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After Monaco, it’s devil take the hindmost... Escalating tensions between Rosberg and Hamilton preMonaco are revealed, while Mercedes insist they have the situation under control It was only a matter of time before the increasingly intense title fight between Mercedes team-mates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg reached a flash point. It finally happened in Monaco, the sixth race of the season. The trigger was Rosberg’s trip down the escape road at Mirabeau on his final run in qualifying, which prevented Hamilton, behind him on the track, from completing his own last lap and potentially beating his team-mate to pole. Hamilton felt the “mistake” was anything but, and he was not alone. The stewards’ decision to clear Rosberg mollified Hamilton not one bit. Mercedes non-executive director Niki Lauda admitted the two had “argued about whether Nico did it deliberately” that afternoon, and Hamilton was still seething after being beaten into second place in the race. His mood was not improved by the fact that he had glimpsed a chance to pass Rosberg when the Safety Car came out for the second time following a crash by Sauber’s Adrian Sutil. However, the team waited until the Safety Car was actually deployed to call the two in at the same time – after they had passed the pits for the first time following the shunt.

F1 Racing July 2014

him marginally

7.5.14 The sale of Silverstone

ahead of Hamilton

falls through 9.5.14 Renault

again in the points

claim some teams are late with engine payments 10.5.14 Drivers

That call preserved Rosberg’s lead, and was in line with the rule that the first driver on the track gets priority on pitstop strategy. But Hamilton knew that had he pitted as soon as Sutil crashed, before the team made the call, he would have passed Rosberg. Hamilton did not, instead expressing his frustration over the radio, saying he knew both that he should have come in, and that the team would not call him in. So why didn’t he come in? Did he not want to upset intra-team harmony any further? Did he want to retain the moral high ground by looking as if he was doing the right thing, when so many people believed that Rosberg had not? Hamilton did not disguise the fact that he felt Rosberg had acted deliberately. “We’ve sat down

A controversial pole allowed Rosberg to lead Hamilton over the line in Monaco

and cleared whatever air needed to be cleared,” he told F1 Racing after the race. “We’ve been through the data and seen what needed to be seen. I wish you guys could see it.” A few days later, Hamilton did his best to calm the situation, taking to Twitter to announce: “We’ve been friends a long time and as friends we have had our ups and downs. Today we spoke, and we’re cool, still friends.” The situation in Monaco led to other details coming to light, which made it clear that while Monaco was the catalyst, tension had been brewing for some time. It emerged that Hamilton, on his way to victory in Spain, had used an engine-boost mode the team had banned the drivers from employing in races. Presented with this accusation in the post-race news conference in Monaco, Hamilton retorted: “Nico did it in Bahrain” – this was the same race at which Rosberg had radioed the team to complain of a ‘chop’ from Hamilton at Turn 2, demanding they “warn him that was not on”. And in the run-up to Monaco, Hamilton had given an interview to the official Formula 1 website, in which he compared his and Rosberg’s levels of desire to win the title, saying: “I come from a not-great place in Stevenage and lived on a couch in my dad’s apartment. Nico grew up in Monaco with jets and hotels and boats and all these kind of things, so the hunger is different.” Rosberg, meanwhile, said after the Monaco weekend how important it had been to halt his team-mate’s run of four straight victories: “Lewis had the result momentum and I had to try to bring that to an end. I did that today but it’s going to be close to the end.” Hamilton’s belief that Rosberg was prepared to resort to foul play to do so will perhaps have given him a different view of his “friend’s” level of hunger. What the pair actually mean when they refer to being “friends” is unclear. Even before Monaco, each had admitted that they may be friendly, but they are not best friends. After Monaco, Hamilton said: “It’s never going to be perfect because we’re fierce competitors, so you can never expect us to be best friends. But we will remain respectful I think. Or I will try to remain respectful.” It adds depth to an already fascinating battle between two very different drivers. Mercedes

cautioned over formation lap speeds 14.5.14 ‘Louder’ exhaust trialled by Mercedes at Barcelona test

