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Jenson Button, and the constructor’s championship in 2009, grew out of the ashes of Honda’s F1 entry after Honda had withdrawn from F1 at the end of the 2008 season after only a single Grand Prix win for Button in Hungary 2006.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

 

[cider_and_toast]

Ah, as the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend

 

[Greenlantern101]

I guess Merc aren't planning on signing Alonso any time soon.

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/egocentric-alonso-was-bad-for-ferrari-lauda-551786

 

[Titch]

Harsh words. But Allonso has said he's going to retire in 2016, hasn't he. ?

 

[FB]

He said Ferrari would be his last team and has now announced that McLaren will be his last team so who knows where he will end up. It's all a bit Frank Sinatra isn't it.

Back to Mercedes, we appear to have a clear 1-2 in the team now. Let's hope Ferrari offer Hamilton a bit more competition than Rosberg is.

 

[racecub]

By outcome of course. Differentiation by outcome, not by design. Though he was a little closer today in quali than he has been.
I think maybe Ferrai will be closer in the race than in quali....well Vettel might.

 

[RasputinLives]

After all the moaning from number 2 recently I bet its gonna be subconsciously by design from now on.

 

[Mephistopheles]

Maybe not by design but definitely the preferred situation within the team..

 

[olegg]

"El Pais newspaper said Williams, Lotus and Force India each pay around EUR 25 million per season for the German marque’s F1-leading turbo V6 ’power unit’.
But the report said not everything is equal.
The Williams of Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas are usually one step below (the works team), and then (the situation) is different still for Lotus and Force India"

What do you think?

 

[FB]

I've already been pulled up for speculating that all is not equal in the engine department between the works team and the customer teams so I shall keep quiet. What I will say is that Mercedes have to sell a lot of engines to recover the reported €500 million they invested in the hybrid units so it's no surprise they want to keep the engine regulations as is for a few more years.

 

[cider_and_toast]

Here's a question, how do you make an engine not as good as the one you have. I think Grizzly in the things we know thread said that the teams are responsible or most of the plumbing, cooling, exhaust systems and other gubbins. So if Mercedes supply what is effectively, an engine block, with a couple of systems attached to it. Is it the fact that the rest of their systems are better and that accounts for the difference or is there something on their engine that spins faster, is less restricted or operates more efficiently, that they deliberately don't do on the other teams cars. I don't disablieve that the customer teams engines aren't the same as the works ones. I'm just wondering how it's done ??

 

[Road of Bones]

Make some of the moving bits of them heavier?

 

[canis]

It is against the regulations for the engine supplier to supply different engines to different teams, it would also be a massive cost to Mercedes to run more than one type of engine.

What is more likely is that Mercedes works team know more about how to package the engine into the car than the other teams, as said there is a lot to make an engine work around the outside of it that is not provided to the teams and so it is to be expected that the works team have more of an insight into how this is to happen than anyone else...

 

[Brogan]

http://www1.skysports.com/f1/news/1...of-their-turbo-engine-has-given-them-the-edge

 

[cider_and_toast]

That's what I would have thought. It was down to the works team knowing the engines. Having said that though, how would they check if the customer engines are of a different weight? The cars are weighed all up not chassis and then engine. No team is likely to know how heavy another team's engine is? We know what difference just a kilo could make in F1.

 

[FB]

For 2015 the Mercedes customer teams didn't follow the same route or weren't allowed to? I recall something about Williams having a different position for the hybrid battery which necessitated a bulge on the side of the car which wasn't there in 2014.

 

[Brogan]

or weren't allowed to?

Dictated by whom?

I don't believe engine suppliers can dictate to their customers in that manner.

Is the situation really that much different to Red Bull being the preferred team for Renault over the last few seasons?
Red Bull undoubtedly benefited from that relationship.

 

[FB]

Not at all, I'm just intrigued by the freedom the customer teams of all the engine suppliers have and how much the engine suppliers input in to the installation of the units at their customers. Mercedes have split the turbine and the compressor on the works car. Did these parts arrive as a single unit or separate parts at Williams, for instance or if they had wanted to could they have separated the parts? You can imagine an engineer at Williams picking up the two parts and going "Doh! they forgot to bolt these two together".

I think your trying to read too much into my questions, if Mercedes have funded the development of this power unit it's natural and logical that it would be designed to best suit their car, in exactly the same way at Ferrari and Renault with Red Bull.

 

[cider_and_toast]

I guess a side question which may answer yours FB is where and when are the FIA seals applied? If they are done at the Mercedes engine factory than it's safe to assume that the units would arrive at the customer teams ready assembled and waiting for the remaining parts to be bolted on. If they arrive in kit form then the FIA would have to go around and seal each unit of each team in turn. My guess is that it is all done at the factory and then they are shipped whole.

Further, I can see how teams may have struggled to achieve the same deft packaging that Mercedes achieved last year on account of the fact they received their engines later than Mercedes. What's the excuse this year? At least in engine layout and dimensions, Williams for example should know exacty what to expect. This would suggest that it's not an engine issue but a chassis / aero issue that has prevented them moving forward from last year.

 

[Slyboogy]

If Williams and its drivers are echoing the engines being different, then there must be some truth to the matter.

 

[Brogan]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/26946444

The Mercedes customer teams have not been able to take as much of a benefit from this advance as the factory team because they did not know about it as soon as the factory team, so could not as effectively optimise their cars around it.

They did, however, all know by last spring, about the time the basic layout of a team's next car is finalised.