Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team 2013

[munudeges]

Red Bull has experienced this odd thing too, but luckily in a practice sessions rather then a race.

Merc's front wing is hardly doing anything 'novel' is it?

It's the same story with this team. Things appear to move forwards only for something to happen that makes you go 'Hmmmmm'.

[munudeges]

...the spring that hit Massa...

Same team, different colours.

Its a shame that anything to do with Merc attracts strong emotional responses both for and against.

If Merc got into Formula 1 and hadn't bought an outfit that had a long, long, long history of incompetence and mismanagement (way before Merc got involved), exceptionally poor cars often with poor build quality, sinking like a brick when things had just started to move forward and were running their outfit with anything approaching competence then we wouldn't be going there.

It's not a 'for' or 'against' anything Richard. You can only look at a duck so many times before you're forced to conclude it's a duck. How would Oscar Wilde have put it?

[Cocles]

Right now, Willis is working on the W06, and Costa on the W05. Lowe was placed in charge of the W04 shortly after he showed up (Bell was directly supervising it after Costa had moved on to the W05). I imagine Lowe is still in charge of W04, but I doubt the 2013 program still has any significant resources for development.

[munudeges]

Two different teams and leads producing two different cars for the next two years, under the same regulations where continuity is vitally important, where no one has any idea what the W05 will look like let alone how it will fare and where how it will follow into the W06 is a glint in someone's eye? McLaren dispensed with their silly alternate design teams, but they only did that in alternate seasons, for exactly that lack of continuity.

Saints preserve us. How much more of this insanity are we going to see?

[xpensive]

....
Saints preserve us. How much more of this insanity are we going to see?

While running the risk of losing another three precious votes, I'd say for as long as Daimler's money and interest last?

But again, isn't this is xactly why this team catches all that interest from F1T members, friend or foe?

[Richard]

They're not much different to McLaren (flying wheels and random features every year are specialities) , Lotus (fire being their speciality for 2012), Red Bull (KERS and alternators being their timeless classics) and so on.

All teams other than Red Bull seem to struggle to maintain consistent performance, yet Merc seem to catch all the attention on here, even after demonstrably showing a consistent improvement. Surely the team with more money than sense and dodgy management decisions is down the road at Woking?

The only reason I can see for the flack aimed at Merc after their improvement is animosity toward the owners or managers, because the flack they get tends to be personal and doesn't match the results. You may not like them, but they are only 10 points behind Ferrari and have more race wins than Ferrari. I think the other teams on the grid would love to have that level of incompetence and insanity.

Anyway, it looks likes a platypus.

[dans79]

Two different teams and leads producing two different cars for the next two years, under the same regulations where continuity is vitally important, where no one has any idea what the W05 will look like let alone how it will fare and where how it will follow into the W06 is a glint in someone's eye? McLaren dispensed with their silly alternate design teams, but they only did that in alternate seasons, for exactly that lack of continuity.

Saints preserve us. How much more of this insanity are we going to see?

This is a common strategy in large tech companies, it's actually how some companies make significant advances. They key is you must have a large and well defined management structure, and you must have an over abundance of staff. This allows you to have multiple groups of people working on the same or very similar problems from different points of view. They key is regular communication between the groups, and enough time built into project plans to allow team A to say team B has a better solution to this problem we are going to use theirs.

[SectorOne]

And it´s not like the W06 will be finished at the same time as the W05. W06 is on paper i would assume. Or at that point where any new regulations or tricks found by other teams next year can easily be incorporated into the design.

[FoxHound]

I doubt very much whether munedeges actually understands exactly what Mercedes are doing with their alternate year strategy.
I sure as hell don't, and I watch this team like a hawk.
Suffice to say, this was the year the results began to take an upswing....and the management changes and staff acquisitions occurred in the beginning of 2012 through the year.

So either they where all smoking crack in 2010 and 2011 and the reformative 2012, or the changes have worked with tangible results as proof positive.

[xpensive]

...
Suffice to say, this was the year the results began to take an upswing....and the management changes and staff acquisitions occurred in the beginning of 2012 through the year.
...

Imagine the results they can have with just one or two Technical Directors more?

[SectorOne]

Today´s feel good video from both the drivers, quite a funny story in there about both going off on the first test together, on the first lap, in the same corner essentially parking the cars right next to each other
Apparently there was one wet patch on the whole track and it caught both out haha,

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqqYwvh00uM[/youtube]

[dren]

I was under the impression they are not designing the actual W06 now, but they are developing new tech for future cars.

As for the team itself, they have produced some dogs, but also have produced some very good if not great cars.

[Kiril Varbanov]

Rosberg's racing helmet has been stolen. Nico published a CCTV image of the thief. I did my best to re-arrange the photo.



More details: a Schuberth registered with the Number R-NR 074/02-13. The SNELL-Label is ST 270141. FIA label gold: AH04248. FIA Label white: Nr. 134

I need the CSI team to clean the pixels ...

[GitanesBlondes]

Better get Hercule Poirot and Ms. Marple on it.

[ThumbsUp]

Here is another pic of the dude. I also rotated the image.