Current Mercedes

Mercedes GP

FIA Entry: Mercedes GP Petronas F1 Team
Car 7: Michael Schumacher
Car 8: Nico Rosberg
Engine: Mercedes V8
Team Principal: Ross Brawn
Technical Director: Bob Bell
Race Engineer Car 7: Mark Slade
Race Engineer Car 8: Tony Ross

Stats as of end 2010

First Entered 2010
Races Entered 19
Race Wins 0
Pole Positions 0
Fastest Laps 0
Driver World Championships 0
Constructor World Championships 0

Team History

The Mercedes team history splits into two parts. In 1954 the famous pre-war Silver Arrows entered the F1 world championship and recorded a 1-2 at their first race. Fangio went on to win the drivers championship that year and again in 1955. Mercedes withdrew at the end of the 1955 season after the accident which killed 80 spectators at Le Mans which involved one of their cars.

The current team entered F1 in 2010 after Mercedes bought Brawn Grand Prix. Brawn Grand Prix, winners of the Drivers Championship, with Jenson Button, and the constructor’s championship in 2009, grew out of the ashes of Honda’s F1 entry after Honda had withdrawn from F1 at the end of the 2008 season after only a single Grand Prix win for Button in Hungary 2006.

Prior to the Honda takeover in 2006 the team had raced under the name of British America racing which had acquired the assets and race entry of the Tyrrell F1 team in 1999. BAR competed in 118 races without a single victory. The high points for the team were 2 pole positions (both for Button – San Marino 2004 and Canada 2005) and 2nd in the constructors championship in 2004.

Tyrrell were amongst the most successful private F1 teams taking part in 463 Grands Prix, scoring 33 victories and 3 Drivers Championships, all with Jackie Stewart.

2010

Having replaced Button and Barrichello with Nico Rosberg and 7 times WDC Michael Schumacher many expected great things of the new Mercedes team in 2010 but they had an indifferent season.

Rosberg managed 3 podiums for the team but Schumacher, coming back from retirement, struggled with the new cars, tyres and limited testing under the revised regulations. The team finished 4th in the Constructors Championship.

2011

For 2011 Mercedes retain the same driver line up and are hoping for better things from their MGP W02 chassis.

 

[Brogan]

Daimler has bought Aabar's Mercedes stake and now has full control of the team.

 

[The Artist.....]

Brogan

I'm really not sure what to make of that - Mercedes have been reticent to throw the kitchen sink at F1 since they came back in 1993/4, and have seemed nervous generally of motor-racing since 1955.... For a company that was said to be weighing up its future in F1 as well, this seems like an odd move.... However, we will see what we see!

 

[ExtremeNinja]

The Artist.....

In some responses you are going back to 1999 and in others you are going back to 2010 and it seems the choice of date range that you use depends on what suits your argument. For instance: in the last 4 years McLaren have won 19 GPs and Brackley have won 9. Sure, it is still in McLaren's favour, in terms of wins, but there was also a WDC and a WCC for Brackley which is something that McLaren have not achieved in that time and they are the two ultimate prizes. This argument could go round and round with any number of permutations of manipulated statistics but the fact remains that Hamilton has left McLaren, who have not met his expectations, and now he places those with Mercedes with a long-term view.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush but a turd in the hand is less attractive than a poo in the bush.

 

[The Artist.....]

ExtremeNinja...

The only reason I went back to 2010 is because it's the time that JB and LH have been team-mates at McLaren- if you really want, we could consider all of McLaren's wins from 1999-2012 and compare them to Brackley F1 in the same timescale....

Personally, I just think that Hamilton is mad for leaving McLaren and joining Mercedes if he hopes that it will be a long-term better hope....

 

[ExtremeNinja]

I know what you think as you have said it many times. It was the selective-ness of your usage of statistics to bolster your argument that I was questioning. Again, in your last post where you go back to 1999 you choose to talk about wins instead of championships. Anyway, I've had enough of that. I know what your position is, however you choose to push it.

I will retain an open-mindedness for Mercedes, performance in the future. They won the championship in 2009 with a car that was second best over the season (largely because Jenson outperformed Barichello to such a degree when they did have the advantage). I think if they get the car right, then they are much more able to make the most of it and take a championship than McLaren are. If they haven't got the car they look a little lost, but without Hamilton so do McLaren - and he is going to be in Mercedes' pocket next year.

