Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

[raymondu999]

Jock Clear had been race engineer to ... Barrichello (Ferrari team-mate) ...
These drivers Schumacher has been team-mates with or rivals with!

Does that really count though? I mean, Barrichello wasn't Schumacher's teammate when he was with Clear.

[Cam]

I don't know what to think about this anymore. With that amount of incidents happening we actually need to take sabotage into account. Even so I would refuse this idea and rather explain the things with pure stupidity and sloppy work but to many things happen. I don't think it is coming from the head of the team but from the lower level. Some of the nameless mechanics in the team must have absolutely no interest and ambitions towards their work, some anti Schumacher or anti German sentiments.

Perhaps. I like to think there is no sabotage, but as you said: it is not out of the question. Anything is possible really, and we'll never know what happens behind closed doors.

Mick has one of two options going forwards. 1) Sacrifice some kind of animal to ward off the juju that's skulking him or 2) admit something smells.

That said, the fact Button has dropped off the F1 racing face of the earth might also prove that F1 this year simply makes no sense at all - and Mick is in this category as well.

Strange days indeed.

[Raptor22]

when Brawn was dominant, Clear was incapable of engineering a race win if it washanded to him on a plate. Thats a very mediocre engineer by any incompetent standard. Currently, he can't even engineer a race finish !!

Brawn is incompetent to keep him around. But then you need that level of incompetence to make yourself look better.
If Schumacher's car stopped breaking down I'd change my view but I have zero confidence in that happening.

Looking back in the history of F1, the only times there was such disparity in reliability was when the team used one car as a test and development mule and the other as race win contender.
The pattern repeats itself at Mercedes.

So its either complete incompetence and therefore Brawn and Clear should be fired for keeping the incompetents around so long, or its deliberate sabotage through using Schumacher as a test mule. Luck has absolutely nothing to do with reliability in modern F1. Poor engineering is centric to this.
What gets my goat is that it is so blatant, so in your face, that Mercedes actually think they can spin a positive story around fairies and gremlins and have fans believe it.

Schumacher being pure class is just the way he is. He'll never complain publicly, he'll never bemoan the team. I think he has just accepted his role at Mercedes is just to have his name linked to the team and car for identity, credibility and marketing purposes. This team has never demonstrated an ability to "turn it around in a season" so I doubt they will be able to improve reliability on Schumacher's car. Judging from the laughter and smiles in Schumacher's garage after their car retired, its fairly obvious that the boys wanted to get to the casino early

[Mr.S]

I heard before the season that Ross & Haug said that anything less than 3rd(a repeat of 4th) would be called a failure. Mercedes Board said that repeated failures wont be tolerated.

This is a season where Sauber gets podiums & should have won in Malaysia. Williams won. Its a lottery. Good that Mercedes won but they are 5th now right. So Points wise they have taken a step back from last year. Maybe someone's head will fall soon.

Apart from that they are genuinely using Michael as a Test Mule. His tyres took time to get warm & as did the rest & most of the guys stayed out longer & undercut him. Kobayashi is one such example. Look at Grosjean,Michael,Nico all in there & look at how it ended.

I also cant help wondering why is Mercedes at almost Last in the speed trap in qualifying that also with DDRS which give them atleast I hope 3-4km. Without it they would be definitely last,that also with the best engines.


I am not even going to rant about Michael. If the team could not give a 10-15 second cushion then there is nothing to say. Michael had 1-2 tenths over Nico in each Qualy Session. He would probably have finished in 4-5th & the whole race would have changed.

All the TOP team's performance are very same. They are all within 0.5 of a second,maybe a couple of tenths less or a couple of tenths more here & there. In this case 2-3 tenths can change the game. It can possibly mean Regular & consistent victories.

I have been saying it. Its time for a Mclaren Style Exhaust to develop. I cant believe they need half a season to do it.

[snoop1050]

As for the DRS failure, shxt happens. But I cant understand why Michael is copping ALL the DRS failures while Rosberg hasn't had any problems...............................sabotage is not the cause.

maybe scumacher pushes the DRS button harder than rosberg you mean?

i get the feeling rosberg would have been better off with more fuel aswell, it was clearly holding his pace back alot around the start when he was tolds to save fuel after only a handful of laps.

[raymondu999]

The button is an electric switch. All it does is close a circuit which then sends a signal to the SECU, which then does the DRS control (AFAIK). Hitting the button harder/softer does no change. It's only the moment when the button press gets registered in the SECU that counts. Unless of course you're saying his button got physically jammed and wouldn't "bounce" back up

[snoop1050]

The button is an electric switch. All it does is close a circuit which then sends a signal to the SECU, which then does the DRS control (AFAIK). Hitting the button harder/softer does no change. It's only the moment when the button press gets registered in the SECU that counts. Unless of course you're saying his button got physically jammed and wouldn't "bounce" back up

i was beeing sarcastic

alot of people are claiming schumacher is causing all the mechanical failures by beeing to hard on the car

[zyphro]

I cannot fathom the incompetence of Mercedes. The pit crew knew MSC's DRS flap was open, yet they let him go? JET how do you back the team up on that one? Shocking, just shocking.

