Mercedes GP W02

[Lorenzo_Bandini]

Alonso since Silverstone last year did a very good job, so you can't ear him that he didn't do a good job, same with Vettel.

This car is very bad, i don't know where is the problem with this team, it's seems they cannot understand their car, like last year.

[bot6]

Marcush -> They have not reported it publicly. Telling the newspapers "our owners do not give us enough money to compete" would hardly be good for Mercedes' image.

This book http://www.businessbookgp.com/ is a fairly good read if you want to dig in a bit deeper in the financial side of F1.

From most of what I've been able to dig up from different sources, Ferrari has the biggest 2001 budget (199M Euros), with McLaren and Red Bull not far behind. Red Bull has actually increased its budget this season, the only top team to do so. Which is why many think they do not really abide to the RRA.

Mercedes' budget in 2010 was 80M Euros. 30M from Petronas, and 50M from FOM for having won the 2009 championship. Nothing from Mercedes, except from buying the team. And Mercedes have publicly said they would not give any money to the team and that the full funding had to come from sponsorships and FOM image rights, that's how they got the Daimler shareholders to accept the purchase of the F1 team.

So the 2010 budget was less than half that of Ferrari's 2011 budget. And Mercedes' 2011 budget is even less than that, but I haven't found a precise figure yet. I read somewhere that they were planning on a 10% cut for 2011, so it would be 72 million, a bit over a third of Ferrari's purse.

[spadeflush]

yes marcrush. If Schumacher wud ve got a normal start without any damage most probably he wud ve finished in points. But this is whats bothering me now. With this team we are always talking about "would have" and "could have" and "should have". When is the car going to perform? I think the engineers have had enough time to know whats wrong with the car there HAS to be a solution somewhere.

[madly]

if i keep thinking, another thing comes to my mind.
it was not only MGP who struggled. Lotus Renault comes to my mind. everyone expected them to be fast at monaco (due to the good "driveability" of their car and their engine). they didn't look good either.

does anyone have some "insights" on this? did they "cook" their tires or did they struggle to get temps into it? (i expect them to be to hard on them)

LRGP had problems with super soft tyres. They didn't extracted more than few tenths better lap times than from softs. So it was the reason of the big gap in qualifications and relatively poor results.

In the race. Both W02s were at first stint 'train makers', I was surprised their slow race speed. It seems that MGP has much better qualifications than race peace now. In the Monaco race Lotus Renault had better peace than Merc.

Even in Barca Heidfeld starting from last position almost was before both Mercs (one or two more laps and he would pass them - he was about 2 seconds faster at the end due to other tyres).

[marcush.]

talking about budget.
What may it be .were does Mercedes not invest to come around on 72millioans versus 200 of the top three?
Windchannel time? fixed item
human recources? 130million you say they got 100headcount more with 100000+ euros annual salary?

Mercedes can use a whole lot of equipment available in their R&D around the world ..things RedBull can only dream of .To me it´s a matter of using all recources available in the whole mercedes conglomerate cleverly and not asct as independant satellite near Silverstone.

Again.The car has shown speed already but obviously the engineering team at the track does not know how to extract it or even be able to predict what is going to happen.Or they are not allowed to tell the true story .Which is more and more plausible to me.

[marcush.]

crickey both works teams have struggled this race ..when HRT had threatened to lodge a formal protest.
I don´t count Ferrari in this as they live in their own bubble...

[bot6]

I didn't quite understand everything you wrote in that first sentence.

As far as using Mercedes infrastructure, F1 cars are very specific beasts, and road car tech doesn't really apply. Furthermore, the MGP racing team is a separate entity from the general Mercedes R&D department. They don't really have anything in common. If anything, the road car R&D could "rent" resources from the F1 team to develop road cars but not the other way around, the needs are too specific.

On top of that, the infrastructure in Brackley is the old Honda stuff, which is now a bit outdated. Sometimes I think Mercedes would have been better off buying Sauber off BMW rather than BrawnGP, as the infrastructures are better.

In the end, the deal is the following:
Ferrari: huge infrastructure, 199M Euros for 2011.
McLaren: slightly less big but still huge infrastructure, 180-200M
Red Bull: smaller but very up to date infrastructure, 180-200M
Mercedes: big but old infrastructure, smaller workforce than the other three, 72M

See a difference that might explain the fact that development and design work is not quite as effective?

[marcush.]

I´m talking about availability of CT ,scanning electron microscopes ,metallurgy,and general R&D -just think about KERS and Batteries knowledge,electrronics development that can be transferred all things completely out of range for a RedBull or Ferrari seized outfit.You need a horde of boffins ,highly paid ones ...and the effect on lap time is .3of a second at best .Just look at RedBull with their KERS ...
Nevertheless RedBull has carved itself a niche in a performance area with flexible aero wich is surely not available in Mercedes as a competence.so again not money rules here but someone being the "driving force" and someone paying the bills of course...So the combo of a well filled pocket and visionary people is what´s needed.Money alone does not cut the mustard...see Toyota.

