2024 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[CHT]

Merc team is certainly on a decline and LH expected departure must have rattled the team in a big way.
Come 2025 a Merc team without WDC and fighting among the mid-fields will be unknown territory for the team and Toto.
Not sure how long Toto can hold as TP.

Any idea whats the latest about Mike Elliotts and has he been approached by any team yet?

[PlatinumZealot]

The car definitely has buckets more downforce than it's predecessor, they can measure it! But alas it's not translating to laptime!!

https://www.motorsportweek.com/2024/04/ ... d_id=49882

The tale of the phantom downforce.

Shall I christen this car the "Silver Phantom?"

[Vanja #66]

70 points of phantom downforce, that's an even bigger pile of nonsense than losing time due to cooling issues in Bahrain, that's about 10% of overall downforce levels. If it's really there, it will translate into much better lap time no matter what.

I know my 2024 prediction sounded too harsh 4 months ago, but everything is happening according to it. If they don't figure out the car completely by the end of the season, this will translate further to the 26 car as well.

Mercedes will introduce a whole new car, which will inevitably give them lots of headaches in the first 5-10 races. I was disappointed by their start of the 23 season, I expected a lot better pace from them. Same can be said for the year-end, they didn't seem to be able to hit the ground running in a number of late-season events and this tells me they don't fully understand their car. How well will they understand the 24 car then?

[Jdn1327]

So clearly, that narrative of LH'S decision to leave was not influenced by the performance of the car is nonsense. I know someone a while back posted a tweet saying LH hadn't even gone in the simulator before he made his decision. Can we trust mercs account of this?

[Mosin123]

So clearly, that narrative of LH'S decision to leave was not influenced by the performance of the car is nonsense. I know someone a while back posted a tweet saying LH hadn't even gone in the simulator before he made his decision. Can we trust mercs account of this?

Well, drivers dont jump in the sim till pre season, he made his decision public before pre season started, contract talks must have started early during last season, as it was kept away from every body till he had no choice but to go public. so its likely it was agreed before they even started work on this years car.

[j_ste]

The car definitely has buckets more downforce than it's predecessor, they can measure it! But alas it's not translating to laptime!!

https://www.motorsportweek.com/2024/04/ ... d_id=49882

The tale of the phantom downforce.

Shall I christen this car the "Silver Phantom?"

A collage of Mercedes excuses over the past three years would be a fun read. Not quite in the " my dog ate my homework" era but getting closer

[DGP123]

Hamilton to Ferrari was pretty much done at Monaco last year. It was leaked on that weekend, and quashed by Vasseur. Cat was out the bag then, but nobody believed it would happen.

The denials came from all angles on media day in Monaco. Speculation that Lewis Hamilton could move to Ferrari next year, in a £40m deal no less, has ramped up this week but was quickly quashed on Thursday by both Hamilton and Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur.
26 May 2023

[Jdn1327]

Hamilton to Ferrari was pretty much done at Monaco last year. It was leaked on that weekend, and quashed by Vasseur. Cat was out the bag then, but nobody believed it would happen.

The denials came from all angles on media day in Monaco. Speculation that Lewis Hamilton could move to Ferrari next year, in a £40m deal no less, has ramped up this week but was quickly quashed on Thursday by both Hamilton and Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur.
26 May 2023

Why would LH sign so early with them? Surely he couldn't have known about the performance of this car

[TeamKoolGreen]

Merc team is certainly on a decline and LH expected departure must have rattled the team in a big way.
Come 2025 a Merc team without WDC and fighting among the mid-fields will be unknown territory for the team and Toto.
Not sure how long Toto can hold as TP.

Any idea whats the latest about Mike Elliotts and has he been approached by any team yet?

Mercedes will be fine once they show some humility and hunker down like Red Bull did after 2013. Instead of arrogantly thinking they should be at the front.

[chrisc90]

My thoughts still stand from May 2022. Not a bad analysis really.

viewtopic.php?p=1064852&hilit=Losing+battle#p1064852

[Vanja #66]

So clearly, that narrative of LH'S decision to leave was not influenced by the performance of the car is nonsense. I know someone a while back posted a tweet saying LH hadn't even gone in the simulator before he made his decision. Can we trust mercs account of this?

Best storyline I got is something like this:

- early spring 2023 Elkann, Vasseur and Hamilton have some initial discussion, which leaked by Monaco
- in some time they get his verbal confirmation he will join Ferrari at some point (maybe even an MOU was signed or something like that), either 25 or 26 since he wanted to have at least one more season with Merc in 24 in hope of better results and maybe even a title fight in 24 or 25
- in summer 2023 he extends with Mercedes until 2025, but as we later learned - that year was his option
- late October or November 2023 he starts realising things are going nowhere with Mercedes in 2024 and gives Vasseur verbal confirmation for 2025
- early January 2024 the deal is signed and conveyed to Leclerc and Sainz and key Ferrari personnel
- 31st of January he conveys this info to Wolff privately, which is leaked to Italian media a few hours later from inside Mercedes

With enough experience which Hamilton certainly has, it's not hard to understand when you talk to an engineering group if they have a complete grasp of the problem they face or not. His trust was already massively shaken and the end of 2023 clearly inspired no confidence in immediate massive revival. So it may have been enough to talk to people, ask some key questions and thus confirm there's no full understanding of the problem from their side and decide the ride is over.

[CHT]

So clearly, that narrative of LH'S decision to leave was not influenced by the performance of the car is nonsense. I know someone a while back posted a tweet saying LH hadn't even gone in the simulator before he made his decision. Can we trust mercs account of this?

Well LH was at the Merc factory in Oct 2023 offering the "team" encouragement and cheering them on to keep fighting while feeling inspired and optimistic about the W15 after visiting wind tunnel

But little did the team knows that their pilot decided to abandon the plane 2 month later.

As i know Merc are always complain about corelation with their design simulators. So I am not sure how LH could made the decision to abandon the team of people who have provided him with 8 to 9 years of championship winning car after testing a possible "faulty" equipment?

[PlatinumZealot]

Hamilton has a good nose for when efforts will be futile.. He leaves Mercedes not one year too early and not one year too late. It can be argued that Mercedes owes him a championship they will never be able to give him back. And this bothers Toto.

[Cs98]

So clearly, that narrative of LH'S decision to leave was not influenced by the performance of the car is nonsense. I know someone a while back posted a tweet saying LH hadn't even gone in the simulator before he made his decision. Can we trust mercs account of this?

By all accounts the car is good in the simulator. He made the decision because Ferrari will give him a bunch of money and he probably likes the idea of driving for them, and he has lost trust in Merc. But not because he had solid intel that the W15 was going to have issues, that timeline doesn't work

[venkyhere]

Excuses that Toto/Ham/Rus are narrating to the media, are, I am sorry to say, now starting to look like pure gaslighting. They need to stop talking. Even if they keep repeating 'we are working on it' like a broken record, no matter whom the media speaks to --- that's the way to go. Keep all tech-talk-root-cause-investigations INTERNAL. That's the only way to lift the pressure on the engineers. Afterall, it doesn't matter whether they have two sets of media darlings trinity - Toto/Ham/Rus and it doesn't matter what they say in public - it's the engineers who have to fix the car.