Why you should not write off MB-AMG Petronas

Prior year performance is no indicator. Unless, of course, you're Red Bull.

MB has the talent to be a top tier team and with Lewis a WDC is not out of the question.
Whether the large number of chefs will help or hurt will be interesting to see but without a good car they're going nowhere.

 

I still maintain that even IF Mercedes has a good car, they will fall by the wayside in the development race. You can talk about how the DDRS hampered their development but it's not like the W02 developed very well either.

 

This statement reminds from a point raised in a Garry Anderson article (believe this was previously referrenced in another thread here on fchat):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/20091800
I think he touches on it toward the end.

Not sure if this is the correct article, but the point I took away was that a team is better served by having a single visionary ala RB and Newey instead of the many engineers' solutions conflicting with one another.

Too many cooks and all that....

 

No coincidence that Brawn had success on his own, not with Honda or MB.

 

Garagistes trump corporate boards.

 

Yup, MB will **** it up once again.

 

Nail meets hammer

 

"Do you like the knee cushions in red or blue ?"

 

I think you are completely underestimating the influence of the drivers: while I agree that they don't design the cars their feedback is now with testing gone more important than ever

A driver who can give precise feedback is now even more important than ever since now every practice session counts.

 

All due respect ferraripilot, I've got to rant.

AMG has had many failings, but the single biggest in my view, has been the utter ineffectiveness of in season development and blaming everything under the sun for their problems.

In hindsight, W01 wasn't a horrible car. It lost ground while they developed it and gained ground when they stopped. But this team blamed the car as fundamentally flawed AND that failing on 2009's championship fight. They abandoned it to put extra time in on W02 and promised better.

Early on, W02 was hailed as an improvement on W01... but then - had some unexpected issues? Like running cool, or eating tires or going fast... generally, pretty important in race cars. Again- they lost ground while developing and quit on it early to concentrate on W03. They blamed that on engineering staff and team structure- and hired a bunch of big names. in the end W02 finished 4th - no better than W01, it too, was abandoned early to work on W03 with the stated goal, however unambitous, was simply to improve on 4th....with "title contention" delayed to 2013 (HA!).

Again, W03 starts out looking decent.... and this joke of a team asserts that they need to stop all development to "understand .....the tires"???? Really- blaming the tires every other team is using??? Sauber/Perez can almost go a full race distance on these horrible tires and Mercedes has to stop all development to "understand" them... with all those new top shelf engineers? AND- they came 15 times closer to finishing 6th than 3rd? They went BACKWARD not forward! And then the "Lewis" press release, in a round about way, suggests that what the team was missing was a top shelf young driver?? And this new hopeful's first press release was say how excited he was and to quash Brawns previous expectation that 2013 would be a contention year.

I find it unfathomable to objectively view this journey and see hope.... but then hopes blessing is that it requires no basis in fact or logic.. (no offense intended to any remaining fans or ferraripilot- I'm just so done with this sorry excuse of a team!!!)

My guess is Schumacher knew this team was going nowhere next year... Lewis was having his issues at McLaren and drank the Mercedes "we look really good on paper" kool-aid and acted on emotion rather than logic. Whitmarsh eluded as much, and what was Lewis supposed to say..."wtf was I thinking???"

After 3 years of wasting hope on this team- I'm done. Lauda? Hope? He's a driver.... If the most successful driver in F1 history couldn't raise up this team and essentially quit while trying- what hope is there for Lauda or Lewis? They need a singular minded design and development leader like Newey or a Byrne... not a driver.

At least next year I can go back to cheering solely for Ferrari- who despite some weaknesses, always shows up in the beginning, middle and end. Alonso is even earning my respect lately. As the MS story unfolded, I was hoping for an Alonso/Schumi team up to bring the fight to Redbull... but mostly to prove Schumi wasn't Merc's real problem!

Rant off.

 

THIS!!!!!!

 

Great rant - Very well stated......

Are you sure you're not straight out of MB's PR department?.

Seriously, development compatability?

