2016 Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team - Mercedes

[Manoah2u]

anybody would say stuff like that in the heat of the moment like that. from all people, he gets the engine blown, whilst ZERO other merc-powered cars get ANY engine-related tech problems. ZERO. he had them ALL. it's not far reached, just moment-caused. that's what emotion, and fighting for the WDC feels like.

Apart from that, i think lewis DOES need to take more control in absolutely DEMANDING flawlessly working material. Let the mechanics work double on their jobs to make sure nothing goes wrong. Hell if i was lewis, i'd promise them all 10k extra bonus at the end of the year out of his own pocket if he grabs the title. If he has 20 mechanics personally working for him, that equals 200.000 USD at the end, which is really laughable thinking about what he earns winning the title and salary and bonusses. if he promises all 1000 employees 5 K extra, that would cost him 5 million so that might be a bit much, but in the end, he can definately afford it. Offcourse 5k might not sound as a lot, but if he'd pay equal to every single member there, including cleaning staff [ if that is part of the 1000 employees ] then the complete spirit of the team lifts in your advantage.

I hope Lewis will stand by his word to leak and open up all about that little incident before and all around it of which he stated as long as he is in F1 he can't open up about it. I feel there's more behind the scenes we are willing to believe and take word for - then again, i'm sure that same goes for RB and Ferrari aswell, not even mentioning Mclaren.

[Manoah2u]

Either way, what does he need to do to still grab that title?

[Cold Fussion]

My goodness, this makes Loose Change seem well reasoned and logical.

[Fulcrum]

I have no intention of stirring the pot here, but I'm sure this won't produce the intended reaction.

Here is a somewhat complete, although not definitive, summary of the season so far. I've categorized notable incidents that could have affected net race outcome for either driver. Red indicates a terminal incident resulting in immediate retirement.



There are two points worth mentioning immediately.

- Hamilton has experienced more issues; we all know this.
- Mercedes have only managed 2 completely clean weekends, and I'm being generous with Singapore, as both drivers reported brake issues during the race.

To summarise the above in another way.



Hamilton scores more points, on average, than Rosberg in like-for-like circumstances. Rosberg is ahead as he has experienced more 'Clean' races.

Hamilton has had more pure mechanical issues than Rosberg, although 3 of his mechanical issues have been confined to qualifying; if they had struck during the race, I think the title battle would practically be over by this point.

The drivers are pretty much equal on collisions. Spain and Austria the most notable instances. I've recorded an incident for Rosberg in Canada, but not Hamilton. Even though Hamilton and Rosberg were involved here, Rosberg's race was affected, not Hamilton's. Hamilton has been hit by Bottas (Bahrain), and Nasr (China). Rosberg has been hit by Hamilton (Canada) and Vettel (Malaysia).

Hamilton has had worse starts than Rosberg. You can measure this any way you like, Rosberg's start performance is better.

In spite of the obviously higher incidence of mechanical issues for Hamilton this year, he can consider himself slightly lucky in the sense that most of the issues have allowed him to score points. By way of counterexample, Vettel has had 8 significant incidents this year, 4 of which have resulted in immediate retirement.

This season is by no means over for Hamilton. Hamilton managed 100 points between Austria and Germany, an interval where he experienced relatively few issues. In the same interval, Rosberg only scored 57 points. Were that to repeat, Hamilton would lead Rosberg by 20 points going into the last race.

If Hamilton doesn't have any further issues, the Championship is subject to his own performance. He needs to optimise his starts, if possible, but that's about it.

Having said that, Rosberg clearly isn't far behind Hamilton's level. On pure speed, he's a bit slower. Without significantly close opposition, he's been able to maximise his opportunities. The edge he has experienced with respect to reliability and starts have clearly helped, but he's consistently fast nonetheless.

[turbof1]

I have no intention of stirring the pot here, but I'm sure this won't produce the intended reaction.

Here is a somewhat complete, although not definitive, summary of the season so far. I've categorized notable incidents that could have affected net race outcome for either driver. Red indicates a terminal incident resulting in immediate retirement.

http://i.imgur.com/9u1zjBY.png

There are two points worth mentioning immediately.

- Hamilton has experienced more issues; we all know this.
- Mercedes have only managed 2 completely clean weekends, and I'm being generous with Singapore, as both drivers reported brake issues during the race.

