There is nothing wrong with their powertrain in my opinion. Many things affect top speed. Most of all drag levels. Williams made a shit car, Aston martin and Mercedes made a car thats very affected by porpoising and Mclaren seem to have some aero issues after the brake duct had to be changed. They keep telling you people the engine is fine. Its the cars that are shite
F1 2022 Season
- Thread starter pauldyson1uk
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I was thinking the same, all of their problems is aero, not getting the porpoising sorted out, lack of wind tunnel time, not yet convinced the zero side pods are helping or hindering.
Yes other teams are bouncing around, but looks like Mercedes is the worst.
Lewis and his team got their set up dredfully wrong, where has Russell got his right.
A couple of weeks before Australia, can they get it sorted before then, I hope so and start to challenge, 3 teams fighting can only be good for the fans.
I'll be amazed if they can catch up during the season. Has a team ever overcome such a deficit??
I am not sure, its only 2 races, still plenty of time to make up those points.
Each race they will be learning more about the way the car rides, I think they will come good this season, it maybe the second half of the season.
Mclaren in 09. That thing went from winning a world title to one of the worst defending champion cars ever built, after mid season it was winning a few races. I doubt they can win the title but I think they can match the others midseason.
I remember that season , Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen.
Both had a dreadful start to the season.
Heikki has 5 DNFs in the first 7 races, Lewis managed a 4th in race 4.
The second half of the season was better from Heikki finished all the races with points scored in 6.
Lewis did even better won 2, a second and 2, 3rds, 2 DNFs
McLaren became the first team to win a GP using a KERS-equipped car when Hamilton won the Hungarian Grand Prix.
I could not remember all the facts, Wiki is you friend.
The car is there, it's just their running with a very high ride height to compensate for the porpoising. As soon as they can reduce that to the optimal level, without porpoising, then you'll see them back amongst it.
With the season being so open as well, I doubt we'll have an absolute runaway leader.
It must be incredibly frustrating as the simulation data etc all tell them they have a very fast car on their hands. The porposing nightmare is holding everything back till its resolved.
I dont think this is anywhere near as bad as Mclaren 09, as the wheel base on that car was out by 30mm or something and threw everything off. It wasnt a great car when they resolved the issue. Which was a massive expensive fix.
Theres every chance Mercedes might not be able to have their "cake and eat it", and be forced to change their suspension setup to something similar to RB. Not sure what ferrari are running suspension wise. Seeing as both ferrari and RB fixed their porposing issues very quickly, im guessing their suspension is doing something the Mercedes car suspension isnt.
If it was as simple as creating a air curtain on the edges of the floors on both sides, by generating mini vortices and sealing the floor as RB have done, im sure Mercedes would have done that by now. My uneducated guess is that something will have to change on the Mercedes suspension front. We will find out as all car changes for each race weekend are published by the fia under a new rule.
Anyway lets see what happens. It might be too late for lewis to join the title fight, but if he gets in and around leclerc and max on pure pace, a three way battle between them would be box office viewing.
Nonono, when Hamilton wins it's because he's lucky. Statistically the best driver of all time entirely down to luck.
The car isn't there. They're nearly 7 tenths behind in qualy trim and nearly 1 second a lap behind in race trim...
You're kidding yourself if you think this Mercedes will be "back amongst it" anytime soon.
Last season Lewis and Max had the best cars , where was Leclerc.
This season Max and Leclerc have the best cars and Lewis is nowhere.
You can have WC drivers, Lewis Max and Leclerc, but when you have a mare of a car how are you expect to compete with the WC drivers with good cars ?
You might not agree with me and thats fine, having a WC winner car is nothing without a WC winning driver and visa versa.
I think they will nail the problem, but it won't be anytime soon, I think after the summer break, they won't be winning drivers or constructors, but I think they could win races.
Quoted for later in the season, you've an awful habit of poor hot takes so I don't see this current take being any different.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the Merc is still performing very well in low speed corners? Might be a dark horse for Monaco on that basis...
You might be on to something , Monaco is not a happy track for Lewis.
Ferrari's GPS had Mercedes down as the fastest in the slow corners at the Bahrain test, just couldn't get any speed on the high speed corner or straights without it bouncing like feck.
Yeah would be lovely to see him exorcise some of those demons from last year's catastrophe.
Thought I'd read that somewhere; cheers for clarifying! Suppose it's hard to make concrete predictions given we don't know how the new tyres will react, but that might give them a decent shot at Monaco if they can sort out their aero package somewhat.
Easy mistake, both love to stroke their ego and like to look at dicks in training.
Low and behold, there are plenty to find in this thread.
Also, if Ronaldo's social media accounts were not managed by someone else, you would see he never uses any capital letter either.
you can quote what ever the you want, the delusion of Mercedes fans right now is off the planet based of two races that show just how piss poor their car is.
If they’re nowhere near the title at the half wag point they’ll tank the season for the development time
Or you know, they were fully aware of that and set the car up to maximise those types of corners… because I mean it’s not like Racing car setup is a constant process of sacrifice for overall lap pace… oh wait…
You could be right, I dont for one minute think they have a quick fix for the problems they have.
