Have you seen the FIA statement?No FIA removed the entire rear wing and permitted Mercedes to replace it with only the exact same wing, meaning an illegal DRS one. All according to parc ferme rules
That makes much more sense as the rear wing is operating as expected and presumably has been through further scrutineering and so is known to work within the regulations.From the FIA statement it seems that if Mercedes asks permission to alter the replacement wing they would get that permission, meaning they can change the gap the original wing had on the replacement, meaning they could then use DRS legally. Lewis did not use DRS during FP2, dutch tv was following Lewis and explaining why he would need to be disqualified if the wing dimensions were different than those from the wing FIA has taken, parc ferme rules, and how he would be disqualified if he used DRS with the illegal gaps.
I suspect (because this is how similar situations were handled at Merc when I was there and some of those people now work at RBR) that it would have been a placement student back at the factory, working in the race support room, cutting on car videos of wings and doing some photogrammetric analysis to determine predicted deflection at points across the rear wing. This would then have been supplied to Adrian Newey, who then notified the FIA with videos and measurement data.Adrian Newey noticed the illegal gaps during FP1 he said and RB notified the FIA formally before the qualification for sprintrace started. I don't know if FIA then notified Mercedes before quali, but like someone mentioned here, the speed or timedifferences were telling
It certainly was, amazing driving.What a drive by Lewis Hamilton.
To some extent having the sprint race was lucky for Lewis as it gave him the opportunity to recover somewhat from the disqualification from qualifying.In fact, without it this would’ve been another pointless sprint race.
Bottas did well to get and keep the lead.Well done to Bottas for doing his job, and well done to Mercedes on tyre choices.
I can see why you would say that as 0.2mm is so small, that it suggests some insider knowledge, but I would be amazed if that was how RBR found out for the following reasons:0.2mm on one side of the wing. Not designed in, just an tiny error or failure. Interesting that RB knew. Makes me wonder whether they have someone on the payroll within Merc.
He is right that teams and the FIA have managed faults like this sensibly in the past. The technical delegate would have had a chat with the team manager or chief race engineer and it would all have been resolved without the press knowing about it. That works until the FIA feel that you are taking the mickey and then they will give you one final warning and then you will get a penalty. As Merc have been under a microscope in this area it could be that the FIA have found additional items and reached their limit, but I suspect that it is something else.Toto was PISSED at the FIA wasn't he; really thought he would get a RB type pass for a broken bit of Merc, he should have known better really.
It certainly should be.Should be a fun race tomorrow.
Interesting as always Ian! I was commenting somewhat tongue-in-cheek re RB but as you say..there are some odd aspects, ie that Newey is said to have made quite a detailed representation to the FIA.I can see why you would say that as 0.2mm is so small, that it suggests some insider knowledge, but I would be amazed if that was how RBR found out for the following reasons:
1. There are very few people who could have modified Lewis' rear wing (3 mechanics would have had access) and they work as a very strong team so I just cannot see them damaging the wing and then telling someone at RBR.
2. RBR and Merc have been following what the competitor's wings were doing very closely, and as such they were looking for differences in behaviour. Lewis' car had a massive speed differential with DRS over other cars (including BOT) and so probably resulted in an even more detailed analysis.
3. I haven't seen any of the on car video, but in 2004 we thought that we were making accurate enough photogrammetry measurements down to +/- 0.5 mm of rear wing displacements. Since then on car camera resolution has improved dramatically, there are more cameras on the car and off car camera have much greater resolution and so the accuracy will have improved.
But I do agree that this looks very odd.
The 0.2mm difference in gap cannot account for the large difference in DRS speed (incorrect for Wolf to say that it made its performance worse) with BOT, so that suggests to me that they have chosen a rear suspension setup that has weaknesses in some areas, but allows the rear wing to stall early on down the straight, and results in the large speed differences. There are tricks that you can use to do this, but it looks like they must refined this over the years and have minimised the downsides.