Mercedes GP MGP W01

[747heavy]

[ringo]

check out the bib stay.

[feynman]

Chassis torsional rigidity is something thats easy to get wrong when you have a change of driver. In Merc's case, two driver changes!
...
What I believe happened in the Brawn team last year was the negotiations with Jenson certainly destabilised the design team since they did not know who hey were designing a car for until it was too late to go back. The design was cast and the parts were in production when Schumacher entered the fray. Rosberg is a driver who can cope with an understeering car so the team would have designed the car for he and Jenson with a skew toward jenson as WDC.

I don't much buy any of that. A fast car will always go fast, and any half-decent drivers will live with its temprament. You don't build a car to any nebulous notions of 'driver style', you build the fastest car you can, and then let the peddlers earn their salary, like it or lump it.

Using Jenson's contract negotiations as an excuse for another Brackley lemon is a little too much.
They endured years of horrific Earth Dream disasters, were gifted a Super Aguri/Dome 5-development track, 3-wind tunnel, 'monster'. It was obvious it wasn't an authored car like a Newey, it arrived by the brute force expedient of Honda throwing sacks of burning money into the wind tunnel. They didn't know why it worked. As soon as the Brackley factory tried to change it they went dramatically backwards for the chilly mid-season. They put it back the way it was and stagggered over the line. That the Merc this year is uninspired should really surprise no-one, consider it a return to form.

The problem is clearly way more fundamental than any vague or woolly subtleties of driver preference or driving style. Put Rosberg in Button's current ride he'd win races, put Button back in the 'designed for him' Merc, he wouldn't.

Haug needs to clear shop, but who knows if Mercedes has the stomach to take the short and medium term hit for a complete team reboot. Will they just hope that it all works out by itself.

Renault got a great f-duct up and running in one bounce. How many months is it and the Merc exhausts are still setting the car on fire? It is not good enough, and is clearly nothing much to do with Button leaving.
If this aimless midfield treading-water goes on for another year, then Ross has big problems. A reshuffle on the Daimler AG board, some new executive-in-a-hurry wants to change the lunch rota in the road-car plants, and doesn't need the inevitable union aggravation, pointing at an expensive and not winning F1 team, I wouldn't be surprised if they write-off the whole project, and decide they can actually live with the SLS and MP4-12C competing after-all.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Mercedes have competed for 6 months with the W01. "Aimless midfield treading" happens for a reason, And I do believe that this team in its Mercedes guise is performing better than any Honda "earth dream" cars ever did with twice the resources.

Give them a chance, and Im sure there is enough potential within the team to push them further up the grid. I agree that there are some people that shouldnt be there however.

[segedunum]

"Aimless midfield treading" happens for a reason, And I do believe that this team in its Mercedes guise is performing better than any Honda "earth dream" cars ever did with twice the resources.

[Giblet]

All these apologetic excuses for the MPG car's form are getting kind of old. Mercedes for whatever reason, has played their cards wrong. Reasons aside, Mercedes decided to buy Brawn, hire MSC, and develop their car the path they have.

They dug the whole and are sitting in it trying to clamber out.

The car looked twitchy and looking for grip in the parabolica.

The only thing they did right IMO is hire Rosberg.

[aral]

"Aimless midfield treading" happens for a reason, And I do believe that this team in its Mercedes guise is performing better than any Honda "earth dream" cars ever did with twice the resources.

I agree segedunum. Wasn't last years Brawn, a Honda with a different engine?

[nacho]

The most worrying for Mercedes in my opinion is the way they just seem to be going backwards relatively, update after update compared to the other teams.

[LionKing]

To put things into perspective for Mercedes GP :

Last year Rubens with Brawn car had done 1.22.976 in Q2. The fastest lap by MGP this weekend so far is 1.22.946 in FP3. On the other and Ferrari is 1.4s and McLaren is 0.9s faster than last year... Adding F-duct to the car, one year of development and refinements, EBD etc has not helped them much. Off course they lost some time due to narrower front tyres but other teams are already way faster than last year ....

[timbo]

The most worrying for Mercedes in my opinion is the way they just seem to be going backwards relatively, update after update compared to the other teams.

Honda style.
Seriously, there's something very wrong with their development team. Brawn was able to turn the fortunes by a brute force approach, but we already seen last year that they are not too good at solving problems.

[TheRMVR]

I want to talk about the airbox on the W01. The airbox on 'normal' F1-cars creates some turbulent air that is send to the rear wing. With the configuration that Mercedes is running there is no airbox in front of the rear wing.

What is the impact of this all? Is it something all the teams will run next year? Is it something that doesn't help very much? Or is it something that is actually quite clever but not really noticed because of the lack of pace by the Mercedes team?

[BorisTheBlade]

As stated some pages ago, they were simply caught flat-footed by the F-Duct. The F-Duct uses the space of the RW which is normally behind the Airbox. So it's only a small tradeoff for all the other teams. But for Mercedes it essentially means, that their clever approach has no real benefit anymore.

[siskue2005]

All these apologetic excuses for the MPG car's form are getting kind of old. Mercedes for whatever reason, has played their cards wrong. Reasons aside, Mercedes decided to buy Brawn, hire MSC, and develop their car the path they have.

They dug the whole and are sitting in it trying to clamber out.

The car looked twitchy and looking for grip in the parabolica.

Nico has not been able to win with the car and fight for the Champioship isnt it?!
So how come thats the only correct choice?

with ur logic they should fire them both with Brawn and buy Lewis and Mark with Newey

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

To put things into perspective for Mercedes GP :

Last year Rubens with Brawn car had done 1.22.976 in Q2. The fastest lap by MGP this weekend so far is 1.22.946 in FP3. On the other and Ferrari is 1.4s and McLaren is 0.9s faster than last year... Adding F-duct to the car, one year of development and refinements, EBD etc has not helped them much. Off course they lost some time due to narrower front tyres but other teams are already way faster than last year ....

thats what happens when you screw up the weight distribution and/or have chassis rigidity problems.

[raymondu999]

I remember last year though. With those front tyres, Jenson was sometimes more balanced in Q3 than in Q2. I believe he went FASTER even in Monaco Q3. I could be wrong.