Mercedes F1 technical director Mike Elliott has explained how a single data anomaly in the W13’s early design simulations led to the team’s disappointing 2022 season.
The Mercedes W13, in its first season with a ground effect design, has come closest to the porpassing problem that has affected all F1 teams to some degree.
Mercedes F1 was able to fix certain aerodynamic porpassing issues, but in the next phase it will work to fix the ride quality problems that porpassing has hidden, ultimately making the W13 faster and I succeeded in making it a race winner.
The key to this turnaround was the significant upgrade Mercedes added for the F1 American Grand Prix.
Mercedes F1 team principal Toto Wolff said the W13’s concept flaws were part of a major overhaul of the procedures it implemented when it realized its poor performance against its rivals. He revealed that it can be traced back to “decision”.
Mike Elliott has spoken out about the implications of this decision, but not exactly what it says: “What are you going to do over the winter with the W14 that Mercedes F1 is developing for 2023? It will explain where they are and where they are going.”
“But what we were aiming for with the car, interestingly, was right from the start,” added Mike Elliott.
“And now that we have the simulation results, we have chosen a slightly different direction. It’s easy to look back and say ‘why did that happen?’ I think it’s easy to look at it and think, ‘If I hadn’t done that step over there, I would be in a completely different position.
“However, at that time, if I had seen that data anomaly, I think it would have been very difficult.”
“Just aside, when you scuba dive, you have something called an incident pit. When you teach scuba diving, you teach people what you call an incident pit.”
“And the reason we teach it is that when you look at the accidents that happen in scuba diving, it’s never the first failure, it’s the failure to avoid the first failure that causes many other failures and many troubles. because it is being hit by
“If you go back to the decisions we made, it’s pretty similar. The first thing we did was very difficult to pinpoint.”
“And then a series of things happened in a chain reaction that resulted in this.”
“And once you know where you ended up, it’s very easy to look back and see where you took a wrong step.”
It has been suggested that this flawed error in the simulation has caused Mercedes to push for a ‘zeropod’ sidepod approach. The larger rear floor area flexed under peak downforce loads, causing the W13 to suffer extreme porpassing at lower speeds than its rivals in early 2022.
Mike Elliott points out that this key design flaw left Mercedes with the potential to unleash the W13’s performance potential, and Silver Arrow’s new W14 will work to ensure this does not happen for 2023. It is said that
Mike Elliott said of Mercedes F1’s 2022 season: “In the end, we started the season at the front of the midfield, sometimes a little worse, and I’d like to think we finished the season with the second fastest car.” Told.
“So the decision we made was not a big deal. If we had done it right, maybe three or four tenths faster.”
“You can’t play the card again from that point on, so it’s really hard to know.”
“And it would be arrogant to think that if we hadn’t made that one mistake, we would have had a world championship-winning car. That’s not the right way to look at it.”
“The more important thing is to look at it and say, ‘We know we made a mistake and we know there’s a performance we can unlock by changing it.'”
“Some of the upgrades we introduced towards the end of the season were just to confirm that. We’ll have to do the rest over the winter and see where we get there.”