19.5.14 Sir Jack Brabham dies, aged 88 21.5.14 Red Bull instructed to change the design of their camera pods 23.5.14 Nico Rosberg signs an extension to Mercedes contract until end of 2016 26.5.14 Ecclestone rules out return of French GP 29.5.14 Teams consider in-season testing ban to cut costs 03.6.14 Romanian team, Forza Rossa Racing, believed to have letter of intent from FIA allowing them to field a team by 2016 08.6.14 Adrian Newey signs new Red Bull contract but will step back from everyday involvement with F1 team

non-executive chairman, Niki Lauda, summed it up like this: “One thing is clear. Lewis from my point of view has a 0.1-0.2secs advantage on Nico because he can get the laps in qualifying in order. Nico is working hard – my type – with the mechanics, with the engineers, with the tyres, how many laps, forwards and backwards. “So we have one natural talent, very emotional, and we have another guy who is doing the same job in another way. So we are in a very comfortable situation to have two different drivers, but in the end they do the same speed, or the same result. So, for me, it is a very good situation.” How long it will be possible to describe the situation as ‘good’ remains to be seen.

F1 Racing July 2014

photos: glenn dunbar/lat; steve etherington/lat; andrew ferraro/lat; lat archive

Ferrari: third best 22

The month’s big stories at a glance

How Mercedes built Lewis the perfect race car

F1 Racing July 2014

In a season dominated – so far – by one team, one driver has done most of the winning. What makes the Mercedes W05 so ideally suited to Lewis Hamilton’s style? F1 Racing investigates Words stuart codling pictures steven tee/ LAT

F1 Racing July 2014

O ver the past four seasons,

Mercedes have quietly been moving all the pieces into place to dominate F1. The instrument of that domination is the W05, since Spain renamed – deliberately – as the W05 Hybrid. And, thus far, the most artful wielder of that instrument is Lewis Hamilton, albeit by margins of thousandths of second. Tiny margins, yes, but margins that have left his team-mate, Nico Rosberg, increasingly frustrated. The W05 is, Lewis has said time and again, the best car he’s ever driven. So how have Mercedes met the challenges of the new regulations with such great success, while rivals – behind the scenes and sotto voce – are already talking of stopping development of their 2014 cars? And how is it that Lewis, more often than not, can wring those fractions of extra pace from the all-conquering W05, leading inevitably to those equally telling moments in the post-race ‘green rooms’ where even the millions watching on TV can feel the hushed frisson? The team didn’t set out to favour either driver – and, for now at least, the two of them are allowed to fight it out between them on track.

F1 Racing July 2014

But as the W05 came together, the stars aligned for Lewis, handing him a car perfectly suited to his style. Frustratingly for Mercedes’ rivals, this isn’t a story where any one element provides the ‘magic bullet’. Rather, it’s a carefully crafted collection of marginal gains…

Lewis makes himself heard “Last year I was struggling,” says Lewis. “I was really uncomfortable. I like an oversteering car, but it was too oversteery. “It took all of last season to know what feeling it was giving me. Things were happening and I would think the car was just not underneath me. If you look at that car from the front of the cockpit you can see the steering wheel – it was high. And Nico and Michael [Schumacher] would sit so high their heads were close to the airbox. When I got in it I said, ‘This is all wrong.’ “So I sat so low – I was maybe 40-50mm lower than they were – my vision was worse. But then I have moved the steering wheel much lower, the centre of gravity is lower, Nico has followed me and now he sits as low as me. These are the sorts of things I’ve brought to the team.” Schumacher was one of the greatest exponents of an oversteering car, so it’s no surprise his preferences left a legacy. But in an era with less track testing there’s less chance for a single driver to steer development. And Mercedes are keen to stress that the W05 was shaped by collaboration. “Our drivers are so detail-focused that both of them have great influence over the car,”

F1 Racing July 2014

At every stage, the different design disciplines have been willing to trade off with one another to reach the best overall solution

says Mercedes’ executive director (business) Toto Wolff. “The advantage for Lewis has been that he didn’t feel comfortable in last year’s car because he had no impact at all [on its design]. He feels in the right place this year, probably because the engineers understand his needs more.” “Michael had a different driving style to me and he wanted different things,” says Lewis. “Nico and Michael gelled and went in one direction, then I’ve come along and my way is slightly different, and I guess we’ve created a hybrid: Nico’s come halfway, I’ve come halfway, so we now require the same things from the car. “A key difference for me this year is braking. We did a lot of work on the simulator last year analysing how hard I hit the brake, the pivot position, the master cylinders, different brake materials and really focusing on brake settings. The guys came up with a piece of software that helped me with brake migration [where the front-rear balance changes as the pedal is released]. It takes a while to build those relationships and for the engineers to get to know what I require from a car.”

