Mercedes GP - Inauguration and 1st season

[Giblet]

4th is still not a disaster, unless you are using a different definition for the word disaster. The world is not measured in absolutes. They were not as good as they should have been, they did worse then before, but 4th is far from a disaster.

Saying "We've dealt with that before as well" is glossing over a debate that was never, and won't be, settled.

They could have done better yes, but calling 4th a disaster when there can be only one winner, is dealing in absolutes.

Stable as their technical side has been, they have always kind of sucked as a group. The Brawn was the best car of 3, as it's hard to count any teams that had no DDD at the beginning of the year. Th 2005 BAR was quick and did well, but the team admitted that they never fully understood the cars success.

2006 - Jenson got a win, and did well in the last half of the year. Best scoring car for the last 6 races or something. Then the lost they plot for 2 solid years. 2007 and 2008 were utter jokes. Couldn't even have a car that braked stable, let alone turn a lap at all quick. They never looked good at all.

The team has a history of peaks and valley's with nothing in between, and based on that, 4th is not as disastrous as you seem to want to convince everyone of.

Calamity? Hiccup? Sure. Disaster? We'll see next season. If they can take what they have learned in the last half of the year, and apply it next year, at least this 'disaster' won't be for naught.

[segedunum]

Fourth is a disaster because of where they were. They fell further back than any other team on the grid did, which as we have seen is not out of character. Leopards just don't change their spots, as they saying goes.

As I've said, Mercedes did not buy the team to 'build something' for several years.

[xpensive]

You mean beating the gargistes doesn't necessarily prompt the Stuttgart suits turning cart-weels like Pavlov's dogs?

[Giblet]

If you measure the success of a F1 team in single years and take no history into account then what you are saying makes sense, however nobody judges a team over a single year, unless they were there one year.

When Mclaren or Ferrari has an off year, they are still considered successful teams. You need to have repeated lack of success like Williams to lose that moniker.

Mercedes didn't research and/or made an impulse buy, and are experiencing buyers remorse.

They bought a team that had one shining year, on the back of a rule loophole, and a very long development time compared to every other team. The history of the team should have put up red flags, but Mercedes wanted out of Mclaren for a slew of reasons, and bought the best team available at the time.

Honda's history has been a decent season, followed by a year or two of actual disaster (2007-2008), so after winning the title, and being 4th, is spades better then they usually do.

If one of the Mercedes drivers was to actually have done something this year, they might have got a 3rd place, so long as every single point he should have got like Nico, was taken from Ferrari.

Next season will tell us if they have learned enough to improve, making this far less a disaster, and a small hiccup.

I see their history as s sine wave, with the distance between peaks and valleys lessening year on year.

EDIT: So yeah, in short Mercedes should have hoped for a great season, but not expected it.

[marcush.]

mercedes GP do not even have a simulator.... theird will be ready only in 2012..
http://www.motorsport-total.com/f1/news ... 23004.html

according to ross brawn statement in Auto motor und Sport Mag..

the simulator will be Mercedes input....why did they not book hours with toyota?

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Thanks for that Marcush,

I have just read the AMuS report/interview on the simulator situation at Mercedes GP. They do in fact have 2, one old one(pretty useless) and the new one (actually in use, but being developed all the time), but wont be fully operational until 2012.

Brawn has already said in the interview that over the winter they are making "great steps" on the simulator with Daimler. This is very reassuring to me as it underlines Mercedes commitment to the project.
It also sheds some light on how Mercedes got their season back on track towards the end of 2010. The simulator as I understand it has been in the works since May, and maybe the results of the simulator, albeit rudimentary, were far more accurate than the old simulators results.

This goes someway to explain why Honda then Brawn and (for the first half of 2010) Mercedes were left scratching their heads as to what was going on. Engineers see the numbers, go on that basis and the reality is quite different from what they "know" to be right.

The tyre cock up may have been from this too. Without insider knowledge we can never tell but, I do know that for a team to finish 4th without a top line simulator is not bad going.

http://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/form ... 62126.html

[segedunum]

mercedes GP do not even have a simulator.... theird will be ready only in 2012..

I'm sure it took other teams that length of time to get functioning simulators as well.

I'm kind of getting the impression that people have been using this team to simply milk money over the years - at every level. An all-new simulator project where some bungling execs have said "Oh ---, a simulator. We need one of those!" sounds like another classic example.

the simulator will be Mercedes input....why did they not book hours with toyota?

Ours is not to reason why. You'd think they didn't want to try and win......

[Richard]

Brawn's simulator comments are odd consiering how much Honda money seems to have been sloshing about in the team.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Brawn's simulator comments are odd consiering how much Honda money seems to have been sloshing about in the team.

Simulators require all sorts of up to date software and hardware. Maybe Honda did splash the cash....in 2006. That makes it around 5 years old, now I have seen my laptop from 5 years ago and boy, I dont know how I coped!

Perhaps the architecture surrounding the actual software may have an intrinsic flaw. When you have as many variables as they tend to programme in, its inevitable that you will screw up. I guess the question is how accurate you can get it because it will never be an exact replica of reality.

Why not use Toyota's sim? Well I dont think they would be privy to allow Mercedes engineers intimate time with their own Sim.
And would Mercedes want Toyota to have intimate details on the W02?
It opens a can of worms basically.

How much of their late season revival was down to this new sim, we will have to see. And a specific poster may snipe at everything Mercedes seems to be doing at the moment, but they are addressing problems that have plagued the team over the years. Chassis expert in, Tyre expert in, New simulator replacing the outdated one..... these arent the actions of an incompetant or rubbish team.

[segedunum]

Every other competent team on the grid had simulator projects started many, many years ago and they've continued to develop and add to them. What they don't do is ditch their existing simulators and continually undertake new projects that will be completed at unspecified dates in the next year or two to keep them updated.

I think Ross Brawn would really be best served keeping his mouth shut from now on. Every excuse that comes out of there can be translated as "We didn't do this and we forgot about that." One might get the impression that he and his team are incompetent or something.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

[...]

[Richard]

they are addressing problems that have plagued the team over the years. Chassis expert in, Tyre expert in, New simulator replacing the outdated one..... these arent the actions of an incompetant or rubbish team.

Time will be the judge of that.

To be honest I do hope to see Merc challenging the leaders, F1 will be better with more title contenders. However this team has previously spent vast amounts for poor returns. However that predates Brawn, so lets see if he can help them kick the profligate habit.

[Tamburello]

Fourth is a disaster because of where they were. They fell further back than any other team on the grid did, which as we have seen is not out of character. Leopards just don't change their spots, as they saying goes.

I don't think they fell as far back as some people think. After all, Red Bull won the last three races of 09 and McLaren the one before that, so the Brawn was probably the third fastest car at the end of 09, at best.

It seems that they stayed where they were and were overtaken by Ferrari aswell.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Time will be the judge of that.

To be honest I do hope to see Merc challenging the leaders, F1 will be better with more title contenders. However this team has previously spent vast amounts for poor returns. However that predates Brawn, so lets see if he can help them kick the profligate habit.

+1 Exactly right.
No one can sit here and say for certain what will occur in 2011. But since Brawn arrived at Honda, there seems to have been a rather different approach.

[segedunum]

It never ends:

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/88806

"In the Abu Dhabi test we didn't detect big differences compared to the performances obtained with Bridgestones, but it's clear that, by changing supplier, the cars need to be adapted. We'll see a lot of changes during winter testing."

Hmmmmmm. Oh dear. So Rosberg was right before he was gagged then?