McLaren-Mercedes, 1995-97.

[wesley123]

maybe a bit fun to notice, but these Mercedes engines always broke, until 2007, the first McLaren not drawn by Newey, since then there has yet to be an engine failure by the Mercedes engine.

[xpensive]

The McLaren chassis of those years were not as bad as one might think, in 1994 with the so bad-mouthed Peugeot engine, they still scored eight podiums, even without Ayrton Senna?

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

So because the 94 chassis was ok, that means 95-96 chassis were as good?

If I remember correctly the MP4 10 was such a desperate design it had 4 iterations.
The A-B-C-D specs respectively.

[xpensive]

Actually, I believe that Häkkinen would have taken the title already in 96 or 97 if McLaren had stuck with Peugeot.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

My word.

I guess McLaren were idiots for ditching that powerhouse French company with such a brilliant engine.

(Sarcasm off)
Did Peugeot not go through a sustained period of blowing up? Did they also not get ditched by McLaren because a) the mercedes deal allowed McLaren more money to further develop their cars b) they had access to information on both engines and chose the superior option.

In hindsight, it's perfectly clear McLaren made the right choice.

[Richard]

So to clarify - most the failures in 95-97 were engine related?

Does this infer that Merc were the weaker part of the team and were being carried along by the experienced McLaren team?

Remember that there were a lot more failures in that era, we'd have to compare the McLaren failures with their peers to see if the failures were normal for that era. When I last looked at this, 45% of cars that started a race in 1999 failed to finish. So it appears Merc might have been more reliable than average?

viewtopic.php?p=128058#p128058

[xpensive]

...
Does this infer that Merc were the weaker part of the team and were being carried along by the experienced McLaren team?
...

I think that's a fair assessment richard, the Mercedes powerplants were indeed fragile, Peugeot on the other hand developed their V10 from Group C xperience, why Peugeot's engine-failures in Formula One were few and far between.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

What you think and what is reality is quite different. You'll probably flag this comment to the mods, but in context of this thread you are bypassing the facts to suit your agenda.

Oh and please look at Richards post in it's entirety.

[munudeges]

What is clear is that there was a clear and verifiable progression in the first three years of the McLaren and Mercedes relationship, regardless of when Adrian Newey did or did not come in.

Anything else is purely academic, although the Peugeot engines did seem to lack power from what I remember. Why McLaren didn't give the relationship the time it needed I don't know, but McLaren probably thought Mercedes would give them more commercial opportunities as well as a decent engine. They were right on both counts.

[Richard]

mun - It also shows that even Merc needed to graft onto a team with established leadership with a long track record of success. The combination of McLaren's experience and MHPE resources took them 4 years to develop into a WCC team.

We saw the same for Red Bull, although they were the other way around - an engine supplier with a long track record grafted onto a newly formed leadership & design team

[xpensive]

The most important difference between Peugeot and Mercedes, other than a shitload of money, was that while the Peugeot engine was developed in-house, Mercedes simply bought into Ilmor and told them to change the valve-covers.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

How right you are x.

So why not direct whatever it's your getting at to ilmor!

[xpensive]

Mercedes screwed up so bad with HPE they had to hire a swedish director, which was most telling of their desperation.

http://www.nyteknik.se/popular_teknik/t ... 265288.ece

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Is this thread a vehicle to berate the Germans?

As debate continues, your motives become clearer....

[Richard]

they had to hire a swedish director, which was most telling of their desperation.

A swede replacing a swiss?

You've not mentioned the Indy Car connection. Who'd have thought a company from Indy Car could conquer F1?