Season openner - Australia 2015

[lkjohnson1950]

I don't think Merc gets enough credit for the chassis of the last 2 seasons. After all several teams are using the engine and none can beat Merc.

[John S]

I don't think Merc gets enough credit for the chassis of the last 2 seasons. After all several teams are using the engine and none can beat Merc.

The suggestion seems to be that Merc customer engines are not quite up to the factory cars spec. There could be two reasons for this in IMO :-

[1] they are making sure customer teams have a really hard job beating them. After all it's rather embarrassing for the factory team to explain to public corporation boards why they should invest huge sums to benefit third parties.

or, and this is I believe the more likely:-

[2] The factory team takes more chances with the engines they run with more extreme versions of developments. The customers have an expensive contract with Merc for the supply of power units, but who pays if they need to use a 5th or 6th engine?
Even if it's Merc taking the hit it's still a cost no one wants and could impact on the cost of engines in future years.
Merc may be trading reliability against the latest, but risky, spec to ensure the engine contract prices stay within a manageable range.



 

[Jericoke]

I don't think Merc gets enough credit for the chassis of the last 2 seasons. After all several teams are using the engine and none can beat Merc.

The suggestion seems to be that Merc customer engines are not quite up to the factory cars spec. There could be two reasons for this in IMO :-

[1] they are making sure customer teams have a really hard job beating them. After all it's rather embarrassing for the factory team to explain to public corporation boards why they should invest huge sums to benefit third parties.

or, and this is I believe the more likely:-

[2] The factory team takes more chances with the engines they run with more extreme versions of developments. The customers have an expensive contract with Merc for the supply of power units, but who pays if they need to use a 5th or 6th engine?
Even if it's Merc taking the hit it's still a cost no one wants and could impact on the cost of engines in future years.
Merc may be trading reliability against the latest, but risky, spec to ensure the engine contract prices stay within a manageable range.

I would easily believe either scenario.  I'd suggest engine suppliers not be allowed to also be teams, but obviously we can't lose Ferrari's long history of doing just that.

Perhaps the simple fix is that engines must be shipped separate from cars, and distributed to teams by the FIA at random.  That is, Mercedes (and Ferrari) brings enough engines for everyone, but they don't know which ones they get until the FIA opens the crate.

This means that anyone with a supplier engine gets a fair supplier engine.  Certainly once the crate is opened, the owning team is free to do whatever the FIA allows.  Mercedes would still have the advantage of knowing the engine better than customers, but they wouldn't be able to factory build a better 'standard' engine for themselves.

[J.Clark]

That is a rather interesting concept.  I like the idea of it, but in theory, I'm not sure how well it would work.  It would mean some unusually long hours for the mechanics and techies because they would have to get the power unit installed and tested at the track, rather than before shipping - probably days before.

[Alianora La Canta]

The suggestion seems to be that Merc customer engines are not quite up to the factory cars spec. There could be two reasons for this in IMO :-

[1] they are making sure customer teams have a really hard job beating them. After all it's rather embarrassing for the factory team to explain to public corporation boards why they should invest huge sums to benefit third parties.

or, and this is I believe the more likely:-

[2] The factory team takes more chances with the engines they run with more extreme versions of developments. The customers have an expensive contract with Merc for the supply of power units, but who pays if they need to use a 5th or 6th engine?
Even if it's Merc taking the hit it's still a cost no one wants and could impact on the cost of engines in future years.
Merc may be trading reliability against the latest, but risky, spec to ensure the engine contract prices stay within a manageable range.

The regulations only allow engine manufacturers to homologate one engine per year, so #1 is impossible. #2, on the other hand, is very plausible because nearly all Mercedes engine failures have been on Mercedes cars, and the smallest number have been on the Force Indias (which have been the most cautious of the Mercedes-powered squads thus far).

[Jericoke]

Who on earth thought it would be a good idea to get Arnold up there to interview the drivers.  We were sure Jackie was there for that...why else was he even on stage?  I don't even think Arnie knew Rosberg's name.

I read a theory that Bernie is looking into bringing a race back to California, and is trying to involve Arnold in the efforts to make the Long Beach Grand Prix (currently an IndyCar race until 2018) back into an F1 race.

I don't see it happening.  Long Beach long ago realized that F1 fees were too expensive, which is why they quit.  I can't imagine that the fees have gone down since the 80s.

[lkjohnson1950]

Never underestimate Bernie's ability to do a deal.

[Alianora La Canta]

Only one engine can be homologated per year, so the only way Mercedes could be giving the customer teams something that wasn't the same as the current works team engine is if they were giving out 2014 units. Had that been the case, we'd have noticed they were rather slower than they are...