“That is a very novel approach” Pat Symonds impressed with Mercedes’ modifications ahead of the 2022 F1 season
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Pat Symonds the F1’s Chief Technical Officer has been left stumped after looking at what the Mercedes team has done regarding their designs in Bahrain.
It has been stated in Planetf1 that Pay Symonds believes Mercedes have taken inspiration from aerospace technology for the cooling system on the newly designed W13.
After the first pre-season testing it was widely predicted that all the teams were going to show up with major upgrades during Bahrain testing but no one predicted that Mercedes was going to come up with a narrow sidepod design.
There were doubts as to how the team was going to cool down its car but it seems they have come up with a solution that Pat Symonds didn’t predict.
While talking about the W13 Symonds said, “This is a very novel approach.”
“I like to see novel interpretations. I have to say it’s not one that I’d expected to see. And I’m still really impressed at how they’re getting the air through to cool the car, but they obviously are.”
“I guess it was just a little bit more radical than we thought.”
Pat Symonds believes that Mercedes have got a few tricks that is helping in cooling the W13
“As we developed the aerodynamics of this set of regulations, obviously, we looked at lots of things, not just downforce producing, but we had to look at brake cooling, had to look at tyre heating. And particularly, we had to look at engine cooling.”
“And we were using a bigger inlet than that [on the W13] to get the cooling. I think on the Mercedes, they have a few little tricks in there that help them in this respect.”
“So for example the intercooler is a very, very neat device, it’s a water/air intercooler, which of course Mercedes have had for a little while, but I think this is a little bit different.“
“And that’s why they can really shrink wrap this car a little bit more than most of the others can.”
“The intercooler that I was talking about, I think, comes from Reaction Engines in Oxfordshire, the people who are doing this sort of air-breathing rocket motor, and the sort of spin-off from that has been this really extremely efficient heat exchanger technology.”
“And I think that’s part of the reason why they’ve been able to produce the car the way they have.”
After the arrival of the upgraded W13, there were questions raised regarding the legality of the car but so far F1’s motorsports managing director has not received any formal objection from any of the other teams.
Moreover, Symonds believes that teams are trying to trim down the size of the side pod areas as much as possible.
“I think one of the trends we’re seeing, and it’s not particular to these new regulations, but we’re seeing that it’s very, very difficult to start to package everything into the sidepods, he said.
“People think what’s in the sidepods, surely it’s only the radiators, the heat exchangers.”
“But of course, there’s a lot more, there’s a lot of electronics in there. I think some people are moving that electronics into that keel area.”
It looks like the other teams have been left very impressed with the Mercedes design and are now trying to somehow adapt the same design to their respective cars.
Mercedes have shown their ace in the hole in Bahrain and it is going to be fascinating to see if any of the other teams are also going to dare to come up with a narrow sidepod design to improve their car’s performance and make it go faster.
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Rishabh Negi
(3244 Articles Published)