Mercedes W04 car launch

Doesn't look too different from last year's Merc. Gary Anderson didn't seem impressed from the BBC Sports article. Looks like the two most impressive cars so far are the McLaren and the Red Bull?

Nismo said:
...I'm wondering how long into the season it is before a Merc. employee starts mentioning 2014 :D
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Er, what day is the 1st free practice for the Aussie GP on? ;):D

pingwing said:
Fully expect this season to be written off now, then the 2014 rules to change in 8 weeks killing it for Merc completely.
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Can see Bernie orchestrating this just to wind Lauda up. :D
 
Have I missed something, or have all the other cars launched been radically different to their 2012 counterparts but everyone just failed to notice?
 
i thought they all pretty much look the same bar a few tweaks since there are no rule changes.

hamilton does a few laps in the new car.



how come they are allowed to drive it on the track? have any other teams?


and not the best planning with helmets, they both yellow...
 
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^it's classed as a filming day. limited to 100km afaik. Also I bet they're running last year's tyres.
 
They are demo tyres, spec'ed nothing like the race tyres, so thattheteams can't gather my decent data. They also aren't allowed to add any sensor equipment etc to the car.
 
It used to be that the demo tyres were so hard that it was like driving on ice, so no meaningful data could be got. More recently, they're super super super super soft and grippy - data can be taken from these runs now.
 
lewis' helmet is more orange than Ros'.

the cars looks really good IMO, you guys may make jokes and laugh about the nose but seeing it in action to me it looks perfectly fine.

unlike my spelling :P
 
Looks a lot like last years car but instead of addressing the fundamental problem of last years car (it burnt tyres like paper)
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almost every car that team has ever made even pre merc have had tyre issues

goes back as far as 2006
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/54867
still baffled then still baffled now.

Best thing for merc would be to start from scratch in germany or something from 2014 onwards
 
I remember aswell in the British grand prix in 2009 Brawn basically saying it was too cold for the car to work properly lol.

As pointed out, bit of a fail with crash helmets, might be difficult to tell them appart at times.
 
Skeeter said:
They do, but people seem to have gone all out towards Merc for it.
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because mercs car had so many faults last season where as the other top teams only need a bit of detail the merc really needed a lot of work to play catch up and it doesn't appear to have happened
 
arknor said:
because mercs car had so many faults last season where as the other top teams only need a bit of detail the merc really needed a lot of work to play catch up and it doesn't appear to have happened
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Mercedes have fixed the one problem they had with their car though..

Schumacher has gone.
 
arknor said:
because mercs car had so many faults last season where as the other top teams only need a bit of detail the merc really needed a lot of work to play catch up and it doesn't appear to have happened
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How on earth can you say that. You have no idea what is inside the car. Bore are the wings what they will actually use.

Take mclaren, when you actually get someone knowledgable on it, it's changed drastically, so has Mercedes. Mclaren have basically changed the entire car.
 
arknor said:
because mercs car had so many faults last season where as the other top teams only need a bit of detail the merc really needed a lot of work to play catch up and it doesn't appear to have happened
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James Allen's article infers that quite a lot has been done, it's a positive article
 
Glaucus said:
How on earth can you say that. You have no idea what is inside the car. Bore are the wings what they will actually use.
Take mclaren, when you actually get someone knowledgable on it, it's changed drastically, so has Mercedes. Mclaren have basically changed the entire car.
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It doesn't matter what is inside the car mercs biggest problem was a massive lack of downforce compared to the other top teams.
They seemingly went for a low drag car that accelerated fast and bombed it down the straights.
but they also seemed to completely get rid of the DDRS as that massive qualifying advantage they had just disappeared and it was one of the few things keeping them anywhere near the front, once it was gone for whatever reason they would struggle to get into the top 10.

anyway I guess we have to wait and see but im not expecting any miracles that allow them to compete with ferrari , RBR and mclaren , maybe even lotus will be out of reach again.

I suppose it would be a pretty big improvement if they can put a pace gap between themselves , williams , force india and sauber though as by the end of the season all of those were starting to appear better than the merc, I think if those 3 teams had better drivers they would have been a real headache for merc for a lot of the season instead of just towards the end
 
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