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[Roth]

As for Merc's stance, it's obvious what they're doing and none of it is to save money. Toto's not that altruistic. It's pure selfishness, which is fair enough, but don't try and dress it up any other way.

Can you prove this or is it again just an opinion that doesnt take into account any facts, and instead sounds as if it has been thought through?

Firstly - none of it is to save money - how can you say this? - the facts are that merc would have to supply 8 extra sets of engines without extra pay, please explain how refusing to do this is not about the extra money. Lets hear your side of the argument as you at least have a bit more capacity to reason and avoid logical fallacies than some we have heard from on this

Secondly - for it to be pure selfishness would mean that there was only a benefit for Merc and Merc alone by sticking to the freeze, therefore you should be willing and able to explain what the benefit gained by ONLY Totos Merc and NO OTHER team would be by this

Remember selfish is (of a person, action, or motive) lacking consideration for other people; concerned chiefly with one's own personal profit or pleasure. So what do merc alone gain that noone else does?

Why would they be offering engines without extra pay? Has this been stated that Merc would not be remunerated for their efforts? These efforts which you've just told overboost are going on regardless of a freeze or unfreeze; so why is there necessarily any significant Merc resources being poured into it over and above what's already being done? If it does mean more money being paid atleast with the Merc there are more teams to spread the R&D costs. All other teams' costs are none of their concern.

The biggest benefit for the Merc team over the customers is the integration; it's clear now that as well as the best CPU they have the best aero and chassis, so they win on all fronts. Part of that is down to the ability to design car and CPU in tandem. This isn't Brawn - a modified Honda with a Merc engine dropped in the back with a short winning lifespan - this is the fruits of many years of labour, built to win consistently and over a long time, and it's paying handsomely. I also understand the way they've packaged the CPU is making a big difference, and one of the main hinderances of Ferrari - it's what helped them in Canada when the MGU-K failed. It seems like other teams have to fundamentally change more on their engines to improve, not just keep chipping away at what they've got.

I don't care about engine freezes per se, as has been said they all signed up to this, and even if as a spectator I can get bored by the domination my role is reactionary - I want the best for the sport but am powerless to achieve that - but I know when a businessman like Wolff who when two teams went under went on a survival of the fittest bent, then talks about the engines freeze like it's a cost exercise, not an advantage one, I tend to think he's paying lip service to the latest political zeitgeist.

Merc are out to protect themselves in the long run, which I've said is fair enough, and to do this having nothing change is at the moment the easiest way to do that. They know their updates will outstrip the other teams, or not lose them ground at worst, and that even if Honda turn up with a monster then McLaren still have to supply a package to make it work, which judging by the last couple of seasons is unlikely, at first anyway. Merc are in it to win it, they aren't in it for the long haul like Ferrari or Williams, willing to ride out the low points, so they are doing evrything in their power to capitalise on their success - a success which is huge for the Merc brand as a whole. And it means money. There's a reason Ferrari don't pay a penny in advertising - simply being in F1 is enough for them - so for Merc to be in this position is better than any sleek advertising. They don't win, they pull out, and lose all that prestige. They hold all the cards, and they want it to stay that way.

[What's Burning?]

It would be lip service were it not for the fact that the people screaming are ignoring the facts.

1) Mercedes provides their customers the best engine at the cheapest price
2) these engines don't build themselves, Mercedes have to build 8 times the engines Honda builds, four times the engines Renault builds and twice as many engines ferrari builds. With the level of precision required this will add cost and reduce reliability both for Mercedes and its customers.
3) factor in the introduced obsolescence with continuous in season development, given the above. Mercedes have every right to tell Renault and Ferrari to go suck eggs.

[CookinFlat6]

Why would they be offering engines without extra pay? Has this been stated that Merc would not be remunerated for their efforts? These efforts which you've just told overboost are going on regardless of a freeze or unfreeze; so why is there necessarily any significant Merc resources being poured into it over and above what's already being done? If it does mean more money being paid atleast with the Merc there are more teams to spread the R&D costs. All other teams' costs are none of their concern.

