Hey there,
2023 season has ended and we are approaching season 2024. @ScarDuck14 has already opened a new thread regarding the new season.
See you there!
@Meza994 wrote:
@LuckyNico92I dont know where all this love for changing team pricipals or in football the coach comes from when certain things dont go well.. A new team principal wont make his engineers suddenly be smarter.. It wont make the concept work.. Its the task of the principal to find the right time to let go of the concept which probably was last year but possibly the engineers said there was still something to find..
Wolff said that they "hit their marks" with the new car - i.e. they produced an upturn in performance that was possible following the design concept (and probably what they ran out of development budget for), it's just that relative to everyone else it was a "standstill".
It has to be a decisive moment, to me the phrase "without dogma" literally means that the engineers will be tasked on completely new philosophies (i.e. not believing that the (now) "old" concept can produce yet more gains) because the budget is finite. Even changing tack right now, it's possible that a major change may exhaust the development budget for the remainder of the year.
I expect Mercedes to follow a design philosophy similar to that employed by other teams I don't think it will be too hard to "blue sky" something similar (design regulations and constraints make the job within a few critical boxes anyway), the interest lies in how quickly they can bring that to bear, There is a possibility with all the stops out it could be Baku, but I think Imola is more realistic. They have to take the current car to the next two away races (Jeddah and Melbourne), that leaves Baku and Miami before Imola. Otherwise, the season will be one third over before they bring a new car, which means 2024 before it challenges.
@P4st3l1ak wrote:
@SteveJackson
I think they may still struggle with porpoising, although new regulations made it better for them. It must have, Toto was driving that change and forced FIA to accept it after all 😉
But they could have thought it will give them an advantage which could, also, have backfired now.
Only top car I saw was really jittery was the Ferrari.
Yeah they made the increase in ride height but it just means all teams have to make the car really stiff, plus the tyre "suspension" is gone with the new rims.
Merc 'old' design philosophy is just to make the car really slippery but they are lacking overall downforce, they were speaking of the downwash created by the scollopped sidepods (esp. Ferrari) and all the other teams using that downwash to make the car more predictable (stable I guess) and I don't think Merc have it (downforce or proper rear stability).
Aston Martin must have a well balanced package that gave stability as Alonso waxing about "this car is nice to drive" and he looked to be pushing quite hard last stint and he didn't fade, the car must be still kind to the tyres, etc. Merc need a bit of that.
