Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

This forum contains threads to discuss teams themselves. Anything not technical about the cars, including restructuring, performances etc belongs here.
User avatar
clipsy1H
-16
Joined: 12 Feb 2012, 02:21

Re: Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

Post

i find an interesting interview with Michael (before the race i think)

here it is -> http://gulfnews.com/sport/motorsport/mi ... -1.1097600 (i post a passage you can read full by clicking on link)
Does it mean that the engineers are still working at the development of the car?
We are still working on the car for next year. We are not working on this car just for this season. Everything that is done is going to benefit the car for next season.

What about Nascar racing? Do you think it can suit you better after you stop F1?

I have kept saying that there are plenty of people with plenty of well-meaning ideas, such as yours now. I will find my way and find what is interesting for me. Nascar will certainly not be one of my challenges in the future.

What would be your immediate future like?

I am still obviously involved with the worldwide safety campaign. I have been, and most likely will be involved in it in the future. In Formula 1 itself, I am probably less involved in the safety aspect other than for my team. Or if I am needed to do something specific to improve F1 safety aspects, I am always around.
We must stop to dream about something significant in last 2 races because Brawn don't give a ... about Schumacher high retirement.
And second, he may continue do in other competition something small just for his fun but more important we continue to see him at F1 races because he's involved with FIA safety program and like he said will help to improve safety in F1.

marcush.
marcush.
159
Joined: 09 Mar 2004, 16:55

Re: Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

Post

FoxHound wrote:
Dragonfly wrote:I pray for the opposite. The sooner they go down the drain, the better.

Quite pathetic how you can hold 500 people's livelihood in such contempt.
Have your opinion on the team, fine, but to show such malice and disregard for people is disgraceful.
those 500(!!!)+people are responsible for the current results if I´m correct? What do you think your boss would do if you constantly NOT deliver? Raise your salary ,perhaps?
We have been constantly told that formula 1 the business is the toughest in this world , but I´m quite sure I was never retained in a company hoping for better times ,more luck or just plain sympathy ....
Make no bones about it they failed massively this year ,that win was worth NIL ,narda niente in hindsight as their campaign completely derailed after this and they are further back then ever now with a car that was a massive step forward .
How they managed to get Hamilton and how they lured Daimler in investing even more is surprising and in no ways a reflection of their suceess in building a potential championship winning team. To be perfectly honest I see them lucky as others are committing lots of idiotic errors as well these days ..if that was not the case they would look even worse.
Fact is the China win was a combination of others not being able to maximise their potential yet and them lucking in on a perfect setup + constant conditions.
Last edited by marcush. on 05 Nov 2012, 00:56, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
Cocles
17
Joined: 02 Sep 2011, 13:27

Re: Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

Post

marcush. wrote:
FoxHound wrote:
Dragonfly wrote:I pray for the opposite. The sooner they go down the drain, the better.

Quite pathetic how you can hold 500 people's livelihood in such contempt.
Have your opinion on the team, fine, but to show such malice and disregard for people is disgraceful.
those 500(!!!)+people are responsible for the current results if I´m correct? What do you think your boss would do if you constantly NOT deliver? Raise your salary ,perhaps?
So you think the appropriate response is for the boss to disband the entire company? You just come across as tired and angry these days, Marcush, and it's affecting the quality of your posts.

munudeges
munudeges
-14
Joined: 10 Jun 2011, 17:08

Re: Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

Post

FoxHound wrote:Quite pathetic how you can hold 500 people's livelihood in such contempt.
Have your opinion on the team, fine, but to show such malice and disregard for people is disgraceful.
Such is life I'm afraid. No one is entitled to a livelihood I'm afraid, and certainly not those working for a Formula 1 team. Your view on real life seems somewhat naive and more than just a little delusional.

User avatar
FoxHound
55
Joined: 23 Aug 2012, 16:50

Re: Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

Post

Marcush I posted 3 races ago we would not see an improvement in Mercedes W03.

