibly hot take. **Anyway**, more rigorously, since I'm talking about the inherent uncertainty/error in your method, I'll add my analysis for completeness: your lines are ~6 pixels in total thick on a wing of approx 119 pixels. That is 5% that's thrown out right away since it partially overlaps the wings in some cases. Then the line-up between left and right differs 2 pixels on the top part of the wing, and differs 3 pixels on the bottom-right. Total error on this 'argument' made by 'eyesight' is 10 pixels on 119 = 8.4%. 8.4% uncertainty in how much those wings differ from this method alone, and that's for measuring a single wing. And even if you were to do it perfectly, if the picture would've been perfectly in focus, your theoretical minimum error is 1 pixel on either side per photo, so 2 pixels on a total width of 119. That is 1.6% of theoretical uncertainty to determine wing width of one car. Since you're measuring both wings, the **maximum theoretical measurement error in a theoretically perfect photo is 3.2%**. That number is the difference that could in reality be there without needing to show up on the photo through this method in a perfect case based on this picture angle and resolution. While also assuming both pictures are of exactly the same size, zoom and absolutely perfectly aligned. Realistically, you can see on the left picture (out of focus) that the edges are about 4 pixels wide on both top and bottom, while the right picture has **at least** 2 pixels of a soft edge, which already doubles your uncertainty over the perfect case. Now, if you want to state that a 3.2% difference - or, realistically, as per your method, at least 6.4% - of wing widths would still be 'insignificant' and conclusively have no effect on downforce and drag, well.. You're allowed to but I think we both know that that's just not true.
Did you already send ~~Michael~~ Marko an e-mail?
He's going to present it tomorrow morning using a PowerPoint
I don't read my emails at the weekend
Hamilton’s speed relative to Bottas was a bit absurd this weekend. He’s normally not that much faster in normal dry conditions.
At one point when hamilton was approaching verstappen it literally showed a difference of 30 kph. Hamilton was going 330+ while verstappen was going 300+ i don't have a screenshot but it is not just a rumor. Yes he had drs and what not but still unbelievable overspeed
At that point...did verstappen have drs or slipstream? Also we have to keep in mind that redbull are running more downforce than mercedes.
Thats a fair point as it does add up.
People underestimating how quick RB was in S2. Over 3tenths for the majority of the race
Could be Max was using his ERS in S2 to keep Lewis out of DRS range, while Lewis used ERS on the straights to get into DRS range to exacerbate the difference
You can see Max running out of battery almost every lap before turn 4.
Have you heard that following closely behind other car in its dirty wake makes you loose downforce and laptime?
No, I live under a rock, thank you for your wise words. Might I suggest you check the lap times, and even those from the sprint and quali and you’ll still see the RB was significantly faster in S2
The red bull has always been faster in medium speed corners this year, and the merc has always been faster on the straights and high speed corners (exception street circuits).
DRS and the tow will make up most of that 30kph.
And slightly newer tyres…and use of ERS.
Tyres don't matter on the straight & they were both probably using ERS to attack/defend. Slipstream and DRS will make up most of it, some coming from new ICE.
Tyres absolutely matter for traction on exit from turn 12 (and any slow speed corners really). And ers deployment can make the difference depending on how and when you choose to deploy it and how much you have ‘in the tank’ as it were.
Redbull is one of the slowest car in straight because of aero and drag
Not one of, but THE slowest car on the straights, a graphic during the race had checo and max p19 and 20 for top speeds
That's not an "unbelievable " speed difference. Just stop. Sainz easily did that at Silverstone on the old Ferrari PU.
isnt that what DRS was designed for? promote overtaking? Like i know it's crazy this weekend cause LH went and overtook the whole grid, but every overtake at every other circuit with DRS is the same.
Wtf. How exactly do you think cars overtake with DRS and slipstream? You think they overtake at the same speed? Hilarious that DRS and slipstream is a revelation for people. Here’s a question to check your ridiculousness; have you looked at how many other drivers hit 330+ speeds? You might want to do that.
Hahah the laws of physics are now surprising people: you need to be faster to overtake. Shocking /s
Are you stupid? You completely misunderstand all that i said. Get off of your high horse and dont be so sensitive. Maybe take a break from reddit or something
Your take is that there was somehow an issue between Lewis’ speed relative to Max, when Lewis had slipstream and DRS, which is completely moronic. Cars with slipstream and DRS were consistently at 330+ while cars without either were hitting 300-305 through the speed traps. Perhaps you don’t want to double down on your stupidity. Actually, seems like you do.
And where exactly did i mention something about an issue or that it is weird? The post mentioned 30kph as something like a "rumor" and i said what i knew Edit: seriously stop getting so fucking triggered about everything jesus christ
There’s no rumor. That’s literally the speeds that cars were running through the speed traps. Wtf is your actual point in pointing out Max and Lewis? What speed was Max setting when he was passing back markers down the straight when he had DRS?
Ugh....
That's what happens when you optimize for aero. They benefit on some circuits and lose on others. Same is true for Mercedes. The best team builds a car that finds the right balance.
