Why is Mercedes vulnerable in races?

Why is the Mercedes harder on the rear tyres than the Ferrari?
James Braden, via Twitter

James, if I knew that I could earn a fortune down at the team's Brackley base!

I think it's because of the balance of the car. If you compare it to the Ferrari, the Mercedes is faster on one lap, but the Ferrari 'looks' better over a race stint. I say 'looks' because I think this still has to be conclusively proved.

Mercedes gets the front tyres working better for that one lap in qualifying, but that means that over long distances the load in the rear tyre on corner entry is more acute and higher. So it's the rears you have to look after.

Ferrari doesn't have the front bite to get that quick lap out of the car in qualifying, but because of this the initial load on the rear tyre on corner entry is less. This allows the rear tyre to build up the required cornering-resistance forces that little bit slower.

It's not just a matter of reducing front-wing angle, as that will lead to understeer everywhere. It's more of a transient aerodynamic problem, probably front-wing stall instigated on corner entry when the front wing is low to the ground because of braking and roll.

The front-wing main plane on the Mercedes consists of two elements, so when it stalls it will lose 'x' amount of downforce. The Ferrari 'was' one element, so when it stalls it will lose '2x' of downforce. So on corner entry, the Ferrari will have less front downforce but as soon as it recovers, which will only take metres, it will have the downforce back and gain a good balance for mid-corner and exit.

Transient aerodynamics is where most of these small differences in one-lap performance compared to long runs stems from. It's very difficult to get on top of and produce a package that's good in both situation.

I said 'was' above relative to Ferrari's front wing because it has changed its front-wing main plane to a two-element construction. I just hope they know what they are chasing with that modification.

Are we going to see pre-arranged races by Mercedes before mid-season (referencing team orders and Toto Wolff talking about changing approach after the race)?
Oilinki Phuket, via Twitter

I'm afraid so, and it will be very sad to see. I don't like the way it's going, and even when you have a tyre-pressure problem, as Valtteri Bottas had in Bahrain, it is still a race for him and he wants to get the best race result possible.

Sometimes you will suffer problems during a stint, but if the end result is to be told to drop behind your team-mate, then they might as well never allow them to race.

I'm afraid unless he starts to thrash Lewis Hamilton, which will be very difficult to do, Bottas will quickly become a number two. It's a lot easier for Mercedes to do this now compared to when Nico Rosberg was driving because Bottas has come into the team with Hamilton well-established.

As the new kid on the block, it was always going to take a little time to come to terms with his new environment, but for Toto Wolff to talk like this after only three races will hurt the motivation.

Will the gap between the top three teams and the rest be somewhat closed with in-season development?
Paul Nsonga, via Twitter

When you get a new set of regulations like we had for this year, the teams with the most manpower and the biggest budgets out-research those with less manpower and smaller budgets. So they are normally well ahead when the season kicks off.

Sometimes a small team can outwit a bigger one, and this is what they spend their time trying to do. If this does happen, luck plays a major part in it. That hasn't happened this year.

When the cars are released ahead of the season, it opens the eyes of some of the smaller teams as to what direction the bigger teams have been going in. I'm not saying they then copy the bigger teams, but it opens directions that the smaller teams might not have gone down.

So, as developments start coming, I expect the smaller teams to close the gap slightly.

It's a bit like climbing a ladder, especially if you don't like heights. Mercedes is probably one rung from the top, Ferrari perhaps two, Red Bull four and so on. For the guys at the bottom of the ladder, the steps are easier to take.

Those at or near the top have to think a bit more before taking that last step, and while you are doing that the others will catch up that little bit.

What is your take on the futuristic concept car unveiled by Renault last week?
Tracey Pankhurst, via Twitter

Tracey, I think it's great that the teams are getting involved and putting forward ideas this early. If I was involved, I'd be asking all the teams that are competing, especially the manufacturers, who have huge concept-car departments to forward their ideas.

Ten years away seems a long time, but if car concepts are to change by as much as this proposal suggests, the regulations would need to be under way by 2022.

F1 should be a standout formula. The cars should look different, be noisy, be very powerful and fast but, more importantly, be able to race. That means being able to follow another car closely, and that needs to take priority in any concept.

It doesn't need to look like Wacky Races, but there's certainly room for improvement on what they currently look like.

