Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

[SeijaKessen]

Do we realise HRT has indeed reeled in on the front runners? Their pace deficit is more like 105 % in the race here in Korea compared to the 106 we sawe at the start of the season ....but if that´s the case you have to really question what is going on at MGPs.
Even when considering all teams are moving forward then we have to conclude MGP are really doing worse than anyone else in the development game ...including even HRT

I fail to see how they can go on like this without making complete idiots out of themselves in the coming 4 races.

marcus, it's really a shame Schumacher is going to go out on such a poor note in F1. At least in 2006 he had the fortune to be in the running for the WDC. In 2012, he's just trying to keep the car near the midfield.

I find it amazing he is ok to into retirement with this stench on him. He's pulled out every last bit of performance possible this W03 is capable of and it matters very little since so many teams have either caught up to, or surpassed MGP.

[SeijaKessen]

I think the major problem at MGP lies in the mindset of the think tank which is still hungover from the "Brawn GP" effect. Their philosophy seems to be on these lines : "We did it once, we can do it again." Magic Bullet. They look like they want to create a car at the start of the season which decimates the competition, like the BGP001. Who cares about in season development when we can amass a lot of points at the beginning of the year and just try to hold onto the lead till the end?
This scenario may sound farcical, but it does explain why the W02 and W03 development began very early on and once they knew they hadn't hit the bull's eye they stopped bothering about updates. Maybe work on the W04 has been going on in full swing all this time, only this time, they wont announce it, owing to the failures of the previous two years of doing the same.

Just my take on this epic failure from a different perspective.

The team was gifted a world-beater from Honda that they stuffed a Merc engine into. They then were gifted a loophole in the rules and allowed to run the double diffusers. They were unbeatable till teams started to catch up in the second half of the season.

The Brawn GP effect you describe would be valid if they had proven they could actually build a car on their own capable of doing something early on. It's all smoke and mirrors with this team. Promises of greatness not too far down the road...then when the time comes, they say there's been a minor setback, but not to worry because soon they will be challenging when they understand one little problem.

[Ganxxta]

I know they are dying of laughter in Ingolstad watching this team.

Not only in Ingolstadt, I know that almost everyone in Germany is laughing about them, at least the people that watch at least one race per season and see the results of the other races in the news, just look at German forums ...

My friends (MSC fans) are laughing about the team and Hamiltons decision, my coworkers (no F1 enthusiasts, just reading the news) are laughing about Mercedes and saying that it was a right decision of MSC to leave the Team.

So, at least in my little world Mercedes hasn't done itself a favor with their F1 engagement, its more or less a PR disaster.

[Raptor22]

I am having some dart boards and golf balls printed this week.
The faces of CRoss Prawn, Noughtberg Huge and the three wise men baring gifts but riding a camel.
I'll throw in a few with Lance Armstrong's face too.

The biggest sporting fraud's of the 21 century.

Sorry had to get that off my chest

A pal of mine in Hamburg recently purchased a Range ROver. I asked why not a Mercedes ML. He laughed at me....

[SeijaKessen]

I am having some dart boards and golf balls printed this week.
The faces of CRoss Prawn, Noughtberg Huge and the three wise men baring gifts but riding a camel.
I'll throw in a few with Lance Armstrong's face too.

The biggest sporting fraud's of the 21 century.

Sorry had to get that off my chest

A pal of mine in Hamburg recently purchased a Range ROver. I asked why not a Mercedes ML. He laughed at me....

Don't forget Elliot Ness!

Pretty soon we'll be hearing about how Gabriel will come from the Bulls to design Merc's very own worldbeater.

With Lauda there, this is going to be a near repeat of the Jaguar debacle of a decade ago.

I would never buy an AMG badged Merc vehicle at this point because of this team. I wonder how they will spin this as a beneficial marketing tool.

[spadeflush]

I think the major problem at MGP lies in the mindset of the think tank which is still hungover from the "Brawn GP" effect. Their philosophy seems to be on these lines : "We did it once, we can do it again." Magic Bullet. They look like they want to create a car at the start of the season which decimates the competition, like the BGP001. Who cares about in season development when we can amass a lot of points at the beginning of the year and just try to hold onto the lead till the end?
This scenario may sound farcical, but it does explain why the W02 and W03 development began very early on and once they knew they hadn't hit the bull's eye they stopped bothering about updates. Maybe work on the W04 has been going on in full swing all this time, only this time, they wont announce it, owing to the failures of the previous two years of doing the same.

Just my take on this epic failure from a different perspective.

The team was gifted a world-beater from Honda that they stuffed a Merc engine into. They then were gifted a loophole in the rules and allowed to run the double diffusers. They were unbeatable till teams started to catch up in the second half of the season.

