Mercedes GP - Inauguration and 1st season

[segedunum]

It's pretty clear that RB is having to throw more soundbites to the media as to the whys and the wherefores. It's not something he's done much of in the past and it's as much an explanation to the Stuttgart people as it is to anyone else.

[andrew]

He's not done it in the past as it has not been his role to do so in the past.

[Giblet]

And typically in the past he has been on a winning team, with a winning car. Not much reason to make excuses when you are winning races and championships left right and center.

[andrew]

If anything, Ross Brawn has been extremely honest about the car not working as they hoped it would.

I don't recall any statement by Ross Brawn that I would call an excuse. I can however recall several statements of fact.

[segedunum]

The problem is that you're not debating JET. It would be nice if we could get back to debating what's been pointed in this thread, but of course, certain people want to avoid it. There's a reason why impartial sources are used in many walks of life - because those with a vested interest in telling us everything is OK will tell us that it is so, which is why we need to look at other things. It's basic amateur hour stuff. The 'insulting 5 year old stuff' is just obvious off-topic frustration.

When a Team Principal gives us an assessment of what's gone wrong and the state of the team, and is also indirectly talking to his superiors incidentally, then he's not going to give us the actual gory details. All good there. Alas, some are trying to quote this as fact because the contradictory details are too difficult to contemplate.

If all that then contradicts the financial figures we've seen for the team, directly contradicting the state of the team last season and thus the reason why their car has slid backwards, a dominant car has lost seconds on competitors with a stable set of regulations as well as being told that lots of technical staff have been lost when we have seen that key staff that have been there since the BAR days are still there........then there's more than enough to question RB's version of events. It's got nothing to do with me simply not accepting his version of events, just that there is every reason to doubt it.

He might well want to make a success of it, but as we've been through before, he needs some trusted and experienced lieutenants who have a track record of success. Why? Because their rivals all have those kind of people.

The only response in return has been "Oh, RB is right and we'll just ignore it" and people getting upset when his word is doubted. If we can't move this on then maybe this thread should be locked until next season?

[marcush.]

it is just laughable to think the financial situation is or was completely unknown to the Mercedes board and they would need any online forum or publcations to get an idea of how much they paid who received the money and how the state of things were in 2009.
If the suits were not able to read the numbers back then they will not want to understand now either..
Brawn speaking to the board through media ? forget this .he is reporting more often directly than he might be comfortable with and all his statements are aligned with mercedes policy in advance.He may have a bit more degree of freedom than Rosberg in this but not much.Never this could formulated to please the board and hide things from them.this is not quite an unimportant R&D venture allowing you to bury budgets for years without having to stand up for it.Far from it .

[segedunum]

Mercedes would have been even more thrilled if they had been furnished with the true financial state of the team at the end of 2009, as I'm sure they were. They would have seen a team that had won both championships, a team that seemed to have reached a peak of technical expertise, a team that had a car with a reasonable technical lead that they could carry directly into 2010 as well as a team that was pretty much the richest on the grid with all the totals added up.

Given that Ross Brawn will have been viewed as the common denominator and would still be there, Norbert Haug selling all of that and Michael Schumacher of all people would be joining them if Mercedes swallowed the takeover deal what wouldn't there be for them to like?

[marcush.]

you really think Brawn could sell the cat in a bag to Mercedes? Buyers in Automotive are quite a species and I´m pretty sure some smart people have waded through the business numbers of
BrawnGP before the deal was done.Surprises? I´doubt they did not know exactly who was earning what in all this .Remember how things got shaky last year when Mercedes revealed that Brawns sponsorship deal with Henkel(?) was identified as a big fluke by Mercedes? You will not be able to sell your company to those without giving away a lot of detail beforehand.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

What a martyr you are seg.
Your crusade has gone on to accuse various people of various things ranging from:

1.Mercedes not knowing the financial state of a team they took over(laughable)
2.The staff at Brackley being incompetant
3.Brawn's statements as being lies and not to be trusted
4.Laying into Haug and Schumacher for whatever random reason.

