2016 Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team - Mercedes

[Mattchu]

I personally believe (yes, this will be opinion) that the woks Mercedes team has to deal more with unreliability, simply because they push the engine harder. I remember back in 2014, Williams had to request to Mercedes if they were allowed to use a higher engine mode. I think this is a general principle. Which for the record is not bad: Mercedes will be looked at if the engine explodes due a customer team pushing it too hard. So customer teams have to ask permission.

Finally, you also have the case where any updates to the engine, will go to the works team first and when those 2 cars supplied, to Williams, then Force India, and ultimately to Marussia. This can create situations where Mercedes has updates, but the other teams have not yet. When Mercedes runs into problems, they'll rectify the issue for the other teams too, in many cases before those teams were able to run the updates.

Personally i think this is where Formula 1 has become a bit of a joke sport (and i use the term `sport` loosely)!

How can a customer team ever be expected to be competitive with the engine/pu manufacturer team if they have one arm tied behind there back! The engines/pu`s should all be exactly the same spec and all power modes should be available for all teams to use at their discretion.
The FIA should have a mandate in place that if a new upgrade is available then enough units should be ready to supply all the teams if they so desire. If they don`t want the upgraded engine that`s fine but at least we`d all know...
The way it is now is just a cartel with the dominant parties giving scraps to the lesser teams and politics having so much of a influence on the outcome!

[Jolle]

I personally believe (yes, this will be opinion) that the woks Mercedes team has to deal more with unreliability, simply because they push the engine harder. I remember back in 2014, Williams had to request to Mercedes if they were allowed to use a higher engine mode. I think this is a general principle. Which for the record is not bad: Mercedes will be looked at if the engine explodes due a customer team pushing it too hard. So customer teams have to ask permission.

Finally, you also have the case where any updates to the engine, will go to the works team first and when those 2 cars supplied, to Williams, then Force India, and ultimately to Marussia. This can create situations where Mercedes has updates, but the other teams have not yet. When Mercedes runs into problems, they'll rectify the issue for the other teams too, in many cases before those teams were able to run the updates.

Personally i think this is where Formula 1 has become a bit of a joke sport (and i use the term `sport` loosely)!

How can a customer team ever be expected to be competitive with the engine/pu manufacturer team if they have one arm tied behind there back! The engines/pu`s should all be exactly the same spec and all power modes should be available for all teams to use at their discretion.
The FIA should have a mandate in place that if a new upgrade is available then enough units should be ready to supply all the teams if they so desire. If they don`t want the upgraded engine that`s fine but at least we`d all know...
The way it is now is just a cartel with the dominant parties giving scraps to the lesser teams and politics having so much of a influence on the outcome!

Because they have a limit of 5 PU's a season, they need to run in limited modes most of the time. To keep it fair and/or workable for all the customers Mercedes (in this case) regulates how long per GP you can run a specific mode. Else, FI for instance, would use the high mode for one GP, gain an advantage and ruin the PU in one GP. Not just bad press then their PU's can last the distance but also almost a lottery who's going to use it in what GP.

Plus, FI and Williams with their chassis budget that is dwarfed compared to AMG are never going to beat them anyway.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

As this point is stressed again and again: They shifted 5 mechanics from the pit crew. Not less, not more. They did not shift the data engineers, nor the race engineers.
Furthermore these mechanics do not touch anything in the failed components, they just mount the components to the car with a 2-eye-principle, so an engineer is always watching their hands.

There is simply no coincidence between the 5 exchanged mechanics and the mechanical failures. By the way, where are the rumors coming from? Did Ham say anything like that? There would be rather a coincidence between the bad pitstops and the mechanics exchange.

Why did they changed "just 5 mechanics"? Which other team has done that? What is the exact reason for that?
Lewis Hamilton admits Mercedes' decision to move his mechanics to rival Nico Rosberg's garage has 'all sorts of psychological effects

In my point of view this is a completely wrong way to look at it. Three out of 42 is just nonsense statistics as only one ICE failed. Last year the one with the ICE failure was Rosberg, so we would be good on statistics if we count this one...

