

There are no positives for the remainder of the calendar for Mercedes. The only positive is that every weekend that goes by, we draw closer to the conclusion of this god forsaken ruleset. No steady development, Kimi underdelivering under pressure since Monaco and dumb strategy decisions. I think the W17 will be a flop with the current technical team.
It could be that the technical team never fully grasped these rules completely and are still putting fires from the zero side-pod design choices that never got dialed out. I am skeptical of the W17 until proven otherwise.MB_Racer wrote: ↑07 Sep 2025, 21:00I honestly don’t understand why the upgrades are not working this year…
To my knowledge all the upgrades since 2013 that were brought always worked and our team was very good at improving throughout the year…
The only exception is this year, 2025… could this be a real issue for the future ?
Does it show a lack of quality in our technical & aero departments ?
How about Vegas? The cooler temps have suited Mercedes in the last few years... Are they still working the tyres too hard?OverheatedTurbo wrote: ↑07 Sep 2025, 19:21There are no positives for the remainder of the calendar for Mercedes. The only positive is that every weekend that goes by, we draw closer to the conclusion of this god forsaken ruleset. No steady development, Kimi underdelivering under pressure since Monaco and dumb strategy decisions. I think the W17 will be a flop with the current technical team.
That RB21 with Max Verstappen might win it actually.WardenOfTheNorth wrote: ↑08 Sep 2025, 01:31How about Vegas? The cooler temps have suited Mercedes in the last few years... Are they still working the tyres too hard?OverheatedTurbo wrote: ↑07 Sep 2025, 19:21There are no positives for the remainder of the calendar for Mercedes. The only positive is that every weekend that goes by, we draw closer to the conclusion of this god forsaken ruleset. No steady development, Kimi underdelivering under pressure since Monaco and dumb strategy decisions. I think the W17 will be a flop with the current technical team.
I think Toto was hoping Kimi to be the next Lewis Hamilton. Max didnt start his F1 career in top team, only Lewis did when he was brought in by Ron Denis to drive alongside Alonso in championship winning carmvfad wrote: ↑07 Sep 2025, 20:51It's obvious that Kimi will continue next year. Toto would never replace him for now because that would be admitting his mistake in putting a boy in F1, thinking he was the next Max Verstappen...
Kimi will definitely improve next year with a new and different car, he'll be able to improve significantly compared to Russell. He's a very very very good driver (just like Russell, Leclerc, Bortoleto, etc).
But he's also lucky. If any other driver coming from F2 (Frederick Vesti, for example) had performed like that, he would have been under much greater pressure and probably wouldn't have continued the following year.
With Kimi, the hype train went too far.. the boy had a docu-movie made about him, before he even ran his first official race lap as a mercedes driver. I call that 'a bit too much'. Things like this, and the inability of Toto to keep his mouth shut (the decision itself announces what he thinks about the boy, there is no need to keep talking about like how film industry celebrities love talking about the anonymous charity they do) have placed immense pressure on Kimi and even the tiniest mistakes are getting scrutinized by the media. Which traps him in a vicious cycle - if the mind is disturbed, it leads to more mistakes, more scrutiny... vicious cycle.CHT wrote: ↑08 Sep 2025, 01:40I think Toto was hoping Kimi to be the next Lewis Hamilton. Max didnt start his F1 career in top team, only Lewis did when he was brought in by Ron Denis to drive alongside Alonso in championship winning carmvfad wrote: ↑07 Sep 2025, 20:51It's obvious that Kimi will continue next year. Toto would never replace him for now because that would be admitting his mistake in putting a boy in F1, thinking he was the next Max Verstappen...
Kimi will definitely improve next year with a new and different car, he'll be able to improve significantly compared to Russell. He's a very very very good driver (just like Russell, Leclerc, Bortoleto, etc).
But he's also lucky. If any other driver coming from F2 (Frederick Vesti, for example) had performed like that, he would have been under much greater pressure and probably wouldn't have continued the following year.
??? Strategy for George was perfect in my point of view. They optimized the runtime on both compounds and pitted him perfectly into clean air.OverheatedTurbo wrote: ↑08 Sep 2025, 11:57“All of us” yeah, except George. George is managing pretty well with the cards he is dealt with (dog --- car). All of us should be only the conservative strategy team and car designers that can’t get their head out of their ass.