Mercedes AMG F1 W03

[Chuckjr]

Do we know if Merc will make next years car an evolution of this years car, or have they started from a clean slate?

[Huntresa]

Do we know if Merc will make next years car an evolution of this years car, or have they started from a clean slate?

No point in starting clean slate for 2013 when 2014 is soon here. Merc will be in the same place during 2013 as this year sadly but Lewis and Rosberg 2014 will be a bigger threat but i dont think they will make it then either but hey

[Chuckjr]

Well, Ferrari was able to make their DOA a solid contender with a crap tunnel, so maybe Merc can do the same with this car next year. But I gotta tell ya, with so many big people with personal motivations/interests in the team (Lauda, Brawn, Hamilton, Merc board, etc) it will be a challenge indeed.

[Huntresa]

Its only Renault in the modern era that has taken the title as a Factory Team right? Not counting Ferrari since we know they did

Just thinkin Merc will fall into the same category as BMW, Toyota and Honda are in, which is failure to compete with the best.

[turbof1]

i do not believe merc's ddrs is responsible for the tyre problems. this is an issue they've got for years now and i suppose this is a basic design error/issue. wondering why they still couldn't solve it. i mean this is quite embarrassing. merc is one of the big teams and considering their manpower they cannot solve the rear tyre problem and sacrifice front downforce? nobody knows... but as Brawn repeating that the main focus is to understand the tyres.... the tells us this EVERY race since monaco and almost only this. i mean he cannot reveal what they are doing in detail. but with him repeating and stressing it every race i got of the intention that they are desperate and do not know what to do. and this is a shame and i don't think they will improve this the next year if they are not capable of changing and solving problems during a season or even come up with upgrades. seems to me most of the merc engineering crew is really slowly and ineffective in what they're doing. and this is someting you can not change simply by buying in bell/costa/elliot/....... i doubt the overall capacity of the merc team not only his head engineers. maybe most of them are simply unexperienced since brawn had to fire 60% of all team workers i 2009.

I think it is due it makes the set up much more complex then originally was believed. Remember that in China they got it working suddenly. I've readed an article about it at AMuS. I can't find it atm; I'll look into later on.
It might also be a mix of several problems, of which a lack of proper rear downforce. We did see that the tyre deg was getting better from Singapore onwards, where they introduced their new exhausts.

The car is good by itself; if they find the answer to their tyre problems they will be in for a good 2013 season, because then they can actually focus on making the car faster.

[dren]

The W03's attention to detail is a lot better than past cars. It also is packaged very tight, even with the DDRS tubes. Next year's car will be an evolution with even tighter packaging. Let's hope they get a good understanding of the coanda exhaust by the season's end so they can design around that next year.

[godlameroso]

I wouldn't be surprised that after Monaco they didn't just turn the rest of the year into one big testing session.

[marcush.]

there is no sign of them having made any inroads on understanding their problems in 3years going as MGP .They were useless in maintaining their considerable advantage in 2009...and they had crap 2007 and 2008 with no direction and no strength...

[alogoc]

The W03's attention to detail is a lot better than past cars. It also is packaged very tight, even with the DDRS tubes. Next year's car will be an evolution with even tighter packaging. Let's hope they get a good understanding of the coanda exhaust by the season's end so they can design around that next year.

there is just to much Honda non winning legacy in that team!

[Adamski]

The W03's attention to detail is a lot better than past cars. It also is packaged very tight, even with the DDRS tubes. Next year's car will be an evolution with even tighter packaging. Let's hope they get a good understanding of the coanda exhaust by the season's end so they can design around that next year.

there is just to much Honda non winning legacy in that team!

How is it possible?

I mean I think the same after these three years. The board always just keep the BS out race after race, season after season. Today I read a Brawn interview from the October of 2010. He said the team was just almost cut into two parts in 2009 and they have lost too important manpower and engineers.
That was the reason why they didn't know which way to go with the MGP W01 and that is how the car was in many areas a compromise. He also said in that interview that 2011's car will be much better because of the reshuffle of the board which is enabled them to go more extreme with the designs. We all know what happened in 2011.

I'm filled up with the excuses and ask the question again. How is it possible that after Honda go out and this team is losing much of their people, now it is the third year of rebuilding with a completely new board and thus it is almost a completely new team but still the ghosts of the BAR era hunting them?

What is going wrong whit this team?

[Huntresa]

Cause its hard to be good in F1, its prob one of the hardest sports to win in.

[Coefficient]

I think the team have been under financial restriction from the board in Stuttgart whilst it was decided whether to pull out of F1 or not. By the time the board made their minds up it was too late for WO3.

The car was a podium contender out of the box and was refined into a winner by China. Between then and the UDT the team didn't spend a penny on serious development so they slumped rapidly. I doubt we'll see any further pace extracted from this car now as the design team will have elected to cut their losses and go for broke next year.

Could the reason for the car being hard on its tyres be a remnant of the team building cars to suit Jenson's for years? His gentle style would need a more aggressive chassis setup to generate heat in the tyres so perhaps that philosophy is still echoing today unessesarily? My thinking being that aggressive chassis design plus aggressive drivers could just be a bridge too far for the tyres?

[Vasconia]

Wait a second, this car wasnt a podium contender, only in China and Monaco was fast, the rest of the season the race pace has been awful. In the first races it was fast in Qualy but not in the race(remember Australia, Malaysia or Bahrein), so the only difference has been that they have lost the edge on Saturdays.

And now they are building a new car(as Lauda has confirmed) for 2013, I expect another tyre eating monster.

[Timstr]

Wait a second, this car wasnt a podium contender, only in China and Monaco was fast, the rest of the season the race pace has been awful. In the first races it was fast in Qualy but not in the race(remember Australia, Malaysia or Bahrein), so the only difference has been that they have lost the edge on Saturdays.

And now they are building a new car(as Lauda has confirmed) for 2013, I expect another tyre eating monster.

So what's so surprising about that?
With different people (Costa, Elliott) now leading car design, it should not be a surprise to anyone.
It would actually be disappointing if they were to follow the same concept.
If something doesn't work you try to find a different direction. That's the adagium of F1 racing.

[Coefficient]

[quote="Vasconia"]Wait a second, this car wasnt a podium contender, only in China and Monaco was fast, the rest of the season the race pace has been awful. In the first races it was fast in Qualy but not in the race(remember Australia, Malaysia or Bahrein), so the only difference has been that they have lost the edge on Saturdays.

This jusdgment is unfair. At the beginning of the season the pace was in the car for top positions, it just needed honing for consistency which they achieved in China. However, the pace:conisistency ratio of their competitors continued to improve whereas they stood still and I believe that is because they weren't spending any money on the car for a few months.

Lets face it, the DDRS is probably a bag of crap and had the team had unrestricted financial freedom to develop they would've binned it and done something else. Instead they raced the Vanilla version of the car until UDT and now they will spend the next 4 races getting their coanda exhaust to where Mclaren, Sauber, Ferrari and Red Bull had theirs by Barcelona this year.