Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

[Mr.S]

Moderator edit:
This thread has been split out of the W03 thread.

Please be constructive. No handbags!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXsK0C76Pmg

ROSS Brawn talks stuff. Says clearly they are looking for RACE Wins this year. No young team BS like Haug is saying.

Says Podiums are a must & they are looking for Michael's return win & Nico's 1st win this year. I think Mercedes board has said it clearly to them,1 Win & Multiple podiums this year & Championship Contender Next Year.

[raymondu999]

Yep - sounds a bit like what BMW's plan was for 2008

[Gridlock]

“We’ve set our objectives over the winter and we’ve met most of them,” said Brawn, who admits that he has only two ambitions left in motorsport: to see Michael Schumacher take a 92nd Grand Prix win and to see Nico Rosberg win his first.

- James Allen

[shelly]

No more world titles for rb till retirement then? (just joking)

[raymondu999]

Well... referring to the handy dichotomous key provided by Websta in the old W03 thread:

These are the possible directions that the Mercedes W03 thread will go based on the possible outcomes of the launch/test:

Launch (Although we have seen most of the car)

Mercedes unveil reveals very interesting looking parts: Mercedes will be a front runner.

Mercedes unveil confirms a fairly vanilla looking car - Mercedes are hiding something, the innovation is under the skin: Mercedes will be a front runner.

Test results

Mercedes top the test times: Mercedes will be a front runner.

Mercedes are in the middle or bottom of time sheets - Mercedes are sandbagging: Mercedes will be a front runner.

Looks like they're sandbagging; and hiding something; as shown by there nonwillingness to put in laps. Mercedes will be a front runner

[Mysticf1]

I'm interested to know what your comments would be if Merc went home with chassis issues?

It really amazes me how this team is able to attract the greatest of both extremes, blind hate or blind love/optimism. Personally the more teams up front the better but i'm not going to count any chickens until Melb q3...if not the first European races.

[ringo]

I'm interested to know what your comments would be if Merc went home with chassis issues?

It really amazes me how this team is able to attract the greatest of both extremes, blind hate or blind love/optimism. Personally the more teams up front the better but i'm not going to count any chickens until Melb q3...if not the first European races.

There are no issues with chassis design with lotus. One chassis is perfectly fine.
There problem is more of a manufacturing fault than a design problem.

I dont hate mercedes, but i dont love them either. The car looks like the caterham, nice effort but still not very cohesive like the mclaren or the ferrari.
In fact i'll go out on a limb and say the force india will be whooping this car as well.

I like how clean and spacious the rear is, but that's about it.

[Cocles]

I'm interested to know what your comments would be if Merc went home with chassis issues?

It really amazes me how this team is able to attract the greatest of both extremes, blind hate or blind love/optimism. Personally the more teams up front the better but i'm not going to count any chickens until Melb q3...if not the first European races.

This "blind optimism" is something the naysayers keep putting in our mouths. You'd be hard pressed to find a bigger Merc fan, who posts regularly, than JET or myself and neither of us have once stated we expect Merc to take the championship in 2012. Nor even second. What JET and I want is for the W03 to close the gap with the top three. We want to see *progress*. If they break into the top three, all the better.

I bring up the "burnt paint" comment, because I think it's asinine, shows bias, and implies the poster hasn't been closely following this or the previous thread. As the engineers on this thread have repeated several times already, burnt paint does not equal or even necessarily imply overheating. Even the right brained posters like myself would be able to point out that it's not unusual to see burnt paint on various, even front-running, cars throughout the season. "Burnt paint" is just a silly thing to go on about.

...Just as its silly for a Lotus fan to throw rocks right after his team has tucked its tail between its legs and gone home for the week. I have nothing against Lotus, I just think it was foolish of Ringo to make such an incendiary comment in this thread, at this time.

To answer your question... if Merc had gone home with Lotus's problem, I'd be gutted. I'm not a fair-weather fan, so I'd hold out hope, but I'd be very, very concerned. And I confess... I may even grasp at straws, or go into another team's thread and claim their car isn't ready.

[Cocles]

There are no issues with chassis design with lotus. One chassis is perfectly fine.

Actually, no. That's entirely false. Lotus was going to fly the other chassis out, only to realize it had the same problem. That's when they decided to pack things up.

Did I read the news wrong? I can dig up a source if needed. Although that might be a bit OT.