Red Bull would have a huge variety of concepts to choose from. After all, it runs the Red Bull soap box events and some of those machines look pretty good to me!

I've always wondered when it rains, how all the water coming into the airbox and down to the engine affects the engine's power. Is the fuel/air mixture changed? Does it do damage if too much water comes in with the air?
Dennis Matthews, via email

As long as it's not a massive amount of water - basically normal rainfall - it doesn't do any harm. The airbox intake relative to the volume of air the engine uses is actually quite small, so the amount of water coming in is also quite small.

Actually, you get more power from the engine on a wet day than you do when it's sunny and warm. The moisture mixes with the airflow and makes it heavier and denser; the electronics account for this density change and adjust the fuel as required.

Drivers always comment that the engine feels crisper and more powerful on a damp day than when it's sunny and bright, and that is why when you're testing pre-season and trying to set a quick lap time, you always try to get out on track early in the morning when there's still some moisture in the air.

At races, during qualifying, you always look to catch that little bit of cloud cover. It makes a difference that can add up to a couple of tenths.

Should Formula 1 ever take any notice of Red Bull's relentless embarrassing threats to leave F1 if they don't get their own way (referencing the engine comments Helmut Marko made)?
@f1mrfox, via Twitter

Red Bull seems to think that the more column inches generated, the more attention it will receive. To a certain extent, that is true. As Bernie Ecclestone (remember the guy who ran F1 for so long?) often said, 'There is no such thing as bad advertising'. And Red Bull is in F1 for only one thing: promoting its product.

The latest saga with engines is typical of Red Bull not understanding that if it wants to go racing, it has to put the pieces of the jigsaw in place to make that happen. Red Bull has been on about an engine shortage ever since Renault screwed-up its first version of the new-for-2014 power unit. But then again, so did everyone other than Mercedes.

The only part of what was said that I agree with is that Formula 1 should be about big, noisy, powerful engines. That can be achieved at about half the cost of the current units.

Why were the 2017 cars not that much faster than the '16 cars in Bahrain?
@ad5red, via Twitter

That's a question I am sure many people will be spending lots of time trying to work out. Seven tenths - the difference between pole position this year and in 2016 - is not a lot when you consider the amount of money spent by the teams to build cars to these new regulations.

Given there were no significant circuit changes that altered the racing line, I would have to put it down to the track surface and high temperatures. Being in the desert, the track surface is always a bit sandy and slippery. Perhaps this year was worse than last year...

When you have conditions like this, it's always hard to get the best out of the car. With the extra downforce and tyre grip the cars have this year, it was probably difficult to use it.

This could also be the reason that the midfield bunch was closer to the frontrunners. In Bahrain, there was a one-second gap. But in Australia and China - both shorter circuits in terms of lap time - the gap was 1.8-1.9s from the front to the best of the midfielders. So perhaps the sandy surface means the extra downforce of the top cars doesn't produce a lap time.

Do you think the F4 accident at Donington might filter upwards and mean we see the return of high noses and lower rear crash structures?
Lewis Howard, via Facebook

Lewis, first of all motor racing is dangerous. I don't believe any set of regulations will cover all eventualities. After all, drivers have a choice whether or not to compete and there will always be an element of risk. It's just that this has to be minimised.

I have never been a fan of the low noses, and said so when they were first introduced. The research for these was done to cover an isolated accident such as Mark Webber running into the back of Heikki Kovalainen at Valencia in 2010.

The low nose is there to reduce the possibility of cars getting airborne and therefore the danger of ending up among the spectators. I agree that this needs to be taken into account, but there are many other more common scenarios. One of them is what happened to Billy Monger.

To me, the logical thing would be to have all of the crash structures at one level, which would be the wheel-axle centre-line. The suspension is attached to the car by many components, so the impact load would be spread over many individual points, and this is the strongest height to enable energy dissipation in an accident.

On an F1 car, this is around 30cm above the chassis reference plane. There is no logical reason that the front, rear and side impact structures should not all be at this height. For other formulas, it can be slightly different to suit the different tyre sizes, but axle height on any car will absorb and contain more accident scenarios than any other location.

We will probably have to have a similar accident in F1 before there's any real change. Yes, F1 cars are structurally second to none, but that only means that when a car submarines under one that has stalled on the grid or slowed dramatically, it will be the driver's head that comes into contact with the rear.

We know what the outcome of that terrible scenario would be.