The Brazilian weekend showed a real stra-power Mercedes as this year had not yet seen. Hamilton’s comeback during the Sprint Qualifying on Saturday and again during the Sunday race impressed in many ways. One of the main was the perception of power of the new internal combustion engine of the seven-time world champion, who pushed the W12 number 44 constantly to excel in the extensions of the Interlagos circuit. RedBull obviously has pointing the finger against super-power Mercedes, but allusions to 25/30 km / h speed difference on the straight they actually leave the time they find: the combined wake and DRS effect lead to differences between 20 and 35 km / h on every track between any car, for which the use of that number, in this case, is purely instrumental. On the contrary, the confirmed by Toto Wolff himself, who said that the Mercedes Power Unit has a reliability problem but has no problems with potency, suggesting that when the Brackley team mounts a new unit with the possibility of using it to its full potential, the power output is considerably higher to the competition. We then decided to try to dig deeper into the data available to us to notice any anomalies in light of the “out of scale” performance shown by Mercedes. A fundamental data for our analyzes are the revolutions per minute of the engine. We have thus set up a statistical analysis covering the whole season, focusing on what happened in the race. In addition to the two Mercedes and Verstappen’s Red Bull, we also analyzed the readings of the two McLaren (to have a reference with a Mercedes customer team) and both Ferrari, using these two teams as “counter-proof” of the data collected on the two top teams. For this reason, we only report the graphs relating to the first three of the world rankings.
In processing the data relating to the engine revolutions we have identified two parameters reference to be analyzed: i maximum revs achieved, and what we call the “center turns changed“. When a driver is accelerating, the engine passes, at each gear change, from a high rpm to an obviously much lower one.
To ensure theacceleration as effective as possible, the gearshifts must therefore be made in some way “around” the point of maximum efficiency of the engine, which is why taking the midpoint between the maximum revolutions before changing gear and the local minimums immediately after the shifting results in a value of revolutions per minute that is close to the point of maximum efficiency required. This point varies (generally drops) slightly as the gears increase, but to have a single reference parameter we have averaged the points obtained, thus obtaining a value comparable between Grand Prix and Grand Prix. The parameter thus obtained is somehow “relative” to the engine mappings chosen by the teams: the higher the value, the more the Power Unit will be in a “push” mode. Obviously this is assuming that the Power Unit is somehow the same along the season, so with the same parameters of use, even if, clearly, this is not always the case. The fact remains that we have obtained a first reference that appears reliable, being able to find a lot of what we saw in the season. This is if not for a curious one anomaly in the Mercedes data, precisely as regards the Brazilian Grand Prix.
The data are normalized with respect to the seasonal average, in order to make the references of different teams comparable to each other. The graph may initially “scare” but starting from the beginning of the season (left) and following the flow of the races you end up recognizing many of the situations experienced during the year. For example, it is evident that Mercedes had already started with Hamilton forced to push a lot on his propulsion unit already in Bahrain, given the battle with Verstappen, and that then the British is gradually due descend “Di manettino” to avoid reliability problems, with Verstappen first finding the seasonal maximum in Imola, to then choose more conservative regimes up to Baku. Here, both Verstappen and Hamilton (and also the others we have analyzed), show how the Azera track is particularly stressful on the engine front (Bottas’ dull race is revealed even with the data so low in this respect). We then move on to the central phase of the season, with the double Austrian faced with a rather conservative regime by Verstappen (given the technical advantage shown) and with an even more conservative regime for Hamilton, with the intention, probably, of preserving as much as possible its engine unit, given the impossibility of fighting for the victory in these races. Bottas’ data in this case goes against the trend, but it must be said that from this information it emerges that several “experiments” have been made on the Finnish Power Unit to find optimal regimes, since then amount of engine changes arrived on number 77 during the second part of the season. Hamilton in Hungary squeezes his Power Unit to the maximum in an attempt to recover the bad strategy at the start, while Verstappen runs as best he can with the damaged car and his data is therefore not reliable. In the second part of the season we see how Verstappen has a peak on the occasion of the new engine unit of Sochi, but how then Honda returns to adopt conservative regimes in an attempt to ensure reliability for the 8 required races. In Mexico the Mercedes Power Units are pushed to high revs, probably given the combination of Bottas with a fresh engine and the knowledge that Hamilton would make a change of elements in the next race. We then arrive atBrazilian anomaly. At Interlagos the results of our calculations tell us that Mercedes has adopted the values lowest in the whole year, in total antithesis with what has been seen on the track. In fact, we know that Hamilton’s engine power was certainly not inferior to the other races, on the contrary the differential with the rest of the group appeared much wider, a hypothesis confirmed by Wolff himself. But then how is this result possible? Furthermore, from the cross-checks we have done nobody else of the pilots analyzed had the minimum season at Interlagos. Before answering we also look at the graph of maximum engine revolutions in each race, also in this case with values normalized with respect to the seasonal average.
