Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

[tomaswrx]

It was a team and MS decision before going to q3. He has enought fuel to do at least 5 laps (fast one and warm-up) so it wasn't like this - oh first flying lap is not so good, lets do a second one on a spot. So, of course, team is responsible for calculating traffic, time and etc, and not MS.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

It was a team and MS decision before going to q3.

Then this?

... team is responsible for calculating traffic, time and etc, and not MS.

your contradicting your first statement.

I'm thinking a driver can make the difference when the difference is only 0.04 seconds. Schumacher himself said the lights where still green when he crossed the line.

[marcush.]

JET,sorry but it is the team that employs the strategists ,it´s not Ms .So ..as Schu approached sector three everyone involved should have been alarmed that it might possibly not work out .You just cannot cut it that close ...It´s just bad management and the driver is absolutely not in position to judge that gap.
I have done some target time racing at the ring and it is damn hard to hit the target spot on and it works only driving a tad faster than necessary and pace yourself to the line..not to cut it close and hurry up to make it.
Team error ,again.Michael is part of the team ,end of story P9 .Let´s prepare ourself for a hard days work

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Team error, driver is part of team.

And I agree Marcush, time to move on and see what the alte herr can do for his mannschaft.

[Richard]

No need to sound like bickering school children. There are other forums for bickering about Schumi bias, or goading about Ross Brawn.

It's only a lump of carbon and metal on a strip of tarmac, why get so personal?

[zyphro]

The guy who MS fans readily admire for his tactical mastery, but the moment it goes wrong a couple of times turn with the ferocity of rabid dogs.
This team has gone down the toilet, and you only need to look at this thread to see evidence of that fact.

Corrected it for you. You should take off the black glasses with Mercedes logo on them. Are you noticing what Ferrari do? They started the season with a worse car but are fighting back.

Exactly.

[zyphro]

You should take those severely tinted Schumi fan boy glasses off and realise Schumacher crossed the line 0.04 seconds out.

Had Schumacher made the lap and qualified higher you all would be praising him, instead of the team. It was Schumacher's decision to do a final 2 lap qualifying stint. Schumacher's decision based on the 1 lap he made earlier in Q3.
He missed it by less than a mouse's ball hair and you lot jump on the team? That's poor form, even for a fanboy.

If you knew your rectum from your cubitum, your rhetoric will be toned down somewhat. That goes for all the anti-team sentiment.

Are you really that fickle? It was a major risk to leave it so late.

Not to mention: Schumi said the light was green, yet the team told him to back off?

[mep]

"A team failure and he is part of the team"
Yes - But that does not make it a failure of the driver. The driver is part of the team and his responsibilities are: to drive the car, to keep himself fit, to be mentally and physically prepared for the race, analyze the track and conditions for his optimum racing line, don't crash somewhere, give interviews to the Fan and the media (without shredding the team) and many other things.
The driver is not responsible for tasks like:
-assembling a gearbox to make sure it lasts more than 17 laps,
-or to check if the DRS is working,
- check if the fuel pump works,
-fix the tires to the car,
-calculate the correct amount of fuel required to finish the race and fill it in the car,
- calculate the required time to finish x laps + security gap to make it over the line before the red lights.
So if any of those things go wrong it is the team to blame, excluding the driver! To be more precise all this errors can be brought down to a source of the error. This source has to be found and questioned why things happen all the time. Especially when they want to compete in Formula 1 and try to claims to be so super professional. In fact what they show there is anything else than professional. It is just embarrassing. Especially when they fail to do the simplest things, which each child is able to do, like calculating the required time to the end of the qualifying. Failing that is simply inexcusable.

[tomaswrx]

I agree with mep. Everyone in the team have their tasks, duties and responsibilities, and MS duties are far from calculating a time needed while driving. Very unprofessional from Mercedes staff. And it is not the first time this year. Even Marrusia or Hrt don't make such mistakes like Mercedes does...

[marcush.]

btw .what is the punishment for posting a timed lap after the session is over? The team needed the whole first sector to realise it was not counting ..? Or was official timing running for him and they got informed he was too late by a glimpse?
at 300 you are covering how many meters per second 83+ ...so him seeing only green light indicates it was super close ...

[AosudiF1]

I don't think Brawn is running strategy anymore. They have guys to do exactly that, reviewing the opponents relative position to avoid getting caught up.

This is hardly on Brawn's head. The guy runs the whole team. He cannot be everywhere.

I also agree that the miss was almost non-existing... but still, it is frustrating (clearly demonstrated below ).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0RCR2Uzsyk[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuvO3vwNiyk[/youtube]

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Are you really that fickle? It was a major risk to leave it so late.

Not to mention: Schumi said the light was green, yet the team told him to back off?

No question of the mistake, but the team did tell him to back off during his first lap. Who manages the backing off?
The difference here is 0.04 seconds.

Does anyone have Q3 lap times?

[mep]

It does not even matter if it was close or not. Even if he makes it over the line by 0.001s there is something seriously going wrong. The team will sell that as being professional but in the end it is not. There should always be a security time left. Apparently his first lap was even quicker than the ones before but he could have also had a mistake in it or getting hold up so the time missing is even much more than 0.004seconds. Professional is when you achieve your targets without taking any unnecessary risk. This means leaving sufficient time to do the laps or having parts on the car double checked if they are still working before you sent your drivers out and have backup plans ready for all circumstances. Being professional should be the highest intention of a team like Mercedes who want to sell cars Made in Germany. Unfortunatelly this team does not stand up to that at all, neither has it anything German in it.

