Fear is central to self-preservation, but if left unmanaged it can prove to be your greatest personal limitation. In the case of Mercedes, the fear on the eve of 2023 was that of falling back into the abyss of porpoising, experienced first-hand in 2022. The W14 was born under the banner of caution, designed to turn high above the ground to keep away from those conditions in which one encounters in the hopping. However, the greater heights from the ground cost Mercedes an important load, slowed down by the ghosts of its own past. Acknowledging the excess of caution, Brackley is now working on a a lower and more aggressive design ahead of next season.
Cautious approach
In view of 2023, the FIA had changed some rules in the regulations concerning the fund, in order to make the cars less sensitive to porpoising. The reduced sensitivity to bumping could have been an incentive for teams to find more downforce when descending with heights, so much so that Mike Elliott himself, then technical director, stated that the new regulations would awarded the lowest cars. Still, the brunt of porpoising suffered in 2023 was still too vivid in Mercedes’ memory.
James Allison says: “2023 brought with it a change in the rules which gave all teams some protection against bounce. During the winter we had to make a choice: be aggressive and boycott that protection to find performance or take a more cautious path, moving away from all the porpoising that had already ruined our past season. We have taken the cautious approach, aware that it would have been easier to correct if we were wrong. However, during the year we realized that we had been too cautious and we made some changes to remedy it”.
Albeit in different ways, Mercedes and Ferrari pay for the unambitious goals set during the project stage. Red Bull and Aston Martin, on the other hand, have aimed higher – or rather, lower – by taking advantage of the regulatory change to lower the car and find load. Since its debut in Bahrain, Mercedes takes note of its shortcomings and immediately start working on the updates. However, bringing the car closer to the ground to find performance turns out to be more complex than expected and not only due to the risk of falling back into porpoising.
Work on mechanics
To turn low, a car needs stiff suspension, capable of guaranteeing a high degree of platform control, i.e. to stabilize the aerodynamic platform – frame and bottom – at a constant height. This was not the case with the Mercedes at the beginning of the year, too soft on the suspension precisely because it was designed to work higher up. At the beginning of the season, the team described the heights of Red Bull as unattainable, so much so that if the W14 had tried to replicate them, it would have risked impacting the floor and damaging the chassis.
Therefore, development cannot focus only on aerodynamics, but also aims to stiffen the suspension. The large package that makes its debut in Monaco introduces all-round innovations, affecting the bottom, diffuser, bellies and above all a new front suspension. Mercedes approaches the scheme of the arms of Red Bull, looking for an anti-pitch kinematic capable of stabilizing the height of the bottom especially during braking. The development then continues with important aerodynamic innovations to the front wing and again to the bottom and bellies, which arrive at the turn of the Silverstone and Spa races. The correctives have the desired results, but also bring with them some side effects.
The price of the cargo
With the mechanical and aerodynamic innovations, the W14 can now turn closer to the ground: the goal of finding load at medium-high speeds has been achieved. The overall efficiency increases, but the load brings with it greater resistance, slowing down the car on the straight ahead. Also for this reason, new rear wings arrive from Brackley, the last of which at Spa, useful for containing the delay on the straight. However, the new Mercedes performs at its best on the most tortuous tracks in maximum load conditions, as confirmed by the podium in Barcelona and the pole position in Budapest.
The developments also introduce problems in cornering behaviour. Thanks to the new wing and suspension, the front is strengthened to such an extent that the car becomes too nervous and reactive when cornering, depriving the drivers of the necessary confidence, while in the middle of the corner the W14 does not rotate as desired. “It’s unstable when you start turning the wheel and then it’s annoyingly dead at the apex,” explains Allison. “We want the opposite, that’s what we’re working on”.
During the year, Mercedes is therefore not only faced with load problems, but also with balancing. In addition to the instability when entering, the W14 finds itself paddling out of the slower corners, fighting against an unstable hindquarters which worsens in hot conditions. Then there are Hamilton’s criticisms of the driving position too far forward, all notes that will be invaluable in view of the 2024 project.
W15: lower and more aggressive
“The hope is that we have developed the skills we need now and can continue to develop in one direction.” Mike Elliott’s words echo those of his colleagues and tell of a Mercedes confident that it has approached the correct development direction, even if it hasn’t quite found it yet. Thanks to a regulation that will not change, the W15 of 2024 born to turn closer to the ground. Meanwhile, the revamped W14 acts as a forklift to expose all the risks and implications of working at lower ground clearances.
For next year there is optimism for having found the right compromise for the concept, also with regard to the sides. At the beginning of the season, the team’s top management kept repeating that bellies weren’t as crucial to performance as the bottom is. Starting to develop the car around lesser heights though, Mercedes has too discovered the potential of a wider body and dive, whose aerodynamics interact with that of the bottom. Thus the controversial tapered bellies disappear, in which the team had decided to restore confidence for 2023, encouraged by the performances at the end of 2022 and by the victory in Brazil.
In the meantime, however, there is a championship to complete and a second place to defend among the constructors. A few more updates will arrive on the W14, even if by now the bulk of the development is behind us, but Wolff encourages him to find new performance by working on the set-ups. Mercedes is not yet fully master of the new concept, having to learn to adjust the mechanical structure to allow the car to remain close to the ground. In fact, compared to Ferrari, the team needs more practice sessions before finding the optimal set-up. Finally there are still to be analyzed the reasons for the porpoising suffered in Spa. In Brackley it is thought that it was an exceptional circumstance due to the track and the set-up chosen, but the risk that the cause was the new surface has not yet been completely eliminated.
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