This forum contains threads to discuss teams themselves. Anything not technical about the cars, including restructuring, performances etc belongs here.
From my own very limited experience in this field ,Almost everything learned in racing translates very well into series development.
In fact my own experience goes as far as saying that´s exactly what most of the development teams lack.The racing environment does not promote hiding and fogging up areas of non performance and the results of your work are to be seen by the world every other weekend whereas in series development things can get covered up till series production and beyond...
My feeling is Mercedes is for more involved in what is going wrong here than we can see ..I remember being surprised by Schumachers statement that he felt very comfortable to talk about technical matters for the first time in his home language ...but thought this was a political statement back then...
Anyways the concept decisions of W01 and W02 clearly were wrong and no matter of being short on time ,but a lack of basic understanding of the needs.Again they did not understand the tyres afain they did not understand implications of CofG height or position change with fuel loads.
But mark my words w02 IS not limited by tyre nor by Cof G positioning ,the misconception is in another area.The car is a reflection of the team .Compare the looks of RB7 and W02 .The first seems to be a one shot cast ,flowing lines and a concept is visible when W02 is a accumulation of halfbaked ,but dare to be different ideas glued together in an attempt to make a Formula 1 car.
Just as a hint:Red Bull is winning races with a semi professional KERS when Mercedes very much is depending on their KERS performance even when it comes to getting into Q3.
It´s a lot of effort they put into KERS and it seems to be very good..but as it stands the well developped KERS is responsible for aone of the official drawbacks of the car -high CofG with full tanks as it raises the fuel tank a considerable amount..wrong concept decisions.
Except they were there and have already had their 2008 and miraculous transformation into a winning team. Lightning won't strike twice.
I'm not talking about lightening, because such a change is not really needed. With Red Bull, it literally was lightening because they went from being in 14th place with countless DNFs to being half a second quicker than everyone! RB had an amazing transformation and all-of-the-sudden went from being the 'party team' (I'm not kidding) to the team to beat. MB doesn't have it that bad, but with the right people in place (which they are) they will learn from these mistakes which will translate into a championship winning team. Give them 2 years tops. MB has far more resources in terms of technical ability than other teams can hope to have due to their massively successful roadcar production. They just need to deduce how one translates to the other to get the clock working. Clocks are fickle and terribly accurate devices, and F1 race teams are no different.
you need to find a balance of what to ask the mothership and when to stay quiet and do your thing.
Of course the possibilities within something the size of Mercedes (not forget the avionics etc recources of DLR etc ...also available at a press of a button -watch Haug always fingering his smartphone... this can be as big a help as it can be an annoyance and distraction.
Last edited by marcush. on 02 Aug 2011, 16:53, edited 1 time in total.
They are doing to well to consist of a team of Mercedes engineers who are sent to a learning trip in a F1 team. They should stand on the end of the grid in this case. You are either a passionate racer and deserve to be in a F1 team or you are not there. It should be a fairly easy step to switch from a F1 team to a car manufacturer. Whereas the other way is a rather seriously jump.
What are all the other teams doing wrong when this is just a bunch of rookies?
I´m not sure about this.
Is it necessary for a cfd guy to be passionate about racing or is there a differnce for the FEM if the part is going on a f1 car instead of the next c-class benz? You obviously got different values and margins but in the end this is just applied knowledge.
Sure the guy who does layout the whole car ,the suspension and is developpping the aero concept is nothing like those who do these things in road car development....but in the end it´s the key people in R&D and those who pull the work from drawings and files into reality which are those special people in Formula 1.
Ferraripilot wrote:I'm not talking about lightening, because such a change is not really needed.
You're not grasping this English phrase about lightning striking twice in the same place. It means that Mercedes, as Brawn, already had their jump up the grid in 2009. It's far, far, less likely to happen again by the simple law of probabilities.
The specialist Italian magazine Autosprint reports that Mercedes, headed by another former Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn, has targeted Costa.
We reported recently that the Brackley based team is on a recruitment drive to boost its staff numbers to the height of big three teams Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari.
Autosprint said Brawn told Daimler chairman Dieter Zetsche at the Nurburgring that Mercedes’ struggles in 2010 and 2011 have been due in part to the team’s comparatively small size.
