- 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.
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- 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.