Mercedes GP 2011

[marcush.]

Newey has more than once looked like a fool and mind you when his first RBcars came out they were indeed NOTHING special-mediocre and not a few thought he had lost that edge or aura he seemed to show at Williams and Mclaren at times.
As for the Mercedes team -if you buy in something -wich is the obvious choice when teams are on the market, why shouldn´t this be appealing to the supporters of the marque? There´s no difference to Mercedes badging/buying into illmor and then Mclaren.
I think they have done the right thing ,even though it looks like they made some people rich doing this.Fair enough I would take the 80mill € as well before they beat me up.
in all one has to admit that Brawn has saved Hondas race team,bagged two titles in one year and sold of the whole lot for monster money securing the future of one third(?)or more of the workforce doing that and is now a rich man as well.I would take the flak of some forum experts easily with my pockets stuffed like that...cannot be wrong all after that.

[Raptor22]

I doubt anyone is EXPECTING amazing things. Its more a case of HOPING for amazing things.
Mercedes has a history that predates Ferrari.
If Volkswagen enters Formula 1 they can in effect call the F1 team "Auto Union" and run the effort as a technology platform for all their brands.
then we'd have some real history.
On the motor racing scale, McLaren, Williams, Brabham, Lotus are spring chickens in comparison with the marques that fought over the spoils before 1950.

Hence it will be hugely appealng to see Mercedes do well.
they cameclose to a F1 re-entery in 1992 with Sauber. the board instead opted to not entere F1 as a team but rather as a technology partner. I won;t bore you with the details though.

[Raptor22]

Newey has more than once looked like a fool and mind you when his first RBcars came out they were indeed NOTHING special-mediocre and not a few thought he had lost that edge or aura he seemed to show at Williams and Mclaren at times.
As for the Mercedes team -if you buy in something -wich is the obvious choice when teams are on the market, why shouldn´t this be appealing to the supporters of the marque? There´s no difference to Mercedes badging/buying into illmor and then Mclaren.
I think they have done the right thing ,even though it looks like they made some people rich doing this.Fair enough I would take the 80mill € as well before they beat me up.
in all one has to admit that Brawn has saved Hondas race team,bagged two titles in one year and sold of the whole lot for monster money securing the future of one third(?)or more of the workforce doing that and is now a rich man as well.I would take the flak of some forum experts easily with my pockets stuffed like that...cannot be wrong all after that.

exactly, good business sense was never a crime.
the deal saved Honda a wackedload of severance payouts ot employees as well, the costof shutting down the facility and seling of equipment at a loss.
Instead Brawn took the risk of keeping the team alive and its risk that paid handsomely for him.
Some of the armchair experts seem hellbent of making sure that Brawn is not viewed as a engineer either. I my experience the only people I have ever worked with with looked down upon the guys who had worked their way up from the workshop floor were ratehr poor engineers themselves and they always felt threatenedhnce the constant need to remind people that those guys and gal were "only" artisans.
Today they're better engineers than the "engineers"

Kudos to Brawn for the effort thus far. He did a stirling job at Williams then Benetton, then Ferrari, Honda sn now Mercedes.
Good effort should only be rewarded

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Exactly Giblet.

Just because you paint the cars silver doesnt mean they will be 1 second faster, as much as I want that to be true.
Fact is Mercedes cannot win at whim nor can they change an entire team overnight.

The noises im hearing about staff changes, Michelin tyre gurus joining, Bob Bell on his way, a highly rated Ex Toyota/Mclaren chassis engineer(iguchi) and new CFD and simulator tech being invested into by Mercedes are all music to my ears.
Because these are the things that need to be done for the team to advance.

I would liken the Brawn GP metamorphasis into Mercedes Benz GP as somthing of a hangover. Because they lost very good staff initially when they werent being bank rolled, and then were left with the dilemma of whom to take on post Mercedes takeover.