Every race since then, we have people expecting Mercedes to be podium contenders as if they forgot the previous race. Well, it ain't happening now is it?
This team in its Bigois baby direction hit a brick wall, we could all see that in Oz... Same problems, same old story right?
Now Costa is taking the reigns with the help of Elliott for a new direction.
They have been crap, fully agreed. But Mercedes are getting stuck in, they aren't crying about it.

I'm hoping we see marked improvement, and if we don't, in 2014 I'll join you with the pick forks and fire to lynch the team.
Until then these guys deserve some time to improve. Remember red bull in their 3rd year?
JET set

User avatar
Cocles
17
Joined: 02 Sep 2011, 13:27

Re: Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

Post

FoxHound wrote:I'm hoping we see marked improvement, and if we don't, in 2014 I'll join you with the pick forks and fire to lynch the team. Until then these guys deserve some time to improve. Remember red bull in their 3rd year?
Totally agree, and ironically most of the heavy hitter in this thread did too back when the Costa/Willis hired happened. Then of course they all came down with retrograde amnesia.

"Don't get your hopes up; we won't see the full effect until W04. Don't get your hopes up; we won't see the full effect until W04. WHY ISN'T THE W03 FAST?!??? THIS TEAM FAILS!!!"

Some of you apparently got your hopes up....

User avatar
FoxHound
55
Joined: 23 Aug 2012, 16:50

Re: Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

Post

It's a classic case of a high profile product finding the going is tough in a new venture.
Fans, and detractors alike all agree the results are unacceptable.

What can Mercedes do?

Well to be fair just this year...

They sacked Bigois
Recruited Ellis
Revamped the windtunnel
Made 30 million in extra funds available for 2013
Signed Hamilton
Signed up for 7 years

These show Mercedes want to succeed.
JET set

User avatar
yener
4
Joined: 09 May 2011, 00:00

Re: Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

Post

In the first races of this season it was a lotery. We saw many winners and almost every team could win a race. This happened because of the new softer tyres. Nobody really did understand them. Then we also had the front runners of 2011 which had lost their EBD. So McLaren, Ferrari and Especially RBR had to work really hard to get back their downforce at the rear without the EBD.

After a couple of races we slowly saw the puzzle pieces falling on their place again. RBR slowly started to dominate again. Ferrari fixed their floor problems and McLaren also find their way.
Lotus was also getting faster and faster.

When this all was happening Mercedes was the only team with "tyre" issues race after race. They realised after 10 races FINALLY it's not only the tyres.

Conclussion;
Mercedes is currently 10 races behind the car development. While they started building and developing in 2011 season. At the start of the season they were exactly at the same point as the top teams. But they wasted their time on solving the tyre issues and their genius inky winky front wing.

They will close the gap with the top teams with maybe 5 races. But they will still be 5 races behind in development time. So its going to be a cold cold Christmas at Brackley and Stutgart..
"Life is about passions - Thank you for sharing mine" MSC

SaveMeHollywood
SaveMeHollywood
-1
Joined: 06 Oct 2012, 03:29

Re: Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

Post

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AZfALYz8zY[/youtube]

Ross Brawn: "What happened there?!? What happened there?!?"

bhall
bhall
244
Joined: 28 Feb 2006, 21:26

Re: Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

Post

FoxHound wrote:
Dragonfly wrote:I pray for the opposite. The sooner they go down the drain, the better.

Quite pathetic how you can hold 500 people's livelihood in such contempt.
Have your opinion on the team, fine, but to show such malice and disregard for people is disgraceful.
You need to get over yourself, JET. You also need to get over this idea that F1 is a matter of life and death. If we constrain our opinions to those that have no real world implications, we'll quickly run out of things to say.

I'm with Dragonfly here. The quicker Mercedes GP folds, the better. Wasting money on a hapless Formula One team is irresponsible for a corporation like Daimler that's so strapped it needs to cut costs by €1 billion and liquidate its EADS holdings (which will cost German taxpayers at least €2.1 billion, by the way).

