This is the last of the Mercedes Benz SL roadsters that could be considered a sports car. This series of SL, commonly known by the chassis code W113, was produced between 1963 and 1971. These cars are also known as the “Pagoda” SL due to the shape of the car’s removable hardtop.
As a child of the 70s and 80s growing up in California in these cars were everywhere. It seemed to me that every Jazzercise instructor drove one of these and looked great doing so.
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For those of you who follow Formula 1, you know that the ink is drying on Lewis Hamilton’s highly publicized move to Mercedes GP. Hamilton, who has been supported by Mclaren’s young driver development program since he was 13 years old is moving to the German works team for a three-year 100 million dollar contract. Since entering the sport in 2010, Mercedes have under-whelmed the competition by only scoring one race win. Mclaren, on the other hand, has been a staple in the championship title hunts in Formula 1 for the last forty years.
People have been saying that Lewis is only interested in moving to Mercedes, due to the extra sponsorship money that he will be receiving in his new contract. Signing for Mercedes provides him with the access to his own image rights back, giving him the ability to make personal sponsorship deals that he was unable to make at Mclaren.
Those in F1’s inner circles have been commenting on how Hamilton’s move signals his loss of focus as a racer, and one of the single greatest mistakes in the 2008 World Champion’s career.
But is it really? I’ve had some time to think about it and if we take a look back in Formula 1 history, we can reflect over a similar situation with a young Michael Schumacher in the early 1990s.
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In 1996, Schumacher made the move from championship winning team, Benetton, to a faltering Scuderia Ferrari. Having won the title twice in the last two years with Benetton, Schumacher was enticed over to the scarlet red cars, in the hopes of molding the struggling team into series champions.
It wasn’t a smooth progression for the driver or the team. Through 1996 and 1999, although Schumacher was constantly in the hunt for the title, he did not win a Driver’s Championship during that time. The main cause was a car that wasn’t up to the task. Ferrari would constantly let him down through technical retirements through a lack of development or rookie mistakes determining race strategy.
However, with each mistake, the team learned how to improve. Ferrari used that time to go through through a massive internal reorganization. Through Schumacher’s recommendation, they hired Ross Brawn as technical director and Rory Byrne as chief designer. Byrne, Brawn and Schumacher revolutionized the car’s development path year over year. From the production side, Ferrari also centralized their car development operations under one roof in Maranello, formerly having production challenges by having engines developed in the UK, while their chassis were being developed in Italy.
Once they got their house in order in 2000, Ferrari’s championship run really took off. We all know how Schumacher and Ferrari dominated over Formula 1 for the next five years, giving Michael a total tally of seven driver’s titles.
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Coming back to the present, ironically Hamilton is replacing Michael Schumacher is his move to Mercedes GP. A team that has Ross Brawn as technical director and other genius minds such as Bob Bell and Aldo Costa. The team is still developing, but with the minds that they have backing the car’s development, mixed with Hamilton’s natural driving talent, Mercedes may turn into a force to be reckoned with in the coming years.
I’m not sure how Hamilton’s skills are when it comes to providing the right feedback which helps to develop a car. However, he can drive the wheels off of whatever he’s given and that’s a huge help to get an understanding of the underlying baseline performance.
It definitely will not be an easy or quick project, but evolving from mid-pack to top team has happened before in Formula 1. One only needs to look at the rapid progress of Red Bull Racing as a proper case-study of a team that’s climbed from being mediocre to meteoric. However, in racing is never a sure thing that a team will become successful. How that success is determined is based on the caliber of the driver line up and the level of financial investment put into the team. For Mercedes, nothing less than being champions will do. So the climb will be steep, even with drivers like Hamilton and Rosberg carrying them.
Whenever a top driver changes teams, it causes a massive shakeup among the fans so people are likely to put alot of un-needed back press on Hamilton over the next few weeks. (Remember, how Jenson Button moving to Mclaren was supposed to be a big mistake for the Frome man in 2009? Glad I didn’t make a bet on that being a bad fit for him.)
Hamilton will just need to be patient, and grow with the team as they learn to work with each other. His move from Mclaren also shows that Lewis is wanting to break free of the shadow of the team that has fostered his development from the age of 13. At some point, children do just want to leave the nest, and in my opinion this contract move is Hamilton’s way of putting the final stamp on his need to be independent.
So give it time, and we’ll see who’ll be laughing in the end.
(Plus the idea of a Alonso, Vettel, Button and Hamilton four way battle will be EPIC. Bring on 2013!)