It’s all about the car There’s a twinkle in Toto Wolff’s eye as he asks, “Have you ever been in the ivory tower in Brackley?” F1 Racing has, at various times, visited that area of Mercedes F1 HQ, accessed via spiral stairs and offering a commanding view over the entire site. Formerly the offices of Nick Fry, the company lawyers and other senior staff, the entire floor is now given over to meeting

F1 Racing July 2014

rooms where the various engineering disciplines – including delegates from Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains, 30 miles away in Brixworth – gather regularly. “Half these rooms are packed with powerunit people,” says Wolff. “As management, it is important to align the mission. If you look back, Brixworth used to be a McLaren-focused operation because that was the works team. That was the team that was taking wins and titles. It was important, although our team was not performing really well in the way we were expecting, to align them behind Mercedes.” The ongoing aim is to create race cars that represent a seamless fusion of chassis design, aerodynamics and powertrain packaging – a

“Nico and Michael went in one direction – my way is different. We’ve created a hybrid” Lewis Hamilton

process set in motion by former team principal Ross Brawn, who steered Ferrari to multiple successes in the 2000s. When Brawn arrived at Maranello in the late 1990s, while Ferrari were in the doldrums, he found a disjointed operation in which the cars were assembled from blueprints faxed over one A4 page at a time from John Barnard’s design office in Shalford, England. He united the design, construction and powertrain functions under one roof and a remarkable run of success ensued. Little wonder Wolff describes Brawn as “mega-instrumental” in bringing that mentality to Brackley. How does this work in practice? You only have to look at the areas of the W05 aft of the driver to see how tightly packaged it is; it’s the only current F1 car to require aerodynamic ‘blisters’ to accommodate the mandatory gearbox mount locations. The engine cover makes the equivalent area of McLaren’s MP4-29 look rather less elegant in comparison. At every stage the different design disciplines have been willing to trade off with one another to reach the best overall solution – F1 Racing has learned, for instance, that the exhaust layout sacrifices potential top-end power for better aero. “There are some compromises on the car for the benefit of shaft power,” admits Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains MD Andy Cowell. “There are some compromises on the power unit for the benefit of aerodynamics. It’s a matter of finding that sweet spot, and if you’re looking at the total car rather than just developing a power unit or a car, then you have a real virtuous circle.” Teams who have a more detached relationship with their engine supplier, Red Bull being a prime example, traditionally target aerodynamics as a means of increasing performance. It’s become fashionable among the paddock opinionati recently to suggest that a Mercedes-powered RB10 would be a better package than the W05. This notion is batted aside aside by Mercedes’ executive director (technical), Paddy Lowe: “That’s quite an annoying story from our point of view,” he says. “I’ve got no sympathy with a team who says, ‘My engine isn’t good enough.’ Go and work with them – it’s a partnership. Formula 1 is a teamwork business and it’s about engineering the car as an integrated system. You can’t decouple one technical aspect from another: you make the whole thing work to deliver lap time.

wo1

W03

The first Mercedes F1 car of their new

Featuring a ‘double-DRS’ system to boost

era was designed in 2009 on a restricted

straightline speed, this car failed to live up

development budget while the team were

to expectations. Rosberg won in China and

still Brawn GP. Although it had a number

Schumacher set a time fast enough for

of innovative features – a low-profile

pole in Monaco (he was demoted due to

‘split’ airbox appeared at the Spanish

a penalty), but the car overheated its rear

GP – it proved difficult to adapt to run

tyres and struggled to get the front ones

an equivalent of McLaren’s ‘F-duct’, the

to optimum temperature. Mercedes fell off

forerunner of DRS. Nico Rosberg claimed

the pace as the season progressed and

three podiums, Michael Schumacher none.

the Stuttgart board grew impatient.