Im also aware of the difficulties of doing anything with a split management structure, which Mercedes would have had up until last week due to Brawn and Fry's 24.9% stakeholding.
Brawn and Fry would be liable for 24.9% of the team and its costings. Something this imbecilic newspiece fails to mention at all.
http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_ ... t_id=43047

Chris Sylt + Figures = Epic Fail

*(sidenote) Funny also how they fail to take into account the figures of how Brawn(and Fry) sold the team with £60 million in the bank. Its mentioned but forgetting in the math...Chris Sylt...you gotta love him

(OT Xcuse the sidetrack)The process of winning in F1 is not instant. Its a long haul, and Mercedes will want to see some evidence for further participation beyond 2012.
Come Melbourne we will see wether there is progression or regression.

[xpensive]

...
What is the appeal of the Mercedes team in it's current guise?

Which would be the million-euro quiz, just like rap described above, we are trying to relate to a history which goes back to the early 30-s, and beyond that , why we old farts feel this sad xcuse for a national-team is so embarrassing.

Every day I go to work, I see evidenece of good and true German engineering, by beholding the Trondheim submarine-docks. They tried many times to blow them up afterwards, with little success. A local legend has it that the brits bombed the unit once, barely making a scratch, only for the german soldiers to fill the cavity with water and use it as a pool.

That's the sprit I wanna see JET!

[jav]

Raptor-

good post- I agree with most of it.

I don't think Brawn lied nor do I believe he would do so intentionally. But I do believe his statements have painted a rosier picture than reality would bear witness to. On quite a few occasions, he's made statements that just don't come to fruition. I think this (combined with '09's success)is what enticed Merc to buy in and the rosy statements continue because to sponsors and fans, the performances have fallen short. The more you do that, the less credability you have and that's where I am now. For whatever reason, the team has failed to deliver on plans and while I want to be positive, history has conditioned me to expect disappointment. Yes- I fully agree 2010 can be explained and excused. I'm not so charitable with 2011 and at least til now, I'm not seeing any tangeable signs of hope.

Case in point - I've said I'm skeptical that the "new car" will actually show up this week. Brawn's statements til now would lead us to believe - 1)the basic car did it's job, 2)they know what to expect as far as a step forward given tire, KERS and basic car data modelled projections etc. and 3)they "need" about 1 second - which they feel they can do. Now - Do I expect a new car this week that will have gained the 1 second by the end of testing? NO- I expect the old car with some new bits that amount to a fraction of what they need. Then the rederick will be they'll make up the difference by the first race... and when that doesn't happen, we'll be back the "we expect a big step forward for... (insert next event here) ".

I'm a firm believer in the "under promise over deliver" method of doing business. It seems to me Brawn/MERC do the opposite all too often.

[Ferraripilot]

Boy that's great question Giblet. Why all of the sudden support the team now as they are more technical exercize than team? Some good answers out there. For me it's because I am an underdog supporter, a huge Schu/Brawn fan, and the biggest reason is they are not Ferrari/Mclaren. I suppose it's similar to being a Red Bull fan 4 years ago. It's something different with some very noteable people running things and is most certainly the last horrah for some of them.

[xpensive]

With all possible evidence, I've always been a supporter of the underdog, from Ronnie's running with MrM's hopeless Marches of the 70s to Ken Tyrrell's sandwich-related tryings in the 90s.

But this is a different day and age, to cut it here and now takes a little more than xcuses, if you call yourself Mercedes.

[marcush.]

To deal with Ferrari ,Major Tom and Patrick Head is a different story to mercedes suits i´m pretty sure of that.
Om the other hand Brawn got the stick handed over by Honda so for some reason he earned their respect(I doubt that it was Fry who made this happen).
Today i´m sure running the show is anything but a nice job as it is without a doubt reporting and presenting evidence of progress and milestones to be met more than anything else for Ross,especially in the light of what he sold to MERc not even two years ago.
He sold a Championship winning well oiled machine to the three pointed star and without a doubt painted the picture in more colorful detail to just get the deal.To be retained as the one running the show was maybe the bad idea in this plan as he should know that all effort was concentrated towards 2009 and he had to live up to his promises.At that point Exp is absolutely right on the money.Not realising where they were drifting towards is a big shadow on Brawns expertise.and in the same sense you just have to question the expertise again now when we hear 2010 all over again...we ware abit behind ,but we will make up for it very soon..heard that before.
But: Mercedes has removed Brawn and fry already from the board so he is just an employee now (maybe that was Brawns original plan ,but Mercedes wanted to keep him on board to make him go the extra mile and take responsibility? Remmeber him saying he was never aiming at taking ownership of a f1 team).If the car is a flop Brawn will soon face the axe methinks.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Marcush

