I guess it’s design, it’s the entire car! Track rods, cockpit, sidepods, start of the nose. Very interesting to see how different directions in development translate to the cars
The most interesting parts of this comparison are RB’s front suspension and the floor entries, red bull’s floor is the most different when compared to the other 9 teams
It's both, the RB18 has a very slightly pushed back cockpit, and also its sidepods openings are pushed back too with the help of that clever design that starts a bit before them.
Both halves aren’t an exact match in terms of perspective, but the differences are real.
The Mercedes has its cockpit further forward, closer to the front axle, than the Red Bull does. This is also noticable on side views.
There's a maximum length for the wheelbase (distance between front and rear axles) of 3.6m and a maximum distance between the front axle and the nose. Inside those parameters the teams have some leeway to build the car as they seem fit, so the cockpit relative position isn't always the same.
FIA or F1 allow teams to work in boxes. So each part of the car needs to be in a certain space. That's why some cars looks Sint, but if you look close to the details they aren't.
It's a good design choice by RB. You can see it in all the pics from profile. They gave themselves more uninterrupted floor ahead of the cockpit to structure their flow
[Here you go](https://twitter.com/F1/status/1503755147519815680/photo/1). The sidepod, or rather the lack of it, on Mercedes is radically different from all the other cars.
From [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/F1Technical/comments/szsnzm/cockpit_placement_looks_how_far_forwads_the/), it seems that the cockpit of Alpine is also as further up as that of Mercedes.
That is insulting to Alonso. He is at best a bit better than Ocon. Max would most likely sweep the floor with Alonso. Alonso is and was good, but he's past his prime now.
In what way? Why would you think that Max, one of the fastest drivers in recent years and in his prime, wouldn't outdrive a driver who is at the tail end of his career? If you said 2005 Alonso versus Max then yeah I can agree it would be a much closer battle, but currently? I don't think so.
He's doing OK. Miami was a pretty bad race from him. He had a pretty good start, but two avoidable penalties and two collisions, neither of which were the other driver's fault, isn't great.
I honestly hope that Mercedes doesn't suddenly become the fastest car and therefore the meta. That thing is 10 shades of ugly. It would be much better if all the cars start looking like the Ferrari.
My only complain is that the Ferrari has this super elongated thin nose that reminds me of a mosquito. If it changed slightly I’d love the car. But as is I think Aston is the nicest looking. Although I did like the pop of color Mercedes had over the wheels (not sure what that parts called) in Miami.
I actually like the Design of the RB18 over the Ferrari.
It looks much more aggressive and advanced.
Still the quickest car this season are the two best looking.
AM is behind them imo, but obviously a shitbox.
I think that Ferrari and RB18 are two different kinds of beauty. Ferrari is more aestethic beauty, like sculpture. RB looks more advanced like you said and like proper racing machine focused on performance. It's more raw, especially with those highly visible tapes on connections etc.
I preferred the black mercs for sure. But I’m growing to like the merc a lot. Granted I’m a Mercedes’ fan and unconscious bias and all that. But I really am starting to dig it.
I fear Ferrari's design will fall off first once teams sort porpoising, if they do. I feel so much of their performance is on last gen top side downforce as they use the sidepods to guide airflow to the beam wing. RB is like a mix, guiding airflow over floor and to beam wing while Mercedes is focused on floor. This is why porpoising screws Mercs performances so much while Ferrari can have similar levels of porpoising but not impact performance as much.
Who knows whether focusing on floor or a mixed design works best if porpoising is solved but if I am not wrong I feel Ferrari has the least to gain with their design.
Ive honestly warmed up to the W13 a lot. It looks IMO the most futuristic of the bunch- like a jet of mercury shot from a super soaker.
Optimum for me would be if it was *just* fast enough to compete but not dominant so that it remains a relatively unique solution
I know it's not a beauty contest but that Merc is so ugly. It looks like someone randomly smashed a piece of metal with a hammer - like a dented up old car.
It sorta reminds me of those stealth ships with those almost flat side pod walls
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Shadow_(IX-529)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-class_destroyer
I like it outside of the crash structures the wings are mounted on. If you could replace that with a conventional wing mount I think it’d look cool in a slightly funky way.
The car is beautiful, technically. In an alien tech hidden warp drive kind of way. I love it. Hopefully Merc excecutes the suspension fix that will let it fold spacetime!
Just because I support Hamilton doesn’t mean I have to like everything he’s attached to. I didn’t actually like the black livery of recent years or his purple colour scheme he ran with it.
