Mercedes GP W02

[Morteza]

W02 seems to be much worse than the infamous W01. I just don't get it! They stopped developing W01 halfway through last season to start developing their new car. The result is worse! Their race pace is awful. Do they have any idea what they are doing with their car? The car can do well on a single lap, but drops pace afterwards. They had brought back those vents behind sidepods.[The image is courtesy of Daimler AG]

[yener]

is the source of problems with rear tires is high temperature from exhaust gases?

No, that would be easy to solve. Somehow they have a lack of (mechanical) grip at the rear. I personally think it's a fault somewhere in the geometry of the suspension.
Could also be a shity gearbox that has too short gear ratio's in the first 3 maybe 4 gears.

Car still has cooling problems and i wonder if they use 100% engine power at the races. Maybe they did today and thats why schumi blew his engine up.

Anyways this car is useless. Nothing more nothing less.

[Joie de vivre]

it's just horrible

the fw is still the same as from the brawn ages, what are they even thinking? are they like "wow this fw is really awesome, we are very quick with this fw from 2009, we should not even consider designing new one" ... the only thing from the outside different from w01 is nose and side holes for exhaust ... and maybe some minor changes ... just horrible

[Adamski]

Sorry for another boring post, but for me, it is also boring what Mercedes do. We don't know now, what was the problem with Michael's car, maybe it is a wrong rebuild after his crash or overheating.
But the main problem is, that in Fridays, the drivers were so optimistic about the race pace, but in Sundays, the car start blistering the tires and it is about 1 or 2 seconds per lap slower, than the front runners.
Awesome lot of work for this team, and a real shame, as the chassis mainly not as bad, as it looks in race days.

[yener]

W02 seems to be much worse than the infamous W01. I just don't get it! They stopped developing W01 halfway through last season to start developing their new car. The result is worse! Their race pace is awful. Do they have any idea what they are doing with their car? The car can do well on a single lap, but drops pace afterwards. They had brought back those vents behind sidepods.[The image is courtesy of Daimler AG]

Exactly. The car isn't so bad in FP and single laps. But the tires jus't don't last enough. The asfalt is eating the tires of the Wo2 somehow.
Michael suffers more due this problem. That's because he is earlier on throttle in the exit of corners. But Nico's tires didn't last much longer today.
Terrible lap times and a race pace too cry.

[Morteza]

Brackley guys always had tire problems if I'm not mistaken and they haven't solved it yet! There is sth really wrong with this team.

[yener]

Sorry for another boring post, but for me, it is also boring what Mercedes do. We don't know now, what was the problem with Michael's car, maybe it is a wrong rebuild after his crash or overheating.
But the main problem is, that in Fridays, the drivers were so optimistic about the race pace, but in Sundays, the car start blistering the tires and it is about 1 or 2 seconds per lap slower, than the front runners.
Awesome lot of work for this team, and a real shame, as the chassis mainly not as bad, as it looks in race days.

The team is getting boring. Just like you said; they can;t give an answer on anything. They don't know anything and they are not clear in many similair things.

If they would say; ok screw it we accept we made some bad moves during the development of the car and we are too slow they would earn some dignity.

Something is seriously wrong at the car but somehow they won't or they dont want to solve it.

If i was Ross Brawn i would collect all my staff tomorow. Organise a meeting and fire all the people who can't understand why the car has not the pace they want to have.

[3one]

I guess the double radiator doesn't live up to its hype and still gives heating issues... Would it still be possible for Merc to switch back to a single radiator and trim the bulk in their sidepods at this stage of the season?

[samstre]

what did you expect? after all it's still the same old honda crew that screwed up since BAR times.

so basically they had 9 very bad years and 1 year in which they had an "interesting" interpretation of the FIA rules...

screw them... i give them 3 more years until merc pulls out. at the moment they are looking really bad. they are just complaining about RedBull having more than 500 people at their factory... who cares? they should stop complaining and learn how to play the dirty game.

they look like bloody amateurs.

[Adamski]

what did you expect? after all it's still the same old honda crew that screwed up since BAR times.

I think it's not a determining factor, as you can see them winning a championship. In this way, we can ask questions, how the hell a "party team" can beat teams like Ferrari and McLaren.

[Byronrhys]

I would fire every single tyre and suspension engineer at MGP, ITS SO ANNOYING!!

[samstre]

To get back to "technical" part...

If you compare McLaren, Ferrari, RedBull and Mercedes... You can see that the Ferrari and the Mercedes are both quite "tailhappy" while the McLaren and espcially the RedBull look quite easy to drive.

The next thing we could notice was that Vettels RedBull was really good out of the corners - even when his tires were old.

Merc (especially Michael) had problems whith their rear. Nicos car looked (a little bit) better balanced. Thats why they had graining at their rear on option tires. Mercedes and Ferrari both struggle in generating downforce at the rear. And it looks like Mercedes miscalculated their suspension geometry (again).

-> Bad mechanical grip + lousy aero = MERC

[mirkovladic]

To get back to "technical" part...

If you compare McLaren, Ferrari, RedBull and Mercedes... You can see that the Ferrari and the Mercedes are both quite "tailhappy" while the McLaren and espcially the RedBull look quite easy to drive.

The next thing we could notice was that Vettels RedBull was really good out of the corners - even when his tires were old.

Merc (especially Michael) had problems whith their rear. Nicos car looked (a little bit) better balanced. Thats why they had graining at their rear on option tires. Mercedes and Ferrari both struggle in generating downforce at the rear. And it looks like Mercedes miscalculated their suspension geometry (again).

-> Bad mechanical grip + lousy aero = MERC

I think they really did a very bad copy of the 2010 Redbull. There short whellbase is killing them: high center of gravity (the gearbox), bad cooling (also high), bad suspension geometry and bad aero. Even the exaust is probably not optimal. I really think the good qualy performance is only because Michael and Nico. Nico is famous for doing fast qualy laps from the times of Williams, wan't talk about Michael. One can notice that cars with longer wheelbases complain alot less about tyre problems then cars with a short wheelbase. Apart from aero I think the CoG has a big part in this. I really think they need a new designer with common sense. And they need real updates because I have not seen any this season. They should change half of the car not playing around with details. As this way the won't find 2 s of race performance.

[marcush.]

As I said ,you can only come up with excuses for so long.Yesterday the talk was :Wait till tomorrow we look a lot better in the race than in Qualy and it was the other way around .
Nico admitting to letting the team down .Schumachers car going in anti stall mode on the grid for no apparent reason and robbing him of a good start ,a 10 second loss in the first pitstop ,graining rear tyres and finally a airbox internal event leading to a loss of electricity in the airbox..eg a airbox fire with resulting damage to the wiring loom of the injectors..No wonder it stopped so suddenly.
When things go wrong they really go wrong even though Schumacher was positive about his pace after the pitstop and said this was encouraging and he was sorry for rosberg he had to take the opportunity as he was so much quicker than him.

The car is not the problem methinks ,they lack at extracting performance and to me this is not a driver problem but a pitwall engineering thing

[Ferraripilot]

I wouldn't take their poor Monaco suspension geometry arrangement or performance as any indication that the car is a write-off as all teams must have a special higher and softer setup for Monaco. MB's just happened to not work very well. Once they are back on an actual track I believe they will get back to extracting the most out of W02.