I find interesting that Massa during his interview with Autosport hasn't mentioned MB's team. RBR and McLaren were just two on his mind. Could be that he wasn't do much thinking at that time, but since (we are told) if you spit what's on your tongue quickly, usually that represents closest proximity what you really think, therefore his words lead me to conclusion, that he must have seen the same thing what Michael did; car is not ready to be competitive enough as presented thus far. Last tests will be crucial how we place our bets for Bahrain.

Understandable given todays announcement concerning Mercedes financial status:

"Shares of Daimler AG dropped more than 6% on Thursday after the German car maker reported a fourth-quarter net loss and said it won't pay a dividend."

You guys know how this works, the shareholders have to be made to feel that all expenses, including marketing, are justified.

Yes, but in gamesmanship, if you ignore an opponent you often do it to subtly dismiss them and their efforts, as if to say " I don't rate you" . It tends to have the opposite effect of what is desired, that is, you tend to motivate that opponent rather than demoralize them, to show you how wrong you are.

I am not implying this is the case here with Massa, but you never know. Maybe, just maybe, Ferrari do not see Mercedes with Schumacher and Brawn as "enemies" (rather they can't bring themselves to). They are still on friendly terms, we'll see that attitude change if the cars are close in performance during the season.

If Schumacher says they will be competitive, they will be competitive. They are probably holding something back, and he knows what it is.

Cooper

If you run the company to appease the shareholders, then you've already lost. Focusing on fundamentals is the only way to turn the ship around, if strong marketing in F1 is what is required, the shareholders should be made to understand that. Feeding them bullshit will blow up in their faces.


Cooper

There is the world as it should be and the world as it is. In the world that is, quarterly profits are ALL that matters. Shareholders are hedge funds that do not care about ANYTHING other than profits.

On a positive note I have no doubt that Benz sees value in their current marketing plan and will support their effort in F1. They are not new to the sport and no doubt have realistic expectations. I view the statements as nothing more than corporate speak.

Even Toyota, the blue chip of all blue chips in the automotive sector, is losing money hand over fist. So I think a certain amount of shareholder awareness is built into the current economic climate. The question is: How much patience can a corporation expect from its shareholders? I think Mercedes have a bit of time to play with here, there will not be any knee-jerk reaction should the initial F1 program effort stumble. Now is a time for them to focus on the fundamentals, and make the company strong for the foreseeable future. I think shareholders should not have a hard time with this concept at this point in time.


Cooper

My feeling is that peanut gallery marked MB for P4. Lets hope Mikie and Ross have a secret. I can take some bad news, like one or two races, but then...

Don't know if someone already mentioned that, but Pitpass again published an article regarding Fry:

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_new...es_art_id=39949

Man schumacher takes an early lunch!

If they keep on banging on that line of story, then maybe they're up to something especially if they have an authentic copy of the .pdf file.
That story is some 4 days old and there is no response yet from mercedes.

Not only lunch, but the nap too. Something is wrong there? Only 23 laps. And the weather is good. Loosing time.

I think this goes beyond an appeal to the shareholders' sentiments, I think it is also directed to disgruntled members of the board and workers union. It is some kind of public guarantee to these people and I also think it is a time buying exersice and an attempt to prepare his audience for what may not be a really good year in F1.

It was carefully worded.

I asked m_glendenning (Autosport's man on the ground at Jerez) and he said

" Last time I was in pitlane they were making some changes to the car - perhaps trying new parts. I'll check next time I go down"

I love how consistent schumi is at time.


-0.358, -.38 and then +0.38.

Its pretty cool to see.

These short four lap runs, they are for checking the performance of a specific part?

Mercs true pace! 1:41

just finished his 10 lap stint with mid/high 22s, low 23s

This is sandbagging.

It was a really good run. Started off fast and stayed consistent throughput. The 1:41 was probably to avoid traffic. (discounting the 1:41, the average of the stint was 1:22.9)

If the MB guys want to keep us in suspence, surely as hek they are doing better job of it then most, but I rather suspect that car needs more work on it. (I am totally disregarding possibility that a driver is slow. For now it's a car issue).

I think Ross Brawn sold off the concern at just the right time by the looks of it.

You are absolutely right. Will see tomorrow. But it is not looking good.

The third day of this week’s test in Jerez finally saw a break in the weather conditions and enabled Michael Schumacher to achieve some valuable dry running for the MERCEDES GP PETRONAS team.

After torrential downpours on Thursday night, the skies thankfully cleared today to enable the use of slick tyres for the majority of the day once the damp track had dried early this morning. Michael’s programme focused on developing the set-up of the MGP W01 and evaluating various changes over longer runs. The team had a positive day with Michael completing 79 laps with a quickest lap time of 1.21.437.

Nico Rosberg will take over the car tomorrow for the fourth and final day of this week’s test.

Michael Schumacher: “Today was a nice end to my testing days in Jerez this week and it was great to finally have some consistent dry running. We are on schedule with our programme but at the same time, we are well aware that there is still a lot of work ahead of us. The final test in Barcelona next week will be an important test in this respect and will give us valuable information about the performance of the car.”

Schumi: "That was a conciliatory end of the testing days in Jerez, it was nice finally being able to drive in the dry for some more laps in a row. We are in our schedule but at the same time we are well aware there is still a lot of work ahead of us. Barcelona next week will be an important test in this respect for all of us and will give us more information about the performance of our car."

a lot of work ahead = not fast enough (yet)

Will be interesting to see if the new package turns the car into a winner next week, as I doubt the car is one in the current configuration.

If they want to work more, they have to drive more. Other teams made 50 laps more today, this is work for almost one more day.