I would say Silverstone 3rd July is the target to solve their problems, 7 races, gives them 4 races before the summer holiday to try and claw back some points.
In all honesty I dont know, like most just throwing my 2p worth in
I wonder if Mercedes may consider the car setup from the first test track that had the larger sidepods. My memory is shot, was it Barcelona?
I think everyone had the bouncing in the first test. You wonder why they have been running different setups as seen by qualifying results, well probably because they are pre-season testing still.
Ferrari and Red Bull fixed it for the second test but Mercedes didn’t focus on it as much and chased the downforce performance which turned out a mistake - I’m pretty sure I heard Toto say this in an interview.
I still stick to my theory that Merc will resolve it for Imola with an update and then they can focus on catching up the performance.
People also need to forget about development time turn around from 13 years ago where you could develop the car virtually unrestricted which was great, but it also lead to some issues such as Brawns loss of pace throughout 2009 as an example. Their advantage was massive early season but teams could virtually run wind tunnels 24/7 so they caught up relatively quickly. This is no longer the case
The thing is that the other teams aren't going to sit around waiting for Merc to solve their issues, they will only get faster as the year goes on and the longer it takes for Merc to sort things out the further behind they're going to be. It doesn't help either that that they're working with one hand tied behind their back regarding other upgrades due to the porpoising being a huge road block.
What I find interesting though is that with the new regs the teams should theoretically be able to improve the new cars more throughout the year than say last year when there weren't many stones left unturned after 8 years with the "same" cars.
What I find interesting though is that with the new regs the teams should theoretically be able to improve the new cars more throughout the year than say last year when there weren't many stones left unturned after 8 years with the "same" cars.
What do you guys think about Ocon and Alonso battle? Do you think the team should have allowed it to continue considering it could have caused crash and was also eating up their tyres?
Ocon defends hard against Alonso his team-mate but when it comes to others he just let's them past.
Ocon defends hard against Alonso his team-mate but when it comes to others he just let's them past.
It makes great watching, but it must hurt the team.
Did the battle cause Alonso's car top DNF ?
Do they stop them from racing, Otmar was happy for them to race, he was enjoying it, dont think he would be too happy if they took each other out.
I think this early in the season, you let them race.
Great for the viewers, damaging for the team overall.
Issue I think they had was it was hard to say who was the overall fastest driver between the two to allow them to stay ahead permanently and just crack on. Neither managed to break away so I imagine the team just said race on but dont do anything too stupid. Definitely one of the riskier tracks to do it on, much narrower than the typical events.
You want to see great racing and sometimes that’s just team mates going at it.
Shit for the team, great for the viewer
You could see the boss trying to keep a straight face but you could tell it was killing him inside
It was great to see them fighting but lets be honest they should have had a comfortable 6th/7th place. In the end they allowed Bottas and Magnussen to catch them up and turned it into a 4 way battle.
As others have mentioned it might have pushed Alonso's car into overheating having to constantly push like that.
Good for the sport but i'm sure Alpine will be angry. Unfortunately for them both Ocon and Alonso are hot heads and hate being beaten by their team mate's, so I can't see much changing.
I'm not sure why/how Alpine can be angry when Szafnauer was telling the TV commentators it was all OK and that it'd calm down later and then 4 or 5 laps later Ocon was given the 'hold station' message. If they didn't want them to race, that message would have gone out sooner.You could see the boss trying to keep a straight face but you could tell it was killing him inside
It was great to see them fighting but lets be honest they should have had a comfortable 6th/7th place. In the end they allowed Bottas and Magnussen to catch them up and turned it into a 4 way battle.
As others have mentioned it might have pushed Alonso's car into overheating having to constantly push like that.
Good for the sport but i'm sure Alpine will be angry. Unfortunately for them both Ocon and Alonso are hot heads and hate being beaten by their team mate's, so I can't see much changing.
Max performed from minute 1. Red Bull give more chances than most at the moment so can't see how it's a stick to beat them with.
like he's going to tell the live television broadcast his drivers are being bellends and ignoring the team orders. Tbf they did tell Ocon to hold station literally about 2 laps after they talked to him. It's all well and good until they crash into eachother like Ocon/Perez used to do weekly.
It didn't cost him last week. There was no way he could have stayed ahead at a track like Bahrain where the Ferrari took the slow corners so much better.
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I'm just happy seeing Sainz and LeClerc challenging at the front. Two of the most likeable drivers on the grid.
I read somewhere that Ocon was told 3 times to hold and he did not listen. History has shown that he is like that with his team-mates. Why did he not show the same aggression when Bottas passed him.
If true, that would really endear him to prospective employers in the future.
Max's win reminded me a lot of Lewis' over the years. Probably didn't deserve it overall... Sainz inadvertently squeezed at the start by his own team mate getting him to 3rd, some bad luck for Perez (bet the team in hindsight are pleased they didn't have to wrestle with a Max/Perez switch), and then darn good driving to pass Leclerc and take full advantage of the situation. Wonder why Leclerc struggled at the end compared to Max?
Not sure how he didn't deserve it?
Only one of the front four to "Pass someone on track".