2016 Williams Martini Racing F1 Team - Mercedes

[Cold Fussion]

What evidence is there to suggest that Mercedes would be unhappy if a customer team beat them? Where are all the stories from 2012 where Mclaren should have won the championship suggesting that Mercedes would somehow prevent this from happening? To me this whole logic is completely backwards, because if Mercedes produce a W0Turd™ one year, surely it's in their best interest for their customer teams to have the best possible engine so they can capture some glory and marketing value from their expenditure. If you want to hamper your customer teams, why even supply them at all?

[FoxHound]

His point is clear, Honda would be equally happy if Mclaren-Honda or Williams-Honda won a race.
You can't say the same for Mercedes and Ferrari.


If Honda proves to be competitive in 2016 (i'm not betting many chips on that) it would be a good move.

And yet McLaren, who brought Honda in, would feel aggrieved.
There's also the fact Honda have invested money into the McLaren F1 operation and pay for Alonso's wages. The point being it's not a Honda F1 venture so much as it is a Mclaren-Honda venture.

Looking at that dynamic, you sense that Honda want to get McLaren-Honda working way before supplying any other team, compound that to the issue of supplying 2 teams "equally".

@ColdFussion

There is actually evidence to suggest that while Mercedes proper would be disappointed in not being the best Merc powered car(natural), it would not have any bearing on the quality of their supply to the customer team beating them.
2010-2012 Mercedes helped McLaren with the EBD which was by far better than their own concept(maps, fuel use etc).

[Sevach]

What evidence is there to suggest that Mercedes would be unhappy if a customer team beat them? Where are all the stories from 2012 where Mclaren should have won the championship suggesting that Mercedes would somehow prevent this from happening? To me this whole logic is completely backwards, because if Mercedes produce a W0Turd™ one year, surely it's in their best interest for their customer teams to have the best possible engine so they can capture some glory and marketing value from their expenditure. If you want to hamper your customer teams, why even supply them at all?

It's clear that both Ferrari and Mercedes want the money and political power that comes with supplying a bunch of engines, being challenged by their client teams not so much.

If they adopted this "what matters is that a Mercedes powered car wins" strategy they would've jumped at the possibility to supply Red Bull.


Things aren't black and white of course, sometimes when you are weak it's good to have a flag carrier(Mclaren between 2010-2012, Red Bull and Renault are likely in this situation now), plus in the V8 era mclaren had been using that same exact engine with factory privileges since 2006, kinda hard to hide the tricks at this point.

And yet McLaren, who brought Honda in, would feel aggrieved.
There's also the fact Honda have invested money into the McLaren F1 operation and pay for Alonso's wages. The point being it's not a Honda F1 venture so much as it is a Mclaren-Honda venture.

Looking at that dynamic, you sense that Honda want to get McLaren-Honda working way before supplying any other team, compound that to the issue of supplying 2 teams "equally".

Maybe i'm wrong, but to me Honda seemed eager to jump into a partnership with Red Bull, only to be blocked by Mclaren.

And yeah, of course Mclaren would be aggrieved, getting beaten by another Honda team will probably hurt them economically big time, since Honda might change their investment strategy if they see a Red Bull or a Williams consistently outperforming Mclaren, but i don't think Mclaren has any pull to prevent it from happening.

[FoxHound]

It's clear that both Ferrari and Mercedes want the money and political power that comes with supplying a bunch of engines, being challenged by their client teams not so much.

If they adopted this "what matters is that a Mercedes powered car wins" strategy they would've jumped at the possibility to supply Red Bull.

In a free market, it's the right of the supplier who enjoys the supplied goods. In any competitive market, it's also true that direct competitors do not share technology unless mutually beneficial.
Red Bull had the offer of a PR tie-up with Mercedes if supplied, and simply did not get back to Lauda.If you conduct business like that, in light of Red Bull's treatment of Renault, then the onus is on Red Bull.
It's an example of how not to go about sourcing an engine, throughout the saga.

In relation to Williams, its a night and day difference. Mercedes are stipulate to supply equal equipment.
If Williams want better maps, which are developed together with Brixworth, then they up investment.
I've only heard good things regarding Mercedes supply of Williams, and they know that short of an engine freeze, Mercedes are the best option going forward.

