A package that was meant to gain three tenths, and that would lose three to five according to Toto Wolff. I read that in my bedroom, the sim paused, and my first reaction was the right one: somebody loaded the wrong setup.
Wolff says the W17 seems to generate a lot of drag. It is the first time Mercedes has lost this much on the straights, especially against Max Verstappen. “I see no chance when you lose as much on the straights as we are at the moment,” he said. And in the slow corners, notably turn 2, the car won’t turn.
I did turn 2 again this morning. With my base setup, I get to ninety per cent throttle too early, the car pushes wide, I go again. After an hour, I find two tenths on my own reference. Two tenths is my only figure of the day, and it proves nothing about a real W17. It proves I had a free hour.
The best bit is George Russell: “All the numbers point to an improvement with these parts. Despite that, we are in a sport where we have to focus on lap times, not on what the numbers say.” I printed the sentence and stuck it above the screen. In the sim, the numbers and the stopwatch are the same thing. In real life, they can have an argument.
Toto Wolff also says these weaknesses don’t look like the ones seen since the start of the year. At my place, that’s called a new bug. According to the source, Sepang’s very rough surface and the extreme temperatures could expose an unusual operating problem. The surface, the heat: two variables I have never modelled, like the wind.
Kimi Antonelli, the championship leader, will start third thanks to Isack Hadjar’s penalty, and thinks Singapore will give a better read on the package. I’ll wait for Singapore too. I’ve already downloaded it. In theory.
It’s true, we checked: Nextgen-Auto.
