Mercedes GP W02

[Richard]

The summer break is mandated. Every team has to shut down for 2 weeks in the next 3 weeks. Some teams choose to use this week to unwind from Hungary and then have a week warm up before Spa. Others stop straight after Hungary to give themselves a 2 week build up to Spa.

As I understand it , all facilities have to be shut down. That includes the manufacturing, design, wind tunnel etc. I recall comments that the computer servers are also closed to avoid people accessing documents or running modelling/simulations from home.

Any upgrades for Spa will already be designed and manufacturing nearly finished by now (IMHO)

[xpensive]

Any upgrades for Spa will already be designed and manufacturing nearly finished by now (IMHO)

Xcept parts for the W02, which will be designed and manufactured by divisions of Daimler that cannot be traced by the FIA.

[PhillipM]

Any upgrades for Spa will already be designed and manufacturing nearly finished by now (IMHO)

Xcept parts for the W02, which will be designed and manufactured by divisions of Daimler that cannot be traced by the FIA.

But not actually fitted for another 3 months while they 'sort other issues'

[marcush.]

which is obviously a key advantage for a team like Mercedes...I understand that teams have to pay a considerable fee for the actual checks of conformity by some outside party ,but who knows how often actual visits are and IF these checks include a visit to the warehouse and shopfloor so you would have at least a chance to detect parts not being build inside or outsourced officially..Let´s wait and see ..
but you would not find these in the official job locator ....

[xpensive]

...
...but who knows how often actual visits are and IF these checks include a visit to the warehouse and shopfloor so you would have at least a chance to detect parts not being build inside or outsourced officially..Let´s wait and see ..
but you would not find these in the official job locator ....

To keep track of every part in a 200-400 staff workshop and warehouse on a regular basis, are you kidding me marcush?

[marcush.]

If the guy is popping in on a regular base he should have an idea what is being done...you see the projects grow ...if something out of the ordinary is suddenly popping up ,things never seen before ,I could imagine a guy actually looking for areas where the team fails to honour the RRA is able to detect.
Wading through papers and working hours ...surely not.
Still you are right ..chances to detect someone opening a paralell stream of parts
would be incredibly hard to detect.these are big companies:

[Coefficient]

Regardless X, Ross Brawn is the head of all of this and the buck stops with him. With the reputation he has, even if he is now Team Principal, spotting that a car has a wheelbase that is too short should have been pretty obvious.
...

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.

Conclusively, Ross or anyone else at Brackley spotting a ridicilous wheelbase might be entirely beside the point, call was made.

I think the powers-that-be in Stuttgart seldom gives orders to Ross Brawn. The suits in Stuttgart have very little to offer to Ross Brawn in terms of technical resources (some thought Stuttgart could help a great deal in building the simulator, but the difference a roadcar and an F1 simmulator is day and night ), and know even less in how to manage an F1 organisation.

I think Norbert's role is just a liaison role, no more.

I do agree Ross Brawn and his technical team has a lot to answer for with this year's car so the same mistakes will not happen again.

As team principle, Brawn is somewhat at arms length nowadays when it comes to design direction and engineering philosophy. His Ferrari heyday saw him as tehnical director so perhaps this is why the team is suffering design office issues? Also, he's running the old Honda Team which if you remember couldn't spend £300m a season and get off the back row so there must be some proper numptys (by F1 standards) working in that factory. OK, BGP001 was succesful but I think it's highly refined DDD masked other issues with the car that other teams didn't suffer from so once rivals fitted DDD BGP001 became rather ordinary.

I don't think Ross has lost the fire, he just wants the team principal role as he did at Ferrari but didn't get it. I hope Bell can be as successful as TD as RB used to be.

[siskue2005]

which is obviously a key advantage for a team like Mercedes...I understand that teams have to pay a considerable fee for the actual checks of conformity by some outside party ,but who knows how often actual visits are and IF these checks include a visit to the warehouse and shopfloor so you would have at least a chance to detect parts not being build inside or outsourced officially..Let´s wait and see ..
but you would not find these in the official job locator ....

F1 teams will not police their rivals' adherence to the August factory shutdown.http://formula-one.speedtv.com/article/ ... -shutdown/

[PlatinumZealot]

I agree with this, If you wanna work just work.. just don't force anybody to do it for you.

[Owen.C93]

I know people aren't allowed/asked to take any work home either. But I'm sure some designers will like to get some stuff done before they return.

[hardingfv32]

1) "To keep track of every part in a 200-400 staff workshop and warehouse on a regular basis, are you kidding me marcush?"

The inventory systems rival those used by the aerospace industry. Verifying what is going on would not be difficult if you have an understand of these systems.

2) Production of parts at the Mercedes factory seems far fetched. Wouldn't they have to be used thru out the season to be effective or proficient? An auditor could tell if this was the case.

3) The teams have agreed to this summer break. Again an auditor could detect violations.

Brian

[mep]

Why is it a problem when they produce some parts in an external company during the summer break? They probably do that all year long anyways. I do not consider this as breaking the rule as long as none of the employees of the F1 team do the work. The "spirit of the rule" (if I can use this word) wants that the guys working all year long day and nights get some holiday breaks. Anyway the development of the car doesn't happen during manufacturing. It takes place in the office where to F1 specialized engineers work. Also the assembling to the car has to be noted and controlled. So the design of the parts has to be done before the break, the parts get manufactured in external companies during the brake and put to the car before Spa weekend. There is nothing illegal here in my opinion.

[...]

[marcush.]

Having worked with SAP I can tell you claims and reality could not be further apart..
sure in mass production you get full traceability for the mounting process but even there you have possibilities to influence things .If there is a will to do it there is a way.
I do not even care to speak about development parts ...

[aral]

No surprise when they have all lights on during the nights and Fernando cruising a Marlboro branded Ferrari around there private track during the days.

It's annoying to read some bullshit like this.

Fully agree. However to add to the BS comment, if it was a Marlboro branded car, then it must be an old car, as there has been no branding for a number of years (ignoring the bar coding, said to "represent" Marlboro)!

[hardingfv32]

"of course you would add the "illegal" part to the official inventory system"

So how does a part not in the system get on the car? Can't I audit the cars or haulers at the next race for parts not in the inventory system? Major parts: wings, floors, etc. have extensive production histories. You are going to fake say the autoclave records? This would involve a lot of personnel. Can they all be trusted?

Then there is the issue of the general production and development patterns. As an auditor I am going to expect to see a break in the production and development output. How is this to be faked? Involvement of more employees falsifying records?

How does Mercedes make parts back at the factory? They have the same equipment and personnel as the team? What do they do the rest of the year? Maybe Lemans cars? Can these people be trusted to keep quite when they switch to F1 work for 2-3 weeks each summer?

Brian