Pirelli 2013

[Cam]

Well, to be honest: it would be a fair assumption that they were. The car had to be packed anyway after the test. So even if Mercedes dis not got any view on the data, they would have been around.

It is quite possible that the necessary people have trained Pirelli personnel in the use of the Mercedes equipment and did not attend the test. Later Pirelli handed the equipment back to Mercedes - after erasing all data storage - for removal of the equipment from the test location. It would be an unusual procedure but nothing about this test was done as usual. They must have made some very concerned considerations before they went ahead with it. Again I'm not saying it was done that way. I simply point out how it could have been done.

That indeed could have occurred WB - unlikely, but yes, it could have happened that way. As for Merc not gaining an advantage - even if Pirelli ran everything behind a firewall - Merc still still de-briefed the drivers, still got the car back and pulled it down to inspect engines, gearboxes, suspension etc, engineers would have viewed worn components - so there's absolutely no way, at all, that Merc did not gain some data out of this.

But of course, that's a secondary consideration - did they break the rules? Regardless of any advantage, that's not what is in question here. There is no regulation (that I can see) that says "teams can't get an advantage". Even Ferrari would have got advantageous data - albeit from a 2011 car, which they could have transcribed across to 2013 car behaviours in some form of accuracy. How effective it would be, who knows, but they could have done it.

This is actually a big first test for the Tribunal. If they have no teeth, then there's an opportunity to test them again by breaking regs and seeing how it pans out - both for teams and suppliers. If they flick it back to the FIA, the FIA is going to look pretty stupid really. The management of F1 is under a lot of focus at the moment - as it should be.

[MOWOG]

Ya know? I read just last week a long disquisition about how this site was not a place for opinions. Only hard data and intricate technical discussions were appropriate here. And yet, here is this conversation that now extends to 85 pages and will probably go over 100 pages before the Tribunal convenes and renders a decision.

Basically, nobody here knows anything about what actually happened in Barcelona 3 weeks ago. But that lack of knowledge has transmogrified into a virtual whirlwind of opinion, speculation, what ifs, maybes, hypothesizing and conspiracy theory bloviating that is frankly mind boggling. With apologies to Winston Churchill, never have so many opined so much with so little substance.

I enjoy a good discussion. I revel in conspiracy theories about why the Twin Towers fell and what really happened to Flight 900. I wonder where Jimmy Hoffa is and what really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin that night. But this discussion has gotten way out of hand.

I think it might be appropriate for people to calm down and wait for some actual facts and information to become public before beating this particular dead horse further. [-o<

Of course, that is just my opinion..........

[WhiteBlue]

As for Merc not gaining an advantage - even if Pirelli ran everything behind a firewall - Merc still de-briefed the drivers, still got the car back and pulled it down to inspect engines, gearboxes, suspension etc, engineers would have viewed worn components - so there's absolutely no way, at all, that Merc did not gain some data out of this.

Again there are two issues here. Debriefing the drivers would not impact on the the question whether Merc or Pirelli ran the test. It would simply indicate that Merc are no dummies. The same goes for examining the machinery after the test. That would be a legitimate gain in my view for taking the risk of doing all of this in the first place. So yes, there was an advantage which I never denied. But Merc still have not run that test, only taken advantage from providing equipment and drivers, which is not against the regulation in their view. And as ever the disclaimer: This is only an interpretation of what probably has happened and my legal interpretation of the known facts.

[WhiteBlue]

Or you think that because Whiteblue has an old mercedes car on his avatar that he automatically is a fan of the current mercedes team?

Thanks for putting up for me, turbof1. Just for your information. My avatar shows an Auto Union GP car piloted by Bernd Rosemeyer in the Rain. Painting by Vaclav Zapadlik, 1997, features a scene from the 1936 Nürburgring German GP driving his Auto Union race car ahead of the Mercedes-Benz.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernd_Rosemeyer

Bernd Rosemeyer privately drove an Erdmann & Rossi designed Horch 853, a 5L V8 coupè known as "Manuela". The engine had 120 hp. The design they did at the time was absolutely stunning IMO. Just compare it with a Jaguar E-type or a BMW Z-4.


even the BMW 1-class which I drive today is inspired by this design concept methinks

[turbof1]

Well, to be honest: it would be a fair assumption that they were. The car had to be packed anyway after the test. So even if Mercedes dis not got any view on the data, they would have been around.

