- Formula one has been a hotbed for automotive engineering for decades. F1 engineers are the best of the best. And right now, the best of the best of the best is Mercedes AMG Petronas. Since F1 transitioned to V6
Turbo Hybrid engines in 2014, Mercedes has won the
championship every single year. Some of that comes from a talented driver, like Lewis Hamilton,
(heavenly music) but we've seen other
drivers perform very well in the Merc too. Heck we've even seen
other teams copy their car and gain almost a full
one second advantage. So what is Mercedes doing differently to make them so dominant? Well, even though their
cars change every year, there are some things
about the silver aeros that stay pretty consistent. So today we're gonna look
at what gives them the edge. We're gonna break down their aerodynamics, their engine efficiency, and the innovation that they
bring to the grid each year. (mellow music) (electric current buzzing) Thanks to Raycon for
sponsoring today's episode of "Bumper To Bumper". You know, life can get noisy sometimes. Say you just wanna take a
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(whooshing) - Jerry. Jerry! - And before we get too far into this, I wanna mention
that while we did our research on Mercedes AMG Petronas, we can't say with 100% certainty how they're beating everyone, because if we could I'd have a job at Alpha Romeo right now,
Frederick, my man, hit me up if you need some engineering
advice, I got some ideas. This will be a look at what
differentiates Mercedes from the other cars on the field why those differences might
be giving them an advantage and why other teams just
can't shift their plans to match Mercedes. And we're gonna start off in the aero department,
aerodynamics play a big part in F1. And over the years it's gotten to be a pretty complicated subject. But before we can start talking about what makes the Mercedes
F1 Aero package different, we first need to paint a picture of what F1 air dynamics
are like in general. Crash course in F1 aerodynamics theory. Here we go.
(whooshing) Aero on a modern F1 car
consists of three main things. The front wing, the
floor and the rear wing. The front wing is where it all starts. It's the first part of the
car that oncoming air hits. And it dictates how the air
hits the rest of the car. And now the front wing is super specific and this is why you just can't copy another team's front wing. 'Cause it doesn't match up
with the rest of the car. So the front wing has got to create front end downforce sending
the air away from the car. But it's also got to channel that air to vital components like the
brake ducts and the side pots and high speeds make the
front wings' job even harder. Sometimes a car can go so
fast or change the direction of air flow so much that it
creates a gap in the layers of air, some air strays
attached to the body of the car, that's the boundary layer and the rest gets sent over the car. That's what's generating or downforce. And in between, well, there's little gaps of nothing creating a
vacuum and it sucks air towards it from the nice
clean layers of air around it. And that's known as our laminar air, some of the laminar air detaches and tries to randomly fill the voids bouncing all over the place. And this is what's called turbulence. Turbulence air is bad, you don't want it. It's unpredictable,
spoils the air's momentum, and it's really, really hard to avoid. Turbulent air is like when
you're watching a YouTube video and then the ad comes in. But what if I told you that we can make a special
kind of air to fill that pocket while still acting like laminar air? Well, we've got one of
those and it's a vortex and a vortex is a spiral of
air, kinda like a tornado. It still acts like laminar air, and if it's shot into that vacuum pocket, it can essentially stitch our
layers of air back together. And this is why modern front
wings are so complicated. All those little winglets and veins are creating
vortices, and channeling air to exactly where the
rest of the car needs it. So, the front wing is
directing air every which way. And one of the places the air
has gotta go is to the floor. The floor of an F1 car
is really important. The center portion is flat for minimal turbulence, but
the front and back are curved upwards to give the whole car the effect of a giant wing. The floor has plenty of channeling panels and little venturi style funnels to get the air under
the car moving faster. So suck the car to the ground. And F1 cars even send a little vortices down the sides of the floor to act like invisible side
skirts, to seal all that air in. And finally all this fast moving air gets to the back of the car
and that big 'ol wang, talking about two different
types of wings now. The rear wing is getting loads of clean air to create massive amounts of downforce to press those
rear tires into the ground, and the rear diffuser,
it also plays a big part in the downforce by funneling air out from underneath the car very cleanly, even the exhaust, it
gets some wing treatment to mellow it out, mellow exhaust. It's like a quiet fart.