wo2

WO4

After a troubled pre-season – the W02

Toto Wolff joined as executive director

overheated repeatedly at the first test,

(business), Paddy Lowe as executive

requiring a new sidepod design – Mercedes

director (technical), and Niki Lauda as

seemed to make little progress. They

non-executive chairman, with a view

finished fourth in the constructors’

to replacing Ross Brawn’s role as team

standings but registered no podiums. Ross

principal. The W04’s strong performance

Brawn set about bolstering the technical

– two wins for Rosberg, one for Hamilton –

team, recruiting Bob Bell from Lotus at the

showed the new structure was beginning

beginning of the season and Aldo Costa

to gel. Brawn earned the right to determine

and Geoff Willis later on in the year.

the timing of his own departure.

photos: steven tee/lat; alastair staley/lat; andrew ferraro/lat; charles coates/lat

evolution of the WO5

During the team’s solo year as Brawn GP, it had to undergo a brutal downsizing after years of growth under Honda’s ownership. As Mercedes it began to grow again – there are now 800 staff at Brackley and 400 at Brixworth – and Brawn was able to recruit senior design engineers with pedigree, such as Bob Bell, Aldo Costa and Geoff Willis. The additional investment secured by Wolff helped fast-track development of the

“The nature of F1 is, if you want better technology you’ve got to go and build it yourself” Paddy Lowe

Regulation changes to the nose have had a radical effect on both its height and shape, while the reduction of the working areas either side of its flat area, mean this section must work harder to restore lost downforce

W05, and its new powertrain, under the new technical structure initiated by Brawn – but the team’s new-found competitiveness came too late for Brawn, in whom the board had lost faith.

More bang per buck

“You can’t look at a lap time and say, ‘He’s quick down the straight therefore he’s got a great engine, but he’s slow in this particular high speed corner, which shows his aerodynamics are worse,’ because clearly you can trade downforce for drag. That’s a game we’ve been playing in F1 for many years and it’s a game that’s going on today. Some teams with the same engine are running a lot more drag than others.” The message to rivals: put up or shut up.

Getting a bigger budget You’d be forgiven for asking why Mercedes have only recently started flexing their muscles properly after buying a title-winning team then spending four seasons showing only intermittent promise. It’s a question the board asked themselves, but finding answers wasn’t easy.

F1 Racing July 2014

“There were lots of ingredients previously in Brackley, but some were missing,” says Wolff. “Ross Brawn said in the past that there was a gap between the expectations of Germany and what Brackley knew was possible. The problem was that Mercedes bought the team expecting to win titles with the same budget as Williams. Ross said clearly setting those expectations or getting access to the right resources was missing. “I made a due diligence about the company and the first thing I said to Mercedes was, ‘What are your plans? What’s your target?’ They said, ‘Well, we want to win the world championship.’ I said, ‘You won’t do that on the same budget as Williams because my target there was to be fifth.’ They said, ‘No, we have $30million more.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but we pay the drivers…’ “I said, ‘Let’s do it properly. This is what we need. Or let’s reset the targets.”

Mercedes have spent more on R&D than ever before in the run up to 2014; exactly how much is unknown outside the cloisters of Brackley and the boardroom at Stuttgart. Inevitably that has led to suggestions that they have circumvented the Resource Restriction Agreement, particularly with regards to the expertise they can tap in to from Stuttgart. Insiders robustly defend that, pointing out that a lot of the performance and reliability advantages Mercedes have enjoyed came about through Brixworth’s decision in 2010 to invest in second-generation KERS technologies rather than return to the one used by and co-developed with McLaren in 2009. That gave them a huge head start in developing not only the energy harvesting and storage technologies, but also the complex control software that governs the interplay between the new hybrid systems. “The nature of F1,” says Lowe, “is if you want better technology you’ve got to go and build it yourself.” “Recently I’ve been reflecting a bit more about the journey to this point,” says Andy Cowell. “We’ve benefitted from having a close working relationship with the guys at Brackley

