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Jenson Button, and the constructor’s championship in 2009, grew out of the ashes of Honda’s F1 entry after Honda had withdrawn from F1 at the end of the 2008 season after only a single Grand Prix win for Button in Hungary 2006.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.
 
This weekend, Mercedes hit 100 poles and 100 wins. Here are the drivers who achieved this for them:

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The gear # display on that wheel is massive. You can see it quite easily from the onboard shot, which is kind of cool.

Back to Australia for a second...Pretty amazing that a wiring issue somehow manifested itself overnight in Hamilton's gararge. Could the rain/moisture have had anything to do with it?
 
What amazes me is that they have to use all those controls with fireproof gloves on. I have trouble undoing a zip with my cycling gloves on. And how they can read some of the numbers with the vibrations and trying to actually look where they are going....
 
Indeed and I seem to recall someone mention in commentary that it was Mercedes' 100th GP victory. If that is so then it goes nicely with Hamilton's 100th points scoring finish out of 131 starts.
 
Mark Hughes at Sky Sports reinforces what Scarbs reported more than two weeks ago at Melbourne, that the Mercedes turbo has one turbine at either end of the engine, connected by a shaft, and with the MGU-H in the middle, between the banks of cylinders. Hughes further offers that Mercedes advantage from from the heat advantages offered by this arrangement.

However, Michael Schmidt at AMuS claims that Mercedes simply did the better job designing their ICE. He thinks that even if Renault should exorcise all its software demons (which, considering the complexity Schmidt details, is an if rather than a when), they still would be down on the order of 40bhp. And the flawed bits are components that by the TR remain frozen until season's end.
 
Mercedes always had too many chiefs and not enough indians. Presumably this was part of the reason why Paddy Lowe was taken on, to squeeze out some of the dead wood?
 
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