To summarise the above in another way.

http://i.imgur.com/Pj4sCLT.png

Hamilton scores more points, on average, than Rosberg in like-for-like circumstances. Rosberg is ahead as he has experienced more 'Clean' races.

Hamilton has had more pure mechanical issues than Rosberg, although 3 of his mechanical issues have been confined to qualifying; if they had struck during the race, I think the title battle would practically be over by this point.

The drivers are pretty much equal on collisions. Spain and Austria the most notable instances. I've recorded an incident for Rosberg in Canada, but not Hamilton. Even though Hamilton and Rosberg were involved here, Rosberg's race was affected, not Hamilton's. Hamilton has been hit by Bottas (Bahrain), and Nasr (China). Rosberg has been hit by Hamilton (Canada) and Vettel (Malaysia).

Hamilton has had worse starts than Rosberg. You can measure this any way you like, Rosberg's start performance is better.

In spite of the obviously higher incidence of mechanical issues for Hamilton this year, he can consider himself slightly lucky in the sense that most of the issues have allowed him to score points. By way of counterexample, Vettel has had 8 significant incidents this year, 4 of which have resulted in immediate retirement.

This season is by no means over for Hamilton. Hamilton managed 100 points between Austria and Germany, an interval where he experienced relatively few issues. In the same interval, Rosberg only scored 57 points. Were that to repeat, Hamilton would lead Rosberg by 20 points going into the last race.

If Hamilton doesn't have any further issues, the Championship is subject to his own performance. He needs to optimise his starts, if possible, but that's about it.

Having said that, Rosberg clearly isn't far behind Hamilton's level. On pure speed, he's a bit slower. Without significantly close opposition, he's been able to maximise his opportunities. The edge he has experienced with respect to reliability and starts have clearly helped, but he's consistently fast nonetheless.

Regarding the list: Rosberg had the same issue in Baku. The difference being Rosberg was able to fix it.

Moreover, many of these issues could have manifested with Rosberg as well at some point, with the team taking measures to prevent them from happening after they found out about it when it happened with Hamilton.

My first conclusion would be that Mercedes should get a handle on their overall reliability, especially regarding being able to avoid issues from ever happening in the first place. The PU needs therefore to be more accurately stressed on the rig.

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.

[Cold Fussion]

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.

That's not a hypothesis, that is a baseless guess. There is no evidence to suggest Rosberg's mechanics are more competent than Hamilton's; furthermore the issues Hamilton has had have not been attributed to mechanic or installation issues.

[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.

That's not a hypothesis, that is a baseless guess. There is no evidence to suggest Rosberg's mechanics are more competent than Hamilton's; furthermore the issues Hamilton has had have not been attributed to mechanic or installation issues.

Anything is guessing at this point. The issues have never been attributed to anything officially. There is no data, no solid information you or I have to make a based hypothesis. I am merely pointing a possibility.

Mind I am neither insinuating bias, but rather "luck of the draw".

Btw, do look up the meaning of hypothesis. The term refers to a statement that still has to be proved, not to a statement already proved .

[FoxHound]

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.

That's not a hypothesis, that is a baseless guess. There is no evidence to suggest Rosberg's mechanics are more competent than Hamilton's; furthermore the issues Hamilton has had have not been attributed to mechanic or installation issues.

There actually is evidence to suggest this due to identical cars having polarised reliability records.

Note 'suggest'.

Otherwise you are into realms of conspiracy, acts of god, and luck.

[Jolle]

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.

That's not a hypothesis, that is a baseless guess. There is no evidence to suggest Rosberg's mechanics are more competent than Hamilton's; furthermore the issues Hamilton has had have not been attributed to mechanic or installation issues.

If you look to the past three years instead of this year, you can see that Mercedes has " silly little mistakes" in parts that are not directly performance driven or developed new each year. Like the wire loom in Rosbergs steering rack in '14 or his throttle in '15.

I presume that the engine/ERS failures in the past three years (from memory: Canada ' 14, Abu'14, Italy'15,2xH+T beginning'16 and this one) comes from little mistakes/design tolerances from the engine plant, not from the race team (like the other little snags that costed them dearly). I presume that at brixworth they just make engines, not working in eight teams working for eight different drivers.