The other two failures were MGU-H failures, which burned away when using the Q-mode. They survived normal usage during a race, but burned once at Q, so I assume a similar bad batch. It was simply bad luck to get the bad batch and then an understandable coincidence to get, due to the failure, another H of this batch mounted.

More than the number of components, the manner and timing where they fail is more critical.
-The MGU-H popped just before the Q3 started, which is where the Quali Mode is used, meaning the components fail even before qualy mode is used.
-He suffers a repeat of the MGU-H failure in Bahrain, again in Q3. Common sense.
-Lewis suddenly loses power and stalls in Monaco, again in Q3. A restart works just fine, but loses critical banker lap and making him go longer.
-In Russia, the moment he catches Nico and starts chasing him, guess what happens! Water pressure goes off, forcing Lewis to abort the chase and miraculously the car finishes the race with no water at all.
-In Canada, Lewis had a great friday, was over half a second faster consistently. What happens on Saturday, starts losing feel of the car. Luckily manages to get a pole and admits, it wasn't a great lap as he was struggling.
-In Baku, once again Lewis had a great friday and was more than half a second quick in every lap against Nico. Boom! He loses all the balance for Saturday. Pathetic FP3 with too many break locking and finally crashing, in Q3. In race, Lewis loses power mode and significantly loses power. It was said that Nico also had the problem, but he doesn't lose lap time as Lewis does and manages to fix it too. How? When Lewis asks over the radio, should I try different modes, the answer is "we don't suggest that".
- In Singapore, a freak hydraulic leak forces a whole session to be abandoned. A freak hydraulic leak? Who was responsible for it? Generally, both the cars are so similarly set up (by everyone in Mercedes' admission) with very limited variation. Still, Lewis' side of the garage is unable to replicate Nico's data for Lewis' setup. His car was 0.7 seconds off the pace on Qualy. Nico crashes in FP1, but that has no bearing on his car!!!

-From Singapore 2015, Mercedes changed the suspension type that was not attuned to the feeling of the car for Lewis, which started favoring Nico.
-Since last year's Hungary, they have clutch issues and they haven't managed to fix it. A Team that has fixed every single issue, without allowing a recurrence, doesn't want to fix the clutch problem. Why?

[Mattchu]

Because they have a limit of 5 PU's a season, they need to run in limited modes most of the time. To keep it fair and/or workable for all the customers Mercedes (in this case) regulates how long per GP you can run a specific mode. Else, FI for instance, would use the high mode for one GP, gain an advantage and ruin the PU in one GP. Not just bad press then their PU's can last the distance but also almost a lottery who's going to use it in what GP.

Plus, FI and Williams with their chassis budget that is dwarfed compared to AMG are never going to beat them anyway.

Easy answer ... scrap the different modes (or maybe have max 2, one for qualy and one for the rest of the time), that would keep it fair(er)
The budget is a different kettle of fish altogether...

[basti313]

Why did they changed "JUST 5 MECHANICS"?

You know it is getting weird, whenever you write about something with Rosberg in the subject? Your hate is making you write completely insane posts. If I would have such an agenda on any driver, I would just try to keep away from the team thread or any other thread dealing with him.

[ringo]

Haryanto - Driveshaft failure - Australia
Hulkenberg - Oil leak - Spain
Massa - Overheating - Canada
Wehrlein - Oil leak - Italy
Bottas - Gearbox- Singapore

These only represent the DNF-worthy issues I can remember, I'm sure there have been others.

These aren't the engine though. They are in order:

gearbox
gearbox/ancillaries
radiator/ ancillaries
gearbox/ancillaries
gearbox

These are mechanic related and have nothing to do with the sealed mercedes engine supplied to the teams.

Hamilton is fairly accurate when he says its only his engines that fail.

[turbof1]

As this point is stressed again and again: They shifted 5 mechanics from the pit crew. Not less, not more. They did not shift the data engineers, nor the race engineers.
Furthermore these mechanics do not touch anything in the failed components, they just mount the components to the car with a 2-eye-principle, so an engineer is always watching their hands.

There is simply no coincidence between the 5 exchanged mechanics and the mechanical failures. By the way, where are the rumors coming from? Did Ham say anything like that? There would be rather a coincidence between the bad pitstops and the mechanics exchange.