There is nothing Schumacher can do about that. Should he start to argue with the team on the radio while trying to set the fastest qualy time? Once they disturb his concentration the lap is gone anyways. The same applies to the race. The driver can not argue with the team about the strategy while driving the car especially not when the guys on the wall don't know what to do. It is good to see them doing such simple mistakes because it becomes obvious that something is definitely wrong there. As bad as it is but even the diehard Mercedes fans have to realise that. Whereas it might be worth to point out that this team has nothing to do with Mercedes other than carrying their name. There are some big names but the majority of the team is a composition of guys who always stayed with a mediocre team carrying many different names but never complied with the expectations. The work they deliver and their commitment is just not up to the standard.

The comparison with teams like HRT and Marussia is very good because they have a fraction of the workforce but don't do funny mistakes. Mercedes can have 4 guys who calculate the time required to do 2 laps and then wonder why the result do not match with reality.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Realisation comes when it's too late they say.

Team has nothing to do with Mercedes proper? Hmmmm I disagree. It run's Mercedes-Benz engines and KERS, and is funded by Daimler. It also had a rather large simulator added last year, to which Daimler footed the bill.
It also underwent a major staff reshuffle. Hiring the likes of Costa, Bell and Willis and dispensing with the old guard in Bigois.

The old team had around 700 staff, this went down to 400-450. In 3 years there have been many comings and going at Mercedes GP and to say this is in no way directly as a result of Mercedes-Benz is crass as it is stupid.
The numbers have now risen to 550, with new heads of technical departments.

By using the barometer of the aforementioned post, Red Bull are nothing but a glorified stewart team. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are Red Bull and they are winning for reasons taken under their stewardship. Nothing more to add here.

Also, if the team is not professional, howcome they are in a position to challenge the teams that are perennial winners?
And the this xenophobia surrounding Mercedes being German should really have died when the Berlin wall came crashing down.
Mercedes is a global car maker, they dont sell car's only to Germans. They dont need to make or design cars only in Germany.
What is important is that Mercedes-Benz ethos is instilled in the team. This is what matters and not where the car is made.
Yes, the strategical side of the team made an error, but Schumacher did have control of the car at the time and unless I'm very much mistaken also has a countdown clock on his steering wheel.

[marcush.]

Realisation comes when it's too late they say.

Team has nothing to do with Mercedes proper? Hmmmm I disagree. It run's Mercedes-Benz engines and KERS, and is funded by Daimler. It also had a rather large simulator added last year, to which Daimler footed the bill.
It also underwent a major staff reshuffle. Hiring the likes of Costa, Bell and Willis and dispensing with the old guard in Bigois.

The old team had around 700 staff, this went down to 400-450. In 3 years there have been many comings and going at Mercedes GP and to say this is in no way directly as a result of Mercedes-Benz is crass as it is stupid.
The numbers have now risen to 550, with new heads of technical departments.

By using the barometer of the aforementioned post, Red Bull are nothing but a glorified stewart team. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are Red Bull and they are winning for reasons taken under their stewardship. Nothing more to add here.

Also, if the team is not professional, howcome they are in a position to challenge the teams that are perennial winners?
And the this xenophobia surrounding Mercedes being German should really have died when the Berlin wall came crashing down.
Mercedes is a global car maker, they dont sell car's only to Germans. They dont need to make or design cars only in Germany.
What is important is that Mercedes-Benz ethos is instilled in the team. This is what matters and not where the car is made.
Yes, the strategical side of the team made an error, but Schumacher did have control of the car at the time and unless I'm very much mistaken also has a countdown clock on his steering wheel.

Point is ,RedBull had a good enough car to win championships before the team had matured into championship contenders...mind you they lucked into their first one and not because the team was so strong.

Mercedes is clearly far far from representing the pinnacle of a feisty raceteam -they seem to lack a lot in terms of inspiration and a clear direction when it comes to erasing weaknesses .
MrBrawn is ,these days far away from the work level of the team without any deep connection ..maybe some guys retained in 2009 remember well who chopped the head of their collegues and filled his own pockets ..
To me the facts are:

Bell came in and showed his worth fullfilling his role as technical director -erasing the weak points of the car concept and retaining those which either did not hurt performance or were actually good.
So without a doubt W03 is a competent capable machine ...
They have two competent drivers there as well ...you could attribute one mistake to MS since the start of the season and a soso season start to Rosberg but these two are right there speedwise.
Now they face the reality of weak preparation hurting their results. Not that it was not present the years before -it was always mentioned -but it did not matter then .But now it does ,as everytime they drop the ball it is one win less they can bag effectively.
To me the raceteam is not Championship worthy with their attitude.It was a definitive NOGO to have ANY incident with Schumacher teamrelated for the rest of this season ...and they failed at the first opportunity ,which is a remarkable achievement in its own right. Maybe one more unfixed wheel tomorrow ? or a little bit of DRS malfunction anyone ? My money is on a random bit failing for the first time in the team history ...which was exclusively fitted only to Michaels car after FP3..