Schumacher/Rosberg - the 2010 season unfolds

[andrew]

They're not a million miles away. Schumacher was never going to be driving at the same for as he previously did but he is there or there-abouts.

If you look at it race by race he is doing pretty well for someone that hasn't raced in 3 years. Hopefully he will continue to put Rosberg firmly in his place for the rest of the season.

[Chaparral]

Andrew having never been a fan of Chubacker senior for reasons that dont matter he is doing well in the Merc but credit has to be given to Rosberg he's developing into a quick complete driver - probably another season away from the top rung but I welcome being surprised

[WhiteBlue]

Some voices about the Mercedes drivers Valencia adventure.

I had a bad first lap because one of the Force India's did something stupid and I had to avoid him. Otherwise there would have been a crash. Then my brakes wouldn’t have lasted, so I had to take it easy for the whole race. I was just driving round wasting time.

What goes through my mind is first of all, don’t we have enough trouble as it is? Do we really need brakes too? Then I get a bit worried too, because brakes is not something that you want to be critical with, because that’s not fun, especially on a track like this where I was looking at a few points and think if now I lose my brakes, it’s going to be painful. So that wasn’t too much fun either.

Michael Schmidt analysed the Mercedes pit strategy blunder that cost Michael Schumacher potential points in the race.
http://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/form ... 12974.html

In a nutshell Shovlin made the mistake to over estimate the gap between Schumacher and the following field of cars led by Kamui Kobayashi. They thought they had 18 seconds in hand which should have been enough to leave the pits but they used the lap time which is calculated to the finish line. The field reached the SCL#1 much earlier than the finish line and that is the point when the pit exit light changes from green to red. Schumacher had to wait in front of the red light until the whole field had passed him. Had he emulated Kobayashi's strategy he could have easily ended up fifth or sixth. He was on the same tyres as Kobayashi and his car was substantially faster. He could have also switched to the options for the last five laps with the chance to pass several cars which were on worn out tyres at that time. What a mess Mercedes is making of their races. This is the second time the SC strategy is wrong and now we also get brake problems for Nico. It is time Merc pulls their socks up and gives their drivers a chance to do their job properly.

[manchild]

If you look at it race by race he is doing pretty well for someone that hasn't raced in 3 years. Hopefully he will continue to put Rosberg firmly in his place for the rest of the season.

What are you smoking?

Rosberg 5 5 3 3 13 7 5 6 10 = 75 points

Schumacher 6 10 Ret 10 4 12 4 11 15 = 34 points

[marcush.]

If you look at it race by race he is doing pretty well for someone that hasn't raced in 3 years. Hopefully he will continue to put Rosberg firmly in his place for the rest of the season.

What are you smoking?

Rosberg 5 5 3 3 13 7 5 6 10 = 75 points

Schumacher 6 10 Ret 10 4 12 4 11 15 = 34 points

you obviously dislike MS ,but to be fair...the old man is not setting the world on fire with his current showings ,but we should be clear that expecting this would have been more of a miracle than anything else.
I imagine Heidfeld would not have been much worse or maybe even on points ...but would he have bagged more pointsß I´m not so sure...he was also struggling with tyre issues in recent years.especially in qualy.

[xpensive]

Myself, I'm having problems understading the incentives for either Schumacher or Mercedes for this embarassing xercise, when the former hardly needed the money or the latter the (bad) publicity? We got an unmasket myth though, didn't we manchild?

Afraid this will end in tears, Rosberg is not his dad by a long shot, Kubica would probably embarrass both of them.

[marcush.]

I not sure if you are missing the boat by some margin..
Kubica is surprising me ,but he did not deliver really in the last races ,did he? he had at least in 3 races something worth of a race win....but it just does not add up somehow.

Hamilton...he´s quite good ,but look at Button ,everyone says he´s not that special but there he is directly behind him ,ready to score when the Boss has his moment..

Vettel..has issues with Webber who is not championship material

Schumacher embarrassing himself ?I think at this time it is Mercedes embarrassing themselves more than anything else.
Schu is not Fisichella who was nowhere compared to kimi .Schumacher is maybe a bit slower in Qualy but in the race the two are even ,even though the results don´t show.

[xpensive]

Kubica was just an xample, while Fisichella had nothing to lose, he was not a seven-time WDC legend.