 

[Fenderman]

Mercedes engines have powered all of McLaren's victories since the season opener in 1997 to date. Mercedes have a rich history of success in motorsport right across the globe, from powering other winning constructors race cars to their own manufacturer team successes in Le Mans, GT and DTM, etc. Mercedes F1 as a constructor/team is really only three years old. 2013 will be somewhat of a team building year with Hamilton and then, for 2014, the new reg's and car spec's will provide a new canvas for the whole grid. Ross Brawn has a history of success in F1, especially with Ferrari and we saw what happened under his own Brawn brand in 2009.

With all that in mind, how can we say with any certainty that Mercedes can't come back to surprise us again? After all, they have made a habit of doing just that for over a century.

 

[teabagyokel]

My selective stat is:

Points for Mercedes in last five races: 0

 

[ExtremeNinja]

Which is probably not too far out of line with their expectations having written off this season in favour of future development. It will be how successful those developments are and what they learn turn out to be in the next two years which will validate or nullify their efforts for the latter part of this year.

 

[FB]

I seem to recall BMW stopping their car development to "concentrate on next year", how did that work out?

 

[Tacitus]

Interesting info about Mercedes at Austin.
Apparently the new coanda exhausts are producing significantly more rear downforce on the car but are also significantly more fuel hungary meaning that whilst the benifits are clear to see in qualifying the penalty during the race is also very heavy to the extent that schumacher(with coanda) had to start the race with 23 KG more fuel than rosberg(non coanda) Other teams have also found the coandas thirsty but have had 6+ months to work on solutions to bring fuel consumption back to nearly conventional exhausts levels. Mercedes reckon schumachers car had at least 18-20KG more fuel in it than the cars around him which in terms of laptime was a penalty of 6-8 tenths per lap in the early stages which is why he was such a sitting duck in the early stages of the race, infact he told me that it was lap 10 before schumacher did a lap where he never had to leave the racing line which with the dust offline to added to his problems. Another interesting thing he told me was that their was no real requirement to stop michael for the 2nd time and that the hard tyres he had would have easily got him to the end but with both drivers having no hope of points they decided to do a back to back with both cars as rosberg had just put on a new set of mediums and was in clear air so they wanted to see if the coandas gained enough laptime back on schumachers car compared to rosberg even though he had harder tyres and more fuel on board............All in all it would seem mercedes race at austin became pretty much a test session after lap 12.

 

[Brogan]

Interesting stuff.
That pretty much explains the disparity between qualifying and the race.

A clever move by Mercedes using the last few races as extended test sessions.

 

[Il_leone]

Mercedes have given up on 2012

They are concentrating on 2013 which makes sense and the board are getting impatient which is what Murray Walker predicted when they came back in 2010

I still see this problem where they have too many engineers who have a wealth of experience not used properly because the board are interfering too much and Norbert off course wants to be the one in charge when they need to listen to Ross ...

the same problem Honda had...2009 is because the engineers were allowed to listen to Ross not a yes man muppet like Nick Fry

the other problem is Mercedes are not increasing the team budget so can they keep up development with the top 3 then

 

[racecub]

But Mercedez Benz have just bought out the other shareholder for an undisclosed amount of money and now have full ownership of the F1 team. That and paying for Lewis for three years suggests they have money if its needed.

 

[ZakspeedYakspeed]

Interesting Tacitus ... there was talk pre race that CoTA was going to be the thirstiest circuit all year... which plays directly into the Mercedes achilles heel ... which makes a lot of sense seeing them simply disappear from relevance during the race...

 

[Il_leone]

Everyone is waiting for Mercedes to be regular winners...their problem is the team management...they are not letting Ross to run the team...he is reporting to Norbert who off course reports to Stuttgart

 

[teabagyokel]

Their problem is that the car is slow.

 

[racecub]

This years car is. Although Schumacher just put it 5 th.

 

[teabagyokel]

And then fell through the field quicker than you can say "seven-time World Champion"

 

[racecub]

Yes but we now know why, he was over fuelled to test the new exhaust. The pace was there though.

 

[teabagyokel]

Well, lets hope so, we need as many teams at the front as possible!