It is quite possible that the necessary people have trained Pirelli personnel in the use of the Mercedes equipment and did not attend the test. Later Pirelli handed the equipment back to Mercedes - after erasing all data storage - for removal of the equipment from the test location. It would be an unusual procedure but nothing about this test was done as usual. They must have made some very concerned considerations before they went ahead with it. Again I'm not saying it was done that way. I simply point out how it could have been done.

It's always a possibility. Though personally I would have been wary leaving everything up to strange hands, even if they are trained. If something happened to the car due to inexperience of the pirelli team, then it would be rushing to get the car repaired for the Monaco GP.
It would also be perfectly reasonable to allow some technicians of Mercedes to aid Pirelli with the car. The argument it's an unknown car is perfectly valid. Of course it would also mean you are moving into a grey and sensitive area.

[Pierce89]

I just feel Merc at the very least had more to do with the test than just providing a car. If Pirelli "ran the test" there shouldn't be any need for Merc's race team to stick around. Surely Merc was operating the car, which requires them to see significant data. IDK, I just think Merc benefitted significantly or they wouldn't have been there. Besides, if it was development for 2014, an older car with less DF would seemingly be better suited.

How do you come to the conclusion that Merc's race team was around at the private test. My information so far is that the drivers were available and on site. Do you have specifics about the presence of anybody else beyond the drivers?

Brawn himself said that it wasn't secret because the other teams should've noticed that the team wasn't packing up. That implies they stayed . Besides , Merc's engineers had to be there because there's no way in hell they just entrusted their current racecar to someone else,.especially so close to a race. Do you think Merc would risk allowing people unexperienced in their methods to screw the car up?

Edit: I have absolutely nothing against the Merc team. In fact, they're my second favorite team behind Ferrari(mostly because I like Louie). I just truly feel this is a clear violation of the sporting regs. Besides, as I said before, the 2014 regs entail a significant reduction in DF. So, shouldn't an older car with less DF be more representative if they were honestly testing for 2014? I also think if they had legitimate communication from the FIA allowing the test explicitly, they would get it out in the open immediately rather than letting the Mercedes name be dragged through the mud for weeks.

[Richard]

It is possible to have a significant degree of independence. Pirelli used an independent company to handle the data for the Lotus tests and arranged for the ECU to be locked down. They also used non-Lotus drivers.

key tyre data is handled not by Lotus but passed direct to Pirelli via an independent infra-red camera system run by a German company called RennWerk Gmbh, set up by former Toyota employees.

Pirelli even includes a diagram to illustrate the flow of data, and demonstrate how the Italian company and RennWerk control it, with Lotus given access to what the engineers require to be able to run the car. But special software means that even the data that Lotus works with cannot be accessed “outside the specified test events”

http://adamcooperf1.com/2013/05/31/anal ... s-and-fia/

[turbof1]

What I find staggering is that even though most press conferences in Canada were utterly dominated by the subject, not a single journalist asked specific questions like how Pirelli kept the data hidden or what positions Mercedes personel had in in the test. Of course the chance is there that you'll receive the "no comment" comment, but it would never had hurted and you are almost obliged to asked the question for the chance that you do get decent answers. IMO, really weak journalism over there.

[lotus7]

It is possible to have a significant degree of independence.

Maybe similar to being pregnant to a significant degree ?
And while you are at it, get your drivers to work on their braking problems for 3 days .
To me it is either , the test was correctly sanctioned in terms of the Sporting regs, or not .
Hope we have more than a significant correct outcome from the IT, whichever way it goes .

[FoxHound]

What I find staggering is that even though most press conferences in Canada were utterly dominated by the subject, not a single journalist asked specific questions like how Pirelli kept the data hidden or what positions Mercedes personel had in in the test. Of course the chance is there that you'll receive the "no comment" comment, but it would never had hurted and you are almost obliged to asked the question for the chance that you do get decent answers. IMO, really weak journalism over there.