We've given Hill's story more attention than it deserves, it makes no sense for Williams to change something which suits their overall car design so well.
And there are also the same problems switching powerunits given that McLaren likely have a "me first" clause in bringing back Honda. PR wise, it suits Honda to have McLaren winning for reasons I don't need to go into.

[Sevach]

Right now Mercedes is the least harmful option i agree, but that might not be the case in the future.
For obvious reasons it's unlikely that Williams will openly say bad things about them(even if they do split up), some passive aggressive complaints here and there about not getting the upgraded engine, some noise about Petrobras being unable to get dyno time or get their fuel validated once they came up with something that performs like Petronas, but you really have to keep your ear to the ground to find out.

Honda obviously wants Mclaren to succeed, it would be the simpler choice for them, but Honda's status of associate rather than team owner makes things easier imo.
Honda is in fact the closest thing to an independent supplier (that still has a great development budget), what makes associating with Honda difficult is the performance of their engines, if that gets sorted(again, no guarantees whatsoever)...

Mclaren's contract likely protects them from second rate services, but that wouldn't be a problem.

[FoxHound]

The upgrade spec engines Williams did not receive at the same time was not advantageous opportunism by Mercedes.
Brixworth cannot make new spec components for 4 teams simultaneously.

There are production issues that make it impossible, and also the fact that an untried upgrade will need reliability issues ironed out before its up to race standard.
Witness Red bull and Renault running their upgrades ahead of their schedule. It fell apart. Mercedes themselves had an issue with the new engine that retired Rosberg. Bullets Williams avoided.

As for bench time with Petrobras, I'm not aware of it.
But if you could point me to the story, I'll investigate

[turbof1]

The upgrade spec engines Williams did not receive was not advantageous opportunism by Mercedes.
Brixworth cannot make new spec components for 4 teams simultaneously.

There are production issues that make it impossible, and also the fact that an untried upgrade will need reliability issues ironed out before its up to race standard.
Witness Red bull and Renault running their upgrades ahead of their schedule. It fell apart. Mercedes themselves had an issue with the new engine that retired Rosberg. Bullets Williams avoided.

As for bench time with Petrobras, I'm not aware of it.
But if you could point me to the story, I'll investigate

Did you just copied that from Mercedes homepage? It sounds like their usual PR talk (no, seriously: it does).

Don't get me wrong; there is truth in it, but only to an extend.

What most do not realise is that these PUs usually get updates each and every time a scheduled PU change takes please. These are categorized as reliability, safety or cost upgrades, when tokens are not used to increase performance. But they are updates and physical changes to the PU none the less. In Mercedes' case it usually means the works team gets the upgrades first, then Williams (being a premium customer), then the others. Usually there indeed is not enough time to produce enough parts for each scheduled change, which is more or less aligned by all Mercedes teams. What does happen is that the Mercedes works team gets the parts first, and others whenever parts are ready according to their type of contracts. These teams usually are left with a choice to either run the old PU allocations one extra race, or inject a new allocation of the old spec.

However, reaching your short term capacity is NOT the same as reaching it on the long term. Mercedes of course was not realistically in place to deliver to other teams in Italy, but really should have been later on at the last PU allocation change. I don't bite the reliability talk for one single bit; Mercedes would never put parts in their works team cars of which they are not entirely sure those can last 5 race weekends. Rosberg's case was a random issue rectified inmediately.

What happened probably is that Mercedes wanted to allocate the machine time fully and completely to R&D to produce prototype parts to be tested on the rigs. A little bit of neglection towards its customers, albeit it will be contractually stipulated that they can do so.

[FoxHound]

Did you just copied that from Mercedes homepage? It sounds like their usual PR talk (no, seriously: it does).

Don't get me wrong; there is truth in it, but only to an extend.

Well I'm sorry you took it as PR talk. There's truth in all of it however, and if that rankles, I'm listening.

I don't bite the reliability talk for one single bit; Mercedes would never put parts in their works team cars of which they are not entirely sure those can last 5 race weekends. Rosberg's case was a random issue rectified inmediately

A random issues brought upon by mating 2014 parts to 2015 updates. It's interesting hearing you say this because in the Red Bull team thread you criticised Renault for pushing through updates at Red Bull's request.
They are a customer, and Renault had not tested the parts correctly or indeed enough of them for 2 cars simultaneously.