^ wot WB said, innit

You have just proven my point that it was an opinion not based on the available facts - available even in this here thread. Let me spell out the timeline

RBR hear that Renault engine best effort wontr be ready for the FEb freeze, and wil be ready in June
RBR want to delay the freeze and to increase the window, so to be able to see what Renault bring and then improve it or check out Honda and move to them dumping Renault
RBR do what they alwasy do, get the hapkless Ferrari involved on their side by fooling them into thinking its about helping them also
RBR and ferrari start PR campaign, they force Merc to sit down and discuss
Merc say 'one edition a year is what we agreed, why would you really want to allow us to bring in even a few of the updates we already have in the pipeline, our customers are fine with the performance they dont need to pay more money for at least an extra set of engines during the year'
Ferrari say 'but it wont cost anymore money, not for us anyway because the money we spend we will recoup by finishing higher'
Merc say what about your customers, wont you charge for the extra engines?
Ferrari say, they will finish higher as well
Merc crack up laughing and send ferrari a calculator
Ferrari start crying about disrespect and samurais and other things (actually that nay have been Alonso, anyway...)
Ferari after using the calculator and after marrusia fold say 'we wont pass on the cost to our one customer'
Merc have stopped laughing/crying and leave the meeting saying 'whatever you say mate, lets go and check our calculations'
Merc come back and say no way hose, we would have to roll out the updates to all our teams ergo 4x your outlay when our teams dont need it??
RBR decide to use a diferent tack, and start the PR campaign
RBR tell Ferrari that together they will threaten to vote back unlimited spending if Merc dont delay the freeze till June
Honda are told to vote back the V8s if freeze is not delayed
Honda are still laughing

The informed F1 expertz take up the case and everyone learns something new and something they knew all along - the expertz know all the answers already, they dont need factz

oh yeah while we are at it, here is where the answer to your question of 'why the hell would Merc pay the whole cost and not 'share it out amongst their customers'

Looks like one cost-saving option was placed solely in the hands of Mercedes; but, they chose not to participate in doing so.

 wrote:">To unfreeze or not to unfreeze? With hybrid turbo engines, that is the question

...There has been plenty of to-ing and fro-ing on engine freezes in recent months in the F1 Strategy Group, with Christian Horner breaking the omertà of the F1 Strategy Group by revealing details of discussion points; in a Singapore meeting they had had a unanimous vote to introduce one ‘unfreeze’ window on 2015, but that Mercedes had changed its stance at the Sochi meeting. Mercedes argues that the Singapore meeting was an informal discussion on the topic and in principle they were interested, but when the vote came in Sochi, at which the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone voted in favour of the unfreeze, there were details which were not acceptable to Mercedes, such as that the updates in the ‘unfreeze’ window had to be made simultaneously available to all teams and with no additional costs passed on to customers...

[Roth]

Until anything is decided it's all opinion about exact details of how an unfreeze affects customers. Merc don't have to follow the Ferrari lead in not passing on costs. You're making that a fact when it isn't one. All you've got is the facts of the timeline, nothing else, because nothing else has been decided, unless Merc veto all changes, in which case it's business as usual.

And what WB said didn't answer my question. They already produce eight engines. Nobody is thrusting them on Merc. They don't all of a sudden have to produce more engines with the same resources, they're already set up to just continue what they're doing. And the quality of the engine is immaterial to what the cost is. That just means it's the one to have, not that it makes a difference to freezes. And obsolescence? All parts of a car become obsolete. Do they stop updating aero? Updating an engine is just part and parcel of car improvement. Are we pretending that there's no extra monetary allowance for a very important part of the car.

[What's Burning?]

If you say they don't stop aero development throughout the year then you're being disingenuous at best about your argument. At worse you don't understand what's being disucussed and should read up more before you talk. Because the comparison isn't even apples and oranges, it's apples and orangutangs.

It's clear that you're choosing to ignore the items because your decision is made. Yes in season development adds cost, yes the teams agreed to stop in season development because it adds costs. Irrefutable, facts. whether or not a team wants to pass those costs on to their customers is irrelevant. Sagi's post (god bless her) helps prove that point. That it was the forcing Mercedes to give way the updates without passing costs to its customers that had them balk.

