Post here all non technical related topics about Formula One. This includes race results, discussions, testing analysis etc. TV coverage and other personal questions should be in Off topic chat.
I tend to agree with the guy but it's still a bold claim to make. There really is no other manufacturer based out of their own factory left in the sport which is sad really.
Why is everyone in England? Why isn't Renault F1 in France with Renault? Mercedes in Germany?
“We have been in Formula 1 for 61 years without interruption, and in Italy [Ferrari home soil]. Mercedes as the German team has everything built in England.”
Does it really matter where the cars are manufactured? If it makes sense for a team to manufacture the car in England, then they should manufacture the car in England. It's not like they don't already manufacture their customer cars elsewhere in the world.
True, I agree, but I think what he's suggesting, is that Mercedes simply owns shares of the old Honda then Brawn GP outfit and really should not be considered a manufacturer as they have provided nothing more than money and engines to the "Mercedes GP" outfit.
Mores simply, they simply invested and bought a team, they didn't create Mercedes GP on their own merits.
Yeah, I still don't buy that logic... if one car company buys another, are they not a manufacturer because they didn't design that particular model? And this year's updates will be Mercedes' work, or at least the work of those on Mercedes' payroll. The engine in the car is 100% Mercedes, anyway.
Besides, it's fairly easy for Ferrari to be the only "manufacturer" in F1 considering their sole reason for existence is to go racing. It's not a secret they only "manufacture" cars so they can compete in manufacturer's series. It's not like they're pumping out the volume that a Mercedes, Honda, Toyota, etc are producing since they sell customer cars are their main business and the racing is a side bonus.
Astro1 wrote:True, I agree, but I think what he's suggesting, is that Mercedes simply owns shares of the old Honda then Brawn GP outfit and really should not be considered a manufacturer as they have provided nothing more than money and engines to the "Mercedes GP" outfit.
Mores simply, they simply invested and bought a team, they didn't create Mercedes GP on their own merits.
well in 2011, once the MP4-12C is released, McLaren will be.
But going by their logic, it was only Toyota and Ferrari as genuine manufacturer teams anyway then..
who was the last 'genuine' (in Ferrari's eyes) manufacturer team to enter F1 before Toyota?
Any post(s) made by this user are (semi-)educated opinion(s), based on random fact(s) blurred by the smudges of time.
Any fact(s) claimed by this user will be supplemented by a link to the original source of said fact(s).
so FIAT can claim to be a F1 manufacturer can they , one of their brands makes F1 cars it seems to me , mercedes now own their engine plant in the uk ....don't ferrari have a bigger outside ownership than mercedes F1 ?
and what about when ferrari moved the [chassis ? ] factory to the uk ?
and do they make everything on the car , or do they have bits made for them just like all the others ?
this is all a matter of semantics , and ferrari's statement is specious
The Ferrari claim is a bit ridiculous actually. At the end of the 80ties they have been so far behind in technology that they also had to base their core development facility in England. At that time they repeatedly payed John Barnard to buy and design just about everything important for performance in England. It took them ten years to get over that low and they had to buy out a core of British based engineers for just about everything from designing, aerodynamics, reliability, race engineering to get close to the top. They have in fact done nothing different to Mercedes except transplanting what they bought to Italy and using it there. What Montezemolo is doing there is just sour grapes. He is a little pissed off about the red Merc TV advert with Michael Schumacher. So now he goes and belittles what Merc is doing. Lets have a look what they actually do as an international manufacturer.
They bought MBHPE Ltd. in Brixworth (ex Illmore) from Mario Illien in 2001 and turned that into their own F1 engine technology spear head. Nine years later their engines have won two consequtive championships with 100% Mercedes technology including the best KERS system in the business. I have no doubt that Brawn GP will be transformed in a similar way, taking the best from all sources and amalgamating it into the best chassis in the business. It will be just a question of time to achieve it. Perhaps we will see it done in just one or two years. The development is so fast that after just five years Brawn will be running 100% on technology brought in by Mercedes. They are just a convenient way to jump start the works team. The decision to leave the team in England or transfer it to Germany is simply an efficiency decision. It would be so much more expensive to take it to Germany than having it in England that nobody will bother. Merc have huge factories abroad including the MBUSI Tuscaloosa facility in Alabama USA with 3 million square feet floor size, 3.000 employees and 175,000 vehicles build. Ferrari indeed looks a bit silly in comparison with that kind of international effort with their way of doing everything in Italy.
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best ..............................organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)