You're saying it wasn't capable of being developed? With the huge brain trust now there? Really? Seems more likely to me that they simply lost their way with the thing. The DDRS may have been a blind alley, but I can't accept that's what caused 'em to go backwards over the year.

Even Ferrari (the most clueless team on the grid if many are to be believed ) managed to get Clifford somewhat working by the end.... And it was apparently "fundamentally flawed" from the start. At least W03 looked OK out of the box.

I admire your unwavering support for 'em, I really do, but the silver blinders really have distorted your outlook IMO.

Be interesting to see what MerHam does next year. He'll either grow up (ala Fred at Ferrari) or there's gonna be one huge trainwreck. Either way, should be fun.

Cheers,
Ian

 

I dont think that this is always true. The Renault team was fine. BMW looked good for some time. And Ferrari is still there.

 

+1. Ferrari stopped being a 'garage' outfit not long after Fiat took over. They are a worldwide marketing empire. Not an F1 team. Thats just part of the brand.

 

+1

 

Don't be so literal.
The garagiste spirit is alive at Enfeild (Renault) and at Sauber (BMW).

These days the Scuderia is the corporate outfit.

 

He is a great cheer leader, LdM

 

When Renault started back in 1979 they never won the title, so they became an engine supplier and won it with the garagistes. Only 25 years did they win it as a full team.

BMW was a mess with Theissen constantly torn between duties as a corporate board member and the interests of the team. They played the same lousy PR game MB/Brawn/Haug is doing with their 3 year plan to the WDC. Just one more year of testing, the next car will be it blablabla. And then they screwed Sauber, but that's another story and luckily one where Peter got the last laugh.

As for Ferrari: You cant compare the Ferrari car manufacturing to those of "real" cars like MB, BMW etc. They are still a midsize company and their F1 team is a small shop. AND their culture is completely the opposite: F1 is first, cars second. Not a car manufacturer who decides to dabble in F1 for PR reasons but a F1 company who needs $ from selling road cars to survive (comparable to the previous Lotus, which I also see as a garagiste and not a car company, or even McLaren today).

 

And yet it produced the teams bests results to date.

..and who's fault was it that W02 was "flawed"? W02 was flawed because of design decisions the team made after it's experience with W01. Are we to presume the design staff was 1) oblivious or 2) negligent - that certain design paths are less adaptable than others? Or that a tall fuel tank raises COG? They have no one to blame but themselves, period.

agian, DDRS was their design choice but, that this was THE flaw is your assertion- certainly not fact. W03 was flawed by much more than this alone. Their earo development has been questioned (see 50% vs 60% tunnel testing), as was down force numbers (rear especially which limitted front wing and contributed to tire problems), as was exhaust development and again high COG (remember the relocation of all the brake hardware to underhung???)- and lets not forget reliability or pit stop numbers and speed?

And herein is where the rose colored glasses effect perception. "evolved" is a stretch...It's far more accurate to say MB "tried" some things AND most did NOT work. If they "evolved" at all as a team, it is also true that relative to their closest peers, they regressed. As far as "working with what they had" and "not being able to do much with it"... as with all prior efforts that fell short..."they had what they designed" and to complain about being stuck with it is self indicting.

 

^^^

+1.


I'm still willing to take on bets that LH won't finish in the top 4 in next year's WDC race. Merc just doesn't have it. They might beat Lotus next year but I doubt they'll be in contention for the WCC.

 

I just can´t see the difference between the Toleman/Benetton owned by Renault and the BAR/Brawn owned by Mercedes. One was succesful and the other not (yet), but the problem probably doesn´t lie in whoever the owner is.

I think that the term "garagiste" doesn´t fit to any modern F1 team. All of them are multimillion corporations with hundreds of workers and complex infrastructure. One can be owned by a guy called Ron Dennis and the other by Mercedes-Benz AG, but in both there is a boss and hordes of sub-bosses, etc... As long as the bosses of Mercedes-Benz AG mind their own business and let the experts in the F1 business that they´ve hired do their job, everything should be fine.