Apart from all this just being your opinion, you cannot point to one shred of evidence, yet you harp on like its gospel truth. How are those apples for fair and unbiased?

Fact is you do have a bee in your bonnet over Brawn/Mercedes, any sane person can see that. I have suggested this countless times before to, and I will do so again. If you dont like Mercedes GP or Brawn, dont post here, simple. And if Im "thick" as you so inelegantly put it, refrain from debating with me or suffer the same ignominious tag.

[Raptor22]

Irts copmpletley laughable to think that anyone on this forum has the actual financial situation of MErcedes GP and its previous incarnation, Brawn GP at hand to comment on with such authority.
What we can summised from facts is that in 2008 Honda, called quits on their season early to focus on 2009. They had the luxury o time to evaluate many concepts and choose a design that worked.
We do know that Honda pulled the plug and the Honda chassi became a Brawn fitted with a Mercedes engine.
Wre also know that in order to keep the team alive on the budget Brawn had secured from Honda for 2009, Brawn had to trim the team down which had a direct impact on the development of the 2010 car.
We also know that Mercedes bough Brawn AFTER the 2010 design was already completed therefore we can ASSUME that the 2010 car was designed on a shoestring, with skeleton staff focussed on a Championship winning year which would determine their future...

It is also fact that Brawn had to survuve 2009 with a much smaller budget. Yes HOnda ha paid for the rolling chassis already but they did not pay for the engine and kept ther KERS. Brawn had to use customer MErc engines and due to a small budget they had to make these alst an entire season. It has not been confirmed how many engines they actually had, but it has been mentioned that the number was basicaly what they used to race with. No extra engines due to no spare cash.
Mercedes money arrived late and the impact of that was only felt toward the end of 2010.

You dont get taken over without any disruption to business as usual even though you may have some of the same staff. Mercedes wants their engineers in the team as well and those people have to be accomodated and have to learn to work with the people who have been there for years. there had to be a culture and organisational shift and that does not happen over night.
2010 was always going to be a transitional year for Mercedes and Ross Brawn. Having Michael Schumacher on board made that transition a little easier because for RB he is a know entity (Brawn lost both its drivers end of 2009 or have we forgotten that little fact).

So erroneous comments on budgets aside, the kind of transition BRawn into Mercedes brings requires time. People who design winning cars donl;t forget overnight how to do that.

the reason Honda did not get much success was because Honda was using the F1 team to train young engineers. The staff was always in flux so the senior people were always having to learn to work with new faces. Ross Brawn came in and changed that because his reputation is respected by the Japanese, he is samurai to them. He could convince them to do things another way and that showed results in 2009 albeit under a different team name.
So 2010 was to Mercedes what 2008 was to Honda. Except Mercedes is much larger company with deeper pockets (although not felt by Mercedes GP) so they are not subject to the fickleness of the global economy and therefore can make a longer term commitment to F1.

[marcush.]

I have a different view here.
Ross Brawn had quite a few funds coming in from Honda ,right .But he needed to trim down the company to make it an attractive proposal to potential buyers.
First of all he needed to reduce headcount to get at a point to attract the OEM that would be able to step in and in the same intention he had to make sure the title was won as well.
no question he did not ever think of retaining the outfit and running it for another year.As Branson was not taking the bait being a bit of a scot or "Schwabe" and the difficulty to attarct titlesponsorship in the midst of a crises ...the strategy to lure Mercedes to buy this was really bold and somehow it worked out.

to bash them for not putting enough of effort in the w01 is a bit unfair ,because the main aim had to be on achieving the goals in 2009 and then look forward.

to get hold of Schumacher in the winter was a two folded sword in my view .Everybody MS included thought they were coming up with a top notch car and if not Schu would win anyways.
so maybe Ross was dreaming of Michael saving his face in 2010 and producing miracles as he did in his first career or they knew it all before and it just took time to convince the board that 2010 was lost in 2009 already with Mercedes commiting too late to enable Brawn to dedicate enough recorces toqwards the 2010 campaign,recruiting staff during the season as opposed to the situation now .. losing almost a year in the process.
the weakness was already apparent in 2009 when Button struggled heavily in certain circumstances and the team always telling they had analysed and corrected but it did not really show.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

+1 Raptor

Marcush, that may well be the case. But there is Cause and Effect at work here.