Not necessarily; once you ID an issue, you need to eliminate noise, and benchmark the fix. I see it as an incremental process. There is no point to train a driver with a sick car, or go for a pleasure-ride.

Yep, im sure mercedes is well aware of how they should do things. Let's just wait and have some faith in them.

well, i'm new to the forum but what i can say is that merc still have to work considering that they fought until the race in brazil while mclaren and ferrari had loads of time available to develop their car, if you think about it, they are in the situation some other teams were last year before the season started, fighting until the end of the season and having little time to develop their car while honda, then brawn had a whole year to build the car from scratch. What I don't understand it's why do they still use last years FW and diffuser? Furthermore, RBR looks to be fast straight out of the box and it only seems to be an evolution of last year's car while merc built something new and let's say quite useless so far. If they would have introduced a new diffuser and front wing at this test, in case they have one i think they would have gained more data but let's wait and see.

Doesn't look good at all. I'd hoped Merc would have at least the third quickest car at the start of the season,but Red Bull seem to be ahead as well,at the moment. I actually think the car was closer to the front earlier on in the winter but the updates from other teams helped them get further ahead.


Still not sure about the diffuser thing either. I don't expect any official word on it,of course,but there has been nothing from Brawn to suggest they are confident of a massive gain with the aero-update. If it's just a new nose/FWing then I think we're in trouble.

Maybe they want to keep their new design secret to the last test, which, if successful, would give them jump on other teams? (Assuming there is a suprising evolution available in the first place). On flip side, if it doesn't work, then...

I am trying to figure out why they didn't use it this time as the last test was also in Jerez, and it could've provided them with a lot of data because I think that a new front wing will affect all the car aerodynamics wise wihile a new diffuser will also do that and that can affect many other things. could a new front wing and new diffuser affect tyres?

Maybe they aren't ready because they had discovered quite late that there are issues with car balance, and therefore body work which we might see on the last moment might be not as much evolutionary, but a compromised design fix. New stuff might come then only in race 4 to 6. (This is of course just my speculation about possibilities behind closed door).

Is Ross Brawn still the team principal? I said it earlier in the thread but I saw him walking around the town centre in Henley-on-Thames last Saturday, found out from Wikipedia that he lives a couple of miles from here. A pretty cool customer! Doesn't seem to be sweating it.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/81607

Twitchy rear shouldn´t be a problem for Michael, don´t know how Nico can cope with it

Oh no, even BRK is looking apprehensive... Should I get worried too?

Nah, MGP knows what it is doing and above all, Michael had a pretty decent idea of the potential of the car before signing.

I'll still hold to our theory of the revolutionary new diffuser still to be introduced. Further, according to James Allen MGP has been concentrating on mechanical balance with really heavy fuel loads and the hardest tyre compound. On the same note, Michael finished his comments on today's test by saying that Barcelona will be the place where they will access the real performance of the car.

Come on, this is just winter testing, remember? Let's keep up the positive mood.

Heh,call it pre-season blues. Been a while!

I agree about MGP using the harder tyres for the longer runs,although they would've had to try the softs/medium on at some point today. The pace wasn't great on inters earlier on in the day when all cars were on inters,that's part of the reason I'm worried. Mechanically,they don't seem to have improved much from 2009 and still have some of the issues the BGP001 suffered from.

I'll put all that aside for the moment,though-final day on the morrow,and then on to Barcelona.

A better handling car is usually better, though. Of course, if anybody, Michael is able to drive around problems, but even he won't able to do anything if the gap is too big.

I think Merc is currently on P4 behind Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull. Currently. So that's before the final aero package. Let's hope that brings some MASSIVE improvement. If not, then we will have a difficult, difficult season.

Apparently Michael spent the day entirely testing on the harder of the two compounds for Jerez,while the Ferrari's two stints in the 1:20s were on soft tyres.

Edit: as was Webber's quickest lap,set on the first lap of a three lap mini-stint.

I'm getting worried too

Can anyone tell me if there's a test next week and who will test for Merc on each day? thanks!

There will be test in Barcelona from 25.02 to 28.02. Who will drive when is not decided yet. But I think will be Nico,Schumi,Nico,Schumi.

I have heard they were testing mainly on the hards previously as well. I wonder why they prefer to test on those. But at least it gives a little hope about more potential than what we have seen so far.

Maybe the MGP W01 is designed to work better with harder compounds. Yes, it gives us hope!

PS:

BRK,

Nice info! Where did you get it, James Allen F1 blog?

Isn't that a trademark of Schumachers driving?

I might be wrong.

Yes, it is!

He needs the front end glued to the track, then he keeps oversteering under control with his hands. Having said that, we're talking about really small amounts, not even visible sometimes. It's more like using the rear to help steering the car mid corner. Even Schumacher will be slow on a visibly sliding car.

Like I wrote earlier, the Ferrari looked good on long stints in the afternoon. There was a direct head-to-head in the morning and the Ferrari couldn't match the Mclaren. If anybody was watching, there was some intense shoot out between the two and it was very exciting.

I would suggest that no one should get too carried away yet and I wouldn't write mercedes off either. They may just be sandbagging; there are no points or awards for winning the winter test and we may even leave Barca with an impression only for that impression to be blown away come race day at Bahrain.

Regarding the diffuser, could Merc be putting off introducing a new diffuser to give them more time in the wind tunnel to further develop it, like Redbull's entire car, rather to hide it from the other teams?


Has this been mentioned yet? No doubt it has, but just an idea.

Yes, I've mentioned that possibility in this thread.

It's certainly possible and I hope it's true. Could be a way to compensate the extra development time Ferrari and McLaren had last year by not fighting the championship.

Apart from forum speculation, there has been nothing to even remotely suggest that a radical new diffuser is on its way.

Get over it guys.