Formula One ( F1 )

.

1 Attachment

Holy **** Merc pulled it out the bag this time.

Looking at the sidepod pic again, it looks like they've designed the mirror mounts as wings (being held by the mechanic). Reckon that'll get protested in 10 seconds flat.

The side impact tube is inside that wing section sticking out. It has to be there. The other one is directly below it sort of sticking out the bulge in the floor.

Wow, that's some proper size zero going on there. My aero head says that's going to give them such a drag advantage I don't think anyone is going to get close to them. Not unless Ferrari or Red Bull were bluffing with the sidepod shape.

Does look like they've pulled a number on the rest of the paddock. With a week to go, it think there are going to be some sleepless nights in the rest of the teams.

I do love to see Horner already getting shirty. He chatted with a few journalists this morning about it, they printed what he said, and he's now saying he didn't say it / not on the record.

I'm ready for the drama.

The side impact tube is inside that wing section sticking out. It has to be there. The other one is directly below it sort of sticking out the bulge in the floor.

Though having said that, maybe not...

1 Attachment

I love this side of F1. “It doesn’t say we can’t do this anywhere in the new regulations”

Great

Looks like a complete repackaging at the rear too.

With the reduced team budgets, how do they have the time / money to be able to present two entirely different concepts?

1 Attachment

Very much looking forward to seeing these things actually race. Testing's great to watch but actually seeing the proper pace of these things will be pretty exciting!

Just praying it isn't Merc leaving everyone else in their dust

Fuck me that is nasty to look at though.

Like it's crashed already

Fucking can’t wait. Though this is possibly because I bake a cake for each F1 race and we have a ritual of big mugs of tea and huge slices of cake. It’s all meticulously timed so tea and cake are ready for the formation lap.

Then round two of tea and cake happen when the inevitable safety car comes out.

Brawn on record saying there are no 'legality concerns' with any teams designs currently.

Haven't had the audio on as I've been stuck in meetings, but is there a reason only half the drivers have run with only 20 mins or so left?

Edit: Looks like each team still only planned to have one driver running this session but the full driver lineup was still displayed on the on-screen graphics.

With the reduced team budgets, how do they have the time / money to be able to present two entirely different concepts?

I don’t think they have. I think they bluffed and the previous ‘iteration’ was a dummy/decoy. Looking at the size difference, the bigger of the sidepods is just a big empty box. There’s no way you’d do that in modern F1 as it’s just drag.

The Williams should have been our clue here, because they’ve got the same engine but they don’t have the resources or money to stage decoys. Their car will almost certainly stay the same.

What about the larger bulge behind the top intake in the new iteration? That's an increase rather than a decrease. Surely that's repackaging?

Isn't that just down to the slightly different angle of the pictures? (higher angle for the B photo - look at the Halo))

Just a more general question here, but Mercedes have done something different, and there are comparisons to the double diffuser going around. But is there anything to actually suggest it's going to be a differentiating factor? A similar thing happened with DAS and it didn't look to be the game-changer that everyone was saying it would be. I've not really been paying attention so far today so unsure whether there's some actual info or it's just the media hype-train again

I think they bluffed and the previous ‘iteration’ was a dummy/decoy.

Why would they do that? Wouldn't that mean that merc deliberately chose to not collect as much data as they could have if they ran the current car in the last testing session?

We need less of the time spent on the Red Bull vs Merc team principals and more Haas vs Alfa Romeo: https://twitter.com/HaasF1Team/status/1501882158050336768

With the reduced team budgets, how do they have the time / money to be able to present two entirely different concepts?

initial concept was potentially developed under last year's budget

Hard to tell from a single video, but looks like the Merc's porpoising is more the whole car as opposed to just the rear shifting up and down:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmlbg_3AzSw

Edit: Apologies for linking a video with such a dreadful thumbnail

Class!

Ferrari engine:

^ I do love the ‘naked’ shots. Shows the insane levels of engineering talent required to compete in F1

Nasa level shit