Mercedes Director of Engineering, Aldo Costa, discusses the changes for the 2017 season and what performance gains they are hoping to achieve with the new regulations.
Ideally the car will be wider, louder and faster and harder to drive but we’ll have to wait and see how this plays out with more weight and more drag. I suspect the engineers know far better than I what we can expect but you never know until the entire power unit, tires and chassis are rolling.
If this pans out, and I have no reason to doubt it will, this seems like the kind of car Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel and even Kimi Raikkonen would like to drive.
I still think they’re going in the wrong direction with these changes.
At least wait for pre-season testing. If they fail F1 regulators will blame fans say that the fans asked for changes, if they succeed they will take credit for themselves.
Pat Symonds of Williams seems to agree with you, from his comments in his most recent Motorsport interview.
I think the engines are forever here to stay now, but with their power and s-l-o-w-l-y increasing engine notes, I can live with that. Its the aero that is insane, in particular, the front wing. With this delicate contraption machines cannot be on the tail of a competitor without destroying tires, and then we need artificial DRS because of this to allow a car to close in for the opportunity to pass. Small front wings, less dependency on aero, fatter tyres still to increase mechanical grip from less aero, engine turbo’s boost turned up to produce 1200hp, all tyre compounds… Read more »
#ilovef1 Okay, been thinking about our sport today, and i think sometimes we are so entrenched in the details we can overlook how amazing it is. What other sport is both a team sport, and a individual sport, involves high-tech, insane speed, razor concentration, 100% dependent on driver skill, yet also 100% reliant on mechanical engineering, combines both the old world venues as well as post-modern tracks, tests both team and driver by shuttling all over the globe for constant competition from tropical to desert climates, at sea level to thin oxygen mountain altitudes, constantly challenging the pilots who endure… Read more »
Good perspective Prof, F1 is insanely complex, mentally and physically challenging on a whole number of levels, but the tv coverage (and many other websites) dumb it down to the character of a few drivers.