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[CookinFlat6]

The insipration for this thread comes from LRws truly incredible collection of how wrong people can be about the obvious when they are biased and are not 'adept' enought to recognise this limitation or indeed to suppress it in order to have more sucess

So I thought we could post our own quotes from years back to see how consistent we are with what we say and how we behave or if we are prone to the expensive fallacies of allowing bias or subjective and learnt opinions distort the evidence and reality we percieve

So Ill kick it off with a chronology of some of my own quotes starting with Aldo Costa - as i think he is the single most important ingredient after Ross Brawn in the decision from Daimler that success would follow a 'liberation' of the purse strings leading ofcourse to the targetting of Lewis

Merc will be designing their car around the new engine many moons before the customers even get a sniff at its dimensions

Aero might be where most of the gains come from these days of frozen engines, but new engines can be unreliable, and a car with good aero wont get far with a blown engine.

anyway merc have snapped up top guys from other teams like bob bell, aldo costa, geoff willis, what have mclaren done? lose top guys

If Red Bull, despite 'works' status is seeing alternator failure possibly due to overheating because the fit of the engine etc is too tightly packed then think of what type of advantage a manufacturer will have over a customer who will have to adapt their car design philosophy to suit the enginne

One could say, for the first few years post 2014, the engine and its seamless fit with the car will be more important than aero (are you listening Adrian)

For me the Mercs biggest problem was long runs where it shredded its tyres. Since then Aldo Costa, who was in charge of Ferrari when it was exceptionally easy on tyres, great suspension, good traction has spent half of 2012 on the W04.

The long runs we saw in testing did not show alarming deg, the car looks good in the corners and for getting back on the metal early out the corners, all signs of massive improvement in mechanicals

That was an area that Merc could catch up as the top teams were already sorted

Gonna be an interesting Q3 in less than 2 weeks

all the need to do now is steal Newey

They might not need him at all, aero is losing a bit of regulation conducive ground relative to mechanical for the next epoch, and Aldo Costa + the aero guy from Renault + Brawn + Lowe + Bell + Willis + Toto + power unit + Mercs willingness to open the wallet as success starts to roll could mean the ability to out spend and out gun Neweys Red Bull.

But I reckon it would be hard for Newey to say no to a doubled pay cheque and some Merc projects and directorships for his spare time and or retirement

Red bulls dominance is not just down to Newey, more with their resources and willingness to shatter any RRa or previous budget records.

Ferrari/MS style domination is on the cards here I believe

To be fair to the Dom, he is just a line manager at Ferrari, he is not a true TP like Todt was. He just does what Montezemolo wants. I doubt he has the say over drivers, engineers, car design etc. he just manages trackside as far as i can see. He is not an engineer, he has no experience of other teams, he is a guy who started of at Ferrari organising some part and got promoted because he is family and has respect within the team.

He is just a manifestation of what holds Ferrari back, like all that stuff after Todt of hiring all Italian Ferrari diehards. They changed their minds about that quickly and sacked Aldo Costa etc and brought back foreigners

but they kept the Dom

This one is my favourite seeing as the new Ferrari TP has decared the top task is to get Costa back to ferrari, note the objection to the post by the ferrari pitbulls

The thing about Ferrari is that they seem unable to learn and evolve. Apart from the period of epiphany when they brought in a whole new management culture with Todt/Brawn/MS etc, they continue in the same fashion. Knee jerk reactions to everything, throw money at everything, hire and fire on a whim. Andremain mired in nostalgia and 'the old days'
You have a guy who has won a WDC for you, so you fire him and keep the guy who is weaker but is a 'team player(yes man)' then you import the most controversial driver around, then youtry and sack him and bring the other guy back. In the meantime you poach engineers from other teams, then demote them and poach new ones every few years

Maybe they will poach Aldo Costa from Merc next

Cookin', my wish for you is love to overcome the bitterness in your soul!!

I'm not saying that there aren't good engineers available to them, just that their options are more limited by virtue of their position and roles with other teams may be more attractive. It isn't the only factor (as has already been pointed out, they were also previously able to lap their own track for as long as there was daylight available to test any new parts), but I believe it's fairly important. Brawn and Byrne, crucial figures in the winning streak, both left the team at the end of 2006, and Jean Todt a year later. Most of these positions were filled by Italian staff, and if you look at the timing, it does fit in with the way they have slipped back from the very front.

What they really need to do is follow Mercedes' lead and start to rebuild their team, hiring the best talent they can get their hands on.

One of them was Aldo Costa who was unceremoniously dumped, yet is now a star member of the Merc team and responsible for the mechanical grip on the monster Merc, possibly the biggest differentiatior amongst the Merc family teams.
And they hired Fry and Allinson from England, demoting one for the other, this does not seem like a team with limited access to a talent pool

Maybe you are right and a Merc style overhaul and rebuilding of the staff is required from top down. But surely they missed the best time to do that - in time for 2014