While the team doesn’t have a proper explanation for why things went so well on the tight and bumpy circuit, Wolff suspects that thinking outside the box with testing and set-up data each race weekend was critical to unlocking something in his W13. He cited the example of the team running a new floor at the British GP that was not rated in the windtunnel as a prime example of not doing things like they used to. “This season, we’ve done unconventional things,” he explained. “I remember having a conversation with a very smart lady in aerodynamics and she said, ‘If you’d told me last year that we’d put a floor on the car that we hadn’t run in the wind tunnel, I’d have said we’re never going to do that.’ We did and everyone was proud of the results. “It’s the same every weekend, and more so on Friday and Saturday here. We tried things.” Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes-AMG, with Toto Wolff, Team Principal and CEO, Mercedes AMG Photo: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images Mercedes have struggled to get a direction on developments this year, with the team often finding that the data from the windtunnel doesn’t quite match what it’s experiencing on the track. This prompted her to be bolder with her approach to race weekends in hopes of finding the answer to this discrepancy. “This is a database sport,” Wolff said. “But if you can’t rely on the data, because it doesn’t correlate from the virtual world, from the tunnels, from the CFD and from the simulations, to what’s happening in real time on the track, you just have to try things and find correlations: basically reverse engineering correlation. That’s what we did here and we had some positive results.” Read also: Wolff said the key for the team now was to understand exactly what elements had worked in Hungary to give the team such a good result after a dismal Friday. “I have no explanation,” he said. “I think what I said to Sov [Andrew Shovlin]write down everything you did today from this morning onwards, including eating, to recap why it’s going so well. “This season has been an oscillation between depression and exuberance and sometimes it changes from day to day. Here [on Friday], we tried things that didn’t work at all. But they gave us a little more direction. “But to be honest, it’s been a painstaking exercise this year. And today is one of those days where all the trends of the season, where we were really bad in qualifying, but by performing well on Sunday, we’ve basically unlocked some potential in the car. “If we can show that our race pace hasn’t suffered then I’d see us back in a solid position.”
title: “How Unconventional Approach Helped Mercedes Shock Hungary " ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-12” author: “Connie Williams”
While the team doesn’t have a proper explanation for why things went so well on the tight and bumpy circuit, Wolff suspects that the out-of-the-ordinary thinking with testing elements and set-up each race weekend was crucial to unlocking something in his W13. He cited the example of the team running a new floor at the British GP that was not rated in the windtunnel as a prime example of not doing things like they used to. “This season, we’ve done unconventional things,” he explained. “I remember having a conversation with a very smart lady in aerodynamics and she said, ‘If you’d told me last year that we’d put a floor on the car that we hadn’t run in the wind tunnel, I’d have said we’re never going to do that.’ We did and everyone was proud of the results. “It’s the same every weekend, and more so on Friday and Saturday here. We tried things.”
Photo: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images Mercedes have struggled to get a direction on developments this year, with the team often finding that the data from the windtunnel doesn’t quite match what it’s experiencing on the track. This prompted her to be a little more daring with her approach to race weekends in hopes of finding the answer to this discrepancy. “This is a database sport,” Wolff said. “But if you can’t rely on the data, because it doesn’t correlate from the virtual world, from the tunnels, from the CFD and from the simulations, to what’s happening in real time on the track, you just have to try things and find correlations: basically reverse engineering correlation. That’s what we did here and we had some positive results.” Wolff said the key for the team now was to understand exactly what elements had worked in Hungary to give the team such a good result after a dismal Friday. “I have no explanation,” he said. “I think what I said to Sov [Andrew Shovlin]write down everything you did today from this morning onwards, including eating, to recap why it’s going so well. “This season has been an oscillation between depression and exuberance and sometimes it changes from day to day. Here [on Friday], we tried things that didn’t work at all. But they gave us a little more direction. “But to be honest, it’s been a painstaking exercise this year. And today is one of those days where all the trends of the season, where we were really bad in qualifying, but by performing well on Sunday, we’ve basically unlocked some potential in the car. “If we can show that our race pace hasn’t suffered then I’d see us back in a solid position.” Read also:
