Mercedes GP - Inauguration and 1st season

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

I don´t get your point here.Please explain.
100mill € will not simply disappear in one company and reemerge in another without a trace.
For sure in Stuttgart are ALOT of people looking exactly for something like that to happen as this would be Sudden Death for the whole programm no question.
as it is not something norbert could decide this would cost zetsche and several others their jobs..

Marcush

Exactly right. You see the problem is that Germany's labour unions are hugely powerful, and when you sack 10,000 you dont go spending money without these guys making some noise. They were livid that Mercedes went into F1, how would these people react had they known Mercedes paid twice?
It would be headline news by now.

So the conspiracy theory is then that Mercedes paid twice for the team and hid it from their own trade union, and of course any disgruntled director that has left the company since then and now(blackmail) and of course their sharholders, and also the city(stock market). Just so that it could compete in F1?

If you believe that, you believe anything!

[andrew]

Lets put the Schumacher re-retiring into perspective regarding in 2 words.

Eddie Jordan.

Unfortunately, Eddie Jordan was the one person who said straight away that Schumacher would be returning and driving for Mercedes, and no one believed him - me included. He might look like an idiot sometimes but he has an excellent nose for these things.

And?

He had a 50/50 chance of being right or wrong. Doesn't take a genius to pick one, stick by your guns and when you're proved wrong come up with some cop out.

The only thing that idiot has a nose for is ridiculous facial hair, terrible glasses and horrific dress sence.

What elese has he been correct on? I've never seen a person backtrack so much, ever!!!

[WhiteBlue]

JET is correct.

No he's not, and neither are you, you are both gullible to the xtreme, I think.
Plese note the underlining, something to consider perhaps?

There is not a single piece of evidence that Merc payed twice which makes it almost certain that the story was a myth crated by people with an agenda. English company law is very strict and if you falsify accounts to amounts of 100 or 90 million pounds you go to jail for it. I do not believe there was any motivation for Brawn and his fellow directors to risk such a thing considering that they were getting filthy rich from their investment anyway. I have very clearly shown what the magnitude of money was that went through the company in 2009 and where it came from. Roughly 90 mil from Honda and 125 mil from Merc/Aabar are figures that are very difficult to dispute knowing the level of sponsorship Brawn had that year. People who deny this should first learn to read a balance sheet.

[marcush.]

I´d say look up the video interview with Michael on the mercedes gp website and you can see it´s all made up crap EJ is singing .Michael is not going to quit.
Of course everyone and his dog is dating Norbert and Ross now..they have no Rreserve and test driver ...Nick has been released. It is a very attractive place ,higly speculative but if it was good for Heidfeld it could come good for others as well..

[andrew]

Eddie Jordan is still bitter about 1991, which was his own fault. I think he needs to move on.

You don't become as successful as Schummacher has been by running away when things get a bit difficult. Anyone remember the 1996 Ferrari that had a habit of exploding after half a lap sometimes? That was probably harder to take back then being the reigning Drivers Champion as opposed to now when he is some guy that's just come out of retirement for a bit of fun.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

There is not a single piece of evidence that Merc payed twice which makes it almost certain that the story was a myth created by people with an agenda.

How very right you are!
This thread is not for mambo jumbo rubbish like conspiracy theories. Nor is it a vehicle to spout anti Brawn/Mercedes posts every day. This thread has already been ruined by such posts.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Here for the benefit of all is Brawns interview in its entirety.

Cars are born 12 months before they’re raced and when this car was born we had our focus on lots of things – survival of the company, we were trying to win the championship and we didn’t focus enough on this car.

But that’s the car we have now, that’s not the balance that we are going to strike for next year.

Our new car is well advanced. I can see lots of areas that we’re making progress in.Tyres will be the interesting thing for next year – people that make the best use of the tyres.
We’ve got a pretty powerful tyre group. We’re working closely with Daimler and Daimler experts on how we can improve that side.

I think I understand the reasons why we are where we are and I think I know the things we have got to do to be in a better position next year.

But we’ll see

From the horses mouth so to speak.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Here is Haugs view.

If you remember it was very difficult to get an engine, to get the team running. Ross pointed out he never wanted to have a Brawn GP team basically, but in addition they won the world championship so then they needed to look for the future and this is where we are right now.

What I think is absolutely positive is that we are in Formula 1, that we are committed as Mercedes-Benz of course. I am the first guy who would have wished for more podiums, for race wins, for whatever, but we are looking very carefully at what we have.We have great partners as sponsors. Our company is committed. Our board is committed.

We need some time and we are working to get a race team in a very, very positive and constructive way. In a critical way to the inside absolutely, we need some time to restructure things. We are composed working together and this is where we are. But we are going to be better next year, that’s for sure

I highlighted a few bits, for the benefit of those that have agenda.

[segedunum]

So you quote from two people who are anything but impartial, and certainly do have an agenda because of that. Are you doing this unintentionally JET, or is it the work of previous study? I don't know what all that is about, but you seem keen to quote it for us for reasons that are best known to yourself.

Just remember that all of that crap you've highlighted in bold so helpfully for us are much the same soundbites that Toyota, Honda and BMW came up with.

We've also been through the notion that it takes twelve months or more to produce a car for every season. 2009 was a completely new set of technical regulations that warranted a longer lead time, but that wasn't the case for 2010. I'll quote Adrian Newey's views on what was required for this season:

"The ban on refuelling is primarily a packaging challenge as we have to integrate a fuel tank which is almost double the size of the existing one, whilst trying to maintain the basic design of the existing car....In a sense yes, stable regulations mean that the designs along the pit lane converge and become evolutions of each other - I do like the challenge of major regulation changes as it offers opportunity for fresh thinking"

His views outright contradict Ross Brawn's and are more valid by virtue of the fact that the RB6 is an evolution of the RB5 and is continuing to win.

[segedunum]

He had a 50/50 chance of being right or wrong. Doesn't take a genius to pick one, stick by your guns and when you're proved wrong come up with some cop out.

I don't think anyone would describe Schumacher going to Mercedes at the time as 50/50.

[segedunum]

There is not a single piece of evidence that Merc payed twice which makes it almost certain that the story was a myth crated by people with an agenda. English company law is very strict and if you falsify accounts to amounts of 100 or 90 million pounds you go to jail for it.

On reflection, you'll fin that's probably not a wise statement to have made given what's happened over the past two or three years in Britain.

There are any number of ways of getting around this - purchase of assets via third-party networks of placeholder companies and especially creative revaluation of assets and offset borrowing. Anyone can make their own overvalued pyramid scheme. As xpensive has said, we've had Enron and companies do this all the time. It's called accounting. English company law? Don't make me laugh.

The simple fact is that Honda were not going to invest 100 million in an organisation they no longer had any interest in and where they and everyone else knew it would become Mercedes's factory Formula 1 team. It wasn't going to happen. There must then have been a reason why. But of course, it's all speculation and Honda are very charitable when it comes to their failures and rival car manufacturers.

[WhiteBlue]

Humbug. What is the purpose of showing a m 92 payment by Honda if they did not pay? Honda was facing redundancy charges which were avoided by selling to Brawn. There are reports about this.

http://www.sportspromedia.com/news/hond ... nd_assets/

It is only logical that Brawn insisted on receiving the redundancy charges from Honda for taking over the risk of running the team. Nobody knew at the time of the deal Brawn would be WDC with Button in 2009.

[raymondu999]

He had a 50/50 chance of being right or wrong. Doesn't take a genius to pick one, stick by your guns and when you're proved wrong come up with some cop out.

I don't think anyone would describe Schumacher going to Mercedes at the time as 50/50.

Yes, but EJ could say yes, or no. He just had to choose 1 answer and immediately had a 50% chance of being right. If he said yes, he'd look like a genius when everyone else said no, and could probably use Michael's neck as an excuse. If he said no, he'd just be following the trend.

[xpensive]

There you go Seg, Enron, World.com, Maddoff, Greece and just last week Swedish HQ bank went belly up when it was discovered that they had covered up losses for years, despite being monitored by the government's finance inspection.

Just five years ago, I had done a consultant job for a large company in Hannover, not a big job, but some 40 kEUR worth.
When presenting my invoice to the VP, he looked back at me telling me he was most satisfied with my input, why he after lunch asked if I would prefer to have it in cash and forget the invoice. I grabbed the envelope and never looked back.

It was hardly a hundred mill, but everything is doable, even in Germany.

[marcush.]

expensive...I go with what you say..these things happen.I witnessed small scale wild transfer actions personally with very big companies as well.
In a multibillion € world 100mill is not the real big number ,but it is something you would simply be not allowed or have the power to do,thats the point.
In departments you have only so much you can do on your own behalf and surely 100mill is a board decision and not something that can go a different path especially with something that is so public as F1.
Thats my point .that those big heads cannot count and are far removed from reality is obvious ,remember the Porsche Saga when they failed to realise that purchasing the company there would of course be implications in terms of taxes to be paid....wich is of course a huge sum in itself considering the transaction....