Mercedes GP - Inauguration and 1st season

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

JET,
I fully agree with you and fdid not want to say anything other:

instead of committing in july when talks were already intense AND spending money for the 2010 contender they tried to get the best possible deal out of Brawn..at the end ross had no choice..he could have tried to go alone but as no title sponsor was available -virgin was never going to be enough- he had to accept what was dished out to him by the starsuits...now they got what they asked for ,in my view .I pretty much know how deals in the automotive field are negotiated and with hindsight it was almost clear what was going on ...Brawn had hoped to have a better base package but obviously they
didd not put enough recources behind the 2010 project in 2009 and made a big mistake in their basic layout for whatever reason ,and misjudged their ability to rectify that problem....all in all the car and season did not go too bad considering the circumstances and the pressure they are under.

Exactly Marcush, glad we can agree.

Although I dont know the circumstances of Virgin, they didnt want to stump up 80 million upfront AND have to support 400 staff along with an expensive wind tunnel.
Maybe Brawn was holding out for the best deal for his team?

Its speculation, thats for sure. But Mercedes coming under fire for this is bang out of line. So is talk of a withdrawal IMO.
We havent even seen the Mercedes influence yet. Their 2011 challenger will not be hamstrung by the issues of this year, and if it is.....well lets just hope I dont bump into Brawn
Because then there will be reason to launch scathing attacks!

[xpensive]

Pah, Mercedes GP will be gone before the next concorde agreement, or I'll eat that Nomex suit with sauerkraut...

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Pah, Mercedes GP will be gone before the next concorde agreement, or I'll eat that Nomex suit with sauerkraut...

When is the next one due Xpensive?

Maybe Mclaren and Ferrari will join them!

[747heavy]

I did a quick analysis of the Qualifying performance of the teams this year so far.
It uses the fastest time of each team/car during the qualifying sessions.
It´s a "all out" car performance analysis, this means the time can be done in Q1 Q2 or Q3, the fastest time does not represent the starting order ( e.g. Kubica hat the fastest time in Malaysis in Q2, but does not start from pole).
It shows the difference in percent in relation to the fastest time.
Here is a selection of the data, showing the performance of Renault, MGP; Sauber and Williams in relation to the fastest car. I also included an exponentiell trendline.

black = Sauber
light blue = Williams
yellow = Renault
silver/grey = MGP


What do you guys think about it?



for larger image:
http://i805.photobucket.com/albums/yy33 ... enault.jpg

[WhiteBlue]

Obviously Merc started well ahead of Renault but have been caught by Renault around the Turkish GP time and are now being caught by Williams.

[segedunum]

Talk of budget restrictions and headcount reductions is ridiculous when you've got a nice slice of the budget going to Michael Schumacher. The technical department was unchanged bar one or two departures last year so I don't buy that as an excuse for the W01. This was a team that had a reasonable budget for 2007 and 2008 and still produced dogs so the money excuses still don't wash. They've merely reverted to type.

The team is a mess and their shelf-life is likely to be very short. They've long had an inability to get sponsors in either as Honda or as Brawn, and that whole Henkel thing was utterly laughable. Like their German neighbours BMW, Honda before them and Toyota they will realise that Mercedes don't need to watch themselves languishing around as also-rans and winning and success is not as vital to the company as they perhaps thought. Volkswagen is doing pretty well without the stress of running its own team that it doesn't need and will likely come in when the engine regulations change and start winning as an engine manufacturer. Mercedes would be wise to concentrate on that before anything else.

[WhiteBlue]

There are many inaccuracies in the last post. In fact nothing is correct in it. The truth about the development budgets and resources of the Brawn/Mercedes cars of 2009/2010/2011 have been discussed often in accurate figures. Same is true for the Schumacher salary/sponsorship figures in 2010.

[xpensive]

Xcellent post segedunum. I wonder if Stuttgart realizes how much hard-earned kudos is lost by every race here,
only comfort must be that Rosberg is still faster than MS, just imagine the mess if he'd been even slower?
But xposing a national icon like this is no good either of course.

I think bringing MS out of retirement is very clear evidence that they indeed xpected to have bought a winning team,
not a team in a rebuilding phase for crying out loud.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Talk of budget restrictions and headcount reductions is ridiculous when you've got a nice slice of the budget going to Michael Schumacher.

If you truly belive this, then you have not read my posts, where I have used source after source, timelines and quotes to help paint a picture.

Yet you broadside Mercedes for paying Schumacher top dollar. How much revenue has Schumacher brought to the team just by being there?

They've merely reverted to type.