It almost looks like Mercedes designed a very specific, unique mold for a car and it didn’t work out. The redbull and other cars almost look more “stock” and maybe it’s easier to add/subtract things to tweak the car.
Not just side skirts.. basically everything apart from the frong wing is ugly on the merc. Livery most of all.
Probably looks good only infront ot the grid idk :D
This is the thing. I know we don’t know for sure what teams were running fuel wise, but the Merc does have potential. It seems to have a very narrow operating window in terms of ride height or tyre temps or something, but I’m convinced there is speed in it somewhere! Spain will tell us if Merc can find it.
Which is the problem. Because a fighter jet is built to go up. And you want a car that is the opposite of that, to translate wheel spin into forward motion.
And yet, a certain someone named Juan Pablo Montoya said yesterday that from all the paddocks in Miami, the only thing that almost made him drool in awe was in the Merc's one. I got the feeling that most of the specialists in the field are marvelling at the Merc's aero. But I somehow get you, because we're kind of used to see sidepods on F1 cars and without them, they look weird.
L.E.: you can find his exact words in FP3 practice on F1TV: "From the looks of the car you were gonna say Mercedes was gonna dominate. Like, how they packed that car…it’s incredible. Like, yesterday, I was rocking pit lane after practice, and they had the cars outside.. I was like…Ahaaaaaa… I was drooling all over it. Unbelievable!"
This is a very unflattering angle of it. They way it slopes down the sides are a big reason it looks bad from here. If it had a more defined vertical angle and didn't melt the side and the floor together it would look a lot better. Probably definitely worse performance, but it'd look better.
Why would Montoya’s opinion on it make anyone else’s opinion change or be less valid?
I think the sentiment was pretty clear on it. It looks melted. There’s a ton of mixed severity of angles and generally looks odd. Anyone who isn’t ignorant or disingenuous can say that it’s interesting and unique approach to engineering.
Why is it that Merc seems to not use seal tape on their car body, whereas RB does? And then Merc seems to use it on suspension, whereas RB does not? Appears to be a completely opposite approach from the naked eye.
The Mercedes cockpit is located much more forward than the RB cockpit so using the halo as a reference point doesn't work. The best way to align is by using the wheels.
I dare to say, that Mercedes is the prettiest car on the grid, along with the Ferrari. People say the sidepods are ugly, but a genuinely find them beautiful.
When i saw Mercedes during tests I had the feeling the car was too extreme to work, sometimes you don't need to be an engineer to guess if a car could be a shitbox or not. That car looks like a Brawn GP from 2009 except it's 2022
I was literally posting an opinion calm down, and it's based off the fact they know their porpoising was partially causes by the large floor area (so they fixed partly with the rods).
No arguments 😁
Toto himself says that there was no progress from race 1 to 5. The only thing that helps them are much higher temperatures. Which means the issue is with lack of downforce. On a car built to have very little downforce. It's not rocket science. The pod design is a major part of why they are struggling to get temperature into the tires. The other one is the ban of heating blankets. So they had that issue probably last season already, but heating blankets helped. Now they are confronted with low downforce AND no heating blankets. Don't be surprised if you see the B car from the first test in all races after Barcelona.
I’ve always wondered why their (merc) rear wing and their steering structures were so thicc, like I’m sure it has a purpose - just seems like they took the side pod material and spread it out over other components.
I'm glad people are doing these because it's easy sometimes to be like "all the cars look the same now" but the devil is in the details. Disclaimer being that obviously the Ferrari is quite unique this year.
It strange how everything on the RB seems further slightly pushed back, or pushed forwards on the Merc Is it just perspective or?
It is, one of the things teams can change is the position of the cockpit, very slightly
I guess it’s design, it’s the entire car! Track rods, cockpit, sidepods, start of the nose. Very interesting to see how different directions in development translate to the cars
The most interesting parts of this comparison are RB’s front suspension and the floor entries, red bull’s floor is the most different when compared to the other 9 teams
It's both, the RB18 has a very slightly pushed back cockpit, and also its sidepods openings are pushed back too with the help of that clever design that starts a bit before them.
Both halves aren’t an exact match in terms of perspective, but the differences are real. The Mercedes has its cockpit further forward, closer to the front axle, than the Red Bull does. This is also noticable on side views.
There's a maximum length for the wheelbase (distance between front and rear axles) of 3.6m and a maximum distance between the front axle and the nose. Inside those parameters the teams have some leeway to build the car as they seem fit, so the cockpit relative position isn't always the same.
FIA or F1 allow teams to work in boxes. So each part of the car needs to be in a certain space. That's why some cars looks Sint, but if you look close to the details they aren't.