Just a case of very bad luck for Lewis that he's been on the receiving end a bit more then the other drivers the past few years.

[turbof1]

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.

Also, because Mercedes has a much better understanding of the requirements of the engine, they will have much better optimized cooling and packaging. Naturally, since they design and produce the engine. Customer teams will take bigger margins.

All of this means Mercedes is in a better position to extract maximum performance out of the engine, but the other side of the coin of this, is that components will be pushed closer to their limit. Any additional gremlin (bad batch, miscalculations, wrong fitting,...) might be too much in such cases.

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.

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.

[Fulcrum]

I have no intention of stirring the pot here, but I'm sure this won't produce the intended reaction.

Here is a somewhat complete, although not definitive, summary of the season so far. I've categorized notable incidents that could have affected net race outcome for either driver. Red indicates a terminal incident resulting in immediate retirement.

http://i.imgur.com/9u1zjBY.png

There are two points worth mentioning immediately.

- Hamilton has experienced more issues; we all know this.
- Mercedes have only managed 2 completely clean weekends, and I'm being generous with Singapore, as both drivers reported brake issues during the race.

To summarise the above in another way.

http://i.imgur.com/Pj4sCLT.png

Hamilton scores more points, on average, than Rosberg in like-for-like circumstances. Rosberg is ahead as he has experienced more 'Clean' races.

Hamilton has had more pure mechanical issues than Rosberg, although 3 of his mechanical issues have been confined to qualifying; if they had struck during the race, I think the title battle would practically be over by this point.

The drivers are pretty much equal on collisions. Spain and Austria the most notable instances. I've recorded an incident for Rosberg in Canada, but not Hamilton. Even though Hamilton and Rosberg were involved here, Rosberg's race was affected, not Hamilton's. Hamilton has been hit by Bottas (Bahrain), and Nasr (China). Rosberg has been hit by Hamilton (Canada) and Vettel (Malaysia).

Hamilton has had worse starts than Rosberg. You can measure this any way you like, Rosberg's start performance is better.

In spite of the obviously higher incidence of mechanical issues for Hamilton this year, he can consider himself slightly lucky in the sense that most of the issues have allowed him to score points. By way of counterexample, Vettel has had 8 significant incidents this year, 4 of which have resulted in immediate retirement.

This season is by no means over for Hamilton. Hamilton managed 100 points between Austria and Germany, an interval where he experienced relatively few issues. In the same interval, Rosberg only scored 57 points. Were that to repeat, Hamilton would lead Rosberg by 20 points going into the last race.

If Hamilton doesn't have any further issues, the Championship is subject to his own performance. He needs to optimise his starts, if possible, but that's about it.

Having said that, Rosberg clearly isn't far behind Hamilton's level. On pure speed, he's a bit slower. Without significantly close opposition, he's been able to maximise his opportunities. The edge he has experienced with respect to reliability and starts have clearly helped, but he's consistently fast nonetheless.

Regarding the list: Rosberg had the same issue in Baku. The difference being Rosberg was able to fix it.

Moreover, many of these issues could have manifested with Rosberg as well at some point, with the team taking measures to prevent them from happening after they found out about it when it happened with Hamilton.

My first conclusion would be that Mercedes should get a handle on their overall reliability, especially regarding being able to avoid issues from ever happening in the first place. The PU needs therefore to be more accurately stressed on the rig.

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.

Yes, there are probably several examples of issues I haven't included that could be included. I've tried to include things that I can remember, and also the things that had a material effect on a race outcome. So Hamilton was technically involved in a collision in Canada (could have resulted in a DNF in other circumstances), but as there was no adverse outcome, it was left off his roster of incidents. Likewise for Rosberg in Baku. It could have been very serious if not for the good fortune / recall of switch placements for engine modes.

I think the statement regarding Mercedes reliability is a bit misplaced. Mercedes have the best reliability of any supplier on the grid. While this does not excuse failures, the balance of their performance/failure ratio is excellent - best performance and best reliability usually being contradictory engineering outcomes. Again, it is always a reasonable stance to aim to improve reliability, zero tolerance, etc... and I would anticipate they have implemented measures to at least maintain their standards.

