Mercedes GP 2011

[xpensive]

To my mind both the W01 and W02, and most probably the W03, were/are/will be, all a terrible waste of a great engine.
If Daimler knows what's good for them, they should try to have their powerplants in cars with the potential to win races,
not trailing around in the midfield like MGP and FI.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Or alternatively take the positive approach and try make it work with their current set up.

[xpensive]

Again JET, when settling for the wrong basic concept to begin with, a thousand engineers won't help you.

Been there, done that. Believe me.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

With no technical direction, what do xpect? An RB7 beater?

[wesley123]

I doubt there is anything wrong with the amount of people working there. It is the way they are used and leaded. I have no doubts in Brawn being a good leader, but my guess is he is taking too much of the team in own hands, they needa technical director, they need other leaders i nthe team to guide it. Brawn is good, really good, but he is not a god.

EDIT: The team is also missing a leading driver. Rosberg is nothing better then a Massa and drivers have caught up to Schumacher, now there have arrived drivers that are actually better then Schumacher. The team is missing leadership in the form of key people and drivers. Take a look at 1994, with Benetton, the team was missing manpower and finances compared to Williams, yet they were the faster team, why? Good leadership by schumacher and a few good people in the team.

[dren]

I have to disagree with the drivers. I think Mercedes has the next best driver line up behind Mclaren. The W02 just isn't that great. I agree oddly enough with xpensive and others stating that you cannot blame the bad design direction on the engineering staff size. It's not like the team has only a hand full of engineers.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

The problem with the W02 is very definitely not the drivers.

[xpensive]

OT of course, but I was for some reason considering today how many times it has happened in F1 that a team gives up and ditches their design mid-season, why I came up with only two, both in the 70s.

- In 1972, Robin Herd went for broke with the weird March 721X and broke his nose badly. When they couldn't go back to the 711 of 1971, MrM had already sold those, Herd converted a 712 F2 car with xtra fuel tanks into the March 721G in six weeks. Amazingly, Ronnie qualified and finished 3rd with the hybrid on the Nurburgring.

- In 1979, Gordon Coppuck got the ground-effect concept all wrong with the oddly long M28. The team went through both B and C upgrades before giving up mid-season and replacing it with the M29, which resembled the race-winning FW07 and JS11 cars.

Such radical measures are of course out of the question with today's technology, why I'm saying that once the basic concept is set you're pretty much stuck with it, no matter the headcount.

[wesley123]

I never stated it is the drivers themselves, but mostly leadership of those drivers.
Rosberg just doesnt seem a leader for me, and Schumacher just seem to have lost the fire. Mercedes just doesnt have a driver like Alonso or <placeyourdriverhere> who says after a bad start; 'C'mon guys, stop picking your noses and get to work, we got some catching up to do!'. You just seem to be missing that at Mercedes, where Ferrari was struggling at season start they fixed their problems really quickly, Mercedes on the other hand is still struggling, flawed design is just a rubbish excuse to do so. If that is the case I do not see why Brawn doesnt sack half the crew and hire new guys, obviously most of the team would be consisting of a bunch of morons knowing nothing of aerodynamics or engineering whatsoever. Seriously who the hell even dares to believe that they built another flawed design? This team has done nothing more then building flawed designs the last 10 years. The BAR cars were crap, apart from the 2004 BAR. The Honda designs were crap too. The 2007 Honda was flawed by 'a wrong wind tunnel', the 2008 Honda was flawed by 'we aim for 2009 just to pull out too soon', the 2009 BGP car had tire management problems and the 2010 W01 had exactly the same mistake, and now the 2010 car got another bunch of problems that no one knows of. This is just ridiculous and I am seriously imagining an factory consisiting of a lot of trees connected by ropes together with the workforce consisting of people eating lots of fruit, throwing poo to each other and having way too much back hair.

If Mercedes is serious in this I expect them to come up with a complete restructuring of the team. Stating that they dont have enough employees and do it with less cash is just rubbish to come with crappy, contradicting designs all the time.

[dren]

Such radical measures are of course out of the question with today's technology, why I'm saying that once the basic concept is set you're pretty much stuck with it, no matter the headcount.

Right, the W01 and W02 seemingly were stuck. Although other teams like wes states can engineer their way out of things. The horrid Mclaren in 2009 was turned around into a race winning car by the end of the season. The Ferraris the last two years have been transformed midseason. The Ferraris basic design direction were sound, they just needed optimization in areas.

[marcush.]

I have heard that Schumacher puts a lot of effort into the development and is using every opportunity to discuss matters with the engineers and challenge the soundness of the explanations for actions beeing taken or planned expecting honest and well founded answers.
I think this is really the best you can do as a driver (apart from driving the car to better finishing positions than the s..tbox deserves of course..)

[Hemsy]

Ferrari's Stefano Domenicali has stated in an interview that Ferrari have started working flat-out on its 2012 challenger. I can only hope Merc are doing the same. What will be interesting to see is Merc's 2012 challenger against Ferrari's in terms of how developed it is out of the box. Both had changes to their technical personnel around the same time (April). Both Bob Bell and Pat Fry identified fundamental issues with their existing cars and must have started work on the 2012 cars in earnest.

[xpensive]

Perhaps OT, but when discussing strange organizations, this is how Wiki describes Ferrari post-Aldo Costa;

"Chassis director" (Pat Fry) is one of 3 positions (the other two being: "production director" - currently filled by Corrado Lanzone; and "electronics director" - currently filled by Luca Marmorini). All 3 engineering positions operate on an equal footing within the team and all report directly to team boss Domenicali who has now taken over responsibility regarding on circuit strategy and other functions previously assigned to "technical director".

How a business administrator like Domenicali could possibly act decisively over those guys is beyond me?

[Hemsy]

Perhaps OT, but when discussing strange organizations, this is how Wiki describes Ferrari post-Aldo Costa;

"Chassis director" (Pat Fry) is one of 3 positions (the other two being: "production director" - currently filled by Corrado Lanzone; and "electronics director" - currently filled by Luca Marmorini). All 3 engineering positions operate on an equal footing within the team and all report directly to team boss Domenicali who has now taken over responsibility regarding on circuit strategy and other functions previously assigned to "technical director".

How a business administrator like Domenicali could possibly act decisively over those guys is beyond me?

I highly doubt that. I think what the article means to say is that its the strategists who come up with the strategy but they need Domenicali's approval before executing it. Also it's very interesting to read that all three departments operate on an equal footing. This means that although Pat Fry is the "Technical Director" he's only in charge of the chassis side of things. This could be to allow him to focus entirely on the chassis side of things which has been Ferrari's downfall for the past couple of seasons.

[xpensive]

Technical director? Perhaps you should read the piece on Wiki about Pat Fry before you post?