EDIT: Yes, they need to make the same modification to both chassis. I somehow missed Kris's post above.

Alright... back to the W03.

[Chrisaix]

Hi my first post here. im an MS fan here since 96. Wherever michael goes i support him the team doesnt much, but since his return to mercedes, im now a fan of the team not just because of michael. I see them as a very passionate team. Id like them to succeed on what their goals are. Ive been following this thread since the birth of w01 and i decided to register and join the passion here. The way i see now, i think they are going to do well this season. Waitng for michaels win since his comeback and nicos long awaited first win he deserves, just like ross is wishing. And btw, sorry for my english, i live in manila, philippines a small country in asia. F1 is not that popular here but nonetheless we all scream and bleed for 1 sport. Cheers everyone.

Now back on w03, i hope nico does a 100+ laps today for more data.

[Cocles]

Hi my first post here. im an MS fan here since 96. Wherever michael goes i support him the team doesnt much, but since his return to mercedes, im now a fan of the team not just because of michael. I see them as a very passionate team. Id like them to succeed on what their goals are. Ive been following this thread since the birth of w01 and i decided to register and join the passion here. The way i see now, i think they are going to do well this season. Waitng for michaels win since his comeback and nicos long awaited first win he deserves, just like ross is wishing. And btw, sorry for my english, i live in manila, philippines a small country in asia. F1 is not that popular here but nonetheless we all scream and bleed for 1 sport. Cheers everyone.

Now back on w03, i hope nico does a 100+ laps today for more data.

Welcome!

[Tyler]

It's amazing - the smallest thing like burnt paintwork and everyones getting on the bandwagon about how crap this team is and how they're still just the same as Honda was.
It's still far too early to make such assumptions.
I have a lot more faith in this team this year - let's not forget we have some really good brains with tons of experience on the team now in the form of Bell, Costa and Willis.
I'm sure if they do run into any problem, with these guys on board, the team will find an effective solution quicker than last year.
The team seem to be very positive about the car up to now.
Schumacher is usually very reserved when it comes to the car but his statement about the car feeling immediately good is very encouraging.
He didn't sound so positive last year and certainly not in 2010.
Besides the car looked pretty good yesterday and there were some decent runs.
Most of the teams seem to be having a few niggling problems in testing but that's what testings about.
If they can't fix the problems come the races, well then that's a different story.
I fail to see the logic of how it's so apparent that a car that has still done very little testing time is going to be whipped by Force India and Lotus.
This team has shown it's serious about getting to the top, it's not going to come overnight but they definitely seem to be moving forward.
YOu only have to compare last years car to this one to see that - almost everything on the car is an improvement and a step forward.
If this team had come up with Ferrari's car, people would be saying they've gone to radical, they don't know what they're doing and don't even understand their own car.
If they had McLarens car they'd be moaning about the nose and if they had come up with Lotus' car they'd be slammed for the chassis problem.
Merc have shown their intent by assembling some of the best people in the industry incl their drivers - now it needs some time to come together - with Merc as committed as they are, they will make this work.
As for the W03, I expect that the problem is simply burnt paintwork, if it's more than that then I'm confident they'll resolve it quickly and we'll start to see them extracting performance from the car.

[flickster]

Hi Lads,

New to the forum and simply wanted to introduce myself. I am a big fan of the sport and have followed it since the late 80's. I enjoy both the racing and the engineering so it was great to find this website.

My favourite driver is Schumacher followed by Webber, Kimi, Alonso and Vettel in that order but I respect most of the drivers for their talent and the teams for the amazing engineering effort they put into each car.

I hope Schumacher can have a great year and at least make it on the podium. Would be great to see him win at least one more race before he retires again but I know that will be asking a lot of this new W03. It would be great if he decides to stay one more year as long as he and the team are continuing to improve and getting results.

For some reason I think 2013 will be a big year for Merc GP, I still don't know if they can go from where they were last year to frequently winning races in 2012 but by 2013 they will have no excuse.

Let's hope this new car is a big step forward in the right direction or that they have something special hidden under that body work.

[ringo]

I'm interested to know what your comments would be if Merc went home with chassis issues?

It really amazes me how this team is able to attract the greatest of both extremes, blind hate or blind love/optimism. Personally the more teams up front the better but i'm not going to count any chickens until Melb q3...if not the first European races.