[zyphro]

...
i was beeing sarcastic

alot of people are claiming schumacher is causing all the mechanical failures by beeing to hard on the car

I had a feeling it was this .

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

It's not that I'm backing them up. They made mistakes this year that's costing them and Schumacher dearly.

Incompetence? Please, if it was team incompetence Rosberg would be suffering equally. This is basic logic alot of you are failing to grasp.
Conspiracy theorists should also think that by hampering Schumacher, mercedes are in effect hampering themselves.

The bottom line is Schumacher is suffering from a bout of rotten luck. Mercedes are maybe trying too hard to ensure it turns around.
I have seen enough posts of total amateurs berating proffesionals. Mistakes happen.
Look at red bull and Ferrari yesterday, both screwed up strategy.
Look at McLaren and their pits top issues?
Lotus screwing up raikkonens race a couple of races back.
Hell even Schumacher made a basic error by ramming Senna.

Everyone screws up, its Mercedes and micheals turn... And it's a rough patch.
To question the integrity of the team and of its staff, and the rhetoric used is shocking.

Mercedes and micheal will come good and get a podium, maybe even a victory.

[Raptor22]

If ReD Bull messed up whyis Vettel praising their stragety call to bring him in for stop #2?

Ferrari may have messed up due to keeping ALonso out but that was mostly because they could not tell how hard he had pushed the tyres.IN the end his drop off came a few laps from the end.

those blunders pale into insignificance when you consider that Mercedes had a car in 9th and 5th and both went backwards (one retiring due to shoddy workmanship).
Worse still, the mechanics having a jolly after the car retires> WOW professional hey....

Get you head out of Norbs tail light and see teh truth. Merc are just plain and simple a really poor team. Always have been, statistically, always will be. UNless VAG and perhaps another manufacturer joins F1, I doubt we'll see Merc as a branded chassis around after 2013. Maybe hey will stay as an engine supplier but being cut out of the new concorde agreement, I highly doubt there's a business model fo rthem to stay. Poor success (one lucky win) and clowns in the garage

[Dragonfly]

.........................
Mercedes and micheal will come good and get a podium, maybe even a victory.

Funny, that's what Hembery predicts for Valencia - Michael or Kimi.


About sabotaging: I don't know why everyone is dismissing the option based on logical conclusions that it's not in the interest of MGP. Which is of course true.
But miss the fact that only 1-2 persons are enough to spoil the game. And not in the high ranks at all. I don't know what the inner organization is but if a batch of parts is known to which car it goes it's even easier to do small and nasty things with them.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

@ raptor,

Your opinion is so far polarised, calling them clowns and the teams win "lucky".

Vettel praised red bull did he? From leading to losing a podium by staying out too long....
Great strategy!!
Get real, everyone makes mistakes. Just because your idol is now recipient of some ill fortune is no need for name calling, and worse, dismissing actual achievements as "luck".

Plain laughable and the last time I respond to your posts.

[Raptor22]

so achieving a win and then getting nowhere near to it again isn't luck....
Oh well, they were skillful once.

You need to stop looking at your Idol (Mercedes Benz) as this deity that will one day make your dreams come true. They won't because they're incompetent

[marcush.]

Hell ,even Villeneuve(!) said it was entirely Sennas fault and incompetence causing the accident.
Schumacher on a rough patch is complete nonsense .The times of 30% dnfs is looooooong ago.todays a respectable team will get home with maximum 2 technical items in race conditions affecting points harvesting.Ferrari managed more than one season of points or podium finishes -when did a ferrari last time give up the ghost..? A very rare occasion.
RedBull have also a very fine record in recent years ...I rmemeber a tyre blowout for Vettel but what else?
Mclaren traditionally are a bit more on the shaky side with reliability and Sauber for example have had both extremes in all those years.
Cars not making the distance is not luck AT ALL .Random dnfs due to exploring the outer limits what is technically possible I can accept (once a year ) ..but Schumacher does face trouble in every race ,which is clearly something different.
And he is hit by the same problem more than once -completely unacceptable.FMEA ,FMEA FMEA-process proceedures -living the process -with 500+ employees you have to there is no other way .Brawn cannot check everything-he does not even understand everything .

I remember a passage in Bergers book -where he elaborates about the special tretment he got by some engineers within Ferrari who found ways to map his engine a fair bit worse than alboreto (rip).It took him and Ascanelli some time to proof what was going on but it happened....
Maybe it has system what is happeneing in MGP -especially when Brawn is not acting - very strange.
I dismiss any accusations towards Clear -that guy is straight as straight as one could possibly be ,he is respecting Schumacher after all those years of competition which were rewarding having him as the enemy ..

Seriously the 4 chaps at the rear wing looked -amateurish-
The pit wall amateurish-Schumacher first went through the grass ,then was informed the DRS stuck..when it was obvious when he left and the mechanic was already waving his arms..

Schumacher through the lights was GREEN as green as it could be .I don´t buy the session was over..Not by half a second .maybe a thousand of a second ? the camera did not give a glimpse of red when he went under the lights...Mind you with the speed he was going it´s impossible to not see the red actually .Telling him to abandon the run was just idiotic again.



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