I wish I had their confidence... I'm really starting to dread it. Maybe 2014 will be good, but they are so far behind that I can't see them being anywhere near RBR, McLaren, Ferrari and Lotus next season. I guess this will be the season in a crap car that so many have said he needs.... *sobs*
The problem is if he does well its the car, if he does bad its him I'd be happy if he can just battle for the mid points and hopefully grab a few podiums with some luck. Theres no doubting his quali speed so he'll be at least able to start the car further forward than it deserves.... hopefully.
That's about all I'm hoping for BLS... If he can have clean races and snag a few podiums, I'll be more than happy. If he has a season similar to Kimi's this year... I'll be ecstatic.
Yeah... that would be a reasonable tally. Hopefully he can break that. The winter break is going to be agony.
I'll be honest - I have more respect for Lewis after this season and whilst he's made some PR blunders along the way his driving has been fantastic! He has had a poor car before (1st half of 2009) but I think the difference was then that he was in a team that could and did out develope everyone else on the grid - plus he had KERS and the best engine. I anticipate that he will approach the season in a controlled Alonso style fashion and we will see him outqualify the car and subject to tyre wear haul it round scoring regular points and potentially podiums. I would expect (because of his ability and capabilty to drive around car defeciencies) that he will be able to score 150 points subject to car realiability - thats an average of 6th (ish) place per race. Good luck to him.
Sadly for a Hamilton fan, he's driving better than ever... he's just been plagued all season. Lots of "what ifs" this year.
Well I'm eager to find out, though if you really want my honest opinion on how well Mercedes will do.... Well let's just say the 2011 car, which was a brand new design (pretty much like 2013 will be) didn't turn out that well, it was having hydraulic problems almost every couple of laps into testing and it took them months to sort out. It slowly got better but then tyre issues started to appear, Lewis has been good this year with the tyres but I don't think that will be the silver bullet to sort out those problems at Mercedes, no one man can do that! Pirelli are also introducing new tyres for 2013 so Lewis might hate these new tyres just in the same way Seb struggled with this years tyres. Lewis took on a bigger challenge than what Alonso took at Ferrari that's for sure! They will have a bigger budget than McLaren but it depends if they can get anywhere near the quality of Lotus let alone RBR in that year, this which I doubt next year since they're still trying to gather the best people. I expect a win....maybe 2 for Lewis and maybe one for Nico and that's what it looks at best! At worst he will be fighting with Williams and Force India for decent points if Mercedes continue this form whoever is in that car.
Blimey, you're optimistic Silver. I'd take 2 wins right now. I see one, tops and that will likely need a massive dose of luck. The top four already have a good platform for 2013.... It still feels like Mercedes are clutching at straws.
I agree, I think he's driving better than ever.. The only incidents he's been involved in (Valencia and Belguim), neither were his fault, other than that he's kept out of trouble and beeen solid in both qualifying and the races throughout 2012.
Well the good thing is that Mercedes are starting from scratch, the car was never fast enough in the first place. Hopefully this time round they can learn from their mistakes and produce something better to work with which would be a great start in my opinion!
Yeah.... But, the others have a great base with which to work with, and will only need minor tweaking in 2013 to make them go quicker, unless Mercedes bring out a new spec car every other race, I don't see them catching up in 2013, would love to be proved wrong, but I can't see it.. (My glass is half empty )
I'm actually looking forward to his 13 season. He won't be in championship contention so he (and indeed I) will enjoy each race more as an individual like 2009. Plus he will be right in the pack and I'm looking forward to seeing him cutting through the other midfielders. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ6Ld9QVkLs
Always makes me sad seeing them racing through the spray, we're rarely allowed to see that these days.
True but it won't be too hard to incorporate other teams designs into the WO4. I remember the word in the paddock just before the 2010 season that a lot of teams were going to look like the Red Bull of 2009 and it didn't turn out too bad for McLaren and Ferrari. Can't wait, after 3 more years since the dog of 2009, is Lewis now ready to handle leading a team like Alonso and Seb? Can he get them out of the slump ready for 2014? It will probably be the most interesting thing to watch as I do expect a repeat of 2011 from Seb and RBR next season. Now RBR have caught up with the lack of the EBD, they will start to pull away even more into 2013 I reckon.