Also, it is worth considering that the Mercedes package has probably operated well within its capabilities at various stages in the past few years. I'm not suggesting deliberate sandbagging 100% of the time, but for a large amount of the time they haven't needed to explore the performance envelope "in the Wild". Stress testing in live conditions being way more valuable than anything you can achieve on a dyno.

Now Red Bull, Ferrari sometimes, are legitimately faster. Not faster than Mercedes, but requiring a little more effort from Mercedes to maintain an advantage. Perhaps there are a few aspects of brittleness in the Mercedes engine functionality being exposed by the increased demands being placed on them by the competition?

Regarding Hamilton's mechanics being inferior to Rosberg's (this year), that is a possibility - as you have stressed. I'm not going to dwell on that too much, but I'll look into the data that's available and see if there is some fire for that smoke.

The other thing I didn't highlight in my original post, but which I'll briefly highlight concerns the nature of Mercedes unreliability in general this year.

In the heat of the moment Hamilton had this to say:
https://www.tubeid.net/watch/download-v ... ia-gp.html

I just can't believe that there's 8 Mercedes cars, and only my engines are the ones that have been going this year.

This sentiment was expressed in a notably moderated form later:

http://www.formula1.com/en/latest/featu ... -team.html

As I said in the TV interviews, Mercedes have built 43 engines or however many it might be with the extra three I've had, and I have happen to have most of, if not all of, the failures.

Most is Hamilton's closest approximation to being accurate. I'm not going to blame the guy for being emotional, but he'd do well to realise he isn't the only Mercedes driver to experience less than bulletproof reliability from the drive-train this year.

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.

[toraabe]

Remember .. The Merc F1 car is the fastest, and to be the fastest you have to be on the limit. .. . simple as that,.

[Cold Fussion]

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.

That's not a hypothesis, that is a baseless guess. There is no evidence to suggest Rosberg's mechanics are more competent than Hamilton's; furthermore the issues Hamilton has had have not been attributed to mechanic or installation issues.

Anything is guessing at this point. The issues have never been attributed to anything officially. There is no data, no solid information you or I have to make a based hypothesis. I am merely pointing a possibility.

Mind I am neither insinuating bias, but rather "luck of the draw".

Btw, do look up the meaning of hypothesis. The term refers to a statement that still has to be proved, not to a statement already proved .

There is an immense difference between a hypothesis and a guess.

[Sevach]

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.

Also, because Mercedes has a much better understanding of the requirements of the engine, they will have much better optimized cooling and packaging. Naturally, since they design and produce the engine. Customer teams will take bigger margins.

All of this means Mercedes is in a better position to extract maximum performance out of the engine, but the other side of the coin of this, is that components will be pushed closer to their limit. Any additional gremlin (bad batch, miscalculations, wrong fitting,...) might be too much in such cases.

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.

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.

I agree with you that Mercedes runs finer margins than the costumer teams, Mercedes is right on the line in a number of items, brakes, clutch, suspension arms... I'm assuming that extends to cooling and packaging as well, i think all those years only the Brackley team choose to go for a water intercooler (and nothing on the sidepods).

The costumers operate on a budget, who knows what their contract dictate... do they have to pay extra if they go over 5?
Not to mention if they overshoot the mark trying to be aggressive they'll have to waste time and money they don't have fixing the issue.

It happens with Ferrari too, the factory team has had a lot more engine problems than Sauber and Haas(Haas being a new team has had a bucket load of niggling issues, but the engine seems bulletproof in their cars).


Now... to the Rosberg vs Hamilton part of the problem...
Hamilton had multiple issues with the MGU-H early on in the season, apparently Mercedes indeed found a weakness because they made a reliability upgrade to address this part, Rosberg was lucky that his MGU-H managed to do 4 or 5 races and they changed it on schedule.

Both cars MGU-H have been reliable since.

We'll have to wait and see what Mercedes says about Hamilton's Malaysia engine...

The tricky bit...
The "it's Hamilton's fault" argument (yikes), this is very complex because unlike in the past it's not a case of abusing the engine, overreving, downshifting too aggressively... no, none of that, these days the issue is pushing the right buttons, many drivers struggled with their engine settings while there were radio restrictions (Hamilton in Baku included), but now with free radio that shouldn't be a problem... so i'm going with no here in relation to this latest problem.

[basti313]

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.