and from the development work we’ve done previously on KERS in this factory. A lot of the key features, hardware and software, are created, implemented and bug-fixed in our very close circle of influence. So none of it has required a crazy amount of investment in terms of hard cash going out the door or being spent on capital equipment inside the factory, or on huge numbers of people. “It’s been hard work – the individuals have put in a colossal number of personal hours. The total number of software engineers is not great. They’re very clear-thinking guys who have been working on it since day one, have built the hardware up around a vision, and have then written the software to manage it.” Mercedes are the only team to place the turbo’s compressor and turbine at opposite ends of the engine, giving a series of benefits including a cooler flow of air through the inlet. Obviously the chassis designers at Brackley knew about this from first principles, while Brixworth’s customers only found out during 2013. “How other customers exploit that is up to them,” says Lowe. “That’s the essence of a works team relationship. But inevitably they [the customers] will benefit from some of our innovations.” Neither are the team ashamed of admitting to sourcing help from Stuttgart. Pre-season, they encountered a problem with cooling caused by corrosion in the pipes. “Some of our most intelligent guys were working on it,” says Wolff, “but when we contacted Stuttgart they said: ‘We know that problem – we had it on the road cars, here’s a solution.’” “From a technical perspective,” says Cowell, “it’s been a case of looking at the regulations, looking at the technologies that are permitted, doing some simulation work to look at the

F1 Racing July 2014

MERCEDES F1 W05 hybrid

Technical specification Engine

Tyres Pirelli

Mercedes-Benz

Brake callipers Brembo

PU106A Hybrid Engine capacity

Electronics

1.6 litres

FIA standard ECU

Cylinders Six No of valves 24 Max rpm ICE 15,000rpm Max fuel-flow rate 100kg/hour (above 10,500rpm) Chassis Moulded carbonfibre and honeycomb composite structured monocoque Bodywork Carbon-fibre composite including engine cover, sidepods, floor, nose, front and rear wings Suspension Carbon-fibre wishbone and pushrod-activated torsion springs and rockers Dampers Penske Wheels Advanti forged magnesium

performance authority of those, and then setting some BHAGs – Big Hairy Audacious Goals – and not giving up.”

On-the-edge aerodynamics

Optimum cooling also has an aerodynamic benefit because the and FIA homologated radiators require smaller cooling electronic and electrical apertures, and Petronas are system believed to have delivered much more advanced lubricants – ones Instrumentation that remain effective at a higher McLaren Electronic temperature, therefore needing less Systems (MES) cooling – than some of their rivals. That, along with the embedded Gearbox nature of the powertrain engineers, Eight-speed forward, has enabled the tight packaging of one reverse unit with the rear half of the car, but it’s the carbon fibre maincase front end that dictates the quality Gear selection of the air flow, and here Mercedes Sequential, are enjoying the benefits of the semi-automatic, investment they made in their aero hydraulic activation research facilities during 2012. Two changes to rules governing Overall length 4,800mm the nose have had far-reaching Overall width 1,800mm effects, most visibly in the height Overall height 950mm and shape of the nose. But the Overall weight 691kg reduction in width of the working areas on either side of the FIAFuel mandated flat section has meant Petronas Primax those areas must work harder to claw back downforce. The W05’s Lubricants front wing is a sophisticated piece Petronas Syntium of design in itself, but to optimise Gearbox & Petronas flow around the nose and reduce Tutela hydraulic oil turbulence in the so-called y250 area around the car’s centreline, the mounting points are very slim. Mercedes’ preferred solution didn’t pass the crash test first time and has only recently been introduced. “That’s the exciting thing about engineering,” says Lowe. “The strength of a piece of steel is amazing. There’s a remarkably small amount of steel that will join a car together. An aero engine is held on to the wing of a 747 by a couple of bolts, and when you see it, it’s slightly beyond comprehension. But that’s the excitement about engineering. We’re just pushing ahead with performance in the normal way we invent it. “We haven’t got a lot of recovery to do. We’re in invention mode…”

! N O I T C A , as for s r e t s a dc w For broa ting the F1 sho x et ple teams, g oothly is a com sm ed running F1 Racing learn as kstage affair – c a b t n e we when w Monaco in with Sky on lins ny Row o Antho S D R WO ew Ferrar s Andr

PICtur

14:59 on Saturday 24 May, on a downhill stretch

At of road that runs from Monaco’s Casino Square

to the Mirabeau hairpin, Nico Rosberg appears to lose control of his Mercedes. A locked front-right, a quick catch-and-correct and Nico disappears up the escape road. Yellow flags emerge, Rosberg’s pole is secured and a bomb is lit under the 2014 F1 world championship. That means pure TV dynamite – nowhere more so than for the Sky F1 crew, broadcasting live here, as at every race, thus having to ‘call’ a breaking story as it develops before their eyes. Did Rosberg fumble? Was it a professional foul? Did he reverse up the escape

F1 Racing July 2014