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Jenson Button, and the constructor’s championship in 2009, grew out of the ashes of Honda’s F1 entry after Honda had withdrawn from F1 at the end of the 2008 season after only a single Grand Prix win for Button in Hungary 2006.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.

 

[Mephistopheles]

Singapore 2014 the first time in history a car has failed from "substance" abuse..

 

[siffert_fan]

http://www.pitpass.com/52806/Mercedes-AMG-High-Performance-Powertrains-awarded-Dewar-Trophy

A well-deserved award. The superiority of the powertrain has made the WCC a foregone conclusion and rendered the WDC virtually meaningless, IMO.

 

[FB]

I think read somewhere that Mercedes gave everyone at the factory a £10,000 bonus for winning the WCC so well done them.

 

[Jen]

That was just the Brackley part of the enterprise!

 

[Greenlantern101]

I think many on here are giving to much credence to the engine. Is your selective blindness obscuring the fact that Mclaren are also a top team with an all powerful Merc powertrain (a forgone conclusion apparently) and are currently lying 5th behind a Renualt and a Ferrari powered team.

Its not just about engines you know.

 

[Jen]

Is it not?

Where would McLaren be without an exceptional engine? Just in front of Marussia and Caterham or, maybe, even behind.

The only problem I have is one half of an enterprise gets a £10k bonus and the other doesn't. Neither would be anything special without the other - if that is selective blindness then I'm all for it!

 

[Mephistopheles]

So where's my 10k?

 

[siffert_fan]

Greenlantern101

How can you be sure that the other teams have the same spec power units that the Mercedes team does? Hint: you can't.

Plus Jen is exactly right about McLaren.

 

[KekeTheKing]

All Mercedes teams are running the exact same power units. Any suggestions otherwise are complete nonsense. Merc would be immediately thrown out of the Championship if they were so brazenly flouting the FIA's homologation efforts. Hint: this was never even a remote possibility.

And no matter how many times you try to act like something is meaningless it won't make it any more true. In fact the repetition only serves to illustrate how utterly ridiculous the source is.

 

[FB]

Isn't the turbo installation different on the works cars compared to the customer cars?

 

[Bill Boddy]

Yes and this amounts to a large part of the success of Mercedes. However that is up to the teams, it is not a part of what Mercedes supply. Also, don't Williams use something similar which is why they have had their sudden rebirth this season. And of course they do have Felipe Massa.

 

[Mephistopheles]

All Mercedes teams are running the exact same power units.

How do you know they didn't produce two different spec engines before homologation? A team spec and a customer spec.

The FIA don't actually strip the engines down and look at what is going on inside they don't have time or the know how to do that, they simply put official seals on the ones that are supplied and send them off to the teams and then regulate if any team breaks the seals or not...

 

[Bill Boddy]

Don't they do spot checks on the engines? Anyway there would have been a few teams moaning very loudly if they though that had happened.

 

[Mephistopheles]

What proof would they have all the engines would look exactly the same from the outside and so they would have nothing to compare it with.

Never take anything at face value, that is my motto and to assume that a manufacturing team would not gain an advantage over a customer team at any opportunity is nonsense..

 

[siffert_fan]

The late Rob Walker said that, in his day, it was common for the works teams to have 40-50 more hp than his customer car had (and this was the era of 250 hp F1 cars). Of course, Rob had Stirling Moss!

 

[sushifiesta]

I doubt there's any fundamental difference between the works Mercedes and customer Mercedes engines, but they must all go through some tests before being given the green light and there must be some natural variation from one unit to another. No doubt the works team gets the golden units that look the best when being evaluated.

However, with modern manufacturing techniques etc. I expect the differences are very small, possibly not even measurable in terms of lap time or at least an extremely small fraction of the lead the works Mercedes has on everyone else.

 

[The Pits]

I agree sushifiesta, the event it to the works team's is in the packaging, and knowing the specific numbers in terms of cool I.g etc in advance.

Interesting to see differences between the works team's and customer team's for Ferrari and Renault engines too. I mean, sauber not looking to good this season.

 

[siffert_fan]

http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/formula1/26946444

Why the Dewar's trophy was so well-deserved, but certain people may not like what it says.

 

[KekeTheKing]

That's a nice little article from April. I think it's been posted a couple times. Mercedes really have done a fantastic job maximizing the potential of the very same PU that their customers receive. Good on them for optimizing their solution. And if a factory team can't find a way to gain an edge somehow, then they're doing something wrong (hello Ferrari)

Congrats to the boys in Brixworth for a well deserved award!

http://www.pitpass.com/52806/Mercedes-AMG-High-Performance-Powertrains-awarded-Dewar-Trophy

 

[Mephistopheles]

Agree.