I think they chose to align the front and rear of the wings. It'd probably be better to align the wheelbase, IMO.
It's a good design choice by RB. You can see it in all the pics from profile. They gave themselves more uninterrupted floor ahead of the cockpit to structure their flow
Bro do a Mercedes and ferrari. I wanna see how those sidepods looks side by side.
[Here you go](https://twitter.com/F1/status/1503755147519815680/photo/1). The sidepod, or rather the lack of it, on Mercedes is radically different from all the other cars.
The Ferrari sidepods looks almost like a blown up balloon here
Do other cars have the cockpit as far up as the Mercedes?
From [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/F1Technical/comments/szsnzm/cockpit_placement_looks_how_far_forwads_the/), it seems that the cockpit of Alpine is also as further up as that of Mercedes.
God damn... from the side angles it doesn't look like that extreme of a difference
Driven by Alonso
I would love to see Alonso at Red Bull honestly
Idk, I just can't see it at all tbh. Of all the people on the grid it makes the least sense to me
He wanted to avoid a HamRos v2 because redbull wasn't willing to. Cant blame him really.
I don't think that would happen because I think Max would be miles ahead.
Are you a new fan or what? It Did happen.
Max never teamed with Alonso…? If you’re referring to Ham Alonso then yes, but guy above was talking about Verstappen
Lol holy shit, ignore my comments, For some weird reason I read Ricciardo
I don't think Max is miles ahead Alonso is proving to be just as good as ever
That is insulting to Alonso. He is at best a bit better than Ocon. Max would most likely sweep the floor with Alonso. Alonso is and was good, but he's past his prime now.
bro this season he couldn't prove himself every rsce he has had problems... the other day he would've done pole but the car broke
Lol. Ok sure.
This has to be the dumbest take Ive read in a long time....
In what way? Why would you think that Max, one of the fastest drivers in recent years and in his prime, wouldn't outdrive a driver who is at the tail end of his career? If you said 2005 Alonso versus Max then yeah I can agree it would be a much closer battle, but currently? I don't think so.
Love alonso but nah, would rather see him performing great in alpine
Isn't he performing great now?
He's doing OK. Miami was a pretty bad race from him. He had a pretty good start, but two avoidable penalties and two collisions, neither of which were the other driver's fault, isn't great.
I said that because alpine is his team, the same team he won his wdc with
I don't
I think i know why 😅
Cockpit is so far forward on the Mercedes. Definitely adds to its weird appearance
Red bull back is thicc
I guess they willingly sacrifice slimness there in order to have more freedom elsewhere
abandon slimness, accept flow control.
I'm not fat, I'm aerodynamic. All these rolls creat vortices.
Put that on your tinder profile
You'd certainly find the right kind of person who'd appreciate that joke
Less is more only works to a certain extend.
I honestly hope that Mercedes doesn't suddenly become the fastest car and therefore the meta. That thing is 10 shades of ugly. It would be much better if all the cars start looking like the Ferrari.
Ferrari is a beauty, Aston I’d say second then RB/AT. But yeah, I just can’t get used to those side pods. So unique.
Those sidepods are automotive terrorism
They look like a deflated deepwater fish.
It has sidepods!?
My only complain is that the Ferrari has this super elongated thin nose that reminds me of a mosquito. If it changed slightly I’d love the car. But as is I think Aston is the nicest looking. Although I did like the pop of color Mercedes had over the wheels (not sure what that parts called) in Miami.
I actually like the Design of the RB18 over the Ferrari. It looks much more aggressive and advanced. Still the quickest car this season are the two best looking. AM is behind them imo, but obviously a shitbox.
I think that Ferrari and RB18 are two different kinds of beauty. Ferrari is more aestethic beauty, like sculpture. RB looks more advanced like you said and like proper racing machine focused on performance. It's more raw, especially with those highly visible tapes on connections etc.
If redbull had a simpler color scheme, it would be much easier to see the details. I think part of the Ferrari beauty is its minimalistic livery.
Alpine looks cool as well
Merc kinda has a crumpled soda can aesthetic going on
Came here to say Max was right. It is really ugly.
The merc looks great from every angle except directly head on
Too bad they gave it the dullest possible livery.
I preferred the black mercs for sure. But I’m growing to like the merc a lot. Granted I’m a Mercedes’ fan and unconscious bias and all that. But I really am starting to dig it.
