A few posters here not only doubted the team, but also made a point of ridiculing them.Kingshark wrote:Incredible really. Hats off to Brackley, I didn't think they'd have it in them.
#aerogollumturbof1 wrote: YOU SHALL NOT......STALLLLL!!!
To be fair, Norbert Haug and Shumi were the target of most of the ridicule.FoxHound wrote:A few posters here not only doubted the team, but also made a point of ridiculing them.Kingshark wrote:Incredible really. Hats off to Brackley, I didn't think they'd have it in them.
Sharpening pens on teams and people is easy, but if we look at what McLaren are going through... Mercedes did not suffer any worse. Yet, the flak received was disproportionate.
Have a read through the old Merc team threads if you'd like an example.....
So you are insisting that, Nico is not good enough to face tough challenges from outside the team to win a championship and so he should win this year in a charitable way.Racer X wrote:Nico Ross i honestly hope he becomes Champion because next year with all the teams bringing stronger engines we might see Ferrari overtake the competition or Renault or even Honda. who knows..... My point about Ross is that with a tighter competition Ross might mis his chance to be world champion think Jenson Button on this... what if this is it like Massa and if he doesnt become champion here this year he might never. So i hope he can beat Hamilton besides Lewis is already a Champion. So i hope Nico wins...
Mercedes motorsport bosses Toto Wolff and Paddy Lowe have both suffered injuries during a team building exercise on Tuesday. The pair were involved in a cycling crash in the Austrian capital, Vienna. Whilst technical chief Lowe escaped with cuts and bruises, Wolff was admitted to hospital overnight for treatment to a broken wrist, elbow, shoulder and collarbone. The Mercedes team reports they're both in "good spirits" and aren't expected to miss this weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix. -
See more at: http://www.f1times.co.uk/news/display/0 ... nuvpF.dpuf
Firstly, an epic post by Foxhound. You distilled my opinions into it's purest form and made a very fine whiskey of it. =D>astracrazy wrote:good post foxhound. You also forgot about the master stroke from Ross with the tyre test last year, Paddy or Toto wouldn't have the balls to pull such a stunt.
As you say there were many fool guys leading up to this year who really deserve some credit now (even though it didn't look the case at the time).
I think Ross was the biggest of them all and i doubt we know the real reason why he left because the timing didn't make sense.
I fear Paddy, Toto and Nikki will take the glory at the end of this season, when in reality its far from the case and its likely Ross won't even be mentioned.
I agree with most of what you said. The only caveat would be that last year Merc really only jumped Ferrari, when, in the middle of the season, Pirelli fixed their main issue for them. If changing to tougher tires wasn't enough, they let Merc have a private test in a 2013 car, when we ALL knew the regs didn't allow a current car. Regardless of which tires were tested, you will not convince me Merc didn't learn a trick or two that they could apply to virtually and modern Pirelli f1 tire.FoxHound wrote:Unfairly so too, Pierce.
Haug's move to purchase the team and it's subsequent decline was held against him, and ultimately cost the man his job.
Looking back, it was a masterclass by Haug.
Mercedes always yearned to have their own team, hence the abortive attempts to purchase McLaren.
The £100 million spent to buy the team now looks a complete bargain when you consider to build a factory from scratch, will cost in excess of £300 million, and that's 2004 money. You then have to staff your empty factory....
Schumacher too, came in for alot of flak, but when you see how Rosberg has performed against Hamilton...the old man did good, real good. Just a case of the car not being competitive enough. Schumacher also played the sacrificial lamb on a few occasions for the team, trying new engine maps for the EBD and also different set ups to improve the teams woeful tyre problems. Commendable.
But I think Brawn bore the brunt of venom on these pages. While Haug may have got Mercedes into the sport, Brawn was helming the ship.
It was the shedding of staff back in 2008/9 that did for the team. Losing the likes of Zander and others who were so instrumental in making the BGP001 had a knock on effect to the development of the subsequent W range Mercs.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/motors ... staff.html
270 staff let go in the space of 3/4 months, and a budget which dropped from £210 million to around half that.
No team in F1 could really maintain a development rate or continuity with this sort of disturbance.
It was however sold to Merc under the RRA guise, that all teams would need to meet the 500 maximum number of staff by 2011/12. Mercedes already operated on that basis.
Only when it became clear that the RRA was not being respected, or that clear advantages would be frozen in due to it, Brawn went on his now famous recruitment drive to get the like of Bell, Costa and Willis to turn the ship around.
In the meantime the old guard where being shipped out...Bigois to Ferrari etc.
In this transition, the team struggled which is only normal. But Brawn was singled out as the man responsible, yet in 2013 under stable regs from 2009...the team clearly leapfrogged McLaren and Ferrari by being the second best team.
That does not happen out of nothing, and is clearly also not because of the engine(frozen regs).
All of it is a culmination of Brawn's decision making, even if he is not the greatest engineer that ever lived.
Enter the W05.
This more than anything is cumulative work put in by Brawn, his team and Mercedes. The hashtags on the side of the cars for Micheal are nice touch...but underneath that...they should have #DankeRoss.