Andrew Shovlin, trackside engineering director for Mercedes F1, says he doesn’t know if the W13 is actually a fast car because of its porpoising.
With the transformation of F1 cars into ground effects cars in 2022, almost all teams are struggling with some popping.
In popping, downforce pushes the car down onto the truck, stalling the airflow under the floor, and as a result, the car rises off the road. After that, the downforce is taken once more and the car is pushed back to the ground, and so on.
The Mercedes W13 appears to suffer more popping than its rivals, and bouncing shakes its head in the straight driver’s onboard footage.
Andrew Shovlin, truckside engineering dedirector for Mercedes F1, even says it’s not clear until the purpassing is fixed whether it’s a good car for the W13.
“Maybe that’s a top priority, because it’s preventing you from driving where you want to get the best performance in the end,” said Andrew Shovlin.
“What we don’t know is where we are actually in terms of the pace of the car, if we might magically eliminate the problem. Is the car fast enough? And answer that question. Is very difficult. “
Mercedes F1 had to raise the ride height to limit popping. But they sacrifice downforce and ultimately lap time.
“Basically, we need a deeper understanding of the problem,” continued Andrew Shovlin.
“There are some roads we think are in the right direction, but it will take some time to get those parts into the car. We are working very hard.”
“We are well aware that some teams are overcoming this problem faster than they are, and that is not the standard we usually work on.”
“Every effort in the factory has overcome this and kept us in the normal car development, but at this point there is a lot of work going on to pull us away from this situation.”
Andrew Shovlin hopes that Mercedes F1 will eventually find a solution that does not require cutting out part of the floor. In the final pre-season test, it was reported that the team was scraping the floor following each stint.
However, Andrew Shovlin says the response would reduce downforce that he didn’t want to sacrifice.
“If you can solve the problem of popping, you don’t have to give up downforce,” said Andrew Shovlin.
“I think the problem is more or less that most teams can trade one with the other.”
“In the Bahrain test, we tried the cutaway floor. We also tried it on Friday in Bahrain. I think the final result was a good overall solution.”
“But at this point, we think what we’ve done was a very bandage to the problem, and we need to not only slow down performance, but fix the problem in a more effective way.”
Category: Category: F1 / Mercedes