So the teams agreed to something and because Renault's engine sucked and Ferrari's engine made Enzo roll over in his grave, now even the F1 troll is pushing to go back to V8's. Laughable and pathetic and they know that they have at least another year of being made to look incompetent by Mercedes. I'm looking forward to the 2015 season!

BTW, let's forget about the fact that teams are falling by the wayside, and engines are the costliest component in the car. It would be nice to see Lotus and Force India come out ahead of Ferrari next year as well, if only they had a little more money in their coffers to develop the car throughout the year. But apparently that's stifling competition according to some.

[CookinFlat6]

And what WB said didn't answer my question. They already produce eight engines. Nobody is thrusting them on Merc. They don't all of a sudden have to produce more engines with the same resources, they're already set up to just continue what they're doing. And the quality of the engine is immaterial to what the cost is. That just means it's the one to have, not that it makes a difference to freezes. And obsolescence? All parts of a car become obsolete. Do they stop updating aero? Updating an engine is just part and parcel of car improvement. Are we pretending that there's no extra monetary allowance for a very important part of the car.

Your lack of basic understanding of engineering, development and costs is staggering, but not as staggering as your willingness to stick to what you think and not make an effort to understand what the reality is. That goes for a select few with varying degrees of 'stagger'

Lets go back to basics - like 101 of F1 engines

Ok day 1, get comfortable, switch the mobile phones off and look at the blackboard

The engine is the most advanced and complex bit of engineering made by man
The engine is the single most expensive item in F1
The engine is machined and designed to tolerancies in the region of 1 in 10,000 units of measurement
To produce the engine requires a massive production facility, just to cast the heads and stuff is a big operation but once done allows several engines to be turned out before having to be recast/rejigged etc etc
Once an engine come off the line it has to be tested on a bench - this is a huge cost. Using computing a lot can be simulated and built and designed without the huge cost of the bech testing
So we could happily design updates and parts without spending that much all year long
To put any parts into the engine that sits on the grid - we have to gho through the whole bench testing (remeber thisis the really expensive bit)
So if we deliver a set of engines for 20 ill to a customer we have costs
if we change a few things for performance, i.e not like for like exact dimension, but a new design, guess what - bench tests
Now if we change one thing, other things are likely to need upgrading and changed - more bench testing - mo money
So if we have a race every 2 weeks and design updates that make a performance diffrenece we want to put them on - so how often would we have to do the expensive bench testing??
If we only do this once a year we can load up all our fancy updates and do the bench testing together
Niow so far we are assuming that our updates dont require major RETOOLING or God forbid - recasting etc, say like a new crankshaft
That would require pretty much the same cost increase as a new engine
So if we agreed to supply x engines in one batch for 20 mill according to you we could simply improve it for no cost, why its just like having 2 extra stickers instead of one blahblahblah

You even ask this 'Are we pretending that there's no extra monetary allowance for a very important part of the car.'
Who is making the extra monetary allowance? Bernie? the teams themselves to receive updates that have cost a fortune in bench testing and retooling, (we can even ignore the cost of the parts themselves here) or maybe its the manufacturers who should make this extra allowance?? The manufacturers agreed to make this allowance ONCE A YEAR

Ok lesson 2, lets make it even easier
You have a car - it needs a service once a year, the service costs 500. Thats ok. What if the car maker called you up and said, we need you to have a service several times a month because we need to to service it everytime you put fuel in the car because the fuel technology is in unlimited development to each time you fill up we need to strip your engine and rebuild it, and oh by the way WHY HAVENT YOU MADE ALLOWANCE FOR A VERY IMPORTANT PART OF THE CAR

You would say, yes that sounds like a great idea, as long as it allows me to go an extra 0.004 mph I am happy to pay 500 for a service say once a week, is that enough or can I do more?

[myownalias]

It would seem the simplest solutions to engines would be a return to the 80s with multiple engine designs, keep the fuel limit of 100KG, but ditch the flow rate BS.

