Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

[marcush.]

I think this is really the point .Since Brawn GP we have seen them coming up with ...second rate cars ,really.Not Bell ,not Willis ,not Costa have really changed the status .
Where is the big step they have announced ,when right everyone is within that magic second ....it´s just the charactristic of the tyre that is limiting the spread of the field..with everyone set to the same laptime ultimately you can only differentiate yourself from others in just how long you can keep that ultimate speed.
We have seen them 2 times (China and Monaco) achieving this - and in both races only one car made the distance due to technical problems...
Compare this with :
RedBull
Ferrari
Mclaren
Lotus

and clearly all of them compete for wins more often and have less dnfs (owed to technical problems)
So if they have made a step ,it is owed to the big risks they took ,as we can see they are really operating at the ragged edge more than others with reliability.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

.........and lines of communication start right at the beginning with job titles and to a lesser extent job descriptions. It seems that people get an idea of what you do from your job title, and thus, it communicates something. Crazy concept I know.

It is crazy when you keep banging on about it. It's as if you know more than Costa Willis and Bell combined, let alone The butt of many peoples jokes around here Ross brawn.
You fail, repeatedly to heed Richards advice, and keep harping on about something that may or may not be an issue.
You can prove nothing, there is no technical argument.

Did you ever ask yourself the question wether "the three kings" had experience of working within a team, and knew the score prior to signing up? As directly specified by the top?
Or did you have the idea that these 3 just signed blindly without a single idea of whom they report too or what they are there to do?
If that's the case, you have a low opinion of these men, and of F1 itself.
Makes me wonder why you bother to post at all.

[xpensive]

...
You fail, repeatedly to heed Richards advice, and keep harping on about something that may or may not be an issue.
You can prove nothing, there is no technical argument.
...

You are of course correct JET, you and cocles can have your precious thread to yourselves, enjoy!

[SeijaKessen]

I'm going to make a prediction.

I may very well be wrong, but I think it is worth predicting now.

*drum roll*

You will see Flavio Briatore on the Merc F1 team in 2013.

[marcush.]

replacing haug? or Schumacher?

[zyphro]

I wonder why neither Pat Symonds or Coughlin were snapped up by Merc? Hmm. OK they had a poor past, but, certainly the latter seems to be working wonders.

[zyphro]

....it´s just the charactristic of the tyre that is limiting the spread of the field..with everyone set to the same laptime ultimately you can only differentiate yourself from others in just how long you can keep that ultimate speed.

This.

[munudeges]

The only thing solid we have beyond wishful thinking and baseless assumptions about 'what they were getting into' are their job titles. I'm afraid you can go out into any field you like and where you find multiple directors on a board with varying fancy titles or so many 'Vice Presidents' what you have is a free-for-all where everyone wants to feel equally important and where they want people to think they don't really report to anyone. Or where a company wants to recruit someone and they want to make the recruit feel that way. You can get away with that in Gordon Gekko's failed corporate America or in banking and even get rewarded for it. In Formula 1....doesn't work so much.

I did think there was a brief glimmer of hope this season, but the manner in which they've fallen away from what should have been a decent position early on in the season (not for the first time) points to problems. Even after all we've been through it's a little sad and undignified to read some of the posts, especially now the much coveted 'fourth place' is a distant hope and where the inevitable memo from the Daimler board cannot now be far away.

[marcush.]

as I said before:
the championship is devalued due to second string outfits -sorry Williams - winning races on merit or fighting for wins -Sauber - with not even half the budget Mercedes is pumpinhg into their effort .
So not bagging the second and third win will prove costly not only in championship points and rankings but as seg pointed out:
the memo will soon arrive and i doubt we will see all of the protagonists again next year if Michael cannot work wonders this weekend...

[Cocles]

I love how Richard posts a reasonable and very well written moderation comment, only to be immediately ignored by Mun in the following post. Seriously Mun, are you selectively blind? Take your broken-record posts and create something constructive in another thread.

All of this anecdotal speculation we're seeing is useless. --Is it too hard to imagine that Brawn, Bell, Costa, and Willis are perhaps more professional than our co-workers (or even ourselves)? Personal engineering experience is not a microcosm for the world of engineering as a whole (let alone F1), to think otherwise is arrogance.

