Mercedes’ secret technology. Cheating or genius?

After the British Grand Prix, there was a lot of talk about the increase in power of the Mercedes engines. But it seems that the German team was able to increase its speed not only thanks to the efficiency of its engines. One of the new technologies could be seen during the practice sessions before the United States Grand Prix. This reminded many people of active suspension, which has long been banned in Formula 1. But since the team is using it, it means that it has been created according to legal rules. Let’s try to understand what engineers have found new in the rear suspension of Mercedes cars.

Let’s start by determining what the rear diffuser is. Its work is based on what is called the Venturi effect, which implies that when gas passes through the narrowed part of the pipe, its pressure drops. Take a bottle as an example. It has a neck and a main part. If you blow into it, according to the law, the air passing through the neck will have a much higher speed and lower pressure than the main part. So, if we continue the analogy with the bottle, the area under the car is the neck and its main part is the diffuser, which is just a raised area at the back of the car.

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To obtain aerodynamic support under the bottom of the car, you need to create a void that will in a way suck it towards the ground. And to do this, you must minimize ground clearance as much as possible and, on the contrary, make the diffuser as large as possible in size. You now understand why most race cars are located as close to the ground as possible and have the largest possible diffuser area.

But the engineering’s freedom of thought is limited by the pilot’s safety and technical regulations. Therefore, it is only possible to modify the size of a part within a certain range. But what happens if you find a way to dynamically modify the position of the diffuser on the track, even within a limited range. Apparently, this is exactly what the engineers at Mercedes have managed to achieve.

On straight lines where aerodynamic grip is not so important, the rear of the car’s ground clearance decreases, which means that downforce becomes much less important, allowing the car to reach a higher top speed. But as soon as the driver begins to brake, the diffuser returns to its initial position, increasing its effective surface and increasing the downforce required for cornering. It is fundamentally important to understand that a change in the diffuser’s position should only occur at the right moment, otherwise it will only result in significant losses. In fact, this solution is a kind of analogue to the active suspension banned many years ago.

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Currently, there is no exact explanation of how the engineers of the German team managed to implement this system in accordance with regulations. Because in this part of the car, only purely mechanical solutions can be used, that is to say based on the interaction of certain parts of the chassis. According to experts, they have found a way to use the suspension torsion bars, which are compressed in different ways on different sections of the track, depending on the amount of load acting on the car. Also, given that the efficiency of the diffuser is greatly reduced on straight lines, this allows Mercedes, without sacrificing speed, to adjust the wings to a greater angle of attack, providing even more downforce in fast corners.

As before, Mercedes continues to surprise its rivals. Two years ago, everyone was amazed by their DAS steering system, but now we see a sort of legal version of the active suspension. What will be next? Obviously, thanks to this system, Mercedes is becoming the favorite in the championship race. Their main rivals from Red Bull probably won’t be able to replicate this technology, as their car has a very high rake, meaning they would have to completely revise the entire aerodynamics. It’s not practical to do this five races before the end of the season.

Maybe Adrian Newey also has his own wild cards. In any case, if the Austrian team still wants to compete for the championship, then it’s time to play them.