In Mercedes case, it was a new update. It was tested but there remained valid question marks as to a) if the updates worked, and b) if they are reliable.
Is it absolute coincidence that Rosberg's engine was about to go pop, with the new updates? Excepting Australia 2014(the first race of the new V6 turbo era) not 1 retirement for Mercedes-AMG team with engine failure.
Update arrives and bingo...engine failure imminent.

Then I did mention the production of parts.
I keep saying this, but production times are around 3 to 4 months. That's IF the parts work and are proven under duress ie racing.
Your suggestion is that Mercedes can readily provide 8 engines worth of updates simultaneously, at a massive cost, and without any guarantees that the updates will work out of the box? That will never ever be the case for any engine supplier in Formula one, especially with costs as they are, and tokens as precious as they are.


http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/121195

AUTOSPORT understands the German marque is unable to produce enough of the latest specification of parts to supply all of its customer teams this year.

Call it what you will Turbo, PR BS, gumph, etc etc. But logic dispels the assertions that Mercedes are somehow keeping the updates for themselves so that the customers cannot challenge them.
No Mercedes customer team can get close to the main team anyway, so the question is are Mercedes really that bothered that they are in effect sabotaging their customers, and in so doing sabotaging themselves, so the main team can win by more than 1 second a lap from the next Merc powered car?
Despite the fact Ferrari are their closest challengers...

You begin to see the chasms of fail....

[turbof1]

I didn't meant ill with PR talk. You can actually get a decent amount of information out of it, as long as you read critical.

A random issues brought upon by mating 2014 parts to 2015 updates. It's interesting hearing you say this because in the Red Bull team thread you criticised Renault for pushing through updates at Red Bull's request.
They are a customer, and Renault had not tested the parts correctly or indeed enough of them for 2 cars simultaneously.

The cases are unrelated. Renault made somewhere between during or even after testing, and australia the decision to quickly develop certain parts in order to avoid spending tokens later on. They themselves admitted they did not properly tested it on the rigs.

Mercedes on the other hand used their tokens in Italy, several months after the season started. I think we can both agree they tested them correctly and thorough.

A random issues brought upon by mating 2014 parts to 2015 updates.

Which they were able to fix without introducing new homologated parts (exceptions are general support studs and plumbing). Almost everything on the PU is regulated to the point you almost always need to introduce new PU allocations in order to get fixes on parts introduced. Hamilton was able to continue on with the exact same PU. I'm very confident Mercedes thoroughly tested these parts. If they weren't, they wouldn't have introduced them before securing atleast the WCC.

Again, I think they could have supplied Williams too. Probably for the final allocation. Autosport will probably have recited Mercedes' answer on the matter. Depends from your point of view too: I think Mercedes was occupied with producing parts to test on the rig for 2016. For the matter: I do not believe they try to deliberately slow down their current customers. Rather are making it a priority to put their own team in the best position for 2016. Hence why I feel they kind of neglected their customers.

[FoxHound]

I'm gonna try one more time...

Which they were able to fix without introducing new homologated parts (exceptions are general support studs and plumbing). Almost everything on the PU is regulated to the point you almost always need to introduce new PU allocations in order to get fixes on parts introduced. Hamilton was able to continue on with the exact same PU. I'm very confident Mercedes thoroughly tested these parts. If they weren't, they wouldn't have introduced them before securing atleast the WCC.

It was Monza. The ideal testbed to bring up any deficiencies in the PU. The fact still stands that no Mercedes engine failed, or showed signs of failing inside it's designated lifespan for 29 races. Until Monza.
Benching and laboratory conditions are not the same as actual physical testing, you know this. I'm not suggesting the design was rushed, I'm talking about the production. Both are relevant here, given the low tolerances of these engines.

Again, I think they could have supplied Williams too. Probably for the final allocation. Autosport will probably have recited Mercedes' answer on the matter. Depends from your point of view too: I think Mercedes was occupied with producing parts to test on the rig for 2016. For the matter: I do not believe they try to deliberately slow down their current customers. Rather are making it a priority to put their own team in the best position for 2016. Hence why I feel they kind of neglected their customers.