I fear Ferrari's design will fall off first once teams sort porpoising, if they do. I feel so much of their performance is on last gen top side downforce as they use the sidepods to guide airflow to the beam wing. RB is like a mix, guiding airflow over floor and to beam wing while Mercedes is focused on floor. This is why porpoising screws Mercs performances so much while Ferrari can have similar levels of porpoising but not impact performance as much. Who knows whether focusing on floor or a mixed design works best if porpoising is solved but if I am not wrong I feel Ferrari has the least to gain with their design.
Ive honestly warmed up to the W13 a lot. It looks IMO the most futuristic of the bunch- like a jet of mercury shot from a super soaker. Optimum for me would be if it was *just* fast enough to compete but not dominant so that it remains a relatively unique solution
I know it's not a beauty contest but that Merc is so ugly. It looks like someone randomly smashed a piece of metal with a hammer - like a dented up old car.
If Jeremy Clarkson's HammerheadEagleIThrust was an F1 car? I can sort of see that lol.
Geoff was a work of art!
It's kinda so ugly it's cool in a way
It sorta reminds me of those stealth ships with those almost flat side pod walls https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Shadow_(IX-529) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-class_destroyer
It's so ugly that it has already passed that time where it was cool again, to just be ugly.
I think I’m the only one who really likes it 😅. It’s my favourite car on the grid.
I like it outside of the crash structures the wings are mounted on. If you could replace that with a conventional wing mount I think it’d look cool in a slightly funky way.
The car is beautiful, technically. In an alien tech hidden warp drive kind of way. I love it. Hopefully Merc excecutes the suspension fix that will let it fold spacetime!
I can only wonder why..
Just because I support Hamilton doesn’t mean I have to like everything he’s attached to. I didn’t actually like the black livery of recent years or his purple colour scheme he ran with it.
No offense to you but you have extremely odd tastes then.
Fair enough 😂
Why are you being downvoted?
He had -1, calm down.
He had -5 as i checked
Just looks like a deflated deepwater fish too me.
>It looks like someone randomly smashed a piece of metal with a hammer - like a dented up old car. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50A9wjJ40Dk
Both versions were very odd looking. Add it to another reason as to why I'm happy they're not fast
A more German approach for sure. The red bull has the compact Japanese engine
It almost looks like Mercedes designed a very specific, unique mold for a car and it didn’t work out. The redbull and other cars almost look more “stock” and maybe it’s easier to add/subtract things to tweak the car.
I find their lack of Sidepods disturbing
These comparisons are awesome - thank you.
For purely aesthetic reasons I’m glad the W13 is not competitive. Side skirts on it look like gelatinous fat rolls
Not just side skirts.. basically everything apart from the frong wing is ugly on the merc. Livery most of all. Probably looks good only infront ot the grid idk :D
Are they able to just trim off the side skirts? Or is it a regulation thing?
It was sweet for one session at least.
This is the thing. I know we don’t know for sure what teams were running fuel wise, but the Merc does have potential. It seems to have a very narrow operating window in terms of ride height or tyre temps or something, but I’m convinced there is speed in it somewhere! Spain will tell us if Merc can find it.
I finally grasped the “zero-side pod” for the W13. Great work.
Yeah, from side angle shots the difference is not even close to being this pronounced
god that mercedes is ugly
As someone who is relatively new to F1, the Mercedes looks like a fighter jet, and I'm here for it.
Which is the problem. Because a fighter jet is built to go up. And you want a car that is the opposite of that, to translate wheel spin into forward motion.
And yet, a certain someone named Juan Pablo Montoya said yesterday that from all the paddocks in Miami, the only thing that almost made him drool in awe was in the Merc's one. I got the feeling that most of the specialists in the field are marvelling at the Merc's aero. But I somehow get you, because we're kind of used to see sidepods on F1 cars and without them, they look weird. L.E.: you can find his exact words in FP3 practice on F1TV: "From the looks of the car you were gonna say Mercedes was gonna dominate. Like, how they packed that car…it’s incredible. Like, yesterday, I was rocking pit lane after practice, and they had the cars outside.. I was like…Ahaaaaaa… I was drooling all over it. Unbelievable!"
Are you sure JPM was not referring to the buffet?
I appreciate the irony, but he has very explicit in his words.
TBF being aesthetically kind of odd and being aerodynamically cool don't have to be mutually exclusive.
This is a very unflattering angle of it. They way it slopes down the sides are a big reason it looks bad from here. If it had a more defined vertical angle and didn't melt the side and the floor together it would look a lot better. Probably definitely worse performance, but it'd look better.
