http://www.inautonews.com/schumacher-had-talks-with-sauber-ferrari-lauda#.UHSR5C7A-pk Well according to Niki, Michael looked at Sauber... and Ferrari.
Well I've been proved totally wrong now Hamilton has signed for Mercedes, I never thought he would actually leave McLaren. I've heard the line put out by Lauda that Lewis needs a "challenge" but the move to Mercedes is likely to prove much more than a challenge if Hamilton wants multiple WDCs. Although a big fan of Hamilton I do believe he is somewhat emotionally unstable and wont find it easy to cope with leading the team through the development minefield yet to come. I wish him well and hope he succeeds but it's gonna be tough !!!
Good post. I just think the more and more that comes out it seems as though he is deeply frustrated and desperate for a fresh start on his own terms. I hope he gets what he is looking for.
Yea, I am not a fan of Schumacher but not even he with the help of Brawn and the mighty Mercedes could get it all together, Lewis Hamilton it's time to "big-up" its a man's world you are entering, good luck son.
Who was leading the development of the car in 2009 when the car was more than 2 seconds off the pace then?
I think they just copied everybody else's designs with their technical staff and then relied on their advantage of KERS! I think Lewis just narrowed the gap or heightened the advantage (towards the end of he season) with hs ultimate speed!
I also share some doubts as to how much Hamilton was really involved in the development of the 09 McLaren. I think once he really gets involved at Mercedes after the 2013 season we will begin to see if he can really help drive development and move the team forward. It took Schumi a few years to get Ferrari to the top so Hamilton might be able to do the same given the time, I guess we will all have to wait and see
I wasnt having a dig, I just think its a bit short sighted to infer that someone of Lewis experience (or lack off at the time) would personally drive the development to reduce a 2 second gap at a team like Mclaren. There size and design team can produce a B spec car at any point whereas smaller teams have to develope part by part.
A first step in the right direction from Hamilton if you ask me. ----- Lewis Hamilton to re-think his use of Twitter http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/19908257 -----
I don't believe Hamilton was "leading development" of the 2009 car, a key member of the team its true. I think Hamiltons driving ability was making the car look better than it actually was !!!
The 2009 car was off the pace initially, but that was down to McLaren not getting a particularly good handle on the huge reg changes compared to other teams. You can't lay that at the foot of a driver. The car did improve over the season so you would expect that input and feedback from the drivers helped direct that development somewhat.
Nothing Lewis has done in the past has given me the impression that he has the smarts to drive the development of a team, it's one gaff after another with him, take twitter-gate, he couldn't even be bothered to check if the Button story was true on his own account. Fast driver but really that's about it as far as I'm concerned.
Hopefully the Mercedes engineers will know when the car is broken, although maybe this is a an example of Lewis driving around problems with the car. He calls it understeer, other drivers call it undriveable. I think being more hands on at Mercedes will help for sure. "I know my car really well and it's very rare that I get the setup wrong, and if I do it's only a little bit wrong and I can still live with it," he said in Korea. "But this was the worst I'd ever set it up and I was really shocked that I'd done that and I thought it was my fault. But after the race the guys did a lot of analysis and found we'd had a failure on a part at the rear so that's comforting for me and it means I'm not crazy!"
Makes sense, find it hard that he'd be that much off the pace given the performance of that car in the last few races, could mean a resurgance in Korea? He's still got a slim chance now, but the title (for Hamilton) will be as good as over if Vettel finishes ahead of him this weekend!
And contrary to that, there's nothing that says that he couldn't drive development. Some of the myths of those that can't develop and those that can are mostly rubbish. You hear people talk about what a great developer of a car Alonso is yet we really haven't seen much by the way of evidence in that either. I'd say that the value a driver brings to development is how well he can provide feedback to the engineers... beyond that, there's not a lot they can do.
Some interesting posts above about a driver's contribution to car development. With the advent of super-accurate, increasingly refined detail in computerised telemetry and simulation, the days of a driver truly 'leading development' are long gone. Even in the old days (Hill at Williams and, to a lesser extent, Schumacher at Ferrari were, I think, the last who really fit this description), it was always the result of interplay between driver and engineer. Now though, this has become even more submerged in an all-encompassing, genuine team effort. That said, it is true that a car can still be designed (and developed) to play into the hands of a particular driver's style. And since this discussion is focussed on Hamilton, it is particularly relevant to mention that McLaren's 'two number ones' has always required a compromise – ultimately depriving both of their preferred 'ideal'. Anyone who has read my contributions to fora over the years will know that I do not have a 'favourite driver' – especially at McLaren; but I feel it is only fair to say that of their current pairing (and this is inevitable), one driver's style has been compromised a little more than the other. It is a simple logic. When faced with such a dilemma, a team which bends over backwards to give equal opportunity to both drivers will lean more heavily on the driver more able to adjust his style to that of the other. And I think the general wisdom of the membership of this forum will correctly perceive Jenson Button's style to be the more exacting…
i think youll find that being very quick,and giving good feedback to the team is all you need to help the development of a team. MS had lots of testing to help him in the past.we dont have that now,so its different. and posting things on twitter has nothing to do with making a car better.
completely agree.and lets not forget about what alonso did when he got frustrated as a mclaren driver.
100% agree with that. And to add to Miggins post, I fail to see how twitter posts have anything to do with car development abilities! intelligence is not two dimensional. Just becuase one may have the social understanding and etiquette of a stabbed bull, does not mean they are incapable of being able to excel in other areas. Stephen Hawkins cannot communicate at all with the world yet has one of the finest minds on the planet. Car development is less influenced by a driver these days. CFD and 'simulators' provide the techies with more information that they take notice of than what a driver says at a race weekend. Usually its the driver telling the techies the updates gained from information in the wind tunnel/simulator etc don't work! If they were allowed to test the parts on teh track like they used to, then the feedback from the driver would be far more relevant as the driver has more time to test the new components, rather than just in a 90 minute session where he will give some feedback and the techies then pour over reems of data. If Alonso is so great, why have Ferrari practically stood still this year? Not the quickest at the start, not the quickest now, in fact, have never looked the quickets. Mainly becuase they have been reliant on dodgy data being spewed out of the wind tunnel. Kinda shows how much input the driver has really.
I hear ya on the telemetry side of things and mostly agree with your points... however that data can't really provide all the info that is required and it takes a human being in the car to translate what's actually going on. If computers and data were the be-all, cars would come out off the box on the first day of the season already at their peak. It still takes people and real-world testing to truly get to grips with them.