You open a can of worms treating one customer differently to the other 2. If one team gets the update, and the other 2 don't, and they pay the same rate...that's favouritism.
The 2 other teams will rightly feel aggrieved at being neglected.
So the reasoning behind not supplying the update, is now even more sensible.

4 teams running the updated engine with 7 races to go is going to take a huge amount of resource to get done. Money.
2 teams could realistically get a supply for the remainder of the season.
That front running team to be considered favourites, Williams, were running brand new ICE allocations for Monza having used 2 for the previous 10 races.
http://www.pitpass.com/54553/Italian-GP ... t-elements

This means that, knowing the production turnaround time, Williams would theoretically be left with 3 races to use the updated engine.
At the same time throwing 2 other teams noses out of joint by not supplying them. It's a waste and a king sized pain in the ass for Mercedes...imagine the PR fallout from Lotus and Force India.

Then there's the obvious delays this would incur on the next phase of calibration, production and design for 2016.
Anyway you look at it, it made sense.
Save Mercedes not running the update, which would be backwardness on a galactic scale, this was the best option available to everyone.
Neglect this is not.

[turbof1]

You open a can of worms treating one customer differently to the other 2. If one team gets the update, and the other 2 don't, and they pay the same rate...that's favouritism.
The 2 other teams will rightly feel aggrieved at being neglected.
So the reasoning behind not supplying the update, is now even more sensible.

Well we first of all know that Williams has a premium contract (I believe someone from Williams told this), meaning the supply contracts were never equal to begin with. Secondly, we don't know the exact terms, although you can guess Williams pays more for it. So I don't think you can call it favouritism. You get what you pay.

It was Monza. The ideal testbed to bring up any deficiencies in the PU. The fact still stands that no Mercedes engine failed, or showed signs of failing inside it's designated lifespan for 29 races. Until Monza.

Oh, but I'm sure there have been failings at the Merc PU before. Statistical regression makes sure of that. Only, they were either too minor or too obvious for us to see. Again, what we saw at Monza was not expected by Mercedes, but given they did not had to introduce a new PU component, means the issue itself was structurally minor. Yes, it was enough to terminate Rosberg's PU and it probably took a good knaw out of its lifespan, but they did not had to change Hamilton's PU nor did they so afterwards.
We are looking at an issue that was fixed without touching of the homologated parts of the PU. It might even have been an issue down to wrongful installation of a part, who knows. This is also where it's different from Renault: they had to make changes to the combustion chamber, which automatically forces to insert another PU allocation.
Either way, Monza was barely over the halfway point of the season. By the time the Mercedes teams got to their final PU allocation, any and all issues looked to have been ironed out, so I don't think Mercedes did this out of reliability concerns.

The 2 other teams will rightly feel aggrieved at being neglected.

Yes, well again: you get what you pay, what you sign for. There will be a clausule in those contracts saying they can do this. Infact it has been this way since 2014, and probably even before: Whenever there was a reliability upgrade, Mercedes made as quick as possible the pieces for their own car to make it to the next race, and whenever more parts were ready, the other teams would get them (a big thanks to my source in the shadows for this information. I know you are reading this .), with Williams the first team since they have the premium contract. Unfair? You can certainly debate on that, but not in my view. Reality? Definitely yes.

[FoxHound]

Sources in the shadows....

Force India have the same contract Turbo...Lotus too, but then there are clauses to every contract.
And if Mercedes were in breach of contract, you'd be sure to know about this by now, likely from this shadowy source who shall remain unnamed and cloaked in a veil of darkness as black as molasses and as murky as the nether-realms from whence he came.

It's also not statistical regression, as there is linearity. There's anomalous data which coincides with the update.

I think the happiest customer on the grid last year was Williams, even with this "premium contract".

It's worth mentioning Mercedes contract to customers stipulates equality....Force India and Williams and Lotus. And I bet my bottom dollar it contains a clause that makes mention of production time, and quality control.

http://www.crash.net/f1/news/217249/1/t ... ncern.html

“Being in the unique situation that we've had a contract with both Renault and a contract with Mercedes, I can confirm that we, in the Mercedes contract, it is stipulated that we have complete parity. In the Mercedes contract,” said Lotus CEO Matthew Carter.

