Mercedes GP 2011

[marcush.]

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

I´d think it is more or less a political statement to calm down any hopes to get a win on merit this year.
I would not be surprised if they eek eben closer to the front when officially they redirect all the development towards 2012 as this ends -as it did last year -any hopes on updates bringing the car closer to the sharp end and concentrtes effort towards making the most from what you have got...

Looking at the times in FP1 .rosberg and Schumi are still occupied with :who is the quicker of us two...

[Hemsy]

It's easy to point fingers at Mercedes for not getting things right. But remember that Mercedes are still very much a new team. It took Red Bull six years to win the championship. Heck initially, Red Bull found it difficult to even finish in the top ten. Even Ferrari took the best part of a decade to become regular championship contenders. The bottom line is that these things take time! I'm confident that the arrival of Bob Bell and another hundred or so employees, we'll already see Mercedes win a few races next year and challenge for the championship the year after.

Sorry ,but to me this is a myth .

The Head of the fish changed along with the color of the car ,most people in Mercedes GP not even had to lift their boot to make the transition from Honda to Brawn to Mercedes GP.
That´s a company sale not a new company.

along with that they changed name after winning both drivers and constructors titles so the company buying in could not expect the need for a complete new start restructure and hiring of hundreds of people.

back to the car.sorry for offtopic babble.

Bro Brawn had to lay off so many people prior to Mercedes buying the team because they simply didn't have the budget. They also did not have the best facilities which is why they are investing in a new simulator. So basically they did not have the same people and facilities as a top team. If this isn't building a team what is?! Also Red Bull also did not start a team from scratch but bought Jaguar. Same with Ferrari, they hired the likes of Todt, Brawn, Bryne & Schumacher before they achieved success. Mercedes is doing the exact same thing!!

[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

I´d think it is more or less a political statement to calm down any hopes to get a win on merit this year.
I would not be surprised if they eek eben closer to the front when officially they redirect all the development towards 2012 as this ends -as it did last year -any hopes on updates bringing the car closer to the sharp end and concentrtes effort towards making the most from what you have got...

Looking at the times in FP1 .rosberg and Schumi are still occupied with :who is the quicker of us two...

As long as we dont see the same type of results with regards to development of the W03 as we did this year. I feel they need to be more exploratory and forward thinking this time round. For goodness sake, last thing we want is to see them fighting for 4th again as they have been doing with the W02, and being more than a second from RBR,Macca and the Suderia
But i agree with you marcush, they hopefully will fine tune the car to a pin now, maybe they can eek out a podium somewhere this year, but I doubt it

[Gerhardsa]

It's easy to point fingers at Mercedes for not getting things right. But remember that Mercedes are still very much a new team. It took Red Bull six years to win the championship. Heck initially, Red Bull found it difficult to even finish in the top ten. Even Ferrari took the best part of a decade to become regular championship contenders. The bottom line is that these things take time! I'm confident that the arrival of Bob Bell and another hundred or so employees, we'll already see Mercedes win a few races next year and challenge for the championship the year after.

Sorry ,but to me this is a myth .

The Head of the fish changed along with the color of the car ,most people in Mercedes GP not even had to lift their boot to make the transition from Honda to Brawn to Mercedes GP.
That´s a company sale not a new company.

along with that they changed name after winning both drivers and constructors titles so the company buying in could not expect the need for a complete new start restructure and hiring of hundreds of people.

back to the car.sorry for offtopic babble.

Bro Brawn had to lay off so many people prior to Mercedes buying the team because they simply didn't have the budget. They also did not have the best facilities which is why they are investing in a new simulator. So basically they did not have the same people and facilities as a top team. If this isn't building a team what is?! Also Red Bull also did not start a team from scratch but bought Jaguar. Same with Ferrari, they hired the likes of Todt, Brawn, Bryne & Schumacher before they achieved success. Mercedes is doing the exact same thing!!

This is a bit off topic, but: All well and true, BUT Merc bought the World Champs of the 2009 season, not a Jaguar that could'nt win anything.
I just hope we will see some further imrpovements to this years car so that Merc can keep defending the 4th place

[Hemsy]

All well and true, BUT Merc bought the World Champs of the 2009 season, not a Jaguar that could'nt win anything.

They bought a team which produced the most expensive car in F1 history along with the longest lead time, with Honda paying all the bills. If Jaguar had access to such resources, even they would have been world champions!

[Gerhardsa]

All well and true, BUT Merc bought the World Champs of the 2009 season, not a Jaguar that could'nt win anything.

They bought a team which produced the most expensive car in F1 history along with the longest lead time, with Honda paying all the bills. If Jaguar had access to such resources, even they would have been world champions!

The point is..they bought a championship winning team and car, not some 2nd grade F1 car, that was lucky if it got out of the garage.
Comparing the Jaguar-Redbull success to the failure of Merc to stay in touch with RBR, Ferrari and Macca is pointless as they should have been fighting last year and this year with the team they had and evolution of the car. Ross was already 2 years with the team by the time Merc bought them.
But this is still off topic so lets agree to disagree

[marcush.]

All well and true, BUT Merc bought the World Champs of the 2009 season, not a Jaguar that could'nt win anything.

They bought a team which produced the most expensive car in F1 history along with the longest lead time, with Honda paying all the bills. If Jaguar had access to such resources, even they would have been world champions!

like Toyota ? excuse me for not being able to resist to come up with that...