How do you like those real world implications?

User avatar
Cam
45
Joined: 02 Mar 2012, 08:38

Re: Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

Post

Always to the point and backed by facts. Always refreshing bhall2gk.

No-one likes to see people loose their jobs, especially the ground troops purely as a result of the generals not being good enough. That said, if anything does happen, good people will always be snapped up. Lets wait and see if the rumours of increased budgets and a pumped up Hamilton with everything to prove, can help next year.
“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
― Socrates
Ignorance is a state of being uninformed. Ignorant describes a person in the state of being unaware
who deliberately ignores or disregards important information or facts. © all rights reserved.

elf341
elf341
5
Joined: 10 Aug 2011, 19:31

Re: Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

Post

I think the money boost from Stuttgart was essentially requested to offset the championship money that the team loses moving from 4th to 5th/6th, perhaps with a little extra.

The team's woes are actually very interesting. Brawn recently announced that they haven't kept up with aerodynamic development of the other teams. "Well duh!" seems to be most people's responses, but in a way I can understand how it happened. Firstly, earlier in the season Brawn pointed to the qualifying pace of the car as an indication that aerodynamically the car is sound (source)
Ross Brawn, April 2012 wrote:...our qualifying speed tells us that the fundamentals of performance are there: you can't do the lap times if you don't have enough downforce, horsepower or a good chassis.
i.e. Mercedes knew their race pace was afflicted by tyre issues, so were judging their aero performance by qualification only.

Secondly, mid-season there were quite a few races which had wet fridays and/or wet qualifying. In these sessions Schumacher managed with his wet-driving expertise to put the car in similarly high qualifying positions as the car achieved in its early season qualifying dominance: Germany 4th, Silverstone 3rd. In reality, I would wager that the dry qualy pace was already well into its tumble, certainly the shine was not present any more in the dry qualification in valencia just a few weeks before (a track that the W03 was expected to do well at).
The true extent of the problem was probably only beginning to be appreciated in Hungary, when both cars failed for the first time to enter Q3, and it became apparent that there were severe consequences to their strategy of dropping downforce levels to try and improve balance and tyre handling, with extremely poor performance with big understeer through the long slow corner.

I think after that it's merely been a case of damage limitation. Their 60% WT upgrade will have been sanctioned well before their qualification achievement dropped off (and hence well before they realised they were actually in aerodynamic deficit), and I actually think their adoption of the Coanda exhaust was a bit more out of desperation than anything else - perhaps also a realisation that they needed to understand what has become the pitlane concensus for exhaust solution before the winter break.

The most surprising thing for me is that they have failed to substantially improve their performance with their new exhaust, despite being several races with its use. Brawn stated that several other teams took 4-5 races before they were properly using the exhaust, so perhaps then we might expect improvements in the last couple races?

Either way, I think at Brackley they were caught trying to take an easy route, thinking that they could give up what has been the primary way to improve performance for the past 25 odd years: aerodynamics. In truth, they should have known better that in F1 you have to run even just to keep still.

wunderkind
wunderkind
5
Joined: 04 Apr 2007, 06:12

Re: Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

Post

bhallg2k wrote:
FoxHound wrote:
Dragonfly wrote:I pray for the opposite. The sooner they go down the drain, the better.

Quite pathetic how you can hold 500 people's livelihood in such contempt.
Have your opinion on the team, fine, but to show such malice and disregard for people is disgraceful.
You need to get over yourself, JET. You also need to get over this idea that F1 is a matter of life and death. If we constrain our opinions to those that have no real world implications, we'll quickly run out of things to say.

I'm with Dragonfly here. The quicker Mercedes GP folds, the better. Wasting money on a hapless Formula One team is irresponsible for a corporation like Daimler that's so strapped it needs to cut costs by €1 billion and liquidate its EADS holdings (which will cost German taxpayers at least €2.1 billion, by the way).

