Mercedes GP MGP W01

[NewtonMeter]

was it lap 5 or was it lap 6 when Michael got the message to nurse the brakes...poor Nico not much later..


Micahel admitting in pregrid that he had considerable crossweight in the car in Qualifying..(!!!) wich of course did havoc to his front brake locking up.. dear me..
this is not what you would expect from the current constructors champions...

the pressure must be immense..

Rightly so, in fairness.

[Morteza]

What a bad performance! [-( Their strategy is something that makes me feel they have no idea of what their doing! Now they have brake problems too!!! What's wrong with this team?! Have they lost direction?

[aral]

was it lap 5 or was it lap 6 when Michael got the message to nurse the brakes...poor Nico not much later..


Micahel admitting in pregrid that he had considerable crossweight in the car in Qualifying..(!!!) wich of course did havoc to his front brake locking up.. dear me..
this is not what you would expect from the current constructors champions...

the pressure must be immense..

Last years car was actually created by Honda, so constructors for the Merc were the team that bought the Honda operation, and became Merc. How many of the old Honda team are responsible for this years car??

[ggajic]

What a bad performance! [-( Their strategy is something that makes me feel they have no idea of what their doing! Now they have brake problems too!!! What's wrong with this team?! Have they lost direction?

This is disgrace. I know that Mercedes bought Ilmor and it took some time before Ilmor was under control from Stutgart, IMHO current results just prove that it is time to take some serious steps.

[jason.parker.86]

I respect Mercedes.. but I think the fact they were potless in 2009 and racing on Richard Bransons money is why they are where they are now.

Give it a year or so and they will be back on track for another WDC.. but I think we all knew that Mercedes was not going to be as competative as they was in early 2009.

The signs were all there to see in 2009 when Jenson had to more or less rally drive to win at Brazil, but they won that championship fair and square.

[raymondu999]

Well Honda's team took 2 years to develop a winner in the BGP001. Now we see the actual year-by-year capacity of development of the Honda team. Do remember it was started halfway through last year as well though, and was budget-strapped.

[Yups]

i do not understand why schumacher should be the reason why Rosberg is missing Q3 after posting a perfect lap ..thats what he stated after yesterdays Qualy.
If the old man is 6 tenths behind after having an encounter with another car plus brake problems ..the drivers relative performance is not the issue ,full stop.

Schumacher was too slow in every sector in his last Q2 lap and all other runs compared with Rosberg, Buemi wasn't the problem. Maybe he missed a tenth or two, but it's still not enough. Watch the best sector times this qualifying. A driver who is half a second slower in Quali has a bigger problem. But I will admit Schumachers good race starts usually, Rosberg should improve on this point. Of course usually he is starting from the dirty side whereas Schumachers from the clean side nearly every race.

[marcush.]

being well aware of the fact we are offtopic by quite a margin now :
Schumachers first pole position was after Sennas death ,and if I remember correctly it was never his biggest strength to stick the car on pole..or am I wrong ?
the major point is ,we are debating about drivers whereas the problem clearly is in the car or even the team admitting to be unable to extract the most of the package
available .
My feeling is the team looked with the wrong set of glasses into their issues and have to conclude now it is not the weight distribution nor the aero ,it simply is they have no idea how to get everything possible out of the black stuff in all conditions.
on top of this we see a quite amazing string of cack handed decisions and cheeky decisions in grey areas of event regulations backfiring on them ...+ obvious lack of attention to detail and even basics...why bother about aero or other upgrades when your mechanics miss to correctly adjust corner weights before Qualifying in two qualifyings...Schumacher said he had this same problem in Canada as well.. so is it Shovlin getting some "good" information from Clear -remember Villeneuve had a soft spot for weird setups and asymetric car setup..
or someone is somewhere else already and nobody noticed...

[jason.parker.86]

IMO the problem with Mercedes is they are struggling to get the pace over one lap! Their best hope in qualifying is to do about 20 flying laps to get the best out of the car and tyres, because in all honesty the race pace of that car is not bad! It just needs some clean air

[7TTT]

Perhaps there is a possibility to have similar heaters like in the old Ferrari days? (a kind of oven)
Theoretically this would help?

