Mercedes W15 simulator driver Anthony Davidson has been furious at suggestions the team is battling correlation issues with the 2024 F1 car, admitting: “It's an interesting topic right now.”
Mercedes, which has been limited to one race victory since F1's technical regulations were overhauled in 2022, hopes to return to championship contention with the W15 in 2024.
Correlation problem with Mercedes W15?
Technical director James Allison, who has overseen the car's development, said last winter that Mercedes had “established a fairly ambitious program, with a 'shoutout' of winning both the drivers' and constructors' championships. That's enough,'' he said. ” and a new car.
However, Mercedes had a poor start to the season, with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell finishing fifth or lower in the opening two races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, with reigning champions Red Bull achieving back-to-back one-two finishes.
After Hamilton's poor performance at Jeddah, where he finished a disappointing ninth, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said the team had carried out simulations before admitting the Silver Arrows' problems were “fundamental”. He hinted that he was having trouble correlating the data with actual on-course performance. ”
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“Our simulations gave us direction, so this is the range of setups we chose. We installed the right rear wing, but getting the setup right or wrong could mean tens of minutes of profit. I guess it depends on what you get, but it's not a massive performance corridor.
“The more fundamental thing is that we believe we should be fast and we measure downforce, but it's not reflected in the lap times.”
Appearing on the Sky F1 Podcast, long-time Mercedes simulator driver Davidson appeared to go off topic when asked about potential correlation issues within the Brackley-based team.
Asked to further clarify the situation, Mr Davidson said: “That's a really interesting question.” [and an] Interesting topic of the moment.
“I've done a lot of pre-event work for Saudi Arabia, and actually Melbourne, using various wing levels. And without giving too much away, Jeddah and Bahrain are two very different It's a truck.
“When we start the season, we have to look at options at wing level and also the budget as it is within the cost cap.
“You have to limit the amount of feathers you can physically make. The more feathers you have, the more money you spend, so you try to spread them thin throughout the year.
“It’s tempting to look at all the different circuits and say, ‘Well, I only need to build two wings, and within those two wings I run different gurney flaps, so I can create different gurney flaps within a family of wing groups. If we can create different parameters, we can probably look at us year-round and then spend money elsewhere, for example on the floor.”
“That's what the team is trying to do today.
“So you’re going from Bahrain, you know. [requires] High downforce wing – and that wing will be making an appearance later this year when we hit the low-speed circuits.
“Bahrain [has] Hard braking zones, very tight corners and then we head to Jeddah. Jeddah is much faster and is the world's fastest street track, but it's not completely Melbourne-spec.
“So you go to Jeddah and say: 'We could run the Bahrain wing with the least downforce and see what happens, but it's probably going to be a really drastic car.'
“We saw some cars like that in Jeddah, for example the McLaren, which was quite slow in a straight line but blisteringly fast on the fast sections of the track.
“So it depends on where we put that tipping point before the season starts.”
Correlation issues are notoriously difficult for F1 teams to identify and fix, with Red Bull most recently suffering from the problem in 2017.
After F1 introduced wider cars that season, it was later discovered that the wind tunnel walls were too close to Red Bull's 2017 wind tunnel model, affecting airflow and sending the team down the wrong development path. I decided to walk.
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