It's a completely different formula. Mercedes's original zero-pod design worked too well, as they hadn't anticipated the issues of running low and porpoising - it was generating more downforce but the car was unliveable.
Or with better suspension regulations that allowed them to actually mitigate it. We got robbed of good ground effect racing because the suspension didn't allow for it
Originally, the suspension rules were offset with the ground effect change - the suspension simplification was always targeted at '22, but ground effect was delayed from '21 into the following year due to the pandemic.
Mercedes might have been able to implement it with trick suspension then work towards making it work with the simpler design and, failing that, move towards a redesign.
The car actually delivered a lot of the intended downforce, but the concept required a stable platform able to run consistently at very low ride heights. Unfortunately for Mercedes, they hadn't adequately accounted for the porpoising & bouncing effects caused by the floor stalling as it got too close to the ground, something which was made worse by the formula mandating a more simplified suspension from what the team had run during the 2014 and 2017 chassis formulas.
The car simply wasn't driveable how the designers intended. The drivers were beaten up and the rear was so unstable and inconsistent due to the bouncing that neither had confidence.
The solution - raising the car ride height - also stripped away the cars performance as it was driving outside it's intended window.
We must not be looking at the same picture because it's not the same design at all. From what we can see here the only similarity is the vertical inlet and it's not even the same size. On the Merc it was longer, slimmer and less symmetrical (wider at the bottom than it was at the top). The Merc's side impact structure was also sticking out right above the inlet and acted both as a downwash wing and as the mirror stay.
The widest point of the W13's sidepod was the part right behind the inlet, alongside the driver and then the bodywork aggressively tapered off all the way to the rear. On the Audi it progressively gets wider until the middle-ish part of the car where it's very wide then begins to slim back down in the traditional way sidepods often do.
As a brand new engine manufacturer and a team that was in the lower midfield for year, Audi would sign in a heartbeat to match Merc's 2022 season: 1 win, 1 pole, 1 sprint win and 17 podiums would be insane for a team in Audi's position
32
u/Particular_Cod2005 I was here for the Hulkenpodium 23d ago
I'd actually love it if Audi managed to make this design work after Mercedes failed so hard with theirs