[myurr]

IMO the problem with Mercedes is they are struggling to get the pace over one lap! Their best hope in qualifying is to do about 20 flying laps to get the best out of the car and tyres, because in all honesty the race pace of that car is not bad! It just needs some clean air

IMHO the problem with Mercedes is that despite some key personnel changes, such as Brawn himself, this is still the same team that was Honda. Last year they had the largest development budget spent on the car by some considerable margin and that gave them enough of an early season advantage that they managed to win the championships.

Throughout the season many of their updates did not work or even reduced the performance of the car, giving Jenson in particular all kinds of problems throughout the mid-season. This year, now that the money is back to more normal levels they are struggling with all those same issues. They're not getting the best out of the tyres, their aero upgrades aren't working as they should, and as a team they're not giving their two drivers any kind of platform on which to build.

Schumacher has under performed compared to both his team mate and reputation, but the biggest problem for them is that the car is a bit of a dog. What is worrying is that they don't seem to have a grip on why and their latest developments and 'big step forward' has actually lost them performance relative to the rest of the grid. Their lack of understanding of the tyres seems to be paramount, but their aero isn't performing well either. This doesn't bode well for next year when the tyres and aero will undergo significant change.

Edit: That they're compounding their basic car problems with operational issues is unforgivable.

[marcush.]

the general misconception is that heating the tyres to a temperature is equivalent to working the tyre carcass with the result of having a certain temp.

the best indication is when the guys go out in qualy on prime tyre:These tyres have indeed working temps or at least close to working temp but this is by no means enough to make them stick ...and the guys have to stretch the envelope quite a bit to get them into optimum working range..if it just was a temperature issue ,why not give them an extra few degrees in the pits?

it is not temps.

[marcush.]

maybe those words of Loic Bigois as he spoke when accepting the dino toso award last year speaks volumes about what is going on at Mercedes:

"I would just like to make a wish. The organisers should change the name of this award for next year from Aerodynamicist of the Year to Aerodynamic Department of the Year. The result comes from team work, from a complete department and not from only one individual. 2009 was successful for us but was also very tough. In the same week in March, we achieved an outstanding one-two result in Melbourne and went through the redundancy process at the factory."

Like Team Principal Ross Brawn, Bigois stresses the importance of those individuals who are no longer part of the company. "In fact, it was quite difficult to enjoy our success at the time and I want to dedicate this award to the complete aero department," he added, "to the people who are still here and those who left in March or returned to Honda in Japan. Many thanks to them all for their contribution."

Maybe they lost too many people to really understand all in detail what they had in the Brawn 001 car ...and maybe that loss off expertise sent them into blind alleys over winter..

[Phillyred]

The first handful of races in 2009 were clearly dominated by Brawn GP and the major reason is because of their incorporation and incarnation of the giant rear diffuser.. They accumulated so many points so early and that obviously helped seal Jenson's WC. However, as the season wore on- other teams closed the gap making Brawn's dominance less so.. The Mclaren team especially closed this performance gap and I guess my point is- while Brawn himself is a great team leader the Mercedes/Honda/Brawn GP team as a whole lacks the R&D pace regardless of $$$. Substitute Red Bull in for Brawn GP in 2010 and again look how Mclaren is chipping away.. Mercedes needs to ditch their 2010 R&D efforts and focus on 2011. And for the record Rosberg is simply extracting more potential from his car and his engineers. I think Michael's time will come, but for now Rosberg is #1 at Mercedes GP in my book.

[myurr]

Mercedes needs to ditch their 2010 R&D efforts and focus on 2011.

I don't believe this will be enough. Last year McLaren learnt a lot about collecting data and then making the most of their developments throughout the year. This year they are applying the same methodology with the result that they are clearly the second quickest car out there and their upgrades for the next race will hopefully either bring them closer or even put them ahead of the Red Bull.

Mercedes need to reassess their entire development philosophy if they want to compete. Ditching this years car and spending more time on next years may buy them a small advantage at the beginning of the year but teams like McLaren will quickly overturn that. And they can't keep ditching cars and competing every other season.

They need to look at their entire process, from how they model and understand cars, the test and development tools and processes they use (from CFD through wind tunnels to on track testing), their simulators, and the way they structure their resources between developing for the current year and for the next year. No team is perfect, but some are a long way ahead of Mercedes right now and they're better off having a ground up review and restructure than trying to build on their current shaky foundations. In my humble opinion!