Toto Wolff, the head of the Mercedes F1 team, hasn’t reached the point where he calls the W13 design a flawed concept, but admits that what the team has done is “simply out of compliance.”
With the introduction of entirely new technical rules this season, the F1 team interprets the rules in a variety of ways, and the cars on the F1 grid look very different from last season.
The new generation F1 cars are based on the aerodynamics of the ground effect effect, creating downforce where the floor and its vortices draw the car to the ground. The more downforce, the faster the speed.
Championship-leading Scuderia Ferrari has a thick body with “baby bath” side pods, while Mercedes has introduced the opposite, the “zero pods”.
And experts believe that is most of the porpoising problem that Mercedes F1 has.
Most F1 teams suffer from some bounce, but the Zero Pod has nothing to help stiffen the floor, causing extreme bouncing even if the car isn’t at full pace.
This season, Mercedes F1 hasn’t been able to compete for victory, and the issue is whether they made a mistake in the design.
“That’s a valid point,” Toto Wolff told the BBC.
“All good and evil happen primarily on the floor, we are exploring interesting ideas and concepts that will have to reach the car in future races.”
“I can’t say the concept is wrong, but there’s something we’ve done that simply doesn’t fit the regulations. What’s that?”
“You don’t have to give up the goodness, but if you have a basic area in the car where you can’t unleash the potential we believe to be, you need to reduce the loss.”
But Toto Wolff says the concept isn’t abandoned, especially as the car is still in its infancy and has only four races in the championship.
“That means’where is the baseline now?'” Said Toto Wolff.
“Is there anything new that we can start with where we believe we can unleash more potential?”
“But if we were thinking about it, we would have done it five months ago. We believed this was a development line we needed to move forward, so this is a very difficult exercise.”
“We can only reduce losses next year if we understand where we made a mistake. We still don’t understand.”
In fact, Toto Wolff believes the Mercedes F1 needs to find the “key” to unleash the potential of the car. They can see the lock, but they can’t find the key.
“We have the direction to unleash the potential of the car and move it far closer, but we don’t have the key at this point,” Toto Wolff added.
“Therefore, we need to devote ourselves to our work and rely on chemistry and physics before we fall into some sort of negative spiral. Our passion and determination for improvement is in every team member.”
Lewis Hamilton finished 13th at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix last weekend, while teammate George Russell finished 4th, so it’s too early to say if the Mercedes F1 went the wrong way. That’s what Toto Wolff says.
“Every question is rational. I don’t know if the concept is flawed. I’m not an aero dynamis,” Toto Wolff said.
“At some point, you’ll get a better understanding of whether that’s the case.”
“Suddenly you might fix the bouncing and unleash more potential. It’s hard to think of it as a failure. You can’t find a solution yet, so it’s easy to find out and start focusing on the solution. I hope ”
Category: Category: F1 / Mercedes
