Anton Chigurh

Apparently the Red Bull DNFs were “not caused by the fuel pump”, but RBR does not want to elaborate on it. Weird. Don’t know what would be going on there, unless it’s heat related.

Yeah his accent isn’t bad, I can understand him saying Mershaydeez just fine!

Totally disagree on Paul DiResta. He completely sucks ass. I am indifferent on Karun. I don’t like hate him, he’s just neither here nor there for me. You know what is funny though, is that it seems like a lot of drivers can’t really do commentary. Like you would expect them to give you a lot of good insight and many of them just…..don’t. It’s weird. Nico is good but his presenting style is a little iffy sometimes. Button can present well but he doesn’t provide as much insight as you’d hope he would. That is why Ant is the best. He can do both. That new girl was actually pretty good, too. Naomi Schiff.

Yeah, they have Simone Resta now, who is a great engineer and designer.

I think they are pink for the first few races?

Gasly was an MGU-K failure.

Lol

Try Rushsync. It works for me. https://rushsync.com/

To clarify, the high pressure fuel pump. The steering issue for max was for a bent/tweaked track rod which happened during a pit stop apparently.

Speculation that it’s their mechanical hydraulic pumps failing.

Mercedes had also been the class of the field in their hydraulic heave spring technology (and FRIC before that before it was banned). For 2022 hydraulically controlled suspension springs are banned, and teams must use a much more conventional mechanical spring. Inerters were also banned, which helped a lot with absorbing jounce/vibration and riding kerbs, etc. (they were essentially a mass damper for the suspension). Basically, the suspension has gone back to being incredibly basic, which is part of what is going on as well. Cars will look a bit more like Indycars going over bumps and stuff (as we have already seen). Though, the fact that they are all extremely stiffly spring doesn’t help.

Well, CFD, wind tunnel, and running sim work is different, and it depends on what the issue is that determines which is used to attempt to solve the issue. The car is allegedly a beast in the simulator, where porpoising doesn’t happen at all. Sim work mostly tests setup work, like spring rates, damper response/rebound curves, alignment specs, etc. They are limited on wind tunnel time (it is a sliding scale based on constructors standings, taken at two points during a calendar year), but the rest they can still do as much as they want, as long as it’s all within the salary cap. So, essentially as much as their amount of paid staff can do. The problem with the wind tunnel WRT porpoising is that it’s really hard to simulate the issue due to a few reasons: A) It would damage the “rolling road” belt (its like a huge treadmill) B) You are limited to 180kph in the wind tunnel, which is well below where porpoising happens C) Wind tunnel models are 60% scale, and while many airflow characteristics behave the same on a 60% scale model, not all of them do They ran with a shitload of Kiel probes on the car in testing, so they can measure the aero load at the time the porpoising occurs and it will give them an idea of what to try to alleviate it, but it will take time to develop a mature solution.

You used to have to start the race with the tire that you set your fastest time in Q2 with. That is now gone, and you start the race on whichever tire component you want (that you still have left in your pool). This also means that won’t be any babying of tires in Q2 anymore, and you might have noticed that some drivers had a faster time in Q2 than they did in Q3 today.

Forgot to add, but one route of development is that they can still work on engine mapping and ERS deployment mappings. So, those can be fine tuned and optimized as we go along, it’s just that physical changes to the PUs are a no-go thru 2025 now without majority approval from the teams (which I think requires 8/10 to vote yes to be able to make a reliability change).

They can switch when their contract runs out if they wish. After thinking though, some of this Merc stuff may be coincidental. Merc, Aston, Williams, and McLaren are all running very compromised right now. Apparently raising the ride height to help with proposing adds a ton of drag, and Merc/AM/Williams are all having to do this AFAIK (Merc and AM with 100% certainty). McLaren’s issues are different, but it’s even possible that they just lack downforce anyway and that’s why they never had a porpoising issue. Also, porpoising occurs at higher speed, so utilizing that power may not mean anything if you are just going to have an unstable car. We will just have to wait to really see where the truth lies once the teams can get on top of their issues. The Ferrari does seem like it is the best PU, at least so far, but all PUs should be within probably 15-20 HP from some stuff I was reading. A lot of the traction on slow corners is how the power is deployed, not how much you have per se. Last note: The ICE components and fuel are already homologated. The hybrid component homologation date is later this year on September 1.

The new Ferrari PU is showing immense traction and acceleration out of corners, which will help a lot on race starts too.

Definitely some strange things going on.

I am def more worried about the Merc PU than their porpoising/aero issues. Did they finally make a dud?!?

They have an Apple TV app as well now.

Something weird does seem to be going on with Mercedes engined cars. I don’t know what to think. Top speeds in P2:

Agree with all of this. Also, I know he’s more of a moderator, but I don’t care for Simon either.

Lewis’ new lid has lots of Vale vibes. Makes sense why he went with the yellow T cam and number highlights this year.

Also some new graphics

From our first event notes of the year, a nice a simple track limit section.