Why did they changed "just 5 mechanics"? Which other team has done that? What is the exact reason for that?
Lewis Hamilton admits Mercedes' decision to move his mechanics to rival Nico Rosberg's garage has 'all sorts of psychological effects

In my point of view this is a completely wrong way to look at it. Three out of 42 is just nonsense statistics as only one ICE failed. Last year the one with the ICE failure was Rosberg, so we would be good on statistics if we count this one...

The other two failures were MGU-H failures, which burned away when using the Q-mode. They survived normal usage during a race, but burned once at Q, so I assume a similar bad batch. It was simply bad luck to get the bad batch and then an understandable coincidence to get, due to the failure, another H of this batch mounted.

More than the number of components, the manner and timing where they fail is more critical.
-The MGU-H popped just before the Q3 started, which is where the Quali Mode is used, meaning the components fail even before qualy mode is used.
-He suffers a repeat of the MGU-H failure in Bahrain, again in Q3. Common sense.
-Lewis suddenly loses power and stalls in Monaco, again in Q3. A restart works just fine, but loses critical banker lap and making him go longer.
-In Russia, the moment he catches Nico and starts chasing him, guess what happens! Water pressure goes off, forcing Lewis to abort the chase and miraculously the car finishes the race with no water at all.
-In Canada, Lewis had a great friday, was over half a second faster consistently. What happens on Saturday, starts losing feel of the car. Luckily manages to get a pole and admits, it wasn't a great lap as he was struggling.
-In Baku, once again Lewis had a great friday and was more than half a second quick in every lap against Nico. Boom! He loses all the balance for Saturday. Pathetic FP3 with too many break locking and finally crashing, in Q3. In race, Lewis loses power mode and significantly loses power. It was said that Nico also had the problem, but he doesn't lose lap time as Lewis does and manages to fix it too. How? When Lewis asks over the radio, should I try different modes, the answer is "we don't suggest that".
- In Singapore, a freak hydraulic leak forces a whole session to be abandoned. A freak hydraulic leak? Who was responsible for it? Generally, both the cars are so similarly set up (by everyone in Mercedes' admission) with very limited variation. Still, Lewis' side of the garage is unable to replicate Nico's data for Lewis' setup. His car was 0.7 seconds off the pace on Qualy. Nico crashes in FP1, but that has no bearing on his car!!!

-From Singapore 2015, Mercedes changed the suspension type that was not attuned to the feeling of the car for Lewis, which started favoring Nico.
-Since last year's Hungary, they have clutch issues and they haven't managed to fix it. A Team that has fixed every single issue, without allowing a recurrence, doesn't want to fix the clutch problem. Why?

There are way too one sided points in your post which disregard circumstances. One for instance is in Baku where they could not help Lewis because of radio restrictions, an other is where you make too much of deal where you just assume Mercedes does not use full performance mode in Q2 (they actually do and often is needed).

I'm with Basti on this. Your hate for Rosberg is getting the better of yourself. There is no conspiracy against Hamilton (I never ever tried to suggest that, for the record, in my earlier posts). It's down to bad luck. Obviously there are going to be individuals who screwed up, whether it's a bad batch of parts, a bad fitting by a mechanic, or even Hamilton itself, but nowhere is that intentional.

[turbof1]

A further hypothesis regarding the truly bad luck of Hamilton, is that he might have ended up this year with the lesser mechanical team. The respective teams of Hamiton and Rosberg got shuffled this year. It's always a possibility, and I do want to stress on possibility, that Hamilton got overall a bad draw, with perhaps Rosberg's team being able to identify possible issues earlier and before they get critical. For the record, that is hypothesis and not opinion.

As this point is stressed again and again: They shifted 5 mechanics from the pit crew. Not less, not more. They did not shift the data engineers, nor the race engineers.
Furthermore these mechanics do not touch anything in the failed components, they just mount the components to the car with a 2-eye-principle, so an engineer is always watching their hands.

There is simply no coincidence between the 5 exchanged mechanics and the mechanical failures. By the way, where are the rumors coming from? Did Ham say anything like that? There would be rather a coincidence between the bad pitstops and the mechanics exchange.