While Brawn may(almost certainly) have painted a flattering picture of the team, I dont think he did it for a a pay cheque. At the end of the day, there were many vultures circling the team that would have asset stripped the team had Brawn/Fry not help his hand up for the team.

If not Brawn and Fry who else? A faceless capital firm? A Billionaire playboy?
Because these are the lot you would get buying the team otherwise.

Brawns actions have certainly enriched him, no question, but you have to say his guidance led to the team being manufacturer owned with no immediate fears of job security. For that in itself the man deserves some credit.

But Mercedes arent finished. This is a the very least a good basis for Mercedes to go on in F1. We are still at the embryonic phase of this venture, and time and patience will be required for this to be a winning team.

The W02 is a couple of days away from being seen in race ready guise, lets see if Brawns gamble pays off.

[Ferraripilot]

I will go wild and say they will have their second they were after. I don't think they would be being this flaily regarding their statements without having something to properly back it up.

[xpensive]

The discussion sholud be about how for Merc to get outa this mess, ripping a page from Renault's book perhaps?

AMG anyone?

[segedunum]

See, what I fail to understand about Mercedes fans, is why? They were not a team, they were a technology partner to an actual team. More precisely, they made and built engines.

Now there's a thought provoker..... As an engine supplier who got their name on a few cars that won races I'm puzzled as well. Why on Earth would you go into the massive difficulty of running your own team when all your fellow manufacturers have bolted when you could have simply provided two or three teams with engines and got your marketing that way? I mean, it's accepted that Mercedes probably have the most admired engine out there. All they have to do is match it with teams that are producing winning cars.

I don't see what they get as a team that they don't get as an engine supplier, apart from a lot of aggravation.

Now that they bought the boom and bust Honda team, everyone is expecting amazing things out of them. My question is why? I expect amazing things from Mclaren, Red Bull, and Ferrari, as they have already delivered them in the past.

Well, past history isn't on their side is it? Show me the money, as they say. I'm still waiting. Yep, they could come up looking like a million dollars but there's no evidence yet to suggest they will. Just looking as if they're moving forwards would be nice but they don't look like that either.

What is the appeal of the Mercedes team in it's current guise?

More to the point, what is the appeal of the Mercedes team to Mercedes themselves and how much more can they tolerate? Mercedes GP currently looks like most other manufacturer teams we've had - a spare part the parent company isn't quite sure what to do with.

EDIT: Oh, and I'm sure there's a fair few more points you need to delete on previous pages. I've pointed out to the esteemed Tomba in the past the phenomenon of the usual suspects whining over someone arguing their point, especially in view of the nonsense that seems to get kept around.........

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

The discussion sholud be about how for Merc to get outa this mess, ripping a page from Renault's book perhaps?

AMG anyone?

I speculated on this last year if you remember X.

But AMG would go in their and rip the place up IMO, this approach is expensive. But given AMG's ever increasing autonomy as Mercedes-Benz sports model range...it could yet happen, whats more Mercedes can soak up the cost and "give it" to AMG for free.

But it isnt a mess, IMO. Very far from it.

[Richard]

Good god no, not AMG! That's now a neutered shadow of what it once was.

When Merc bought up AMG and walked in the front door, the founder ran out the back door with the racing parts of the business. He then founded HWA as a specialist race engineering company, and they are the people producing the Merc DTM cars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HWA_AG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Werner_Aufrecht

Its just like Ilmor selling out to MB, and then setting up a new company.