Mercedes GP - Inauguration and 1st season

[raymondu999]

Well they could hardly say they'd target 4th, as that means they don't have confidence in advancement.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Well they could hardly say they'd target 4th, as that means they don't have confidence in advancement.

True but then the three main protagonists ahead of them are Red Bull, Ferrari and Mclaren. All 3 are formidable so to target splitting them is a very high target indeed.
You then have Renault who also are trageting the "top 3".

The higher you go, the less air there is to breath.

[raymondu999]

Yes, but what do you expect them to say? "We expect to have kept pace with the front development, but we can't outdevelop them to catch them"

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Yes, but what do you expect them to say? "We expect to have kept pace with the front development, but we can't outdevelop them to catch them"

Are they going to talk themselves into it?

Its their target. Thats fair enough. But Top 3 isnt as menial as it sounds is my point. Mercedes appear to be more conservative than last year. In my view, a good thing and in keeping with Mercedes-Benz in general.

Personally I think 4th is still as good as can be expected. The other 3 are on a different planet in terms of personell and resource. But they should be more competitive this time round...i hope!

[marcush.]

realistically we should expect RB,Ferrari,Mclaren,Mercedes and Renault(depending on who is standing in for poor robert kubica) on the top spot at least at one race or lets say capable of winning.an outside bet would be williams with Barrichello.So,if all those are closely matched it should be more difficult than 2010 to be better than fourth.But we will only know later this year IF it is really close or someone has come up with the jackpot.

[segedunum]

I see big Norbert is closing off the excuses now, including the one about the tyres:

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/89348

"The tyres are the same for everybody and at the end of the day you need to live with it,"

"We know about our shortcomings from 2010 and we want to do a better job. You can say 'we cannot extract the best from the tyres', which we could say last year, but we could not blame Bridgestone for that.

"You can blame your car, you can blame your set-up, you can blame everything that is built around the tyres. But you cannot blame the tyres."

It's been a source of great puzzlement and amusement to me how some people have blamed weight distribution, this that and the other for Mercedes's inability to move forwards when those things are, in fact, their fault.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

So you manage to turn Norberts postive and forward thinking comment into a negative.

Sigh