But on this subject, it's business to pass costs onto customer wherever possible, simple as that, I don't see how the FIA can dictate business practice to a company, ultimately if customers are unwilling to pay the asking price for Mercedes engines, they have alternative options. Frankly this whole engine stupidity flies in the face of cost cutting in F1... We need to cut costs in F1, I know lets ditch the V8 in favor of a hybrid V6 turbo system which cost bucket loads of $$$ to develop, which the engine makers need to recoup and here we are losing two teams from the grid before the end of the season with other teams in financial dire straights!

[Roth]

If you say they don't stop aero development throughout the year then you're being disingenuous at best about your argument. At worse you don't understand what's being disucussed and should read up more before you talk. Because the comparison isn't even apples and oranges, it's apples and orangutangs.

It's clear that you're choosing to ignore the items because your decision is made. Yes in season development adds cost, yes the teams agreed to stop in season development because it adds costs. Irrefutable, facts. whether or not a team wants to pass those costs on to their customers is irrelevant. Sagi's post (god bless her) helps prove that point. That it was the forcing Mercedes to give way the updates without passing costs to its customers that had them balk.

So the teams agreed to something and because Renault's engine sucked and Ferrari's engine made Enzo roll over in his grave, now even the F1 troll is pushing to go back to V8's. Laughable and pathetic and they know that they have at least another year of being made to look incompetent by Mercedes. I'm looking forward to the 2015 season!

BTW, let's forget about the fact that teams are falling by the wayside, and engines are the costliest component in the car. It would be nice to see Lotus and Force India come out ahead of Ferrari next year as well, if only they had a little more money in their coffers to develop the car throughout the year. But apparently that's stifling competition according to some.

I wasn't directly comparing aero to engine development just that it's a natural part of F1. Teams managed engine developments and worked it into self imposed budgetary restraints in previous years, now we're being told that Merc are protecting them from themselves so they won't go nuts and make themselves bankrupt like Marussia and Caterham. This ties in with the recent distribution of wealth talks the lower teams are understandably worried about, and which Wolff can afford to be a bit patronising about. It's not the coffers of F1 are running dry, let's not spend more on engines, it's Bernie and the big boys get the lion's share so smaller teams can't afford to keep up however hard they try. I agree Ferrari have gotten themselves into their own trouble and that's a slightly different issue to Merc's claims about it being cost related. Ferrari are taking one problem of their own making and trying to rectify with an appeal to competition, whilst Merc are stonewalling using a related ongoing issue about teams staying solvent, which in all honesty they probably don't give a sh!t about. It still boils down to we want to catch up v we don't want to be caught. Merc are in the right, they should just say 'no' instead of having all these bunfights.

[What's Burning?]

They have said no. Then Horner started to cry. Then they said no again and Mattiacci started to cry and bring Ferrari's passion for competition into it. Then they said no again and the troll chimed in about third cars and customer teams, and ferrari is now the moral poster child of the sport with their clarion call to all who'd listen about them having no self interest in anything but allowing competition.

You still neglect to address the fact that Mercedes sells the cheapest engine on the grid, so they are at the very least, the lesser of two evils.

V8 engines suck and V10 engines sucked more. They sound great, but how is that relevant in a sport that sells itself as being all about technical progress? Maybe the embarrassment will have faded by the 2016 engine freeze date. There are more fickle personalities running the sport than there are in an episode of keeping up with the kardashians.

[overboost]

Of course the teams should be allowed to use their designers and engineers to continuously develop and refine their engines in order to be more competitive, it is their job l and it is about what F1 is all about - pushing the envelope. Having them sit on the sidelines all season and not be allowed to do their job because Mercedes is afraid of a little competition is ruining the racing.

