Some Questions on Mercedes F-1

[Mike N]

Some Questions on Mercedes F-1



Many interesting questions come to mind when Mercedes F-1 is mentioned. Many. For instance; Why did Daimler purchase the Brawn team when all other manufacturers were looking for the door? What effect will the current Middle Eastern political unrest have on the team’s ownership member Aabar Investment PLS, of the UAE? Will they stay the course or sell their stake in the team? Did Ross Brawn really profit by $100 million dollars on the sale of his stock to Mercedes? Or, the media friendly question; How will the continuing driver partnership of Schumacher and Rosberg playout? You know the one, wily old fox Michael working his many devious ways against the driver voted best looking ‘female’ in F-1, Nico Rosberg.

As titillating as these questions, and more, may be I’d like to address the issue which makes me the most curious. I’m talking about the extra one second of time which it currently takes the Mercedes WO2 to navigate a race track when compared to the competitive machines fielded by Red Bull, Ferrari, and McLaren. One second. Not much in the normal scheme of things for most of us in our lives, one second on an F-1 track is forever. For Rosberg and Schumacher to be speaking of such a time deficit to the ‘top three’ teams is bad enough, but after all they’re just drivers and drivers have been known to become disheartened when the car just isn’t fast. For team principles such as Ross Brawn, Nick Fry, and Norbert Haug to proclaim this in public and print is quite shocking. Especially so when you consider the team abandoned the WO1 mid way through last season and devoted their time, and large sums of money, to this very car.

So, why is the car so slow? Is it the aero dynamics of the car? Probably yes. Is it the chassis design? More than likely yes on this question, too. Can these problems be repaired? Sure, assuming a new car is actually on the way, as we’re told. Actually we are led to believe a complete new car will arrive soon, but wait, why build a test car for the very limited testing schedule to be run, and build a separate racing car? The new racing car itself will need testing to ensure reliability and pace, and guess what? There’s no time remaining for the team to accomplish this. What type of planning is this, and are the leaders at Mercedes truly expecting us to believe this scenario? Several teams are in Barcelona, Spain for the current round of testing their machines, and with time running out before the new season gets underway Mercedes is not at the test!

As I said at the outset of this article, there are any, many questions surrounding Mercedes F-1 this year, and the racing hasn’t even started.

Mike N