I think it is unfair to stick a price tag to a Championship .This is not the case.Even if RedBull is much bigger than they make us believe they are it´s still Newey and his r&d team who make it happen .They have invested in the right technologies ,no question (even if I much doubt the simulator is one of the key incredients of the success story).

Make no bones about it ,BGP001 was a very competent Formula1 race car and Brawns guys were the only ones to interpret the rulebook in FIA correct ways ....AND had the most capable design of front wing at the start of 2009.
They laid of a lot of people in Brackley ,but not for lack of cash reasons ,as is now well documented.
The driving force behind this was more to make the company more attractive to the potential buyer(s) who thought of a RRA looming and for example Mercedes would not want to buy a Formula1 team and as a first step lay off 100 staff to meet the regs!
It all came different but hindsight is a wonderful thing...isn´t it? Brawn did the sensible thing ,filled his pockets ,saved the team ,sold the team and bagged all the titles on the way.I think he and Mercedes did wrong in not telling the truth and reality from the word go and now they are at a loss to explain ..to the world and to their two drivers as well...
I don´t think rosberg would have signed with Mercedes if he knew what was waiting for him.Schumacher at the very least would have been a lot less optimistic about his short term goals.

[Hemsy]

Merc was seen running a lot of rake today just like in the previous race. I think they meant to do so in conjunction with the new exhausts. However it doesn't seem that Merc have benefited from doing so at all because their lap times didn't seem to improve relative to the top 3 and in fact Nico and Michael especially complained of balance issues in the last race.

[Gerhardsa]

All well and true, BUT Merc bought the World Champs of the 2009 season, not a Jaguar that could'nt win anything.

They bought a team which produced the most expensive car in F1 history along with the longest lead time, with Honda paying all the bills. If Jaguar had access to such resources, even they would have been world champions!

like Toyota ? excuse me for not being able to resist to come up with that...

I think it is unfair to stick a price tag to a Championship .This is not the case.Even if RedBull is much bigger than they make us believe they are it´s still Newey and his r&d team who make it happen .They have invested in the right technologies ,no question (even if I much doubt the simulator is one of the key incredients of the success story).

Make no bones about it ,BGP001 was a very competent Formula1 race car and Brawns guys were the only ones to interpret the rulebook in FIA correct ways ....AND had the most capable design of front wing at the start of 2009.
They laid of a lot of people in Brackley ,but not for lack of cash reasons ,as is now well documented.
The driving force behind this was more to make the company more attractive to the potential buyer(s) who thought of a RRA looming and for example Mercedes would not want to buy a Formula1 team and as a first step lay off 100 staff to meet the regs!
It all came different but hindsight is a wonderful thing...isn´t it? Brawn did the sensible thing ,filled his pockets ,saved the team ,sold the team and bagged all the titles on the way.I think he and Mercedes did wrong in not telling the truth and reality from the word go and now they are at a loss to explain ..to the world and to their two drivers as well...
I don´t think rosberg would have signed with Mercedes if he knew what was waiting for him.Schumacher at the very least would have been a lot less optimistic about his short term goals.

Agreed! =D>

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Finger pointing is not condusive to making a car go faster.

You should know this Marcush.

[Hemsy]

Finger pointing is not condusive to making a car go faster.

You should know this Marcush.

Absolutely! Some members here think that Merc is simply making excuses but the fact is that winning a championship takes years. Even Michael said so. Now who knows better a seven times world champion or us armchair experts?!

[Pierce89]

Finger pointing is not condusive to making a car go faster.

You should know this Marcush.

Absolutely! Some members here think that Merc is simply making excuses but the fact is that winning a championship takes years. Even Michael said so. Now who knows better a seven times world champion or us armchair experts?!

Maybe, but Micheal was winning races his first year at Ferrari. What was his best finish last year? Did he podium? I can't remember.Bottom line, if you compare to his time at Ferrari, the improvement in Merc isn't so obvious.

[Raptor22]

Ferrari in 1996 had nearly 50 years of racing heritage behind them...Most of that in Formula 1

[Pierce89]

Ferrari in 1996 had nearly 50 years of racing heritage behind them...Most of that in Formula 1

They still sucked from roughly 1985 -1995, Whereas in Merc, Shumi went into the reigning champions.

[Gerhardsa]

Ferrari in 1996 had nearly 50 years of racing heritage behind them...Most of that in Formula 1

The people running/working on the cars at in the 90's at ferrari were not the same as over that previous "50 years of heritage", so that 50 years experience you could say...well.. the heritage of racing, it is pretty much irrelevant to be quite honest...even if it has been in F1.
Besides, F1 cars in the 90's werent nearly as "important"(if one can put it that way) as now, and a driver could get more out of the car than what was possible mechanically then...today...not a chance! We cant really use the 90's to compare to nowadays to be fair guys.

Back on topic...sort of:
I just hope merc will really start turning the tide come next years car because effectively they have had 3 years "development and building" by then then (lets face it, the team without the daimler backing and german drivers are basically the same as they are now, except someone here and there) with a championship thrown in there somewhere. I dont think I can take another 2010, 2011 season in 2012.
Fast cars are all about interpreting the rules the best out of all the teams these days, and in the last two years Merc didnt do that. Not even close, which is dissapointing, especially coming straight out of a Double championship the previous year.

my last 2 cents for the day

Peace!