Mercedes GP 2011

[Ferraripilot]

so why bother and work in an area that will not help your results? Even in a 400headcount environment you will not have recources enough to shoot at all targets synchronised.So9 you need to concentrate on those who will bring the project forward.

Which is why they announced today they are staffing like the bigger teams and hiring another 100 people. MB is really taking this seriously

[Byronrhys]

Dieter zetsche has finally gotten tired of being a second behind and is gonna put some money into the team, we are going to be on the same ground now, thats when we can't fail no excuses left.

[munudeges]

sigh, go read what I quoted.

What you came up with was.....not relevant, shall we say. The general discussion thread has been about why MHPE wouldn't give the best of their batch of engines to Mercedes. For reasons that escapes me you then started talking about McLaren's ECU presumably in some half-hearted attempt to imply that if MHPE are giving Merc help then it should all be fine because the standard ECUs are built by a McLaren subsidiary. I can't follow the logic in that.

Where the maps are stored is irrelevant. You can't develop any maps without the full cooperation of the engine manufacturer, and that's the point here. McLaren wouldn't be any the wiser that anything was wrong, but they might suspect they aren't getting the help they might expect.

It's not terribly difficult to grasp.

[Morteza]

so why bother and work in an area that will not help your results? Even in a 400headcount environment you will not have recources enough to shoot at all targets synchronised.So9 you need to concentrate on those who will bring the project forward.

Which is why they announced today they are staffing like the bigger teams and hiring another 100 people. MB is really taking this seriously

If so, isn't is late? Weren't they taking it seriously from the time they bought Brawn GP?
Anyway, Mercedes are where they were last year with not much improvement. We said that W01 was a bad car because of fundamental issues it had. W02 has not those issues and is still not much better. What justifies this? If you wanna be successful, you have to look at someone successful and work hard. Mercedes came up with exhausts that not only were worse, but also ruined their tires! It was then that they realized Red Bull exhausts were the better design? Are there stubborn people at Mercedes GP who don't want to accept their failure(s)? That's why they changed their exhaust layout after 8 races? I agree with Marcus. Sometimes you have to risk to win. Having a DNF fighting at the front because of reliability problems is better than finishing the race with a reliable car. Mercedes have to show us they can fight, but they haven't.

[Ferraripilot]

so why bother and work in an area that will not help your results? Even in a 400headcount environment you will not have recources enough to shoot at all targets synchronised.So9 you need to concentrate on those who will bring the project forward.

Which is why they announced today they are staffing like the bigger teams and hiring another 100 people. MB is really taking this seriously

If so, isn't is late? Weren't they taking it seriously from the time they bought Brawn GP?
Anyway, Mercedes are where they were last year with not much improvement. We said that W01 was a bad car because of fundamental issues it had. W02 has not those issues and is still not much better. What justifies this? If you wanna be successful, you have to look at someone successful and work hard. Mercedes came up with exhausts that not only were worse, but also ruined their tires! It was then that they realized Red Bull exhausts were the better design? Are there stubborn people at Mercedes GP who don't want to accept their failure(s)? That's why they changed their exhaust layout after 8 races? I agree with Marcus. Sometimes you have to risk to win. Having a DNF fighting at the front because of reliability problems is better than finishing the race with a reliable car. Mercedes have to show us they can fight, but they haven't.

I believe they have simply realized they cannot do what 550 staffed teams can do with 450. The large staff operating model is the way to go as was the RB exhaust system all along. Any conjecture as to what circumstances lead to them not employing such a system early on is just that, conjecture. However, I still stand by my belief that they had much larger issues (cooling) to deal with first.

[Ferraripilot]

Dieter zetsche has finally gotten tired of being a second behind and is gonna put some money into the team, we are going to be on the same ground now, thats when we can't fail no excuses left.

Even if they had the staff built and filled by tomorrow, I wonder how much of an effect they would have on 2012. These things take time and I am sure W03 is already deep in development by now.

[marcush.]

well,100 headcount is of course a lot ,but on the other side what did others including Honda achieve with even higher numbers?
A big part of it is surtely quality and positioning of all those people ,finding out what their strength is and giving them exactly whhat´s needed to excell.
What you don´t need is 100 more discussing what is the best direction and feeling there is more compromise or more evaluation needed before further action can be taken...I doubt recruiting is giving them what´s needed it will take a damn long time till everyone is finding his place and a well oiled machinery is blowing out winning hardware at an alarming rate...

If you had the idea you need just people to realise all those ideas in the pipeline it is fairly easy to outsource .No excuses to not have things available and really I don´t understand how slow they are in their approach ...testing interims cars and racing work in progress ....they are to slow in their decisions and to slow in making them happen.

[Morteza]

well,100 headcount is of course a lot ,but on the other side what did others including Honda achieve with even higher numbers?
A big part of it is surtely quality and positioning of all those people ,finding out what their strength is and giving them exactly whhat´s needed to excell.
What you don´t need is 100 more discussing what is the best direction and feeling there is more compromise or more evaluation needed before further action can be taken...I doubt recruiting is giving them what´s needed it will take a damn long time till everyone is finding his place and a well oiled machinery is blowing out winning hardware at an alarming rate...

If you had the idea you need just people to realise all those ideas in the pipeline it is fairly easy to outsource .No excuses to not have things available and really I don´t understand how slow they are in their approach ...testing interims cars and racing work in progress ....they are to slow in their decisions and to slow in making them happen.