The Brawn GP effect you describe would be valid if they had proven they could actually build a car on their own capable of doing something early on. It's all smoke and mirrors with this team. Promises of greatness not too far down the road...then when the time comes, they say there's been a minor setback, but not to worry because soon they will be challenging when they understand one little problem.

completely agree with this. I am indeed talking about the delusional BrawnGP effect. 2009 truly showcased this team's incapability to develop a car in-season. The promises just keep on coming and the denials are everlasting. All they have done is ruined Michael Schumacher's comeback and dented his legacy a bit, while disappointing thousands, if not more, of his fans. I am really relieved now to know that he wont have to suffer this team's mediocrity for much longer. All the best lewis

[lillschumi]

I guess it was in June where they realized the car is crap and then starting focuss on 2013, so they carried over what was working by then and started to merge that with (hopefully) some new solutions for 2013 car.

That probably would mean they started out development of next year without coanda f.i. So one might wonder after Spa when they kind of thought coanda was needed,would then the base they have developed for next year needed to be revised? If so then giving up so early this year have not given them more development time just more wasted development time.

If i where at MGP i would go to the bottom with why they are so slow in their development. If the iterations was faster and lead time idea->update on car was faster then they should be able to start designing/finalizing car later. It would make sence to be able to bring over as much knowledge/gains from this year to next and that is done by finalizing next years concept as late as possible at the same time develop current years cars to the full.

This however is not possible at MGP and have not improved during last 3 years one bit, if something it seems to have got worse.

So why are they slow?, it could be down to the governance model of the development model, it could be down to the factory not being agile enought to produce short series, it could be down to that R&D is bad and unable to make analysis and come up with solutions. We know from fact that the factory is not at decent standard, last years car was really a joke if you look at build finish. maybe they need more time then other teams to accuire same build standard which contributes to slow updates.

[yener]

After the qualy Schumacher said that he did not really want to go out for another lap. I thought this is a very uncommon comment of Schumacher. It seems that he really lost interest in driving for that team any longer.

Well it is frustrating when you squeeze everything out of the car and still get overtaken by toro's and force india's. Cant blame him for the lost of is interest.

[yener]

I have been thinking and i honestly believe the car without the updates would perform better.

It seems to me that the last updates made the car slower. I would love to see the wo3 of the first race against the updated one for the coming GP.

[SeijaKessen]

I think the major problem at MGP lies in the mindset of the think tank which is still hungover from the "Brawn GP" effect. Their philosophy seems to be on these lines : "We did it once, we can do it again." Magic Bullet. They look like they want to create a car at the start of the season which decimates the competition, like the BGP001. Who cares about in season development when we can amass a lot of points at the beginning of the year and just try to hold onto the lead till the end?
This scenario may sound farcical, but it does explain why the W02 and W03 development began very early on and once they knew they hadn't hit the bull's eye they stopped bothering about updates. Maybe work on the W04 has been going on in full swing all this time, only this time, they wont announce it, owing to the failures of the previous two years of doing the same.

Just my take on this epic failure from a different perspective.

The team was gifted a world-beater from Honda that they stuffed a Merc engine into. They then were gifted a loophole in the rules and allowed to run the double diffusers. They were unbeatable till teams started to catch up in the second half of the season.

The Brawn GP effect you describe would be valid if they had proven they could actually build a car on their own capable of doing something early on. It's all smoke and mirrors with this team. Promises of greatness not too far down the road...then when the time comes, they say there's been a minor setback, but not to worry because soon they will be challenging when they understand one little problem.

completely agree with this. I am indeed talking about the delusional BrawnGP effect. 2009 truly showcased this team's incapability to develop a car in-season. The promises just keep on coming and the denials are everlasting. All they have done is ruined Michael Schumacher's comeback and dented his legacy a bit, while disappointing thousands, if not more, of his fans. I am really relieved now to know that he wont have to suffer this team's mediocrity for much longer. All the best lewis

Here's how I see 2013 unfolding.

When winter testing rolls around, we'll see the W04 putting up competitive times relative to McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull, and Lotus at Barcelona and Jerez. Lewis Hamilton will be very positive about what the car is doing and will constantly tell the media how he feels the car is "even better than I expected." In the background, the Hutt will be grinning like the Cheshire Cat.

The remaining MGP fans will see this as a sign of light at the end of the tunnel and start to become hopeful that MGP finally has designed a car capable of competing with the top level teams.

A few weeks later in Melbourne, during FP1-3, the W04 will be in the top 5 with times. In Q3 Lewis will land the W04 on pole or in P2. MGP fans everywhere will rejoice at the prospect of MGP finally having that competitive car. Something will happen during the race where MGP botches a late pit stop that costs Lewis a victory, but still lands him on the podium. The F1T boards light up like a Christmas tree with the performance of the W04.