How do you like those real world implications?
Cost cuts are required at ALL European car manufacturers, not just Mercedes Benz. Almost every luxury car manufacturer have come out in recent weeks saying the effects of Europe's economic woes are finally coming through and to make things worse, China, and Russia are also slowing notieably in since the middle of 2012. Mercedes, Porsche, BMW, VAG have all plan ned to cut production in the coming months. Dr Zetsche had said they can no longer meet the sales forecast and revenue targets they gave to the financial markets in 2011 and that they will scrap the forecasts altogether. Hence the need for Mercedes Benz and Daimler to cut costs and go on a diet. But this is affecting everyone with the exception of perhaps Ferrari.

As for Mercedes Benz's participation in Formula 1 and its implication for the sale of Daimler's shareholding in EADS.............there is NONE. Don't read too much into it.

Daimler has been a substanital shareholder in EADS ever since the beginning when the German and French governments decided to merge their national aerospace groups - Deutsche Aerospace A.G. and Aerospatiale-Matra - along with the Spaniards to form the EADS consortium. The merger was always a merger of convenience as a way to create a big military and commercial defence contractor that could rival the Americans and the British. The Americans are against any foreign defence contractors that are controlled/owned by a government and never truly allowed EADS to bid for any US civil or military contracts. This has always been the main issue at EADS. The Germans always understood this problem and have always pulled the strings via Daimler whereas the French government still holds a direct shareholding in EADS. I can see the collective stance of the German and French governments given EADS is a strategic asset and much of its revenues come from governments, state-owned businesses, and deals generated from diplomatic ties (rememeber a few months ago, Airbus scored an order of 50 A320's after Chancellor Merkel extended her stay in China to accompany the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao on a train ride).

Daimler knows full well of its national responsibility. They know it is their duty to manage EADS on behalf of the German government. The sale of shares by Daimler in a government-sponsored transaction to the state-owned KfW will happen. The only sticking point is the valuation. Daimler would of course want to get the highest price for the shares while the German government wants to do the politically correct thing and pay somewhere between the current market valuation and the valuation by its financial advisors.

I can understand Foxhound's affection for the Mercedes-AMG F1 Team. F1 will be poorer with the withdrawal of Mercedes Benz. Yes this season has been a massive disappointment. But we all knew it was going to be difficult for a team still in its rebuilding phase. I'm sure 2013 will be better!

bhall
bhall
244
Joined: 28 Feb 2006, 21:26

Re: Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

Post

wunderkind wrote:Cost cuts are required at ALL European car manufacturers, not just Mercedes Benz. Almost every luxury car manufacturer have come out in recent weeks saying the effects of Europe's economic woes are finally coming through and to make things worse, China, and Russia are also slowing notieably in since the middle of 2012. Mercedes, Porsche, BMW, VAG have all plan ned to cut production in the coming months. Dr Zetsche had said they can no longer meet the sales forecast and revenue targets they gave to the financial markets in 2011 and that they will scrap the forecasts altogether. Hence the need for Mercedes Benz and Daimler to cut costs and go on a diet. But this is affecting everyone with the exception of perhaps Ferrari.

As for Mercedes Benz's participation in Formula 1 and its implication for the sale of Daimler's shareholding in EADS.............there is NONE. Don't read too much into it.

[...]
I know. I didn't say Mercedes GP is to blame for Daimler's financial woes. I said it's irresponsible for Daimler to waste money on an underperforming Formula One team in light of those financial woes. And I only said that because someone here seems to think Mercedes GP is somehow more a public works project than it is a Formula One team. (Now that I think about it, he might be right.)

User avatar
Cocles
17
Joined: 02 Sep 2011, 13:27

Re: Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

Post

I know. I didn't say Mercedes GP... seems to think Mercedes GP...
It's a been a year now. Probably time we all stopped using a team name that doesn't exist anymore. Sorry to be anal, but if we're making an effort to get our facts straight, getting the team name right would be a good place to start.