So true, Marcus.

[Ferraripilot]

well,100 headcount is of course a lot ,but on the other side what did others including Honda achieve with even higher numbers?
A big part of it is surtely quality and positioning of all those people ,finding out what their strength is and giving them exactly whhat´s needed to excell.
What you don´t need is 100 more discussing what is the best direction and feeling there is more compromise or more evaluation needed before further action can be taken...I doubt recruiting is giving them what´s needed it will take a damn long time till everyone is finding his place and a well oiled machinery is blowing out winning hardware at an alarming rate...

If you had the idea you need just people to realise all those ideas in the pipeline it is fairly easy to outsource .No excuses to not have things available and really I don´t understand how slow they are in their approach ...testing interims cars and racing work in progress ....they are to slow in their decisions and to slow in making them happen.

This could be the case. I agree that even if they staffed 100 more people by tomorrow that the synergy to make things happen and be success is not an overnight process. It's the same as in any business.

[jav]

This could be the case. I agree that even if they staffed 100 more people by tomorrow that the synergy to make things happen and be success is not an overnight process. It's the same as in any business.

IMHO - I think it's even worse than just synergy. If this team had great ideas without the resources to build and implement them, adding those resources could help. BUT- if the team is lacking the great ideas, adding more resources may do very little (ala Honda/ Toyota).

This team needs a few great technical leaders (perhaps Bell is a good start- Prodromou on earo would be nice too) and then the resources to quickly develop those ideas both pre and in-season.

Not every idea will be a winner- but the ability to see and respond to that quickly will be key.

[marcush.]

there are people that just slot in and make a difference.James Key arrival at Sauber as an example.
Newey to Mclaren gave them a boost as well but all hot stuck with that infamous unraced car .
Read a piece about Ascanellis work in Toro Rosso who had to head 17 engineers when joining the team and retaining only 12 of them after 6 months ..now they are up to 48.

Interestingly the total headcount at the start was 140 ,so it was around 12% engineers now they are up to 300 headcount and employ 50 engineers ... so their engineering is up to 16% ..the big 4 are they over 20% engineering ?
I´d guess the engineering part is contrary to a normal business extending ever more when pure workers as machinists ,fabricators and laminators etc will quickly arrive in a saturation zone..
The one area today where you may need workforce is of course the modelshop ..You need to build all those things someone has drawn up so in that area you may be able to accelerate your throughput adding more people .But then of course you need to introduce a three shift system (if you were at two) or you need a bigger facility...and of course three shifts will kill all the possibility for overtime workhours .....it´s not easy.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Im pretty sure Mercedes had it in context to join F1 with the RRA(resource restriction) firmly on the agenda.
Hence why the staffing numbers have remained pretty much the same as when MB took over. Another is that it had to guarantee no funds wqould be directed to F1 that could have gone to employing more people back home... a very tough task!
Now Mercedes are looking at smashing their own sales and profit records, their is money to invest.
Also in Australia this year, Schumacher actively sought to address the imbalance with a 3 min BBC cameo, on how it was beyond him how the top 3 continued to grow (and spend more) despite the RRA being mandated to do the opposite.

So Mercedes are naive on 2 counts, buying brawn then expecting others to slash thier budgets and workforce in line with pre agreed RRA limitations(the latter not really Mercedes fault).

Now the penny has dropped and we arent seeing huge gains, Mercedes have to react to make this work. Increasing the budget is a natural thing to do, but hiring staff will only work if you hire the right staff.
Is there anyone more qualified to know whos who, in F1...than Bob Bell and Ross Brawn?

[marcush.]

JET ,who has decided on the RRA ? i think it was the teams .enforcing it is also very expensive as there are dedicated peopleto look actively into the going ons inside the teams permantly ..So how could it pass by Mercedes that RedBull,Ferarri and Mclaren found creative ways of bookkeeping to honour the RRA and still retain and enlarge workforce...No wonder Schumacher does not understand.So do I .
Remember Wirth stating he did not understand what was allowed and what was not before being audited and suddenly they could more than double their CFD capability?
But sure you are right Mercedes could not spend a penny on top of what they had commited to last year ...that would have been impossible.

[Hemsy]

Hey guys! I am an avid Michael Schumacher fan. I think the root cause of Mercedes' symptoms was the lack of a technical director. Remember that while Ross Brawn was technical director at Ferrari, he is team principal at Mercedes i.e he deals with the management side of things. In the absence of a true TD, the team had no clear direction since the its inception which is why the team hired Bob Bell. Not only does Bob Bell have championship winning experience but having worked for Renault who were one of the best when it came to in-season development (remember how many different front wing iterations they had last year!) he knows what it takes to guide Mercedes to championship winning ways. This is why we haven't seen him at races this years since he's busy organizing things back at the factory and I wouldn't be surprised if it was him who asked for an increase in manpower to enable Mercedes to fight with the top 3 teams.

[Gerhardsa]

Ok..so now that the potential of the car has been "exhausted",it speaks volumes for the development planning for the car by the team during the season! Not up to standard, and I cannot believe this type of info, especially with Bell, Brawn and Schumi in that team.
Surely if the potential is exausted, they will not hold on to 4th place, maybe not even 5th, as we are only halfway through the season
Not good...not good at all if this is the case