Mercedes GP W02

[ringo]

I guess the race is more relaxing for the old man. The race is like a marathon and quali is like a 100m sprint.
Whatever is the reason behind grandpa mikey's speed, he does seem less comfortable as qualifying goes on.

I am a shumacher fan,.... a young shumacher fan.

He's like Clint Eastwood, you prefer watching the younger one. The older one kinds of make you cringe though you respect that he still brave enough to come out of retirement.


The W02 is good enough for pole, if we take into account that without the crazy redbulls the car would be fighting with mclaren for wins now.

[siskue2005]

I guess the race is more relaxing for the old man. The race is like a marathon and quali is like a 100m sprint.
Whatever is the reason behind grandpa mikey's speed, he does seem less comfortable as qualifying goes on.

So you seem to imply he is less comfortable in quly and there is nothing going wrong with his car? its all a giant fat lie?

and Can we have decent conversation without any name callings plz?

[funkyfreddy]

FFS do you lot ever talk about the technical aspects of the cars in here rather than all this schumi bashing??

Can we get back to the actual interesting thing from quali...... what on earth the magic paddle is?!

[3one]

Yeah... i've been scouring the net for any possible info regarding this "Magic Paddle"... Anyone with any inside info on this?

With regards to their performance... I would say it's still all good! Due to the fact there are no major upgrades on the car aside for the enlarged gurney strip...

As they say, this is a step forward, from china, they had a good step and an opportunity for the engineers to learn more on how to setup the car mechanically...

Now with they're current position of 2nd and 4th row in the grid, i hope the short wheelbase pay in their favor during the start of the GP... We know schumi has been great off the line, it would be interesting how he tackles Petrov and Alonso in the first corner... And with Nico, lets see what he can do with two bulls in front of him...

Also is there any news on the next upgrade that they would be doing?

[donskar]

ringo wrote:

He's like Clint Eastwood, you prefer watching the younger one. The older one kinds of make you cringe though you respect that he still brave enough to come out of retirement.

Nicely put. To extend the simile: maybe Schu needs -- like Eastwood -- to move to the other side of the camera: to act (race) less and direct (manage) more. In other words, I think Schu could play some sort of management role in F1 -- developing drivers, working on race strategy, etc.

Again, a shame testing has been effectively castrated as a key part of F1. I think Schu would be (again) great at developing a car. I also think he'd be more competitive if he "owned" development of the car he races. No longer possible under present rules. Now, IMHO, "development" is done by computer simulations to a large extent.

[Paul]

"Magic Pedal" is their foot-operated DRS switch or not.

[marcush.]

lets put aside this schumacher questioning.
He was doing a 1.26.0 two times at least but no 1.25 so Rosberg somehow can rise his game in Q3 when Michael cannot.If it was age talent or car or sabotage does not matter ...it´s like it is.
As long as he´s doing his immaculate 1st laps the qualy defienciency he is showing does not really matter.He´s still abig value for the team driving the car.who would be better???

[MrBlacky]

If you look at Michael's best sector times from FP3 and all Quali's, he would have been able to run a 1.25.9

No doubt that he can run mid 1.25s as well.

[HydraulicGremlin]

Wrt the "magic paddle" I found this interview of Ross Brawn:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luWuJx2Ukik[/youtube]

So apparently it's a way of applying a different set of car settings more quickly. Maybe it's about getting in or out of fuel conservation mode to be able to run with as little fuel as possible?

[HampusA]

If you look at Michael's best sector times from FP3 and all Quali's, he would have been able to run a 1.25.9

No doubt that he can run mid 1.25s as well.

And if you take the top guys best sector times and put them together?

I think something was either wrong with the car or something simply broken. Like Webber in Australia.
I still think Rosberg would be the slightly quicker one but no doubt Schumacher would be right behind him in Q.

[bill shoe]

Less Aero Development, More Mechanical Development, Go Faster.

http://formula-one.speedtv.com/article/ ... berg-says/

“To be honest, we haven’t changed that much on the car in the last few races,” he said. “We’re just getting the most out of what we had, because we just went a bit wrong at the beginning of the season, and a lot of things are just coming together and making it work. That’s why I’m also looking forward to what’s going to come now, once we get some more upgrades and everything is looking more and more positive.

“There’s not one reason, it’s just a lot of things coming together where we weren’t working the car well, and now getting the most out of it. One area is even mechanical, very simple things where we went in the wrong direction so we moved back in another direction with the springs and bars. For example, even that area definitely gave us a chunk of lap time. We confused ourselves a little bit."

[MrBlacky]

If you look at Michael's best sector times from FP3 and all Quali's, he would have been able to run a 1.25.9

No doubt that he can run mid 1.25s as well.

And if you take the top guys best sector times and put them together?

I think something was either wrong with the car or something simply broken. Like Webber in Australia.
I still think Rosberg would be the slightly quicker one but no doubt Schumacher would be right behind him in Q.

Vettel and Rosberg both set their fastest sector times in Q3. Schumacher had no improvement at all in Q3.

[mirkovladic]

I think Michael still has a lot of his talent. Maybe he lost some reflexes. But the big problem he has is his driving still. He is in my opinion to brutal with the tyres. That's way he often doesn't improve his time from Q1 to Q2, Q3, because as he said the more he pushes the slower he goes. Apparently it' not so much the catch to put the car to the limit, but to push the tyres to the limit while not going over the limit. He is a little unlucky with this, as the tyres last year where stronger, but the car was heavily miss balanced for him. This year the tyres apparently can't handle his punishment. I think he has to only slightly take the tyres into account and slightly adjust his driving style to little less aggressive.

When watching him in Q2 I noticed that he was very aggressive in S1 and S2 but S3 he took gently. And I thought why is he so slow there, but when looking best sector times,he is 2nd faster in S3. I think when he changes his driving style a litlle he should be on Rosberg level or even better. That he is able to adjust his driving style he already proven as his race speed is very much comparable with Rosbergs, also the tyre wear.

My 25 cent:)

[Rikhart]

Whats the big mistery, im 99% sure it was nothing but a bad set of pirellis, happens all the time... The true gap between them is more like 1/2 tenths at best, This was tires.

[aral]

Whats the big mistery, im 99% sure it was nothing but a bad set of pirellis, happens all the time..

I don't think so. The Pirellis seem to be very consistent, with little disparity from one set to another. At least not enough to make a 1.1 sec difference.