So yes, out of the 42 engines, Hamilton has got the brunt of the pain, but I don't find that an entirely correct measure. The engines are of course the same, but the stress and useage are not completely identical.

In my point of view this is a completely wrong way to look at it. Three out of 42 is just nonsense statistics as only one ICE failed. Last year the one with the ICE failure was Rosberg, so we would be good on statistics if we count this one...
The other two failures were MGU-H failures, which burned away when using the Q-mode. They survived normal usage during a race, but burned once at Q, so I assume a similar bad batch. It was simply bad luck to get the bad batch and then an understandable coincidence to get, due to the failure, another H of this batch mounted.

That's a great post, and a good insight on procedures. I did not know there would really be an engineering supervising the mechanic's hands.

I also used my terms poorly. When I said engines, I meant PUs. It's a bad habit unfortunaly .

[Juzh]

an other is where you make too much of deal where you just assume Mercedes does not use full performance mode in Q2 (they actually do and often is needed).

Sorry, but they actually really don't, unless it's absolutely critical to put in a fast lap. There was a piece of paper with instructions for hamilton written on it captured on live TV during some qualifying session this year (I think it was bahrain) which clearly stated STRAT 2 for Q2 (might even be strat 3, can't remember, but I do know it wasn't strat 1) and strat 1 would only be used in Q3.

[turbof1]

an other is where you make too much of deal where you just assume Mercedes does not use full performance mode in Q2 (they actually do and often is needed).

Sorry, but they actually really don't, unless it's absolutely critical to put in a fast lap. There was a piece of paper with instructions for hamilton written on it captured on live TV during some qualifying session this year (I think it was bahrain) which clearly stated STRAT 2 for Q2 (might even be strat 3, can't remember, but I do know it wasn't strat 1) and strat 1 would only be used in Q3.

I do remember they had to use strat 1 in Q2 for a run with a harder set, or a second run because the first one got ruined. I'm not entirely sure which race that was. I also have probably not expressed myself well enough: I did not intend to say to use it for Q2 every time, but I do remember they did at times.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Why did they changed "JUST 5 MECHANICS"?

You know it is getting weird, whenever you write about something with Rosberg in the subject? Your hate is making you write completely insane posts. If I would have such an agenda on any driver, I would just try to keep away from the team thread or any other thread dealing with him.

You are trying to justify something that you have no clue on and you are labelling my post as "Nico Hatred". Very funny.
Some people just become weird when you question what the logic is behind their posts. Seems they can't stand scrutiny and need an escape route and they will find one.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

I do remember they had to use strat 1 in Q2 for a run with a harder set, or a second run because the first one got ruined. I'm not entirely sure which race that was. I also have probably not expressed myself well enough: I did not intend to say to use it for Q2 every time, but I do remember they did at times.

And you are using that one instance as a REGULAR to justify the basti313's post of MGU-H failures occuring due to quali mode. It would definitely help if you could list the instances where they ran quali mode in Q2.

[carisi2k]

How funny was Nico's reaction to doing a shoey?

[muhammadtalha.13893]

Someone wants the whole forum to explain the car failures of their favourite driver when everyone thinks that was only bad luck. Nobody owes anyone anything to help calm them down and listen to the mindless ranting and idiotic uses of F words.

Sent from my DROID Turbo using Tapatalk

[Fulcrum]

Haryanto - Driveshaft failure - Australia
Hulkenberg - Oil leak - Spain
Massa - Overheating - Canada
Wehrlein - Oil leak - Italy
Bottas - Gearbox- Singapore

These only represent the DNF-worthy issues I can remember, I'm sure there have been others.

These aren't the engine though. They are in order:

gearbox
gearbox/ancillaries
radiator/ ancillaries
gearbox/ancillaries
gearbox

These are mechanic related and have nothing to do with the sealed mercedes engine supplied to the teams.

Hamilton is fairly accurate when he says its only his engines that fail.

True, but I did say, "less than bulletproof reliability from the drivetrain this year", acknowledging these are not specifically "engine" failures in the traditional sense, but components that in some way depend upon, or are affected by, the PU's functionality. In your own analysis, all of the components are elements of the drive-train - except perhaps the radiator issue for Massa.