The designers and engineers dont sit on the sidelines they can develop at full speed and flat out for the next freez, you dont seem to undertsand this point, there is only a freeze in introducing a new engine spec, at the next window they can introduce an engine thats 10x better than mercs. Its like the transfer window in football, players can move only twice a year, doesnt mean scouts and managers stop working inbetween. Its like Apple releasing a new iphone once a year instead of everytime they change the battery. It means once a year they can bring a better phone than Smasung, but they dont stop woriking on the next iPhone, try get your head around this, the only reason the others are complaining about the freeze is that they are already behind again on next year

cookie this is the problem - The designers can't do anything until the next season! This means that the stone is cast in pre-season testing and that is it! You can predict the outcome of the whole season right there as nothing can be done, no team can make race to race advances or inovations. At that point watching paint dry becomes a viable alternative to watching the races.

Merc is against competing head on race to race while everyone else is for it. I think Merc just needs to trust their talented engineers as they probably actually can go head to head with Ferrari and Red Bull and McLaren. And Wolfe just needs to grow a pair and tell the accounting bosses and marketing strategists in Stuttgart to forget hiding behind the freeze and leave the racing to him.

The state that F1 is in I don't know how much more of this it can suffer. If bringing back the V8 is the only way then bring them back.

ps. And please in the future don't try and compare F1 racing to an iphone battery. Not smart.

[CookinFlat6]

Teams managed engine developments and worked it into self imposed budgetary restraints in previous years, now we're being told that Merc are protecting them from themselves so they won't go nuts and make themselves bankrupt like Marussia and Caterham.

Merc is against competing head on race to race while everyone else is for it. I think Merc just needs to trust their talented engineers as they probably actually can go head to head with Ferrari and Red Bull and McLaren. And Wolfe just needs to grow a pair and tell the accounting bosses and marketing strategists in Stuttgart to forget hiding behind the freeze and leave the racing to him..

You just dont want to get it, you wont even spend 30 minutes learning about the details. The teams dont spend money developing engines, only a few manufacturers can even afford to build engines, the others buy from them. There is no provision for 2 tiers of engines in the regs. The engines for the last 10 years were frozen in development and were all pretty equal - so there cost was fixed to an annual amount. these are new engines, they are not equal yet, thats the only reason there is ANY development

But thats the hardest thing to grasp for most - who get confused between car development and pushing the boundaries and stifling competition by freezing development, and no matter how many times its explained they simply are not interested in the truth. Doesnt make sense to argue from a position of ignorance . So they argue about F1 been about unlimited development (of the engine???) that was the first thing that had to be frozen years ago as its the one area manufacturers can ruin themselves on diminishing returns.

A real genius on here said earlier - the teams are sensible enough not to spend too much or more than their budget, the same genius saying F1 is all about unlimited development. But he refuses to connect the 2.

If there was unlimited spending F1 would once again become a race where the winner is the guy with most money and can waste it inefficiently to win, and become the only competitor cos the others have gone broke or quit. That was Ferrari for 50 years, and it didnt work for them.

Now people are asking for unlimited spending and development and are already crying about the dominance of one team, yet saying they were attracted to F1 by Ferraris dominance

Is it not better to know the rules, the history and the current situation very well before discussing them, its more fun that way

[overboost]

Teams managed engine developments and worked it into self imposed budgetary restraints in previous years, now we're being told that Merc are protecting them from themselves so they won't go nuts and make themselves bankrupt like Marussia and Caterham.

Merc is against competing head on race to race while everyone else is for it. I think Merc just needs to trust their talented engineers as they probably actually can go head to head with Ferrari and Red Bull and McLaren. And Wolfe just needs to grow a pair and tell the accounting bosses and marketing strategists in Stuttgart to forget hiding behind the freeze and leave the racing to him..

You just dont want to get it, you wont even spend 30 minutes learning about the details. The teams dont spend money developing engines, only a few manufacturers can even afford to build engines, the others buy from them. There is no provision for 2 tiers of engines in the regs. The engines for the last 10 years were frozen in development and were all pretty equal - so there cost was fixed to an annual amount. these are new engines, they are not equal yet, thats the only reason there is ANY development

But thats the hardest thing to grasp for most - who get confused between car development and pushing the boundaries and stifling competition by freezing development, and no matter how many times its explained they simply are not interested in the truth. Doesnt make sense to argue from a position of ignorance . So they argue about F1 been about unlimited development (of the engine???) that was the first thing that had to be frozen years ago as its the one area manufacturers can ruin themselves on diminishing returns.

