Mercedes F1

The Aston Martin launch is tomorrow.

They'll be busy all night "copying from those pics".

 

Lolo

 

Aston will have spent their tokens on the anti spin technology for Vettel

 

Utterly brilliant lol

 

nearly spit out my cabernet, well done.

 

It had better be a marvelous control system.............

 

Imagine Vettel destroying Stroll every Gp ( which i believe).
Leclerc rate would be immense for team managers. ( but I guess they already know..)

 

A sound defeat of Stroll only shows how little he has improved. He has lost to his team mates continuously. If he thinks he has a career on merit, it will not be so after a sound defeat by Vettel. Given that, Vettel has done much damage to his 'caree'r at Ferrari. He is very very weak for a 4x WDC.

 

If Seb doesn't destroy Lancelot then he should just go home because either his car is being sabotaged, or he forgot how to drive.

 

I’m scared he will not be any good. Reminds me of an old boxer with only flashes of brillances left


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Well let’s not rewrite history.
-Bourdais? Beat him easily
-Webber? Beat him easily
-Beat raikkonnen too

I agree ricciardo, Leclerc beat him. I also agree on many mistakes and a poor showing last year .
He was as close as Fernando (or close) to win the WDC with a Ferrari but too many mistakes and a very strong Mercedes prevented him from doing so...


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Vettel did much to himself to lose 2 possible titles. Alone in the car. Judgement over time is he caused more issues than the team, who did cause issues. Kimi was destroyed by FA and was never a threat to Vettel. Vettel has been booted out of 2 teams by faster younger team-mates, a 100% defeat rate by Ricci and Charles. He is a weak 4x WDC. Webber was a minor challenge.

Again his time at Ferrari has only damaged his reputation, not help overall.

 

And raikonen? A minor challenge too? Beat him every year last I checked.


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Yes Vettel beat Kimi. Who was never ever a factor upon return to Ferrari, Kimi. Kimi was abused by FA and beaten by Vettel. Vettel had it easy at Ferrari.
Kimi at Ferrari was very much a Bottas-LH situation at Mercedes. Vettel had no challenge.

When faced with defeat Vettel has run away and now fired. Not a superb legacy. Vettel has much to make up this year. His reference is Stroll LOL! Wow!

 

I think Vettel was a great driver but for some reason he lost it and now we have people like yourselves (and I agree) questioning his worthiness as a 4WDC.
The thing with f1 is that it’s hard to explain why and what someone loses it.
For instance take basketball: ur favorite player tears his ACL or takes abuse every game he plays he will go downhill.
For f1 and vettel; it’s hard to pinpoint what happened
Either he was overrated which is possible or mentally his focus, motivation, his reflexes, stamina etc went down.
I think a bit of both personally.


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Under pressure Vettel has failed, rushed moves on lap 1 more than once in recent years. He just makes poor tactical decisions early rather than drive soundly and let the race develop to him when needed. His move on LH in Italy ended his title chance on lap 1. Just 1 example. He repeats such things with regularity in 17-18. In 19 and 20 the car was not perfect and he failed to out pace Charles. His melt-down on the radio in Mexico was the end of my support. He was beyond un-professional and became a joke to me. His antics on LH in Baku were simply pathetic. Sorry but he has a history of poor decisions going back to RedBull with Mark.

 

Fair enough, still a 4 time WDC no matter what
LH fans will say it was the car, non LH dans will say WE know [emoji38]


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+1

Whilst Vettel looked an immense driver at Red Bull, this is partially true because the car did suit him. The car had a fantastic rear end, something that Vettel feels most comfortable driving with. With a car that suits him, he really was nearly untouchable.

As a complete driver, points are chipped away from Vettel for not adapting to cars he doesn't like as well and mental toughness. But this doesn't take anything away from how good he is when he's got a car he likes.

The true greats are quick in any car. Schumacher, Alonso, Verstappen. Leclerc is showing those signs, too.

The 2019 onwards Ferrari had a horrible rear end. Absolutely horrible. Ferrari refused to change it, but did immediately when he left. Vettel will now show what he can do with a Mercedes rear end (albeit slightly compromised due to the smaller floor).

It depends how Vettel performs. IMO he needs to beat Stroll comprehensively in order to ''win back'' public opinion.

 

The greats... I love u Bas but Verstappen is not a great yet. Hasn’t one anything yet and I’d argue vettel won in a torro rosso which he hasn’t done.
Great talent and at some point he should win but right now he can’t sit at their tables.


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Formally you are absolutely right but as Bas I am pretty sure Max is on another league compared with Vettel.
In fact the same league as Charles.
To be honest I suspect Hamilton to be between the two levels.