I second that. If you have a look on Twitter it's almost as if they are too scared to ask the right questions.
However, there is the caveat that most journo's accept this is a storm in a tea cup.

[GSpeedR]

In my opinion, Mercedes should either be punished for blatantly cheating or for their stupidity.

That appears to be an unbalanced and biased opinion because you automatically assume that Mecedes will be found guilty of breaking the regulations. As we have learned from the legal experts cited in this thread there is a strong possibility that the tribunal finds Mercedes was not in breach of the regulations. Until the IT gives a ruling on the issue IMO Mercedes are entitled to the assumption of innocence as any other defendant.

I don't share any bias towards or against Mercedes, and I understand the consequences of of giving an opinion before all the facts have been published. However, even if Pirelli are found to be at fault, Merc should have communicated with the ruling body since they were (potentially) violating clear rules, which they didn't.

[WhiteBlue]

How do you come to the conclusion that Merc's race team was around at the private test. My information so far is that the drivers were available and on site. Do you have specifics about the presence of anybody else beyond the drivers?

Brawn himself said that it wasn't secret because the other teams should've noticed that the team wasn't packing up. That implies they stayed . Besides , Merc's engineers had to be there because there's no way in hell they just entrusted their current racecar to someone else,.especially so close to a race. Do you think Merc would risk allowing people unexperienced in their methods to screw the car up?...

I'm sorry to see that you are not answering my question. That indicates that you have indeed no specific information who was on site from Mercedes for the Pirelli test.

[WhiteBlue]

It is possible to have a significant degree of independence. Pirelli used an independent company to handle the data for the Lotus tests and arranged for the ECU to be locked down. They also used non-Lotus drivers.
http://adamcooperf1.com/2013/05/31/anal ... s-and-fia/

Richard, that is excellent input. I have read that report by Cooper and I must say that it shows a great effort by Pirelli to fire wall the car generated data from the car provider. They have a specially set up Atlas data suit designed by McLaren electronics which blocks the export of all relevant data for all but a small team of Pirelli commissioned engineers. All the tyre data are separately recorded by Rennworks and never go to the car monitoring team. They go immediately into the Pirelli data vault. I can very well imagine that Pirelli made a further development step on their test procedures that will have enabled them to restrict all data generation from the test car to a very small group of engineers that were not identical with the Mercedes racing team engineers. If Mercedes found them some people - presumably also ex Toyota Cologne - who could operate their car safely with a bit of prior training I can imagine that those people would have handled the running of the Atlas suite for Pirelli. All Pirelli had to do from there was making sure that all the data were only exported to their own vault and subsequently deleted by the team that ran the car. The other thing they obviously had to do was setting up a confidentiality agreement with the test engineers (ex Toyota?) not to pass any information to any F1 competitor or third party. If they did it that way the test was entirely controlled by and private to Pirelli. It looks increasingly doable to me.

[Pierce89]

How do you come to the conclusion that Merc's race team was around at the private test. My information so far is that the drivers were available and on site. Do you have specifics about the presence of anybody else beyond the drivers?

Brawn himself said that it wasn't secret because the other teams should've noticed that the team wasn't packing up. That implies they stayed . Besides , Merc's engineers had to be there because there's no way in hell they just entrusted their current racecar to someone else,.especially so close to a race. Do you think Merc would risk allowing people unexperienced in their methods to screw the car up?...

I'm sorry to see that you are not answering my question. That indicates that you have indeed no specific information who was on site from Mercedes for the Pirelli test.

I never said the entire team was there and you know there aren't specifics available about exactly which personell were there. But, you know as well as I do, that you're just being obtuse. There's no chance on this Earth that the 2013 Merc was run without the presence of MGP engineers. To suggest otherwise is just being argumentative and disingenuous. Please don't behave in that fashion when we're trying to have a legitimate conversation.

[kaller]

Actually I'm a little bit surprise that the question who "ran" the test is associated with the question who has seen which kind of data. They way I see it (and Toto was quoted) it is about who generated the data. Who evaluated the data is totally different and has nothing to with who ran the tests. To me "running a test" means giving directions and conditions, tell the people what has to be done. Of course the defense would be easier for Merc if they can prove that did not see much data, but I don't think it is a requirement for their defense to succeed.