Our interpretation of this data is that it somehow represents the risk level that the teams were ready to accept in each Grand Prix, a certain mapping has been set. We see how, for example, after the first races both RedBull and Mercedes come down quickly to avoid breakage. As we can see that a Silverstone the Hamilton car does a leap to the top, confirming the information we have received, namely that in that case the Mercedes Power Unit had not made a leap in performance in itself, but some horses had been released for the solution of one of the reliability problems. In the second part of the season we see how Hamilton initially exploits the new Power Unit but then has a margin of risk allowed lower and lower, so much so that in Austin he reaches the minimum of the season, and this could be a further reason for the defeat suffered by the seven-time world champion on the American track, after the excessive power shown in free practice. In the last two races we see how Bottas had a high level of power available in Mexico, while he was forced to be more conservative in Brazil, while Hamilton (and Verstappen) on the Sao Paulo track still had a high dose of “risk ”, Which is in any case consistent with what we saw on the track.
Remains the anomaly cited above to explain. Putting it all together, we see that as far as Bottas is concerned, the Brazilian race was still conservative on the engine. It does not seem likely that the low value obtained in the center shift laps is only due to a conservative mapping, but at least a part of the low value seems to be attributable to that. Hamilton, on the other hand, remains in total countertrend. Assuming that the Power Unit argument is one complexity huge and that making assumptions is extremely complex, we tried to go by exclusion. Such a low value cannot be a conservative map, given what we have seen on the track, nor in turn an attempt to short-shift (carried out throughout the race) with the aim of controlling the temperature of the rear, as this would again imply a lower power output. In fact, it appears to have adopted itself a completely new delivery curve, with more power delivered at lower revs. Date the absence of clipping at the end of the straight for the whole race, the hypothesis that this occurred through variations to the hybrid part seems improbable, and therefore we remain with the most accredited hypothesis, namely that the new internal combustion unit expresses more power at lower revs. The variables on how the engineers can achieve this are multiple, but use in general is not to be excluded much more extreme of the basic parameters, given the importance of the weekend in a global key, such as one compression even more thrust. There is also the possibility that the specific of the engine either slightly different, remembering that for the purposes of reliability it is allowed to modify some parts. The definitive answer, of course, is known only to Brackley, but the impression is that Mercedes really has forced as never done before in the season, by significantly changing the parameters of use of the internal combustion engine. Making Hamilton recover the penalty positions and preventing Verstappen from reaching more than one Grand Prix advantage in the standings was obviously basic, and the new engine was used probably near its limit. However, we would like to clarify that we are not alluding to anything outside the rules. The data confirm a conservative RedBull on the engine, and a Mercedes that is pushing as never before this season on this aspect, so the two teams are in a moment of maximum differential from this point of view and therefore the differences seem even more marked. What is certain is that Wolff and his team mates have chosen the right track for Hamilton to make the gearbox and engine and therefore use it in a particularly strong way. The natural question is whether such use will be protracted also for the remaining 3 races, or from Qatar, the situation will normalize again. Finally, seeing the peak of Verstappen’s maximum laps in the Brazilian Grand Prix, the impression is that a Power Unit change, to try to defend the top of the standings from Hamilton and Mercedes up to Abu Dhabi.
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