Again? Where I was wrong previously?

As for quote of MS - I read it earlier but I thout of it rather like small talk, like: "green or red light light goes off", "making it three", "already in overalls", do you get my point?

He wasn't directly asked for race predictions and his team expectations.

Exactly. Besides,it's the end-result we're all interested in (in this case a gain of a few tenths in pace),so as long as there is a definite gain,having a 'radical' design is immaterial.

Let´s wait and see. Just a few hours and we should have a much better picture already.
For me a good result would be P4-P6, a podium almost sensational.

You must be drunk.

Different guy in charge, completely different corporate culture, very much a different team from BAR/Honda. Regardless of their history until different leadership they are the defending champions, and rarely does that happen by sheer chance.

For me, just like many drivers and media predict, the cars of big 4 are pretty close, who knows what will happen in quai or Sunday race. Although W01 may be not the quickest one, it is very common if two drivers finish any position from 1 to 8 in the race, of course including the other three teams’ drivers.

changing the floor does NOT require rebuilding the whole car. almost every single team last year had an updated package where a new floor was added during the season....

LOL

TURU meant taking whole car to pieces to fit new flor, not redesign car for new flor.

That wasn't the point.

Please...can the "Rosberg was not handed info which is why he is getting trashed" whining at least stop till he actually starts getting trashed? Funny right the guy who last raced 3 years back in a completely different car with different tyres is the one accused of not doing the sharing.

The car looks really similar to what was at Barcelona to me.

What a surprise, it's not like it's happened to every teammate Schumacher has had since the Benetton days. Johnny Herbert said this would happen. At least Brawn let his drivers race against each other last year.
Pathetic that Schumacher needs to handicap his own teammate.

have you even bothered to take note of what Rosberg said regarding the sharing of information?

No didn't think so, you'll just believe someone that even noted at the bottom he hadn't asked....

Thats a sweet helmet!

Looks just like Button's Race of Champions one, actually.

And what makes you think its not possible to "dismantle" and "reassemble" a car within 24 hours ? Its been done so many times and its possible. IF there is so much at stake with new parts, a team will already know what operational challenges are waiting.

THe sentiment for the past few pages here is basically a group of people hoping that Mercedes sucks and hence all these reasons and a group that is overly hopeful that there is something radical.

At the start of the new season I want to wish to all MGP fans to have very good and strong season. And lots of good memories. Lets enjoy it.

+1

Diffusor still looks the same ... arghz

Minor changes can have massive consequences. It doesn't have to be dramaticlly different in order to be efficient.

On Sky Germany they said 3 huge boxes with, likely, new front wing parts arrived yesterday evening at MGP.

The BBC commentators were suggesting that Michael wasn't a happy bunny...

Rosberg was in all their short runs faster than Michael. We will see what happens later today.

All dressed up and nowhere to go

They used in FP1 the new front wing from Barca.

What a gutter. Michael's off the pace, no gargantuan diffuser and very little in the way of updates for the Mercedes....

Does anyone know what Mercedes' supposed new sponsor is, the one that had never been involved in Formula 1 before and only joined up because of Schumacher's return? Or was that just a load of BS made up by the press?

Well, if he is genuinely slower than Rosberg and by that much then of course he shouldn't be happy. It seems understeery cars are really a problem for him. It would be nice to have him on top right away, but honestly, it was a big possibility that he might run into problems at the beginning. But he will work on it, I'm sure, so it will be interesting to see if and how he will be able to turn the tables during the season.

Mercedes' new sponsor kinda vanished as did Sauber's rumoured deal with Nestlé/Nespresso... I'm afraid both have just been made up press-blabla. :/

We're the slowest car on straights if you exclude the new teams! ouch

MS is probably eating his tyres right now...

Yeah, and the whole "Petrov has money from Gazprom and Sberbank" thing ... though now that Lada are on-board, Eric Boullier has apparently been quoted as saying they are indeed talking with Gazprom and "several Russian banks" for sponsorship, which would go quite nicely on those bare sidepods.

I guess the notion of a new sponsor for Mercedes just seemed believeable compared to some of the crap that's been put out. Virgin supposedly don't have a big enough fuel tank, but that rumour seems to stem from the fact that they never got a full race distance of testing in during the off-season. And Hispania supposedly never showed up, but that was because they kept their doors closed. And now Joe "I'll-print-anything-I-hear-if-it-means-I'll-get-people-reading-my-blog" Saward is reporting (read: starting) rumours thatRenault will change their name to Lada F1.

well, the first session didnt look that good but its just free practice, and when Michael did the first flying laps then the camera showed Ross and he had face like "Oh god, are we really that slow?", but like i said its just free practice lets hope we can see a better second session

What do you guys think the front wing?

Let's take it easy.

We can't know for sure on what fuel loads and setups Michael and Nico were running.

On a positive note, after all the fears, MGP seems to be the third best team currently after Ferrari and McLaren, though it's still early to tell.

Seems to be the latest version used in Barcelona during winter testing.

From Darren Heath on Twitter.

"Mercedes were a whole lot nicer when they were Brawn. Mechanics pushing snappers, MSC ranting in the car. So, so predictable."

RIP Brawn GP.

F1 journalists trying to find ANY reason to bash MS. So, so predictable.

He's an F1 photographer...?

Amazing. A team were happier when they were 1s ahead of everyone than when they are 1s off the pace!

I know. In my country photographers are called "photo REPORTERS", hence I called him loosely a "journalist".

Yeah, that too.

Waahh wahhh a photographer didn't get his shot because mechanics are too busy on day 1 of a massive season to have people wandering about the garage.

What a moronic tweet.

Nico up top now. The car looked real twitchy with Michael in it when he was going for quicker times.

Rosberg was 3-5ths a lap faster doing short stints but I couldn't see a difference between them doing longruns

Not so bad result from FP2.

Looks quite good but I still don´t know more than after Barcelona

Nobert Haug on Sky:

-Our focus was the race performance but we also ran lighter
-Rosberg is doing very good
-Michael needs time but his longruns were really good

Schumi is not doing a bad job for a guy who has not driven a f1 car for the last three years..!..and over that he is still not totally comfortable with the car and hopefully after analyzing todays data they will be able to make improvements on the car for schumi to become more comfortable with it.

any changes on the car? or are they really waiting until fp3?

I´m a bit surprised that the top speed is still really low, especially Michaels. Only the guys of the new teams are slower.

Like I said on the FP thread,I think MS has done pretty well for a 41 year old returning to racing after three years. Not that that's going to be used as an excuse,but three years is an awfully long time-once he's back in the groove,gets used to the car and the pressures of a GP weekend,I think he'll do just fine. Testament to his abilities that he's running at the front already.

Watch his body language in the videos,that man is on fire on the inside-I think he really,really wants to get back to being the dominant Michael Schumacher we all know and remember so well.