Trimming your squad down will cause disruption, leading it to have an effect on 2010's activities. Brawn has been over that and even a blind man can see that it will have an impact(apart from a certain poster).

Everything happens for a reason. Brawn at Honda and hondas investment led to the BGP001, Honda withdrawing and the 2009 championship season led to the W01. With a year of consolidation and restructuring I personally see them being better in 2011 than in 2010.

Its not the mistakes that define your team its wether they can learn from it, and we saw some signs towards the end of the year that they were learning quickly.

Sure, they probably wont be champions. But I wager they score more points and look more competitive next year

[marcush.]

jet +1
Let´s face it we are in no position to judge if Ascanelli at TR or Brawn at Merc are really in the know what they are doing..
For me the drop in performance is entirely explainable and to me it is not a fact that 2009 was the exception to the rule that exHanda is not up to it.
From that standpoint ex stewart /Jaguar was the same as BAR,Honda ....and look where they are now.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

jet +1
Let´s face it we are in no position to judge if Ascanelli at TR or Brawn at Merc are really in the know what they are doing..
For me the drop in performance is entirely explainable and to me it is not a fact that 2009 was the exception to the rule that exHanda is not up to it.
From that standpoint ex stewart /Jaguar was the same as BAR,Honda ....and look where they are now.

Thats my line of thinking. But I believe the Mercedes GP team as whole to be a bit more talented than the Jaguar F1 team of 2004.
There are a few interesting German articles I read on Mercedes R&D, and Brawn hiring one of Bridgestones top men over the summer. Alot of the teams computer work on tyres is being put through Stuttgart super computers. How relevant it is to F1 or what effect it will have remains to be seen.

With the bones being picked out of the RB6, I see most teams adopting some their solutions closing the gap. The the biggest differences next year will be who gets the most out of their tyres during the race, and KERS.

Mercedes GP will have no worries with KERS, but I wonder if they will install it in the nose like the cutouts we saw earlier in the month.
I will try find out more on this bridgestone fellow and post accordingly.

[segedunum]

1.Mercedes not knowing the financial state of a team they took over(laughable)

Nope. On the contrary, I'm arguing that they knew the true state of the team during and after 2009. Things would have looked good. You're either misunderstanding this, unintentionally or perhaps deliberately.

2.The staff at Brackley being incompetantp

Take a look at the staff list produced previously. The key people there have been there since at least the BAR days and given the billions pumped in over a decade of racing 2009 was the only time they got close to winning races, let alone getting close to a championship.

3.Brawn's statements as being lies and not to be trusted

They contradict every other piece of information that we have about the state of the team. Technical staff still there from the BAR days? Check. Brackley's factory and facilities still intact? Check. Team still funded until March with £100 million straight from Honda? Check. Savings of only £7.5 million from staff cuts? Check. Additional money paid in a lump sum, possibly from advanced FOM money and elsewhere? Check. Money forthcoming at the end of 2009 after both championships? Check.

4.Laying into Haug and Schumacher for whatever random reason.

Where did I do that? Haug was a good salesman and Schumacher was a lovely piece of bait to seal the deal for the Germanic hierarchy. Success was assured!

You wave this away as some kind of crusade or that it's 'personal' JET, but once again, you don't address the fact that 2009 was a financially bumper year for the team (with an article that we discussed many pages back) nor that we've seen that many BAR people are still at the team.

We can only go round in circles so many times until you have a look at these things rather than just wishing it all wasn't true.