 

Yes you have a point, he hasn't won a significant championship yet, so can he be a great? Maybe Future great is the correct term...lol

On the flip side, Gilles Villenueve is frequently called a great, and he won no titles. I guess he was taken too early from us, however. Same goes for Bellof, Ickxs, and of course Stirling Moss...

+1

What I find special about Max is how he evolved into the driver he is now. He went from a single season of F3 (no other single seating season done by him) to F1, so basically had to do the majority of his learning in the top class of F1. He made his mistakes and clearly learned from them. That's a lot of pressure.

Leclerc has taken a different path and was highly successful in F2...and boy did his talent shine there! In F1 Charles still makes some mistakes, but one can easily shrug those off as taking risks on opportunistic moves when there's nothing (titles, wins) at risk.

Between those 2 I think Max displays machine like behavior, both on and off the track. Charles is very ''human'' (if that makes sense). Verstappen genuinely reminds me of Schumacher in many, many ways. Leclerc reminds me a lot of Alesi.

On the latter, it's so tough to say about Lewis for me where he really sits, considering the cars he drove and his slump from 2009-2013, and the quality of some of his teammates.
Coincidentally I just finished Jochen Mass' interview with beyond the grid, and he revealed Schumacher was very close to joining Williams in the mid 90s (after Benetton). Michael phoned Jochen and told him he was about to sign a contract with Williams. Jochen told him what was the point...he would jump into what was the fastest car by far on the grid and the value of said championship(s) would forever be ''tainted'' (for lack of better word). He told him if he wanted to be a real champion, go to a team like Ferrari and make them into champions. ''You'll be the king of Italy'' Jochen told him. A few weeks later Michael phoned Jochen and told him "I've signed with Ferrari''.

The rest is history.

Jochen didn't mention Lewis at all, it was just him talking about Michael. But for me the same applies to Lewis. Schumacher truly build the Ferrari team into what it became, and did much of the leg work for Mercedes, too. Lewis simply signed the big money contract after a very convincing battery of facts from Niki Lauda explained him the reality, and the rest is history for him, too. Lewis jumped into a superteam, Schumacher build one (twice).

 

+1000
In a sport where the mechanical aspect is also dominant, the evaluation of a champion can only be done through a context.
Thanks to this drivers like Prost or Vettel with similar palmares will not have the same legacy in time.(Fortunately!).

People who think that Hamilton will be unanimously recognized as the greatest pilot of all time because he will hold the majority of records are either:
1/in bad faith,
2/be ignorant
3/or reason like a teenager.

 

A completely objective summary. - Your point about the actual 'greats' is what keeps Vettel in the 'good' category in comparison. Under the continued, but slight altered rules for this year, in a new team and new car, Vettel must show major improvement or he should just move on. Much like Albon we will see how long it takes over the season. I will not attempt to judge too early. It will take some 4 or 5 races to acclimate in Aston-Clone. After that then we can state what we see so far??

 

Mercedes are one of the more 'approachable' teams for information and highlight of how they operate. This is the first real look into a major team willing to discuss what pivot is made to adapt to lower spending. For if you do not like Mercedes, the process of this is interesting for all teams and here we have some insight given by Mercedes.

How Mercedes could actually benefit from F1's budget cap
By: Adam Cooper
Mar 6, 2021, 4:24 AM

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/how-mercedes-could-actually-benefit-from-f1s-budget-cap/5604296/

Formula 1's budget cap was introduced to make the championship more sustainable and keep the big teams under control, but Mercedes believes the financial constraints can actually help it improve.
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Along with sustainability a key aim of Formula 1’s budget cap is to rein in the performance of the top teams by levelling the playing field.

And yet in typical glass-full style Mercedes boss Toto Wolff sees the cap not as a hurdle for the Brackley team, but an opportunity to become even stronger.

F1 has long been about spending power. It’s no coincidence that the teams that have dominated have had the biggest budgets, and until now, there has been no official limit to what they’ve been allowed to pump in.

The 2021 FIA financial regulations, headlined by a budget cap of $145m, have changed all that. Many areas are excluded from that number, but it still represents a huge change of approach for Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari.

All three have been busy shuffling staff into non-F1 projects, which explains why Ferrari has committed to a sportscar programme, and why Mercedes has been busy seeking customers for its Applied Science division.

Given that extra cash is a benefit in all areas it’s obvious that reducing spend will impact competitiveness. However, there’s another key outcome – the disruption caused by the necessary reorganisation and downsizing.

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Mercedes Pit stop practice with the car of Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes F1 W11

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

Erstwhile midfield teams hope they can benefit from problems for F1's big-spending teams. In its previous guises Aston Martin made a virtue of being lean, mean and efficient, and the budget cap had landed in just right the spot, and thus the team hasn’t had to dramatically adjust its way of working. It’s a similar situation at Alpine.