[xpensive]

There is something strange with this entire team, paying MSC all that money to make a comeback tells me that they were sure to have a winner already last year, otherwise they had been better of with Heidfeld and spending the money on the car.

The other thing is that while they are doing ok in qualifying, the races more often than not becomes a disappointment, but it often seems for diffent reasons, it's like the car has reasonable speed, which has surprised me greatly, I admit that, but it's like they don't function properly as a team?

Finally, all this mouthing about upgrades, which never seem top materialize, it's like one hand doesn't know what the other is doing. Lack of team-efficiency again, which is most surprising, in particular as RB is supposed to be the master of such?

[Sebp]

I didn't quite understand everything you wrote in that first sentence.

As far as using Mercedes infrastructure, F1 cars are very specific beasts, and road car tech doesn't really apply. Furthermore, the MGP racing team is a separate entity from the general Mercedes R&D department. They don't really have anything in common. If anything, the road car R&D could "rent" resources from the F1 team to develop road cars but not the other way around, the needs are too specific.

On top of that, the infrastructure in Brackley is the old Honda stuff, which is now a bit outdated. Sometimes I think Mercedes would have been better off buying Sauber off BMW rather than BrawnGP, as the infrastructures are better.

In the end, the deal is the following:
Ferrari: huge infrastructure, 199M Euros for 2011.
McLaren: slightly less big but still huge infrastructure, 180-200M
Red Bull: smaller but very up to date infrastructure, 180-200M
Mercedes: big but old infrastructure, smaller workforce than the other three, 72M

See a difference that might explain the fact that development and design work is not quite as effective?

What makes the Mercedes equipment outdated? Surely they have modern PCs and state of the art software to design their cars.
Which facitlities do Mercedes not possess that the other top teams have? Does anyone have deatailed information?

[bot6]

The wind tunnel is not quite as new as the RBR or Ferrari one for starters, don't know about the McLaren one. And their simulator is out of date, the new one only comes in use for 2012.

[Sebp]

The wind tunnel is not quite as new as the RBR or Ferrari one for starters, don't know about the McLaren one. And their simulator is out of date, the new one only comes in use for 2012.

What is bad about an old simulator or windtunnel if they deliver correct data? Or is the amount of information you can get out of them less?

[Full_Opposite_Lock]

There is something strange with this entire team, paying MSC all that money to make a comeback tells me that they were sure to have a winner already last year, otherwise they had been better of with Heidfeld and spending the money on the car.

Schumacher is a big name. Big name = Big money from sponsors.

I would hazard a guess and say that the sponsorship he brought in would probably offset the premium that he is paid over Heidfeld.

[xpensive]

I doubt it very much, don't you think that Mercedes brand itself is enough of a lure for the likes of Petronas?

[marcush.]

There is something strange with this entire team, paying MSC all that money to make a comeback tells me that they were sure to have a winner already last year, otherwise they had been better of with Heidfeld and spending the money on the car.

The other thing is that while they are doing ok in qualifying, the races more often than not becomes a disappointment, but it often seems for diffent reasons, it's like the car has reasonable speed, which has surprised me greatly, I admit that, but it's like they don't function properly as a team?

Finally, all this mouthing about upgrades, which never seem top materialize, it's like one hand doesn't know what the other is doing. Lack of team-efficiency again, which is most surprising, in particular as RB is supposed to be the master of such?

Hitting the nail square on as usual,exp.

The car still looks very much trown together -compare with the level of detail Mclaren is exhibiting 8ok Ron´s manierism must be still present even though he is officially out all people there will feel his steely eyes on their work..)
But the car has speed.But as i said before their strategy looks blunt ,going through the motions ...the pit guys are spectacular coming out with the best stops again and again so i gues that s were Ross Brawns wit still shows.But the engineering side with a simprogramm for this and that tidbit ..maybe it´s beyond the grasp of Brawn what the hell his boffins are on.
Wasn´t the revelation after the messup in the first race:We sat at the table and wwent through all setup data and figured out we just went in the wrong direction and found speed going back? just simple ARB settings springs and so on? And Brawn dictating a back to basics approach? I think the whole pitwall engineering side is not working as well as Mclarens and RedBulls for whatever reason.
Clear ,Ross and Schumachers new race engineer Mark Slade who has such a good reputation ..so I ´m a bit lost there why it doesn´t work.These are all well seasoned ,bulletproof pros who know what it takes to make a car quick-or maybe not?
I think Schumacher is Brawns and Norbys wich come true more than anything else.