Sitting in a Formula 1 car isn’t really actually ‘sitting down’. In reality, it’s more of a lie-down position. Recent grand-prix winner, Nico Rosberg provides more insight into the effects of a grand-prix driver’s seating position.
Imagine if we had to drive our road-cars this way? Jeezus.
So having taken a look at some of the replay footage of the Bahrain GP this weekend, this particular incident with Nico Rosberg and Alonso got my attention. It’s clear that when Rosberg comes off the corner, he cuts back across the track in order to squeeze Alonso off the track.
However at the same time, Alonso isn’t alongside the Mercedes when Nico makes the move. So you could argue that although Rosberg was blocking him, that Ferrari driver should have known better than to go there.
What are your thoughts? Was Rosberg being unfair, or was Alonso just not paying attention?
For the last few days, I’ve had a few friends ask me to explain how the Mercedes GP DRS system is more unique than other F1 cars. I found a video which details it.
The key point to note that isn’t brought up in the video that followers should be paying attention to:
For those who enjoy reading text, ScarbsF1 has a great explanation as well here.
As the first official race weekend of the 2011 Formula 1 season starts tomorrow. We at the “Starting Grid” thought it proper to provide you with a quick summary of what happened in 2010.
With the 2011 Pre-Season test sessions in the books, the time for real racing is upon us. The Australian Grand Prix is right around the corner now, and at the time of this writing, only 12 days away. Going into the new season, the question seems to be which team will be able to utilize the new Pirelli tires to the maximum? The teams have been working hard trying to make up for the lost aerodynamic downforce produced by 2010′s cars. The cars no longer have the Double Decked Diffuser, an added weight penalty, a set weight distribution, and KERS/Active Rear Wing to deal with. The drivers are sure to be busy in the cockpits, having already had a multitude of buttons and adjustments to make, but now sorting the new ARW with KERS will add an extra degree of difficulty.
The top teams have wracked up a massive amount of time with Ferrari constantly putting in 100+ lap days save for one incident with Felipe Massa’s prancing horse having it’s arse go up in flames. The team’s Ferrari 150* Italia features seemingly small cooling margins for aerodynamic gain and a re-worked rear suspension arrangement that still uses the pushrod cleverly sorted into a very small and compact package. Meanwhile the sidepods, bargeboards, and floor have been revised to clean up the airflow around the sides of the car.
Ferrari 150* Italia
Red Bull look again to be the favorites for the season, despite Mark Webber believing the Fezza are the team to beat, putting in consistent fast laps and blistering pace during long run simulations. Their RB7 chassis looks to retool some of the ideas used on the clever RB5 that was able to keep up with and beat the championship winning BrawnGP car of 2008. Again, like it’s predecessors, the RB7 is very clean cut, with very sleek and slender rear body lines to maximize the usage of their exhaust blown floor along with a very neatly packaged pullrod rear suspension. The team have decided to tighten up the rear body work to take full advantage of the air available to the rear diffuser and wings.
RedBull RB7
Mercedes looked to have set their mark with the fastest overall time in Barcelona at a 1.21.249 done by the reborn Michael Schumacher in the W02. The team have introduced a rehash of the Brawn001′s front wing element and sleeker side pods that have helped the team find a good chunk of time and have helped to put them right back in the thick of things. Ross Brawn has stated that:
“The car is more consistent now, we are able to make changes to it that have an effect. Everything is moving in the right direction.”
Read the interview here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/motorsport/formula_one/9422249.stm
It will be interesting to see if they can turn their 2010 struggles into 2011 championship points.
MercedesGP W02
McLaren have had a bit of a struggle this pre-season, juggling the radical concepts of their heavily undercut floor along with their L-shaped cooling inlets. Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton have both admitted that their new MP4-26 contender may not be quite the contender they had hoped for. The reliability of the car has been shaky at best and the drivers have said that the balance of the car is not quite right. Although they may be struggling now, McLaren have always had a good reputation for being able to develop a car throughout the season from a zero to a hero.
McLaren MP4-26
Grading the pre-season thus far and how the top 4 teams have managed, I’d say that the Red Bull is still the favorite with Ferrari just behind. Meanwhile, Mercedes’ upgraded body work have seemingly put them ahead of McLaren. There is still some work to do for the Woking team and it will undoubtedly be an uphill battle as the other contenders will be developing as fast as they can.
Tomorrow, I will go through the midfield to review the Lotus Renault, Sauber Ferrari, Williams, Force India, and Scuderia Toro Rosso and see what they have done to bring them closer to the top.