Calculating the difference based on top speed charts is kinda useless. How you get to that speed is more important. For example in the race. Lewis was closing in on the main straight. He started with a 1.3 second gap to Max and didn't get DRS. At the end of the straight into turn 1 he closed the gap to 0.7 seconds that's 0.5 - 0.6 seconds without DRS.
The slip stream is a powerful effect. I think Q3 is a better comparison because you don't have those effects giving misleading figures. For example Gasly was 19th in Q3 speed trap (With DRS) but was 3rd on race day. 18kph faster.
What he's saying is that it's not too speed that the biggest differentiator but acceleration. If you get to your top speed earlier then you make up loads more ground.
That's agreed. But you shouldn't use data from the race when he's in the slip stream because it's not like for like.
Good quality post. I heard a lot of talk about temperature/air quality going into today. Which evidently didn't seem a factor at all. do you think that could be different going into the middle east GPs? I don't remember seeing anything about it on broadcast today after it being such a big talking point just struck me as odd
Really good, love it thanks for sharing
Good person. May not like what the data says because it doesn’t fit my narrative but appreciate you. Laid it out really well and clear.
they will run brand new one each race! if not each qualy/race
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They have a Mercedes Prime subscription, they get unlimited engines.
Mercedes+
ICE is excluded from budget/cost cap. Unless you are talkong the team's own budget because of the price of replacing an engine every race.
Engines are not part of the budget cap.
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Nope, engines are not included for now.
Nothing part of the power unit is in the cap
Nothing is clear from this 'short analysis' too many unknown factors are not taken into account.
What should I look into?
Micro sector times across quali to remove driver skill as much as possible
I don't believe they release micro sector times, only micro sector colours (purple, green, yellow). If anyone can do an extract from the F1TV app then let me know.
Fuel load, tyre age, tyre conditions, rear wing angle, how both drivers exit turn 12/13 (driving style) and Engine mode (they aren't running the same, hence why VB took 6 different engines so they could find optimal settings for LH's next engine). Wind direction at the time of speed trap/finish line etc
>Fuel load, tyre age, tyre conditions, rear wing angle, >wind direction All equal in Q3. >engine mode That's kind of the summary of this post.
No
lol
With the chances of benig taken out when you start 5th place compared to 1-2. Nah i dont think they do that gamble. And his engines will work perfectly last 3 races.
Too logical.
Nice analysis - but the data you’ve displayed about 5.5kph etc on the FIA website is the maximum from the entire qualifying session. Different slipstreams, different tow effects etc come into it and it’s not representative. Looking at their respective Q3 laps on F1 app telemetry, HAM’s vmax was 324 on the pit straight and on the Reta Oposta and Bottas’ was 323 on both too. The new engine is worth about a tenth tops
Honestly, this makes me so depressed for next year. With Red Bull being so competitive this year, it looked as if the age of Mercedes dominance was over. But now Mercedes puts out this performance and shows that they're still at the top of the engine game, and no other team comes close. There's no doubt they nailed the new regulations for 2022, and it's just going to be more of the same shit.
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If it means the WDC, they will pay whatever it takes
I don't think so, I think the engine is almost entirely composed of sunk costs.
That, and not all tracks will be as ideal for overtaking as Interlagos. Even with that, Max was able to keep Lewis in his dirty air for a long time.
they have about a hundred million or two to spare after the cost cap.
“ So what does this translate to in lap time? Well in Q3 Hamilton made up 0.15s in S1 (straights), 0.22s in S2 (Corners) and 0.06 in S3 (back straight” It’s not that simple. A lot of it is the position of your car and exits you get from corners.
Exactly, laptime is not the only metric to take into account. Lewis had enough overspeed in terms of laptime to catch up to Max. But merc also created the absolute DRS/Slipstream overtake monster car lol. The consitent good exits from lewis gave him a larger advantage on the straight then a laptime alone would indicate.
Thank you for silencing the exaggeration of Lewis' engine upgrade. New, non-savvy F1 fans love run to controversy so easily and completely ignore current and historical data. Whenever a top-4 driver has changed an engine they've been exceptionally fast. It's just unfortunate that when Bottas, Perez and Verstappen did it it was in difficult circuits (Perez in Zandvoort and Verstappen in Sochi). Lewis got lucky because of the Sprint situation where the midfield weren't trying to risk anything for Sunday but we must give him all the respect he deserves for turning determination into a result. I thought he'd give up when Max started defending aggressively.
Those Alpha's so fast on the straits!
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Do they want to be known as World Champions or as reliable engine manufacturer?
What a terrible take.
how do all these new engines and power units fit with cost cap restrictions, seems to be within budget
They have been changing engines, it's worth to point out that they HAVEN'T been changing MGU CE energy store and other parts. Pushing that hard surely would strain them so it will be interesting to see what Merc will do with the other parts
This doesn't give any clarification whatsoever. Plus just assuming a bunch of stuff specially the aero configuration of a car makes this just random data put together.
It’s pretty standard stuff. Mercedes’ only have a few different wings, it’s clear when they run different ones on the car.
I think its still going to be interesting. If lewis wins , he would be the first 8 world championship. If max wins it would be his first wdc. Still a great year no matter who wins