“It's all about getting the car to go quicker, but also efficiency,” says Alpine executive director Marcin Budkowski. “We are working a lot on the efficiency of the team, working better, working smarter with the resources we have.

“Luckily, we've never been the best funded team. We've always been known as an efficient team, and we are probably in a better position than the top teams for the cost cap, so we obviously want to capitalise on this in the future.”

The regulations show to what level of detail the discussions extended when they were being finalised – there is mention of subjects like how to allocate maternity leave, sick pay and the salaries of mechanics whose main role is preparing historic or demo cars. Teams now have to dig into every pound, euro or dollar they spend that falls under the cap.

The process of going back to basics, tracking and justifying from scratch all spending in each department of a company, is known as zero-based budgeting.

“My experience in my personal business life was that sometimes going through a zero-budgeting approach shows you how much you have actually left on the table,” says Wolff.

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Toto Wolff, Executive Director (Business), Mercedes AMG

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

“And how much you have carried over from year to year, that was cost of what could have been avoided by simply streamlining processes and the organisation overall.

“Performing in the F1 world is not only down to money. You can have the most money, but not perform how you should. And we have seen examples of that in the past.”

One of the key advantages of spending power is in R&D, and the ability to put groups of people onto special projects that might not pay dividends on track for a year or two.

Aero testing restrictions have to some extent already levelled the playing field in that teams are no longer able to run 24/7 in more than one windtunnel, as was the case a few years ago.

However, the wealthier teams could still bring more bodywork iterations to the track more often, because they had the production resources. Meanwhile on the mechanical side there have been no restrictions, allowing the big teams to pursue innovations.

Now all teams have to have the discipline to spend where they believe it will count – they can no longer afford to pursue multiple solutions to the same problem, and then to eventually discard those that don’t work. They have to be smarter, and make calls on what direction to go before too much time and effort has been spent.

“We have never wasted [resources],” says Wolff. “Because for us prioritising has always been key to how we function, rather than to trying to do A, or A and B. We have always approached with A and/or B, because you simply put more emphasis on what you think will bring you more performance.

“But the cost cap has brought that to a new level, because we were not operating before within a regulatory cost constraint. And that means you need to understand your processes.

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Mercedes AMG F1 W12

Photo by: Mercedes-Benz

“Every single item is costed down, or evaluated [as to] what the costs are. And you need to trim how you operate. But we believe that this is a performance advantage, because it has obliged us to rethink what we do, and how we do it.

“And it will mean that there's even more emphasis and focus on the areas that, we believe, bring the best performance.”

Crucial to all this is that the budget cap has landed in the very year that teams have to race and develop their 2021 cars while honing brand new concepts for 2022.

Until 31st December they could work without financial restriction on both, at least on the mechanical side, as aero research was banned until 1st January. That helped the bigger teams to get a head start on 2022, simply because they had more people available to look at the long term.

That window of opportunity has closed, and teams now have to split precious funds between racing this season and developing for 2022, just as they have to make a call on how to divide up windtunnel time and CFD usage.

“This is a question you need to find solutions for every single year,” says Wolff. “How do you balance the current car and the development time you want to give it versus next year's car?

“And for 2022 it becomes an even more critical topic, because of the scope of changes. And there will be teams that will very much focus on 2022 from early on, and other teams that will see great opportunity for the 2021 World Championship.

“And for us, it will be crucial to take the right view on how we want to balance development for next year. It is subject to discussions every week.”

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Toto Wolff, Executive Director (Business), Mercedes AMG, and Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes-AMG F1

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

A spending limit isn’t just about R&D - it impacts every area of going racing. Mercedes technical director James Allison revealed at the launch of W12 that the team is cost-cutting by simply reducing how many parts it has to produce.

“[There are] developments to try to make it so that the bits underneath can live longer,” he said. “So that we don't have to replace them so often, so that in a budget cap we can operate more efficiently.”

With the dual projects underway 2021 is clearly a difficult season for the top teams. However they will also have to adjust to a budget cap drop from $145m to $140m in 2022, and then to $135m in 2023, which is sure to mean further cuts in head counts.

Can the usual frontrunners adjust to the new world of limited spending and remain a step ahead of the rest? Wolff is confident that his team at least is on the right path.

“The budget cap is extremely important in my opinion,” he says. “Because the costs were escalating over the last 10-15 years, and it became unsustainable.

“And in that way, we are now operating in the same financial framework. And it becomes exciting, because there will not be many differences in terms of spending between the teams.

“We love the challenge. We have taken it on, and it is at times very painful because all your processes need to be adapted in the end to achieve more efficiency.

“We found out during the process that actually efficiency means performance. The group that has worked around the project did a fantastic job. And I believe we're in a good in a good position to extract the most from the limited resource that is available.”

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Mercedes AMG F1 W12