This forum contains threads to discuss teams themselves. Anything not technical about the cars, including restructuring, performances etc belongs here.
We have had the simulator discussion and all pros agreed a driver in the loop simulator is not really feasible or necessary to develop the car.It may come in handy to get your young guns up to speed as you can teach them all the things you have to learn in formula 1 and testing is no longer available.
almost every driver suffers motion sickness when starting to work on simulators ,you can get over it ,but what´´s the benefit..? it does not teach you anything you need to go faster .
As for Mercedes Grand Prix it does not look like they have found real speed ...almost every car -sans Toro Rosso ,Caterham HRT and Marussia can win a race this year...did they all raise their game or hit the magic bullet? surely not.
Ferraris moron and Red Bulls RB8 seem to be the cars of choice ,followed by Lotus ,Macs ,Sauber and Williams ,Mercedes and even FI joining the fray.Considering the drivers ,it very much looks like the true ranking is RedBull,Sauber,Williams ,Force India,Lotus ,Ferrari ,Mclaren, Mercedes..?
haha ..I think W13 might be their turnaround...with Schumacher... errm...aged 56?
I´m really worried now .The team does not look like winners ,in fact ..somehow the fortunes ha´ve turned around in favour of Schumacher for whatever reason ...Mercedes has geared up with a lot of high calibre stuff and it looks like they are running out of time and credit quickly .
This is what I meant when i said the championship is devalued with Maldonado winning a race on merit ,Perez almost and Alonso leading with THAT Ferrari ....and RedBull struggling to play the Newey card.
Alonso frankly admitted the driver being able to push the boundaries is not there anymore as random hit or miss tyre voodoo
is deciding the outcome of a race...I´d think no driver has shown comrehensively he has mastered the tyre riddle yet.So it is a random event nothing more nothing less .Alonso seems to be the sole performer who at least manages to struggle home with good points when he does get it wrong
What concerns me the most marcush, is the shrug-of-the -shoulders complacency from RB, like "oh well, we'll do better", when the same wheel-nut problem appears again, while "Lotus" is bagging points time and again?
Where's the sonomabitch-attitude , appointing a pit-kommissar to monitor the monitored seems terribly political and nothing more?
"I spent most of my money on wine and women...I wasted the rest"
quite obviously shifting attention from schumacher to rosberg and dooo he has a wheelnut issue.I have aired my concerns about the device already last year...and it proves to be an achilles heel to their pitstops.We don´t know about the other risks ...but having two wheeel nut related mishaps in the pits per year is a close to a 5% chance to be hit..adding more variables and it´s clear you will never ever get a 100%reliability not for even 1 car .To have completeted all race laps with rosberg still is little consolation when you are not eveen in the points...
With that crowd of big heads in the pits and office you need to deliver more than that.Quickly.
Lets not forget that AMG is not aiming at the WC this year. And you have to be honest, they are in a way better position then the first 2 years arent they?
The whole team has been sleeping in the first 18 months and now they are finally improving.
Don't forget there are lots of hungry teams, lotus, ferrari, McLaren and ofcourse the team to beat.. Red Bull.
If Schumacher didnt had that much bad luck they would have had way more points and we wouldnt have been so hard for the team.
I think they are slowly getting somewhere. They are improving step by step, but they have to be realistic. World Championship is not possible for the coming season's.
"Life is about passions - Thank you for sharing mine" MSC
But they are aiming for 3rd in the constructors. Points wise they are in a better position than last year but position wise, and considering the gap between 4th -5th- 6th it looks like its gonna be a solitary 5th place this year, unless they improve the car. Agree that lots of points were lost due to the horrid luck suffered by Schumacher but we're not going to get those points back. I hope they bring some updates to make the car competitive on all tracks, maybe a new exhaust solution will help. Consistent top 6 finishes by both drivers is the need of the hour. 11 races to go still, so all hope is not lost. Lets remember that Silverstone was never going to suit the W03, P7 is still a good finish in such a scenario.
whate er they have changed it seems to allow Schumacher to drive th wheels off that thing while Rosberg's more conservative style is rewarded less.