Please mate, do yourself a favour and actually understand the problems. You say they have reverted to type, conveniently bypassing all that happened on december the 5th 2008 to today.
If Mclaren, Red Bull or Ferrari had to go through that, I reckon they would be 4th or worse off too.

They've long had an inability to get sponsors in either as Honda or as Brawn, and that whole Henkel thing was utterly laughable.

This basically sums your posts up, no facts, just baseless assumptions and wild speculation, BAWS for short.
Autonomy bring 8m
Petronas bring 50m
MIG bring bring 4m
Deutsche Post bring 3m
Monster bring 2m
Various other affilitions with Henri lloyd and Graham of London bring in around 4-5 million together. This does not include slaes of Mercedes GP merchandise
Aabar investments(also sharholders) $ sponsorship is unquantifiable.

They are third in F1 for sponsorship draw behind Ferrari and Mclaren, so much for their "inability".

And the term "languishing" really does not sum up Mercedes this year. Podiums are not languishing.

Using 2007 and 2008 to back up your claims of Mercedes GP being rubbish is saying nothing to me.
Those years Brawn was taking stock of his team, hiring and firing and working towards 2009. Still you cannot see that.
Yet you Dismiss 2009 as a luck out. Toyota and Williams had a DDD too you know, why didnt they lap the field?
Oh the front wing? only the most important bit of aero on the car!
So they got lucky because of the DDD AND the front wing? That means his team got it spot on, not "lucky" at all. The culmination of 15 months hard work.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Xcellent post segedunum. I wonder if Stuttgart realizes how much hard-earned kudos is lost by every race here,

Hmmm not so sure xpensive.

Ferrari getting spanked last year? Any loss of Kudos?

I think bringing MS out of retirement is very clear evidence that they indeed xpected to have bought a winning team,
not a team in a rebuilding phase for crying out loud.

Rebuilding phase is perhaps a big word for this. I would say transformation.Mercedes will not go above 420 staff with an eye on next year.
They will want to know where things are going wrong, then isolate the problem and correct it. Team management, somthing that Brawn is very good at.

And Schumachers comeback is clear evidence of precisely the square root of diddly squat. Its a Marketing excercise in my opinion, bringing a sponsorship draw.

[xpensive]

And Schumachers comeback is clear evidence of precisely the square root of diddly squat. Its a Marketing excercise in my opinion, bringing a sponsorship draw.

Why I'm sure said sponsors are turning cartwheels when beholding the myth humiliating himself this way?

[marcush.]

still it is amatter of perspective and expectation.
realistically ,no one will buy a benz because he´s driving for them ...but then same goes for Nico,Coulthard(!),Mika or whoever..
He is not humilating benz if he does anything than it is his own reputation thats possibly on the line...but then ..he still is for at least the next 5 seasons the top gun
in terms of championships...and whatever statistic there is around...you disgrace yourself in bashing him....
Realistically ,he took the challenge and tries to come back to his winning ways in the toughest time ,and we should see this as an honour to be gifted with this opportunity ...as most f1 drivers (except Barrichello..) do .ex F1 drivers don´t count ,simply because they went out being too slow to get a seat or too long out ..so thats just jealousy

[xpensive]

Come now marcush, are you deliberatly trying to misunderstand me? What I'm trying to say is that I belive that both Daimler and MS are professional enough they realized that a comeback at the age of 42 with the three-poined star,
would only be respected and beneficial for all if it could be done in winning ways.

This was obviously a misjudgement, why it's turned out like Alan Jones in 1986 or Herrmann Lang in the 50s, or perhaps even like watching your mother drunk?

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Xpensive

That Schumacher has drawn so much media attention means Mercedes were right in signing him. People in India, China and alot of the US(all important Mercedes markets) dont even watch the the races. They probably dont even care for the results, but they see Schumacher in a Mercedes all right, because his picture is everywhere be it good or bad.

Take Hungary for example, here in the UK there was a paragraph on Webber's stunning drive, and a full page devoted to Schumachers defence of 10th with Barrichello.

High visibility. Do you not concur?

And the fact of the matter here xpensive is that Schumacher has overtaken more cars at the start of a race than anyother driver on the grid in 2010. If my mother drove like that when drunk, she would be a legend among legends!

[Giblet]

BrawnGP, or Honda, dumped development on their 2008 car very very early to take advantage of getting a jump on everyone else with the rule changes, and hit the mark rather well. The silver bullet was the advance time of development plus the DDD. Take either of these away, and they would not have been a title challenger.

This is where Mercedes stands right now. The same core group, with no advantage of a DDD or advanced development time.

They do not seem to have any advantage in pocket that will allow them to jump other teams.

Nico is proving to me anyways that Schumy is not the silver bullet they need.