“So he (Brawn) received the go-ahead for the recruitment campaign,” said the report.
Some news regarding more staffing at mercedes gp.
I wonder also if the rumours circulating about prodromou are also true?
at least this way around we can understand for the first time why Stuttgart has kept quiet and now is underwriting a rise of staff count.
Maybe M-B really stepped in and did a lot of work on W01 ,explaining why good points of BGP001 were dropped for no obvious reasons and some weird new solutions like the airbox pushed through but basics simply were not right with the car.Again the second car W02 was to put right where W01 was wrong and still it shows fundamental flaws...and general misconceptions but none of the people we think are responsible have been sacked..strange and only explainable by stuttgart having insisted on some areas layout (KERS no Zytek input anymore for example)hinting at a wrong balance in the car concept towards important things to Mercedes.Remember BMWs KERS integration totally compromising the car performance and ruining Sauber BMWs 2009 season and finishing the area of BMW in F1 for now...I´d think there are paralells to be found.
I don't understand you guys why you're thinking Brawn isn't the good man to fill his role.
It is well known that he was working very hard as team principal to get this team continue. There was 2 transformations in 2 year. In this two year, the human resources were degraded by half of the amount in the favor to continue in F1.
Lot of people in this forum says, it is still the old Honda team. Well, it's true, and if we look at the old Honda teams results with 700 worker on board, now a constant 4th position in the constructors championship with half of the resources is a good sign.
Yes, it's a bit longer then we expected to get on the top, and also there were mistakes like the W02 basic concept. They need to reorganize the whole team, they need to change the decision-making process and that is what they doing now. And also they are solving the issues with the car.
If we count all of their problems, 1.2 sec / lap distance from the top is not so big. Look at Renault, they didn't get the right development process, and after 2 podiums in the first two race, now they are nowhere.
Michael Schumacher: When you start out in a team, you have to get the teamwork going and then you get something back.
Some people like a good moan. It's part and parcel of forum, but I see what you are saying.
My main concern at the moment is to know who stays and who goes at mercedes. They are getting mercedes money, engines and rumour has it, some staff. Now they are getting the most advanced simulator of it's kind and are increasing their staffing by 100-150.
Names like Costa and Prodromou are being attached to mercedes and these are the names they need.
2 more names I would personally add in the next 2 years would be James Key and Kamui Kobayashi. So there are changes happening, and this is the bloodletting I think the team needs. Although I'm struggling to see who's gone/going.
Surely the man/department responsible for weight distribution/concept has to be lookong nervously over his shoulder.
Finally, the brawn/haug PR machine needs to be left at home. Fans want to see results and not hear them. In fairness this year we have seen them get on with it quietly, but it needs to be quieter still.
jet ,I don´t think the guy who was doing the concept was really the culprit.You decide on your concepts in a team and all the main participants will give a direction telling their needs and constraints and eventually a rough concept emerges.As a matter of fact a lot of key components are very much fixed ,as for example the tank volume cannot intrude the engine front face ,the tank needs to have one volume only ,the tank width is restricted and can only extend forward under the back of the driver to a restricted area.You got the feet of the driver restricting the position of your front axle as well and so pretty much the basic concept is set in stone .You got the fuel tank height as a variable ,yes.And you got the heavy components Ballast KERS,Steering,Fireaxtinguisher,Electronics gearbox ,cooling package ,hydraulics,fuel system to get to the mandated weight distribution.
So the package guy needs input from Aero and mechanical engineering to be able tocome up with a base concept that is enabling the team to go head to head with Mclaren and RedBull and this starts really by understanding what the implications of the rules for the year are .
It´s not coincidence that RBR is the team who uses DRS bery excesively in Qualy and it´s no coincidence that RB has not compromised their car package for a optimum KERS package.Their timing with this seems to juuuuuust fit now they have it working it seems when they really need it to stay with the others...
xpensive wrote:I don't believe we should be too certain that RB is in command here, when the organization seems to have an overhead suitable for the old Kremlin and Norbert taking his orders over the cell-phone from Stuttgart, I don't think RB is in charge of much.
I'm always suspicious of teams who have people sitting between the Team Principal and the owners (Red Bull currently doesn't know who is supposed to be signing drivers) but I didn't think that would have extended to car design.