Lewis bags a victory at Malaysia or Shanghai. Sticky keyboards are the norm across England and Germany.

Suddenly, a storm appears on the horizon in the form of updates. The top tier teams start bringing updates! Suddenly Lewis is seeing the W04 slipping behind.

By Monaco in May, cracks start appearing in Lewis' usually calm and cool demeanor when he begins to get snippy with the media. The Hutt is nowhere to be seen.

Suggestive tweets from Lewis suggest the honeymoon period is over.

MGP fans everywhere feel betrayed like they did in 2012. Ross promises they are working on a "comprehensive update package that will get the W04 back up to the top of the grid."

During the August break Sebastian Vettel jokes to the media, "Whatever happened to Lewis Hamilton?"

And so on...

[snoop1050]

thats got no chance of happening when most of this seasons updates get transfered to 2013 cars aswell merc are already over a second behind

[marcush.]

I think it´s very easy with todays tools sim and all to get confused as much as this.Why on earth did RedBull at the start of the season take two completly different cars through a whole race weekend?
They got confused to the extend of not beinmg sure which direction to take with car development.Sometimes you have to just make reality checks and not trust your simulation numbers when things don´t really stack up result wise.
MGP is really a long shot away from making a fit from simulation development and real results .They completely left alone car development -at least they vowed to do so- but yet they are struggling to set up their car to lean on its tyres according to the tyres potential.

It´s actually very simple-the tyre grip available is load sensitive,slipangle sesitive and it is also temperature sensitive.more temp will in effect not gain any grip but detoriate the tyre quickly .None of all this happens in a linear ways ...and adding more will send you on a trip of diminishing returns and eventually adding more will return less grip.

So you might very well have a balance -but unluckily a VERY unstable one with front temps on the lowish side and rears at the high side of the peak ... so what to do -driving around the problem will be all but impossible as you have to nurse the rears but pushing the fronts more -gaining grip- will worsen your problem at the rear..
I cannot believe they fail to understand these things ..but Brawn surely makes the impression of having absolutely no clue of tyres.

[SeijaKessen]

I think it´s very easy with todays tools sim and all to get confused as much as this.Why on earth did RedBull at the start of the season take two completly different cars through a whole race weekend?
They got confused to the extend of not beinmg sure which direction to take with car development.Sometimes you have to just make reality checks and not trust your simulation numbers when things don´t really stack up result wise.
MGP is really a long shot away from making a fit from simulation development and real results .They completely left alone car development -at least they vowed to do so- but yet they are struggling to set up their car to lean on its tyres according to the tyres potential.

It´s actually very simple-the tyre grip available is load sensitive,slipangle sesitive and it is also temperature sensitive.more temp will in effect not gain any grip but detoriate the tyre quickly .None of all this happens in a linear ways ...and adding more will send you on a trip of diminishing returns and eventually adding more will return less grip.

So you might very well have a balance -but unluckily a VERY unstable one with front temps on the lowish side and rears at the high side of the peak ... so what to do -driving around the problem will be all but impossible as you have to nurse the rears but pushing the fronts more -gaining grip- will worsen your problem at the rear..
I cannot believe they fail to understand these things ..but Brawn surely makes the impression of having absolutely no clue of tyres.

But Marcus, how is it with all these brilliant minds to be found at Brackley, they simply can't figure out how the tires wear, even though every other team seems to have gotten it under some sort of control?

If I didn't know better, I'd think this was the first time in F1 for these esteemed individuals.

[Ganxxta]

Well, in 2009 I thought "What is Button thinking in leaving this Team, he won both titles, Mercedes is gonna buy them, he is the Team leader...".

Now after 3 years I understand, he was there long enough to know that 2009 was more luck and DDD than anything else, Honda got worse from year to year, maybe he also knew what was in the Pipeline for 2010.

Poor Hamilton, I don't think he and Button had a conversation on why he left if you take in account Lewis recent Twitter messages about Button.

Honestly, I can't believe something is gonna change next year, if they don't find the magic bullet they will abandon their car and focus on 2014 again, like they did in every year before.

Btw. Does anybody know if the Super Aguri guy is still in the Team who had the DDD idea?

[marcush.]

Jock Clear- working with Jaques villeneuve ,Takuma Sato and Rubens Barrichello ...I start to have my doubts -Shovlin had Button and then Schumacher ....
Maybe we see these guys completely wrong.. I have to admit every hair i still got does resist that thought ,but Doubts are justified ,considering the idiotic soldiering on with p13 when your gearbox is making trouble and carry over this trouble to the next race -you could as well piss on your own shoes methinks. Why risk to spoil your next race for NO gain?
It seems they all have already quitted mentally.Maybe they already know they will all be sacked soon?