[marcush.]

Kubica was just an xample, while Fisichella had nothing to lose, he was not a seven-time WDC legend.

and he was almost winning the race before he switched to Ferrari.. and did not miss a single F1 race for a long time..

My point is ...Schumacher coming back and you are starting to bash him for not being as sharp as he was or for 7 championships(!) he had not earned ..come on ,thats rediculous.
the guy came back and he is not making a fool out of himself .He is obviously not messias and he is not able to develop the car or show the way to the team to get out of the mud.
But that was myth anyways.He is or was a very good driver ,a very dedicated driver and he was a excellent motivator for achieving more than was in the car at times or even most of the time.That earned him those 7 titles.
He won two championships with Bennetton and 5 with Ferrari after they failed to
score 20+ years to do so.
to even question his abilities is really so far from reality that I have no words for this.
there is always an if or when.Obviously senna would have denied him more than one of those Championships had he survived.
But it is not like there was no decent drivers around in those years or no decent machinery.
You can dislike the man ,no problem with that , I disliked him for a long long time.... but honstly he hass grown on me ,especially now when he´s coming back to
try and compare to todays top guys.

[xpensive]

There's a parallell between Schumacher and Wimbelton tennis-players, early on it was considered bad sportmanship to practice before the actual competeition.

Same thing with the seven-time WDC, he broke the rules on what a driver was, stying fit and taking part of everything within the team.

[WhiteBlue]

Schumacher embarrassing himself ?I think at this time it is Mercedes embarrassing themselves more than anything else.

I totally agree. The season is already lost and it was mostly Mercedes fault. How many times do we need to hear from Nico that the weight distribution was wrong for him as well. Next we have the lack of downforce to be anywhere near to competitive, the problem with heating the tyres on low fuel which prevents both drivers to qualify in the top 10. The F-duct which brings 20% of the speed of the McLaren solution is a joke. So after some acclimatisation time caused by lack of winter and in season testing all they can do is lean as much as possible and go high risk strategies as seen in Monaco and Valencia. It back fired for Mercedes twice. Schumacher himself is also taking every risk (Kubica in Canada) which isn't conductive to safe points hauls.

I see the whole season as a big development exercise for the team and the drivers. This isn't a championship campaign and so the decisions cannot be viewed as if it were one.

[xpensive]

For me, Schumacher was the far and away most complete F1 driver ever, he pushed the envelope in a way that Prost or Senna could not begin to understand. Why he has to go thru this golgata is a mistery, a long time promise to Norbert Haug perhaps?

[marcush.]

We have to give schumacher credit for:
delivering when the team asked for it -in montecarlo -he overtok Alonso in the only possible moment.
He is not to be taken responsible for the team not having made sure this is a possible move.

For doing exceptional first laps constantly , making up for any deficiencies in qualy ther usually,constantly outdoing the young Rosberg.-so what is it worth to Nico to be a tad quicker in Q3 to lose it all before lap 1 is over...

Mercedes is not as clever as they think in tactics these days.Neither could you say the cars are prepared to the standard required..Schumacher lose wheel in race ,carrying crossweight in qualy ,too small brakeducts ..In ferrari times Brawn managed to go thru whole seasons without anything like that...

[WhiteBlue]

..In ferrari times Brawn managed to go thru whole seasons without anything like that...

One should not forget that the team were "The earth dream" loosers in 2008 and went through great upheaval. They did not have strenght in depth like McLaren to start with in 2009. They just had the DDD from race one and not much more. They got slashed down to 280 head count from over 600 and you do not sort that out in no time.

[tarzoon]

I see most of these comments as those in football, by the fantasy football managers. If anyone saw the way the Italian squad was received back home, they'll understand what I'm saying.

Schumi is still one of the greatest: his comeback wasn't as successful as that of Lauda or Prost, mainly because the car is not competitive. Even after Brawn admitted that they didn't have time to research the car properly since they were fighting for the title until the very last race, that the manpower is far smaller for Merc than it is at McLaren or Ferrari, that all the developments somehow are not performing as expected, you're still blaming it on Schumi for being old and uncompetitive?

Given the set of constraints Brawn had to hire a pilot (existing contracts, for example), who would you have chosen instead of Schumacher at the beginning of the season or even now, for what matters?