However, one also has to accept that they are a works team and there are going to be development programmes that come in that will automatically go there first and then trickle down to all the customer teams.
So it would be unrealistic to expect it to be the same all the time. But I think primarily where they can, they're supplying us the same equipment and same software.”

Why would Bob say it's unrealistic? Maybe he knows the process....

I still don't see how you think it possible for Mercedes to roll out an update across 4 teams(8 PU's) simultaneously.

[turbof1]

Force India have the same contract Turbo...Lotus too, but then there are clauses to every contract.

I doubt that very much . We know for instance for certain Mclaren did not have the same service, hence also not the same contract.

And if Mercedes were in breach of contract

Nobody talked of that. I took the word neglectance, inmediately followed by Mercedes probably having the clausules in place to do so.

It's worth mentioning Mercedes contract to customers stipulates equality....Force India and Williams and Lotus. And I bet my bottom dollar it contains a clause that makes mention of production time, and quality control.

Don't loose your bottom dollar on it . Equality in engines in general: sure. They start off with the same PUs and whenever Mercedes is capable of doing it, they will deliver the updates also. Will that mean that all the Merc teams will drive equal PUs all year long? No, it does not. Equality in this case means one team is not heavily advantaged over the other. However, WIlliams has a premium contract. Infact, Red Bull (no please, this is NOT an excuse to turn this into a red bull discussion, so please don't.) asked for that very same treatment:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/120431

The Mercedes executive management board is believed to be split regarding a tie-up, while it is understood Williams has a premium customer contract with Mercedes, which could impact any deal with Red Bull.

I don't know what the exact content of the premium contract is, but given what I've readed around is that first and foremostly means Williams is next in line after the Merc works team to get updates. All merc teams get equally upgrades, but Williams gets priority. There will be certainly more advantages to it, perhaps in extra service or support. That's not certain.

So in short: all the merc teams will eventually receive the same hardware. That's what the equality entitles. Williams just gets it sooner.

I still don't see how you think it possible for Mercedes to roll out an update across 4 teams(8 PU's) simultaneously.

Oh but I neither believe this has ever happened. It always has been Merc works team first, then Williams either at the same race or at the first possible moment afterwards, and then the others. Usually there's 2-3 races until everybody has the same update. But that's not what happened here: Mercedes had an update ready for itself, yet they couldn't deliver it within the SIX races after the race they introduced it? Sorry, but you and me know that's not an issue with normal production capacity, nor with reliability since the PU was fine in those 6 races.

I think I'll leave it at that. I'm wary of dragging the whole topic down into this discussion. You don't have to accept this, nobody force you to do so, but what I'm telling is how it is arranged since 2014. Ferrari more then likely has a similar set up. That's just the reality, but again you do not have to take my word for it.

[Sevach]

Like Turbo, i can totally buy the "we just got these units ready" excuse for Monza, for Sochi/4th allocation... kinda on the we don't give a rats about you guys side of things.

As for the Petrobras rumour, the story comes from a journalist from the Brazilian Sportv channel, his name is Lito Cavalcanti.
Cavalcanti said on air that a little Petrobras birdie told him that the fuel was ready to go and performing the same as the Petronas, but after Mercedes saw how good it was performing they couldn't get any dyno time at Brixworth necesssary for a "this won't blow our engines" seal of approval.

Futhermore there are also rumours about the Petronas supply often putting client teams steps behind.

I would guess that rumours like these aren't enough "proof" that the Mercedes service isn't beyond reproach which is making all this arguing tiresome and dull.

[FoxHound]

Sevach and Turbo,

People are looking for spooks where none are to be found. I'm just disagreeing that this is intentional, it is not intentional.
Words like "neglect" would insinuate breach of contract.
The logistics in finding equilibrium, for all PU users, at all times, is simply not plausible.

You could define this even further in some other blogs with other conspiracy theories whereby the Rosberg faithful are adamant that Hamilton has a better PU, because Hamilton has a higher marketing value.
In some instances it's the other way round.

As for Petronas/Petrobras, I'll look into this. I probably won't get much joy as resources are slim(I googled) suffice to say that Williams have a few lads and desks at Brixworth.

This raises an interesting intersection, are PU's subject to time allowances on Dyno's?
And do Williams Advanced Engineering or Williams Hybrid Power not have Dyno's of their own?