Mercedes: Team Thread

Snippet from presumable a shakedown in Bahrain today.

Not long to go now guys!

 

Just where are we with Mercedes Benz?

Have we reached the point of total reset?

Andy Cowell, Aldo Costa, James Vowles, Mike Elliot, even Paddy Lowe, and lest we forget the man who started it- Ross Brawn- all gone. Lewis Hamilton taking his chances on Ferrari.

He has seen a downward spiral before at McLaren and he read the script very well. Has he seen the same again? Look at McLarens journey - 12 years it’s taken to begin to get back in the podium fight.

Mercedes are now looking at a third consecutive season with a distant defeat to Red Bull. Porpoising still not controlled when they add downforce.

Does anyone feel a step away from the sport coming?

Obviously they may sort it and make us all eat our words, but so far it’s looking very difficult for them.

Now the PU advantage is long gone, they look very lost.

 

They have James Allison back .

I think they will stick around until 2026 .

If that season is a disaster , I can see Toto selling and hopefully the team will survive , probably under a different name BMW

 

Is Daimler the big boss owners of Mercedes F1?
If so, I can see them pulling out if this loss of success continues.

Don`t forget ,BMW have already had a go at F1 and bailed out

 

I was half joking about BMW .

yes they pulled out , but I thought that was down to the intransigence of sir zFrank and sir Patrick ?

 

I was half joking about BMW .

I swallowed that one rather easily,I`m a bit gullible sometimes !!!

 

Did you know the word gullible , isn’t in the English dictionary ?

 

imo they relied massively on the pu advantage.

there's quotes from Hamilton going back to titles 6 or 7 where he's called the car exactly what it is now. hard to set up, narrow window and such.

what I see now is a team with very little progression down the road of understanding the whole car interaction.

none of the teams have cracked red bulls suspension set up and stability.

merc went back in these races to basically being slammed to the floor and thst suggests not enough fownforce being generated below the car so there has to be more form the top of the car.

they are following the rest in aero page but the fundamental design issue is maximum ground effect with good clearance and stable suspension over the whole speed range.

when we eventually see a shot of the underside of a redbull we will see that again it's massively smooth, it's focusing on laminar flows and the vanes won't be driving all that much of a different way to other cars. it's got loads of ground effect downforce without being slammed to the floor.

this is fundamentally where all the advantage lies.

imo suspension and docwnforce are fundamental to being able to then reduce drag around the rest of the car and go quicker and quicker.

Mercedes don't seem to be getting it

 

No, I didn`t know that.

My mother used to say that I always did have a way with words.

 

.

 

Seems Toto would welcome Marko to Merc!!! He's probably just saying that so Max will come.

Looks like Marko might have been the one to leak the whatsapp messages! Sounds like they are saying issues have been bubbling away from when they rejected Porsche's offer to buy 50%.

 

verstappen just wants the best car long term.

does anything think that the jos verstappen comments the leaks and the entire thing has not been a verstappen hostile take over.

newey is not 40. he is almost out the door regarding 2026.

we are headed into unpredictable waters and ino the second ferrari pulled a trigger it shocked verstappen into action.

they've sudden went "**** we might not have our pick here" and sought to take over the red bull team from the inside.

I think it's blown up in the brats face and he's now down to going to merc next year and hoping or sticking where he is for 2025 and then hoping 2026 has more options when he finally uses his contract clause to break away

 

Mercedes look lost after the opening three races- can they save their season or is a total reset required here?

 

I think they have a guy who's checked out and a guys who's just not very good as their drivers.

I think they have an approach to the car thet still seems well behind in terms of the car set up on chassis and suspension to work with the aero.

when you are clearly behind your customer mclaren for the engine you have to have a serious look at yourself. they can get more out of the same engine and gearbox etc that you can.

 

I think Merc just don't have the aero skills to maximise the floor aero so they are having to use the front and rear wings to get anywhere near enough downforce. The problem is then the drag that you create from the wings slows you down on the straights.
They really don't seem to have understood the underfloor aero at all or even have a clue how to sort it. They keep slamming it to the floor to get any underfloor efficiency but that then means the suspension has to be very hard and non compliant over the kerbs and bumps. So they lose speed round the slower corners and have poor top speeds due to drag.
I am surprised that after 3 years and even seeing the underside of Perez's car they haven't worked out how to design the floor to generate aero load.

 

totally agree. they should be firing their management and hiring in anyone they can lay hands on from the teams who are getting it right (not just red bull)

 

Whatever their problem, they clearly have no clue how to put it right and if anything are going backwards. Quite embarrassing for them really.

 

They went the wrong way for over a season with size 0 side pods. So now, rather than playing an impossible game of catch-up, they've decided to concentrate on 2026.

 

do you.srr saying they've totally wasted all the development money spent this winter and have also basically accepted far less prize money by finishing possibly as low as 5th in the championship?

the biggest issue I would have with what you.say is that despite all the changes ground effect is staying so not bothering to understand it in 2024 and 2025 would be nuts.

we are getting smaller cars, smaller tyres, lighter cars bit still will have ground effect so to think merc are happy to not improve their understanding for the next 2 years seems a stretch to.me.

yes there's new engine regs coming but thats only one aspect of the development teams and all teams are working on ot equally.

imo merc have just ****ed it.