(giggling) Now the rear wings' main job is downforce, but we already know that
downforce creates drag, just like with the front wing,
the air is being redirected, and can create a vacuum behind the car that would literally
suck the car backwards. That's why modern rear wings
have those little slits and cutouts and that's to create vortices to cancel out low pressure zones. If you look closely, you can actually see
the spinning air coming off the top corners of an F1's rear wing. All of this can vary from track to track. At a high speed circuit like
Monza wings will be adjusted for low drag and straight line speed. At a high temperature
track like Singapore, the wing angles will be
changed to optimize cooling of the engine and the brakes. So that's the basics of aero in F1, but what makes the
Mercedes F1 car different? The main difference that
sticks out about the Merc is that it's a long boy, like
your boy, six foot nine. (giggling)
I'm not six foot nine. Having a longer car gives
the Merc's a big advantage with aero because they
have more real estate to make their aero work. And if you need to channel air from the front wing to the brake ducts and the brake ducts are few
millimeters further back you don't need as severe of an angle in your winglet to make that correction. You create less turbulence and less drag. It also helps with packaging. The space inside the rear
wheels around the back of the engine and the gearbox, air needs to be channeled
off the sides of the car to the rear wing. With a longer car, Mercedes
can sculpt that bodywork around the gearbox more and
channel that air better. And finally, you got the floor. Now, remember how I said it
was acting like a big wing? Well, if your wing is bigger,
it creates more downforce. Now all of this is totally
different to a team like red bull, who has been long hailed as the F1 aero kings. Red bull cars are short with a high rake to help them get around
those tight corners better but Mercedes' technical
director, James Allison says that what the Mercedes lose
from that long wheel base, they make up with the
aerodynamic benefits. It's a numbers game. So you've gotta sacrifice
a little to gain a lot. So Mercedes takes a
fundamentally different approach to aerodynamics than most
of the other top teams but the aero isn't what
people were so blown away by. Let's look at what blew
them away the most. And that's the engine. Since 2014 F1 has been using 1.6 liter V6 turbo hybrid engines, revving over 12,000 RPM and making 900 horsepower. That alone is pretty wild and what's even wilder is
that, that's the average F1 car and Mercedes is on a whole nother level. There're probably a few secrets to Mercedes engines that
haven't been released to the public. Maybe we'll find out that
they had like a little gerbil living inside one of their
turbos, spinning it up. And his name is Louis Hamstersten. One of the things that's often overlooked about the Mercedes engine is hidden right in the team's name, Petronas. Petronas is the company that supplies fuel for the Mercedes team, but not just that. They also provide all the fluids and lubricants for their engines. In 2017, Mercedes achieved
50% thermal efficiency, which is crazy. That is huge. To put that in perspective the average engine is lucky
to get 25% thermal efficiency. Thermal efficiency is a measurement how much potential energy
an amount of fuel has versus how much of that
comes out of the engine as usable power. A lot of times that
energy is lost to friction in the engine, creating heat, and good engine oil can
reduce that friction. This means that the
engine is more reliable, there's less wear on the components and it gets better fuel economy. Now, I know, you're like thinking, okay, what do I care about fuel economy and an F1 car while it's racing? But it's more important than you think. The current F1 regulations
refueling is ban. Current cars can start the race
with 110 kilograms in fuel. And if you drive balls to
the walls every single lap, you won't make it to the end of the race. If your engine is more fuel
efficient, you can either start with less fuel and be lighter
than all the other cars. Or you can turn the
engine up, burn more fuel and make more power. There's a good chance that is where Mercedes
party mode comes from. If you watch freakin' F1, Mercedes have a party
mode is what allows them to usually qualify the fastest. 'Cause it just dumps as
much fuel as possible, I'm guessing, into the engine. Mercedes also optimized the
efficiency of their turbo. F1 turbos are pretty unique already. They're wired up to the hybrid system, so the turbo can charge
the hybrid power battery but the system can also work in reverse. The hybrid unit can spool
up the turbo directly but Mercedes took a look
at this separated turbo and they realized they can
get more gains out of it. They separated the compressor
in the turbine even more. And they put them on either ends of the V and the engine block, and they ran a drive shaft between them. This got the compressor away
from the heat of the turbine meaning it got denser
air going into the motor. And that also meant that
it had shorter piping to the intercooler. On road cars, you'd call this
