Are Mercedes better engineers?

I´m not an engineer, but I´d bet the house on that this story of "same engine than the F1 car" is the same PR crap than the F1 derived Ferrari F50 engine.

Just for cost reasons it wouldn´t be possible: the engine alone probably is more expensive than a LaFerrari. The fortunate owner would need to heat the oil before putting it into the engine, a herd of mechanics just to start it and a rebuild each year (and I´m being optimistic).

 

Mercedes placed Ross Brawn in charge of building their team. He is the definitive team builder as he does so better than anyone in the business. Mercedes took what he did and supercharged the concept by no longer defining one person as the team principle delegating it to several heads who can manage with more authority directly. Costa, Lowe, and others really make it work well. Others need to get with the program and see their way is the future.

Ferrari's biggest mistake was losing Costa. The guy was Byrne's right hand man and was really onto something with Ferrari, but Ferrari being Ferrari they weren't patient with him, nor were they patient with Fry. I sense a pattern.....

 

Very typical type of mismanagement across sports and industries! I want results now! Waaaaaah!

If it were that easy, then everyone would do it.

Not good.

 

Darn straight sir

 

Quick answer: YES.

 

Agreeing with you again William. IIRC they split their turbo so the exhaust vanes aren't anywhere near the intake vanes like in a traditional turbo. This would help cool the intake charge more than with a siamese turbo. Not sure how many other teams have followed this. Maybe this is "de rigeur" for all teams now but it was a "cool" advantage when they first went to v-6 turbos.

 

Let's just say the rules were basicly writen by them...so, they build an engine before anyone else, and since the rules stoped others to catch up..they became unbeatable...

 

Hard to disagree with this. Merc have out engineered Ferrari and every other team in the last 3 years.

Ferrari have an easy life and that translates into shoddy engineering and team performance. They have the F1 cash dice loaded in their favour so massively, that even though they fail, they get more cash than the other teams. Given that's the case, why should the engineering team try harder? They aren't motivated and it shows.

 

Interesting point is the Merc F1 engine is made in the uk, as well as the rest of the car.

 

It doesn't matter where the car and engine are made, or the nationality of the designers; Mercedes has the best engineers and they have delivered the best car in these last 3 years.
Difficult to argue against that, I would have thought.
Mercedes success owes more to its engineers, I believe, than to its drivers.
But that becomes general in F1, and should lead to a review of the financial rewards for both.

 

Remember when people said these PUs would "cut costs?"

LOL

 

Meh, I´ll believe it when I see it. So far they´re already talking about diferent idle and top RPM. I assume different fuel flow limits. That would need some rethinking of the combustion and mapping.

Hope that I´m wrong, but in the end they probably will just keep the block.

 

^this.

F1 engineers switch teams almost every year. See Bob Bell, Jock Clear, most likely Paddy Lowe and the same Brawn who basically wrote the rules on turbo engines while he was working at Merc and was then let go once the advantage was in place.
How does anyone then even define "Mercedes" or "Ferrari" engineers before ranking them?

In any ways the OP wasn't talking about F1 at all and IMO selling a road car with the same hybrid engine from an F1 car is much easier than selling and supporting the complete F1 car for customers' use.

 

The problem is not the engine but the KERS battery which in an F1 car can seriously injure someone touching the car. In a different configuration like a road car it can obviously be made much safer at the expense of weight and performances so, apples to oranges and this by itself doesn't make Merc engineers any better or worse.

 

Running and maintaining a full blown F1 engine within an F1 car, to be used at track events, is a million miles away from taking the basic engine, down grading each part to make it reliable over 100,000 miles rather than 1,000, limiting the engine modes, using road oils and fuel mixes and thereby amending timing and fuel combustion ratios, ensuring that Kers generation remains possible (and therefore somehow advanced) to take into account lower speeds and therefore lower pressure and demand brake regeneration............... that's makes the basic engine no longer anything like the one ran in their F1 programme in its nature.... it's just the same block and basics.

 

Mercedes engineers are better, period.
In addition, their team management decisions also seem far superior to others, particularly Ferrari's. This year Ferrari lost at least one outright GP win due to piss poor tactics as to when tires should be changed, Kimi had several qualifying sessions screwed up because of crappy timing of tire changes, etc. I hate to say it, but Ferrari's F1 management is like Inspector Clouseau is running the show.
Finally, Mercedes drivers were AT LEAST as good as anyone else's, and as a pair they were generally far superior.

 

+1

 

Its the culture within the team as much as the quality of the engineers.

All the teams have some amazingly talented personal at every level.

The difference at Ferrari is when something goes wrong its a finger pointing game " I didn't do it, not my fault, blame him over there" . So no one takes a risk, or does some thing daring for fear of being blamed. I watched an interview with Jody Schechter, where he said after driving the car for the first time he told the engineers it didn't have enough power, not one of them would translate it to Italian for the old man because of fear.

The systems put in place by people like Ross Brawn, Adrian Newey, Ron Dennis, Frank Williams etc fix the problem, find out why it happened and put a system of checks and balances in place to ensure it doesn't happen again.. and move on.

Mercedes defiantly got a jump on the engine program, but most of it was because the engine group worked with the chassis group from the outset to make the PU and chassis as integrated as possible. Rather than the Engine folks handing a PU to the chassis people and saying "here build you car around this".
Last time something like that was really done was with Cosworth and Colin Chapman, and that union had a pretty good track record as well

 

What's special about the Merc engine to chassis union? I thought the chassis pickup points were standard in F1 now no?

 

The mounting points are standard. there is a lot more to a PU than just its mounting point that affect the overall package. Weight, height, balance, center of gravity, component location, layout, cooling requirements, lubrication requirements etc. Every component on the engine has an effect on not only the engine but also the overall balance of the car.

I understand that the "split" turbo was the engine departments reaction to a specific request from the chassis/aero guys.
Engine folks said to make "X" amount of power we need a turbo "Y" big. Aero said that's fine but we cant have something that big hanging off the back of the engine... move it. It has multiple affects on weight distribution, cooling of the charged air, size and shape of the engine cover, which then effects the air to the rear wing and diffuser...everything is connected. The list goes on.

 

If Merc's engineers are so much better how come they got a budget and a development window twice that of any other new F1 turbo PU?
And as most of them have changed teams since, have they suddenly become idiots just because their money comes from someone else?
Or did Costa suddenly become a genius when he got hired by Merc? How can you even define "Mercedes engineers?" when staff change side so quickly?
They had more time, money and knowledge than anyone else when developing the new tech for the last specs change and still mantain that advantage. They sure didn't look all that smart just before that.