Bigois fired? since when? I figured he was demoted but still there.
Anyways this car needs speed, something the team has trouble finding. I would have thought that Bell and Costa would have made an impact by now but its appears that there is really something amiss within the more day to day functions.
Decemt designers would have had updates by now. All we've seen are subtle changes to the side pods and little changes to the front wing
Schumacher has had the pace for the most part of the season, the only change in the past 2 races is that he saw the chequered flag. Rosberg had a a one off poor race at Silverstone which i believe was caused by a combination of wet qualifying, slow start and botched pit stop. Overall in the race both cars were going backwards. I'm sure Nico will be on the pace come Hockenheim. Yes, the car needs speed, asap. I ve said it before as have most of you guys, maybe its time for a new exhaust configuration.
Yes Schumacher has had speed but he was saying at the beginning of theseason that he had to be tentative on thethrottle or the car would eat its tyres. He seems to be more aggreessive on the throttle again and we're seeing him have a better few races. So was this attributed to the new gearbox or is it becauseinternal changes has results in Schumacher geting what he wants out of the car.
Either way, fans aroudn the world have been moaning about Schumachers teams poor delivery in termsof reliability and strategy nd suddenly Schumachers gets better results. Coincidence or someone responding to public opinion?
The technical deficiencies in W03 can be seen nearly every weekend. Not enough downforce so they struggle in Stint 1. By the time they recover the rest are too far gone for Mercedes rivers to do anything about
my feeling is that with new staffs on board, especially in sensitive areas , like position of Aerodynamics, R&D, the experience of Aldo Costa Willis and Bell will very likely improve this team by next year. the current w03 was born under the leadership of Bob Bell but i dont expect him alone to be a superman and suddenly make the car the most quickest on the grid. in that respect he has improved this car a lot compared to last year.
as everyone has been talking about, the area of aerodynamics is the weakest, i mean they went to make same fundamental mistake with short wheelbase TWICE... with w01, w02.... some of the smartest people on this team cant even realize that everyone else in the grid had long wheelbase car, they tried something different.
and aero area is extremely weak... i mean sure the brawn car was great because of DD, and even then when everyone else in the grid had their own version of DD ... brawn team couldnt react to red bull or mclaren. they wwere lucky because of taking advantage at first half of season. maybe they had to utilize resources, no one knows. w01 situation is understandable as team was going under transition.
anyway this aero area has been weak for this team since honda days!! honda politics went on to fire some of the great engineers like geoff willis, lost mark webber engineer Ciaron Pilbeam; this team once handed a position of TD to a guy who didnt even have experience designing cars.... coming from motorbike engineering!!!
and then this team went on to sign williams f1 reject bigois. his track record is absolutely terrible!!! i believe that brawn car was good because of zorg zander and other engineers who worked during honda days.
anyway, mean this team has lost some serious talented engineers and then employed terrible people since honda days and i think this problem is still ongoing because some of the people are still there since honda days. this is just a feeling .
this team under the leadership of David Richards was so great, because this team was running with low budget and Richards knew how to get some great talented people onboard.
with Honda it was just about too much budget too big ambition in short period of time, too much politics, i mean when i heard that japanese owners got rid of willis and employed TD who has background in making bikes???? ....
since willis has come back, its like returning back home for him, he knows wind tunnel well, he knows factory well, is he the person who was involved in windtunnel upgrade when honda bought the team??
anyway, with geoff, costa has good track records too, so surely i doubt w04 will be bad.
also there was a rumour not long ago that mercedes are looking to employ lotus f1 aerodynamicist ... whether its true or not... we will see next year
w03 was worked last year so, well... i guess thats why team is sufferring now with whatever problems they have.
its not a bad car, but i think it has aerodynamic flaws. and other teams are doing exceptionally well.
Well, I got a sniggering PM from JET once when I suggested a while back before the season started that Lotus (or whatever it happens to be called) were a far more competent than this tin-pot outfit and it looks as if it is all coming to pass.