Unless infighting at Mercedes is actually reported in the news, I doubt a discussion about it belongs here. This may not be a technical thread, but it is a technical forum, so our posts should at least rely on facts, not anecdotal speculation.

Anyway-- Hockenheim should be exciting. The German GP is obviously important to Mercedes. It was last year's disappointing performance at the Nurburgring that ultimately brought Costa and Willis into the fold to begin with. Sure, we're not dealing with the Bell-Costa-Willis baby known as the W04 yet, but the W03 needs to show a sign of good things to come. The statistic created by a Mercedes win this sunday would be legendary, as it would be one of the few times in the sport when the nationality of the team, driver, and track all matched. It doesn't matter that the team is based in Brackley or that Rosberg grew up in Monaco, the statistic would still stand. Great stuff. Chaos theory notwithstanding, hopefully Mercedes will be able to show us what they're fully capable of. (Dear God, please let that be another win.)

[SeijaKessen]

replacing haug? or Schumacher?

In place of Brawn.

Flavio has a great selling point...he can argue that he helped lay the foundation for two teams that soon found themselves with multiple championships.

[xpensive]

...
I love how Richard posts a reasonable and very well written moderation comment, only to be immediately ignored by Mun in the following post.
...

Perhaps this post will cost me a vote or two, but it's interesting to learn that this fine forum has a balanced team of moderators,
one Tifoso and one Daimlerist and that this thread indeed belongs to the fanboys?

[munudeges]

I love how there are those of us who are reasonably pointing out why these things just don't tend to work given what we do actually know and all we're getting in return are baseless comments of 'You know nothing', 'They're all professionals' and 'They know what they're doing'.

As Marcush has pointed out, reality bites at some stage. It makes no sense at all for Daimler to see their team loitering around with Williams and the blank white car of Sauber when Merc have a budget several times the size of those teams.

[NewtonMeter]

I love how there are those of us who are reasonably pointing out why these things just don't tend to work given what we do actually know and all we're getting in return are baseless comments of 'You know nothing', 'They're all professionals' and 'They know what they're doing'.

As Marcush has pointed out, reality bites at some stage. It makes no sense at all for Daimler to see their team loitering around with Williams and the blank white car of Sauber when Merc have a budget several times the size of those teams.

I'd argue with the highlighted bit. Some of the pointing out that's going on is clearly not reasonable, much less informed.

We can all see it's not always going to plan. It's the silly, ignorant, baseless and sometimes downright stupid reasons that some are spewing for it that elicit the sort of responses you're referring to. And then it's those same people who claim to "know what they're talking about" that say Bell, Willis and Costa are arguing over how to design a wheel nut. Well now, what sort of response would one expect if you post kak like that?

And yes, I know the buck stops somewhere, and if that person is Bell, Brawn, Willis, Costa or whomever, so be it. I agree with that. But then say THAT. Not all this bullshit about either those guys not knowing how to design a --- wheelnut. Because that's just dense. Btw, I'm not talking about you specifically anymore munudeges.

[Richard]

The job description debate is a scratched record from October 2011, some is a near verbatim repeat of those posts from last year. It's tempting to delete them from here on ground of double posting

Lets get back to reviewing the team's performance. Marcush & Morteza have led the way, here's my contribution....


I agree there was a glimmer of hope earlier this season, but it now looks like a rather sad deflated balloon.

One could say that there’s no shame in finishing behind McLaren, RB & Ferrari, but Lotus show that a mid-order team can rise to challenge the top 3. It's not as if Merc can blame a DDD-esque loophole for Lotus's rise, it's just hard work, good engineering and good strategies. It's also not much excuse considering the effort Merc have put into building the team.

The challenge is to sift the contributing factors. Bell, Costa & Willis had no input into the genesis of the current car, so they can't carry much blame for that. Where their input should be making a difference is leading the team and improving how the team functions and performs. I would hope that there are internal signs of more resilience at race weekends, along with a more resilient factory & development team. The signs may not show to external viewers, but internally they'll know if they are better at managing risk and change control, they'll know if they are making less mistakes, and those mistakes that are made are resolved effectively.

In a nutshell, I'd say the new recruits should be showing signs of improving efficiency and effectiveness this year, and that would manifest itself in a faster car next year. I hope they have some good evidence of leadership and better teamwork behind the screens, because what is happening on track at the moment doesn't look too good.