Mercedes GP 2011

[Pierce89]

Schumacher might have lost something but he is still good enough to compete with the best he is just not superior anymore. It is annoying to see Rosberg being constantly faster than him but sometimes it’s just the blink of an eye. Schumacher might have lost something like 1-2 tents compared to his own pace when he was a young guy like Rosberg is now. With that he would be superior to Rosberg. Now he is at one level during the races and slightly behind in qualy. Even without that he is still the best driver Mercedes can get and better than some of the drivers in top teams. Actually there are very few drivers like Schumacher. People just have to realise this. His success didn’t came by accident or luck. It was the result of his talent and hard work. Comments like cars or tires build around him is nothing else than BS. However at end of 2006 season it seemed like he Ferrari team was not fully behind him anymore. It became obvious during Turkey race where the team missed the chance to switch positions with Massa and put some unnecessary risked to the championship. Also the engine failure in Japan and the strange behaviour of the car in the next race in Brazil is suspicious especially considering the proven sabotage acts in the team during the following season.

It is some kind of mystery to me why people always tent to criticise Schumacher all the time. This man is an absolute top level driver for 20 years and has won 7 Championships and got second many times. Nobody else even comes close to this.
Well Germans seem to have some kind of problem with their heroes and foreigners don’t support Germans very much. I think even the Italians never really accepted Schumacher even so he delivered so many titles to them. Just look how they kicked out Kimi who won a title for them just to get the Spanish Alonso. I am sure Schumacher would have much more support if he is not German but let’s say some Latino. The 2 or 3 titels of certain Latinos seem to be worth more than the 7 titles of Schumacher. A ridiculous situation.

dude, you're way to bitter. Shumacher is great yes, but no greater than Lewis or Fred(in 06 Shumi had a faster car yet Fred took him)

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Please NO driver ying yang nonsense....Pretty please?

[marcush.]

Funny that BGP001 has not seen that much on track testing yet they somehow managed to filter out the right incredients to build a winning machine..

To me very simply ,they came up with a working DDD and designed the car around it ,not like the others adapting their car to the idea.Basically this year all the teams are jumping at RedBulls exhaust idea wasted all winter testing optimising the second or third best exhaust layout.

Additionally Brawn BGP001 had the correct outwash frontwing arrangement and that was even more of a problem for most of the teams to understand and master (as everybody and his dog barked at the DDD)and as it both was AERO the front wing development got delayed due to the hot ticket DDD which bound all recources.

So Honda /Brawn had one really good invention on the car -the front wing -and the luck to be proteged by higher forces in the ddd drama that kept all busy with that item .I´m pretty sure the car itself was not that strong-why would you throw it all away and build W01 which shares not many things apart from the engine...
If it were that sophisticated (considering the development budget it had)why would you drop almost every idea of it,save the front wing ?

[xpensive]

I believe that is a fairly accurate description of Brawn's 2009 success with the 001 marcush, where I agree not building on that car for 2010 W01 is mystifying to say the very least, in particular for a team to going thrugh a transition phaze, not very wise.

Remember that Brawn was competitive to the very end of 2009, Rubens on pole in Brazil and Button third place in Abu Dhabi.

Something the team has never been close to since, in their MGP guise.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Not hard to believe since it effectively halved in size.

Do that to any team and they would be doing well keeping 4th.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Wow,

A factual piece of news by pitpass! From the horses mouth no less....

http://www.f1technical.net/?sid=b70ff77 ... 674ac3d7da

[marcush.]

Not hard to believe since it effectively halved in size.

Do that to any team and they would be doing well keeping 4th.

But JET -when you don´t have the human recources -then why not build on the BGP001?

It was a good car till the end as x pointed out .Not dominant but still a podium contender in almost every race...and still they put it away.

I think one of it´s traits was the far forward weight distribution ..so it was capable of running a lot forward ballast-which Brawn thought was going to be obsolete..Still they ended up with a car that had a weak front end and it was never finally revealed if it were a stiffness problem or weight distribution or whatever.I guess they simply don´t know.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Simple.

The RB5 was shown to have the measure of the brawn by the end of the season.

AND that was a design not fully utilising the double diffuser with Newey citing the pull rod suspension as problematic when incorporating it into the car. It's interesting that alot of teams also didn't copy the Brawn Gp, only utilising the front wing design of the BGP 001.

So to continue with a car that has run it's course on the design front would be fairly limited to say the least.

[marcush.]

jet -Button said repeatedly -what a hell of a racecar - or something along these lines..

especially the low front steering rack was a nice feature -low CofG less frontal area ,Brawn always said the W01 would be an evolution of the BGP001 but it turned out to be very different,everything done different position of calipers ,airbox ,crossection of the forward tub..you name it...I have the feeling a more evolutionary approach would have enabled them to concentrate on the main development areas of 2010 ..

[xpensive]

...
So to continue with a car that has run it's course on the design front would be fairly limited to say the least.

Perhaps not a perfect parallell, but somehow I'm getting a deja vu of the Lotus 80 some 30 years ago, which followed the winning 79, Lotus tried something completely different and lost the plot entirely for years to come?

[dren]

Didn't they change some things to try to adapt to the different front tires in 2010?

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Dren just answered why Brawn changed the design.

And yes marcush, button called the BGP 001 a "monster" in turkey. He didn't win another race in 2009(10 races with no win). Very good stat that. Barrichello only won 2 of those remaining 10... Hardly dominant.

Also, red bull won the final 3 races ,setting the fastest lap In all the 3. It was the car to have at the end of 2009. Even the "flawed" McLaren of that year ended faster than the brawn.

[marcush.]

...
So to continue with a car that has run it's course on the design front would be fairly limited to say the least.

Perhaps not a perfect parallell, but somehow I'm getting a deja vu of the Lotus 80 some 30 years ago, which followed the winning 79, Lotus tried something completely different and lost the plot entirely for years to come?

a very fitting paralell as Lotus had completely lost the plot with models 76 and 77 coming up with the wingcar revolution on the 78 and then dominating with the 79 which was not that dominant at the end of the season anymore ....

The BGP001 was a new design not carrying much ballast from the ducklings Honda had produced the two years before..So how can it be that people say it was a milestone in terms of development and then it´s not even half into the season at the end of its possibilities and in need of another all new hastily sketched up new concept.
Not plausible at all.Yes Brawns guys had a completely wrong and lonely idea of the impact ´Bridgestones new front tyres would have -again -different to be different and everyone else is capable of either understanding the impact of the change or at least able to adapt the car to reality...I think there is a degree of stubbornness in the team as well.(we wait for the track to come to us -something we heard more than once last year).

[MIKEY_!]

Is it possible MGP are trying all kinds of apparently pointless innovations to set themselves up for the future.

[roadwarrior]

On a totally different note, I recall that one of the reasons for Merc selling their shares in McL was because Ron ultimately wanted to build his own engine and run a 'works' McL. I also assumed that this was a large part of the reason why Merc suddenly became interested in buying a F1 team as they would no longer be supplying engines to a successful team.

Can someone say what happened to the idea of McLaren building their own engines? Are Merc still contracted to supply McL engines for years to come?

Once Merc have the team in a place where it is consistently running in the top three would they really want to continue supplying technology to a team that can threaten their chances of being WCC? McL must know this so it will be interesting to see who blinks first and breaks the deal.