This "blind optimism" is something the naysayers keep putting in our mouths. You'd be hard pressed to find a bigger Merc fan, who posts regularly, than JET or myself and neither of us have once stated we expect Merc to take the championship in 2012. Nor even second. What JET and I want is for the W03 to close the gap with the top three. We want to see *progress*. If they break into the top three, all the better.

I bring up the "burnt paint" comment, because I think it's asinine, shows bias, and implies the poster hasn't been closely following this or the previous thread. As the engineers on this thread have repeated several times already, burnt paint does not equal or even necessarily imply overheating. Even the right brained posters like myself would be able to point out that it's not unusual to see burnt paint on various, even front-running, cars throughout the season. "Burnt paint" is just a silly thing to go on about.

...Just as its silly for a Lotus fan to throw rocks right after his team has tucked its tail between its legs and gone home for the week. I have nothing against Lotus, I just think it was foolish of Ringo to make such an incendiary comment in this thread, at this time.

To answer your question... if Merc had gone home with Lotus's problem, I'd be gutted. I'm not a fair-weather fan, so I'd hold out hope, but I'd be very, very concerned. And I confess... I may even grasp at straws, or go into another team's thread and claim their car isn't ready.

I am not a lotus fan. Foolish of me to disagree with you? Incendiary comment? what?

I wont even explain why this car wont be top 3. I see a silver car with nothing progressive on it or about it expect for the tight rear.

Lotus doesn't have a serious problem. The car is fast and it's of a better design from my point of view, a little hiccup wont change that fact. A week to fix a problem then they're back.

For mercedes it looks like they'll be figuring out things like their new front wing on the first race weekend, cooling flow etc. You see them reverting to the old wing already.

Anyway i'll sit back and enjoy the thread. It seems the delayed launch has given us reason to believe Brawn has some big guns hiding under that burnt silver skin. When In fact he may have used the extra time nervously gauging the other new cars against the W02 in testing then going back to HQ and resetting the goals for the new car.

[Mr.S]

I'm interested to know what your comments would be if Merc went home with chassis issues?

It really amazes me how this team is able to attract the greatest of both extremes, blind hate or blind love/optimism. Personally the more teams up front the better but i'm not going to count any chickens until Melb q3...if not the first European races.

This "blind optimism" is something the naysayers keep putting in our mouths. You'd be hard pressed to find a bigger Merc fan, who posts regularly, than JET or myself and neither of us have once stated we expect Merc to take the championship in 2012. Nor even second. What JET and I want is for the W03 to close the gap with the top three. We want to see *progress*. If they break into the top three, all the better.

I bring up the "burnt paint" comment, because I think it's asinine, shows bias, and implies the poster hasn't been closely following this or the previous thread. As the engineers on this thread have repeated several times already, burnt paint does not equal or even necessarily imply overheating. Even the right brained posters like myself would be able to point out that it's not unusual to see burnt paint on various, even front-running, cars throughout the season. "Burnt paint" is just a silly thing to go on about.

...Just as its silly for a Lotus fan to throw rocks right after his team has tucked its tail between its legs and gone home for the week. I have nothing against Lotus, I just think it was foolish of Ringo to make such an incendiary comment in this thread, at this time.

To answer your question... if Merc had gone home with Lotus's problem, I'd be gutted. I'm not a fair-weather fan, so I'd hold out hope, but I'd be very, very concerned. And I confess... I may even grasp at straws, or go into another team's thread and claim their car isn't ready.

I am not a lotus fan. Foolish of me to disagree with you? Incendiary comment? what?

I wont even explain why this car wont be top 3. I see a silver car with nothing progressive on it or about it expect for the tight rear.

Lotus doesn't have a serious problem. The car is fast and it's of a better design from my point of view, a little hiccup wont change that fact. A week to fix a problem then they're back.

For mercedes it looks like they'll be figuring out things like their new front wing on the first race weekend, cooling flow etc. You see them reverting to the old wing already.

Anyway i'll sit back and enjoy the thread. It seems the delayed launch has given us reason to believe Brawn has some big guns hiding under that burnt silver skin. When In fact he may have used the extra time nervously gauging the other new cars against the W02 in testing then going back to HQ and resetting the goals for the new car.

Fair enough. Everyone has their opinion. I have already said again that Button will OWN Hamilton because he is -smarter- than Hamilton.

And Mclaren to get beaten by Force India because that is not even a tidier rear than last year. That is last year's car recycled.

We will see whose predictions come true.