a hot side in V configuration. Basically this means that one section of the car
is getting all your hot side, and another section is
getting all the cool side. That way you don't have any
of the hot exhaust mixing with any of the cool air
you're trying to send into the motor. With better thermal efficiency, the engine is also running cooler. Now, anyone who knows or follows F1, knows that Mercedes'
only weakness seems to be on hot days, but it's
almost never the engine that has an issue, it's brake
temperatures or tire wear. 2014 was when the new engines came about and it was when Mercedes started absolutely destroying the competition. While running the 2012 and 2013 seasons, they spent their efforts
building the car for 2014. So while everyone else
was working to catch up, the Mercedes engineers had
the freedom to get creative and come up with new radical ideas. In 2018, Mercedes came out with a new design for their wheel. It was a design that channeled air through the wheels to keep them cool and to help control tire temperatures. What they did was add a set
of spacers to the rear wheels. This wheel spacer was
vented just like you see on a drilled rotor. And the idea was to get more air flowing through the center of the
wheel, cooling the rear brake but also cooling the rear tires. And Mercedes are still finding ways to chase tire management today. In 2020, they came up with their most
controversial innovation yet, it's called DAS and it stands
for dual axis steering. And here is how it works. You turn your steering wheel
left and the wheels go left, you turn the steering wheel
right, and your wheels go right. You with me so far? Okay
great, we're on the same page. Now you push the wheel
in and the wheels toe in. And if you pull the wheel towards you, the wheels toe back out,
and this tech is so new that we aren't 100% sure what advantage Mercedes
are getting from it. But there's plenty of theories on how the system could
benefit the Mercedes team. One hypothesis is that it can help them in the tight corners
where they're losing out because of their long wheel base. Having a car with a little bit of toe in can help keep the car straight
and stable at high speeds. But if the car has a
little bit of toe out, it can help the car dart into the corners. So say I'm in the Mercedes, Hamilton, he retired. Yeah, he's sick of winning. So, I'm snaking my way
through sector two at COTA, the nose diving in just right
through eight, nine and 10, hard on the brakes for turn 11, and then stretched out before
me is the back straight by the end of it, we'll be
approaching 200 miles per hour, but my steering is set up quick and darty and I don't want that. So I accelerate, the cheer
of the fans drowned out by the roar of my Mercedes engine, I go with the G forces and pull my steering wheel towards me, straightening up the front
wheels, increasing stability, minimizing scrub, and
maximizing top speed. I like this theory, but it would require the
drivers make DAS adjustments every single lap. And that is not what
seems to be happening. where they seem to be using it is during a safety car period. When a race becomes unsafe
because of debris or a crash, a safety car will come out
to slow the drivers down and they continue in a
parade for a few laps while the hazards get
everything cleaned up. The problem with that is that
F1 tires are designed to run at high speed. They need heat to stay sticky. And if you're going slow, they cool down. But with DAS, the Mercedes
car can adjust the toe so that their tires scrub
the tracks just a little bit. This creates friction and
friction creates heat. So when the race starts up again, everyone else is on cold time. But the Mercedes, they can drive off into the sunset getting first
place like they always do. - Have not seen these yet, so. (suspenseful music)
- No, Boost Creeps, hoodie, who's that handsome boy? Man, what a good looking hoodie. We reworked the logo a little bit, now it's in yellow, really
pops against that black, we added an arm hit so you
can fly that donut flag. I'm gonna rock mine all fall, all winter, go to donutmedia.com and get you one. They're probably gonna sell out, so I would get it sooner than later. - That's it guys. We did it, we figured it out. We know now why Mercedes
is so fast as an F1 team. All we need to do is you
need to give me $150 million and we can go out and make
our own donut F quarantine. I designed the car to engineer, Zach and his roommates
say he would work on it. James would be the team principle, Nolan would be the guy
that when you crash, he'd pat you on the back,
like it's okay, man, you did a good job. Okay, follow me on
Instagram @jeremiahburton, follow us @donutmedia, bye for now.
This is nothing new, they still only talk about things we know since 2017 and DAS, not even a single word about mercs rear suspension.
Insightful only if you don't already follow technical f1.
Lots of things wrong with the aero explanation.
Yeah but cooling system on the silver arrows are extremely skewed and being in traffic for long periods of time will lead to overheating issues. This is the silver arrows might have a harder time overtaking traffic compared to their competition