Why would Montoya’s opinion on it make anyone else’s opinion change or be less valid? I think the sentiment was pretty clear on it. It looks melted. There’s a ton of mixed severity of angles and generally looks odd. Anyone who isn’t ignorant or disingenuous can say that it’s interesting and unique approach to engineering.
yeah theres cool and theres pretty. IE the mclaren senna vs the 720s
the livery is shit
Why is it that Merc seems to not use seal tape on their car body, whereas RB does? And then Merc seems to use it on suspension, whereas RB does not? Appears to be a completely opposite approach from the naked eye.
The Mercedes and Ferrari still looks brilliant. I really like the Red Bull as well.
It honestly feels like the Mercedes just sort of melted from the side.
Merc looks like it's melting.
On the left, you have sexy peak performance - on the right, his anorexic twin.
The merc looks very slim and it looks like it would be faster
From this angle, the Merc’s sidepods are definitely not “zero sidepods”. They are just positioned vertically.
You are talking about intakes, not sidepods
still tho, it looks like they just turned it 90degreea and called it a day lol
We are terrible but I do love that 2 teams can see a set of rules and venture in such different directions...even if we are currently terrible
Both are Muscular Hunks.
Why the long nose?
Please do more of these! As a new fan, it took me a bit to realize just how different these cars really are.
One is fast and the other is not.
That Merc looks like they took a normal car and have it melt...
The Mercedes’ side pod opening is a lot bigger from this view than I thought it would be.
Mercedes' front suspension looks so much bulkier.
Alonso confirmed to redcedes???
Perez+Lewis = Alonso
It’s obvious this year the Merc thought they were the smartest guys in the room…and that was a huge miscalculation.
the Mercedes looks like it has slightly shorter wheelbase, I wonder if this is part of what it makes it good at slow and/or tight corners
judging by the missalignment and shape of the halo im gonna say right now this image is WAY to out of perspective to truly judge cool photo though
The Mercedes cockpit is located much more forward than the RB cockpit so using the halo as a reference point doesn't work. The best way to align is by using the wheels.
dont they have different wheel base too?
One is really fast and the other looks like something out of hell, driven by bad wind tunnel data.
being slim in the back maybe it's useless cause Mercedes have anyway a big front that drag too much
I dare to say, that Mercedes is the prettiest car on the grid, along with the Ferrari. People say the sidepods are ugly, but a genuinely find them beautiful.
It's all about angles
That sidepod design was a big mistake and it's showing, too much floor exposed
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When i saw Mercedes during tests I had the feeling the car was too extreme to work, sometimes you don't need to be an engineer to guess if a car could be a shitbox or not. That car looks like a Brawn GP from 2009 except it's 2022
Sorry Mercedes engineer 🥺
[удалено]
I was literally posting an opinion calm down, and it's based off the fact they know their porpoising was partially causes by the large floor area (so they fixed partly with the rods). No arguments 😁
Didn't they all leave for RBR?
Toto himself says that there was no progress from race 1 to 5. The only thing that helps them are much higher temperatures. Which means the issue is with lack of downforce. On a car built to have very little downforce. It's not rocket science. The pod design is a major part of why they are struggling to get temperature into the tires. The other one is the ban of heating blankets. So they had that issue probably last season already, but heating blankets helped. Now they are confronted with low downforce AND no heating blankets. Don't be surprised if you see the B car from the first test in all races after Barcelona.
Man the Merc is one ugly fuck this year. They need to go back to the black livery.
That Merc is stunning. Third best car on the grid!
Looks like it melted, or shaped by a river sort of organic looking
When compared to the RB the melty side pod on the W13 looks really bad.
Merc designers ambition went over adhesion.
Man the Mercedes is so ugly
And now the 8 time world champion No.14 Max Hamilton
A rare sighting of Sir Seris Perilton.
sick edit!!
The amazing jet technology in Mercedes totally blows my mind! Like a Silver F-117. Imagine if they still had their black livery still.
ByNAS
BYnas and Red TeamViewer
I’ve always wondered why their (merc) rear wing and their steering structures were so thicc, like I’m sure it has a purpose - just seems like they took the side pod material and spread it out over other components.
It's clear what Mercedes needs. A Sky High intake. https://youtu.be/9ONLZ3UcLLo
F1 cars look identical at first glance, I always thought they were before I took an interest in the sport.
The only thing i like on the merc is the side view. For some reason it looks super agressive to me.
I'm glad people are doing these because it's easy sometimes to be like "all the cars look the same now" but the devil is in the details. Disclaimer being that obviously the Ferrari is quite unique this year.
What's that silly front mudguard about all of a sudden?
The red bulls suspension arms look so dainty (eg top wishbone) When compared to the Mercedes
All these split top view comparisons give me strong BAR 01 vibes.
Where can i get this picture but only the rb 18 on it