Mercedes GP - Inauguration and 1st season

[xpensive]

Newey never wrote those rules on bodywork flexibility, but RB actually did write the rules on diffuser size, bit of a difference there me thinks. RB sat on two chairs, ruling and participating, which make him a fraud in my book.

A little like MrE when he was the pointman of FOCA fighting the FIA, while he ran the Brabham team at the same time, from which he had the decency to rid himself of.

[PNSD]

He didnt right the regulations. He along with the other representatives did.

He was the chairman of the OWG. The organisation made up of the team-members to help devise the regulations. He did not personally write them word by word. As ive posted he offered to close the loop-holes he knew were existed. The other teams denied thinking they too could make use of them. Surely the fact that he offered to do such a thing removes any thought of being a fraud?!

Whether you think he's a fraud or not doesnt really matter. His methods has bagged him alot of respect and world championships, whether you like or hate him you can not avoid the fact that he is one of F1's greatest.

[segedunum]

Do you suggest then, that Brawn and his "cronies" plundered cash from the business....then go for the double whammy and sell it to mercedes devoid of any real cashflow? If you think Brawn is a fraud because of this, then I would keep it to myself until I could use substantiated figures with payments to and from individuals...Facts if you like.

We know this is true from the information we've had. £7.5 million was made in staff savings, which is miniscule to the point of being unecessary and is so small that certainly no well paid engineers were lost, and £20 million or more went to directors' pay and bonuses and £10 million on paying off Button's Honda contract.

If I was being cynical I would say that the staff losses were a token gesture to try and give the image of a poor team because I see little point to them otherwise. It does not paint the picture of staff upheaval that Brawn likes to paint.

Is Brawn a fraud? Yes and no. Did he loot the team for personal gain? Yes, but then it was his name on the car and he took some risks - unless he knew he wasn't really taking much of a risk. However, was the team left without any cash to run itself that should have left it in a worse state this year? No. Was Mercedes left with a team that was in a poor financial state? No. It was better than the picture we were painted. That's why they were happy to get involved and why they made various noises, as did many around here incidentally, about Mercedes getting a great deal in this team for free. We'll see if Mercedes have the balls to invest for success now or whether they simply expected to win for nothing.

[marcush.]

you need make things look attractive if you want to sell.
Had he shifted those redundencies towards 2010 it would have been Mercedes buying the lot and having to bite the bullet releasing a lot of people as a starter..Not cool.
I feel you see it very biased but that´s ok with me.

[segedunum]

There are reasons why the BAR to Honda design team did not deliver. A lack of talent was not the problem.Go back and read my last post for an insight into the culture at Honda. Bar was not much different.

I've grown tired of reading the various reasons as to why this wasn't done or that wasn't done. I will refer you to the results of this team over twelve years and what has happened to them when they seem to have made some headway. Most of those Honda/BAR people are still there (they certainly haven't been poached by other teams!) and if they haven't got results on a par with other teams with similar budgets and investment then I'd call that a lack of design talent.

All the successful teams have a strong leader. BAR/ Honda lacked that, not engineering talent. Once a strong leader was in place, performance improved. Honda's problems were management related, not engineering talent related. FACT

The last experienced head engineering person the team had with a track record of success was Geoff Willis. Ross Brawn is a Team Principal, so they still don't have that. They needed an experienced engineering person with a track record in charge and not a bureaucrat. That's a lack of engineering talent from the top down no matter how many times people write FACT in capitals.

[segedunum]

They had to lay people off in 2009 because they had to make it look like they were a team in crisis with a soup-to-mouth existence.

I certainly take the point that any staff cuts will have a delayed impact in many ways owing to severance and other costs. However, given that these cuts happened at the end of 2008 and start of 2009, and the figures we've seen were for the whole of 2009 produced year-ending, I would have expected to see a far bigger initial saving mostly in salaries than £7.5 million with an organisation of costs of £150 million plus if you've slashed your staff by 40%.

Then feeling comfortable enough to raise director pay and bonuses to the tune of £20 million just puts the tin-hat on the sham as far as I'm concerned.

[xpensive]

......

[xpensive]

He didnt right the regulations. He along with the other representatives did.

He was the chairman of the OWG.
...

Indeed he was, and anyone with a bit of decency would not stay in a position to be held accountable for the writing of the rules, at the same time as he was doing his utmost in finding a loophole big enough for a truck to go through.

[PNSD]

He didnt right the regulations. He along with the other representatives did.

He was the chairman of the OWG.
...

Indeed he was, and anyone with a bit of decency would not stay in a position to be held accountable for the writing of the rules, at the same time as he was doing his utmost in finding a loophole big enough for a truck to go through.

Ermm. He was doing his job. Dont tell me that every other designer did not sift through the regulations looking for these loopholes. We see it every year... So now Brawn's a fraud for doing his job, or is Brawn a fraud because the other teams were arragont enough to not take up Brawns loophole closure offer? How is it his fault the other teams refused to close it?

[Richard]

When were the bonuses paid and why? Presumably on the basis of the WDC and WCC? How much did they personally invest at the start?

Yes, it looks awkward to have those redundancies alongside those bonuses. Hindsight is easy, but at the time of the redundancies the team had little secure income and had to balance the books. The business plan in Dec 08 would have flopped if it said "we'll run this at a huge loss but that's OK because we know we'll have the WDC and WCC in the bag in Oct 09".

IMHO Brawn played poker and won, fair play to him, I doubt anyone on this forum would have the acumen to pull it off. Nearly all privateers who try that end up failing - Walkinshaw being a topical example.

[Raptor22]

THey had to lay peopl eoff because they did not have a budget to complete the year. Seg,I'd love to know where you find your "financial figures". Do you write them yourself in Crayon?

[xpensive]

At a certain point in time, I guess this will happen for every human being, engineers included I believe, it will come to beholding yourself in the mirror and asking yourself;

- Is this the legal thing to do?
- Is this the right thing to do?
- Is this the honest thing to do?
- Is this the decent thing to do?

Perhaps in that order.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Okay X,

So you know Brawn highlighted this area in a meeting. He brought it to to other teams attention. From Memory I can actually remember Mario Theissen as the real villain of the piece here.

BMW were in a similar position to Honda in terms of the fact they had a few more months to develop their 2009 car. Something a few poster's may remember was Kubica's dismay at BMW's decision due to him duking it out for the championship in 08.
His dissapointment stemmed from BMW diverting all resources to 09 from around June time.

In the meeting Brawn is talking about Theissen vetoed any ratification to the proposals. So the loophole in fact remained.

Theissen is the real reason the DDD loophole couldnt be shut.

Now put yourself in Brawns shoes. He kinda highlighted it at this gathering, now he will proceed like a good sport and do a single decker diffuser?
Any boss worth his salt would have done what Brawn did.

And PNSD is right, does that make Newey a fraud for the flexi wings? Just the name of the F1 game here bud.

[segedunum]

For people who didn't get the memo they made well over £200 million in income in 2009, more than anyone else:

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_ ... t_id=42149

Putting the fact that this is Pitpass aside it is a concise article with relevant detail.

No budget, especially with a payment from Honda providing well over half of that income at the start of the year and TV (or other payments) that they must have known were pending? Rrrrright.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Oh yes Chris Sylt