A real genius on here said earlier - the teams are sensible enough not to spend too much or more than their budget, the same genius saying F1 is all about unlimited development. But he refuses to connect the 2.

If there was unlimited spending F1 would once again become a race where the winner is the guy with most money and can waste it inefficiently to win, and become the only competitor cos the others have gone broke or quit. That was Ferrari for 50 years, and it didnt work for them.

Now people are asking for unlimited spending and development and are already crying about the dominance of one team, yet saying they were attracted to F1 by Ferraris dominance

Is it not better to know the rules, the history and the current situation very well before discussing them, its more fun that way

cooking this is exactly why the engine rules/freeze have failed and I have made this point before - the engines are to new to even consider a freeze, the rules were doomed to fail.

There was no common reference point for the engines to be compared, what you showed up with in pre-season testing - the first prototype - was a stand alone unique engine which is not fully developed nor optimized in its own right let alone ready to be frozen in relation to other prototypes. The designers of the rules tried to update the engines to more modern specs AND tried to implement a 'cost saving' scheme at the same time. It is classic "you can't have your cake and eat it to" territory. It won't/didn't work. The only place where an engine freeze will work is after a long period of stability not during the intro of new and very complicated technology with a limited few weeks of testing.

We are now at a point where 2014 has been lost to this (including two teams so far) and something needs to be done quickly before 2015 is damaged as well. You should try to look at the bigger picture cooking instead of defending a bad policy just because it benefits your team in the short term.

[Roth]

They have said no. Then Horner started to cry. Then they said no again and Mattiacci started to cry and bring Ferrari's passion for competition into it. Then they said no again and the troll chimed in about third cars and customer teams, and ferrari is now the moral poster child of the sport with their clarion call to all who'd listen about them having no self interest in anything but allowing competition.

You still neglect to address the fact that Mercedes sells the cheapest engine on the grid, so they are at the very least, the lesser of two evils.

V8 engines suck and V10 engines sucked more. They sound great, but how is that relevant in a sport that sells itself as being all about technical progress? Maybe the embarrassment will have faded by the 2016 engine freeze date. There are more fickle personalities running the sport than there are in an episode of keeping up with the kardashians.

They say 'no' then they um and ah, they're unfreeze teases.

I don't have a problem with Merc's general stance, or of making a concession on their own terms; just they don't say what they're willing to do, just what they're not willing to do when someone approaches them. So it's stonewalling a proposal they're never going to be happy with. It doesn't help Ferrari and RB lead the terminlogy with a word like 'freeze' when it's a more nuanced process than that, and have admitted there's still a lot they can do within the current regs, it's not all or nothing. Merc would be better explaining that than knocking back the strawman stuff.

And the cheapest engine thing - i couldn't find any definite figures on the internet about that, so I'll take your word for that, and I can't really explain it, mainly because I'm not sure what you're angling at - is it the lower price proving they are concerned for other teams?

[Hammer278]

I don't have a problem with Merc's general stance, or of making a concession on their own terms; just they don't say what they're willing to do, just what they're not willing to do when someone approaches them. So it's stonewalling a proposal they're never going to be happy with.

Out of curiosity, were you in that meeting? How would you know what Merc did or did not say...the press would release the hot topic (Is the freeze going to be lifted or not), Merc could've proposed a 100 things which the others did not agree with and it would not have been reported.

Point being, if you don't know something don't state it to prove an argument. What we see in the press is a general gist of what's been spoken and you already know this.

[Roth]

Point being, if you don't know something don't state it to prove an argument. What we see in the press is a general gist of what's been spoken and you already know this.

If it's the general gist of what's been spoken, then surely the general gist of Merc's proposals would have come up.

Merc probably haven't said anything because they don't want anything to change.

Anyway, if Merc would have said anything Horner would have blabbed it already. Or babbled it. Whatever.