To succeed at Ferrari, a racing driver must be like a surfer waiting for a good wave. You need to have the instinct to anticipate and and the patience to wait for it. Yes, Ferrari has won championships in the past when they were at the crest of a wave. But the waves are few and far between in F1 for the Scuderia now. Good surfers like Alonso, Vettel and now Leclerc moved to Maranello at the wrong time. they never got the wave of success.
Mercedes: Looois, would you like to join Mercedes F1? Our cars have steadily improved since 2010, we are now winning races and we have put considerable resources into our 2013 car already. Also, don't tell anyone but we have already developed a very successful hybrid PU for 2014 that should give us an enormous advantage. Hamilton: I'll go on record to say what a risk I am taking, but that does sound pretty good. - actual transcript
Not a single driver turns that down. I see no issues with that. Its a shark club, swim, compete or leave. As if FA or Max would turn down such and opportunity. Thats F1 and its not fair.
Oh, btw, the FIA will pass rules that will give us a huge advantage over our rivals.....but don't tell anyone.
MercedesF1AMG exploited the turbo hybrid era formula and rules to their favor. While no one objected to it at that time, it wasn't really fair to the other teams to play catch-up. The rules would penalize those that wanted to catch-up.
Agree. Schumacher co-created his own wave at Ferrari and remained patient enough to eventually reap from his investment. Alonso came close with a slight ripple, but sadly no cigar.
People keep coming back to the "unfairness" of the hydrid formula to discredit Mercedes, but all the teams agreed to it . Were Ferrari, Honda and Renault consulted before the rules were written ? Yes, they were.
Do you think it's fair that IF aero rules were written for 2022 that all teams must keep their aero for 3 years otherwise there will be penalties against the team should they change their aero. So, that means MercedesAMGF1 keeps their sidepodless design and porpoising issues for 3 years even though everyone agreed to said rules.
Fairness has nothing to do with it. If that were the rules, I would agree with them. As a matter of fact, I always wondered why aero development was free when engine development was restricted. Probably that with such rules, engineers would be more conservative in their design.
I personally don't agree with such rules that penalize teams to progress thereby giving 1 team dominance for a certain period of time even though all agreed to said rules.
I don't blame Lewis at all. I've said it before, he's a very smart guy at doing things that benefit his career. I wouldn't call his decision risky and certainly nothing like what Schumacher did with Ferrari, but that isn't Hamilton's fault.
Mercedes were smart in getting things played into their hands, but debate about fairness is a worthy conversation. Mercedes having a 3 year head start into development of a brand new formula, so they obviously knew something other teams didn't know. Then for the governing body to lock in their advantage is terribly unfair. I don't blame Mercedes at all, but the FIA/F1 should never have put that option on the table.
In a way, the budget cap was introduced to limit constant aero development. If development is unrestricted in all areas, it's the arms race and the situation soon becomes untenable for the small teams. Team like Mercedes, Ferrari, or Red Bull used to just throw money at problems to gain an advantage.
But, unless I missed something, I have never heard the teams at a disadvantage to lobby the FIA for the rules to be reviewed, the token system suspended or the engine freeze stopped once they realised the mess it all was. I haven't heard much protest from Horner, Domenicali, Abiteboul, and all about the token system. It's only some supporters who complained about the rules.
Let's just turn F1 into a "spec" series and maybe all this hand wringing about how unfair it is will stop (but probably not). I wasn't aware that only M-B was consulted on power units....who knew? PS. Hamilton: "I hate little kids" actual transcript
Only research into hybrid which they was already working on to rival toyota who already had the prius owning the hybrid market, along came the mercs electric blue hybrid in 2009. It was Ferrari who demanded the V6 over a 4cyl ICE when finalising the engine regs, and renault thought they was going to be better than they was. Everbody knew about kers also. Its not like Merc had the 2014 engine ready to fire up the day they agreed the regs. Merc, like most normal car maker, was / had already been working on hybrid engines. even Porsce had its very own hybrid development going on ( although they did have a working hybrid way back in the 1900's!! lol ) but the cayenne s hybrid was being developed before f1 had thought of it....... Only Ferrari who never thought of any thing other than natrually aspiated engines was at any real disadvantage. Honda wasnt even around, but had been building hybrids since 1999.... But Merc and Renault was already building hybrid engines before f1 had even started talking about the v6 hybrids, so was every body else apart from Ferrari.
MercedesF1AMG had 3 engines built going into the turbo-hybrid era. The 1st one was indestructible. (Can you imagine this one!!) The 2nd one was too fragile. The 3rd one was in between the other two. I don't know what configuration those engines were in--->V-4 or V-6.
