DIFFEY: Will Mercedes mishaps detract from the magic?

Leigh Diffey, broadcaster for NBC Sports on Formula 1, IndyCar and the Olympics, assesses whether Mercedes-Benz's 2014 season will be remembered for the crushing dominance of the silver machines, or for the few times the team has tripped up.

Winning is about winning, right? Or is winning about not failing? The Mercedes AMG Petronas team in Formula 1 has been near perfect this year. In fact, prior to the Canadian Grand Prix in June, the team looked right on track to score F1’s first perfect season.

Whether it’s Nico Rosberg or Lewis Hamilton, they seem to be able to do whatever it is they want to do: pole positions, fastest laps, leading the most laps and, of course, winning are all so achievable week in, week out. That is until a failure occurs.

The team has suffered five DNFs from 14 races thus far; three on Hamilton’s side of the garage and two for Rosberg. Hamilton had a five-dollar part fail in Australia, and ERS failure in Canada and after nursing a wounded car around Spa for some 36 laps (following car-crippling contact with his teammate) was forced to retire but five laps from the end. For Rosberg, Silverstone saw an engine-related failure and, most recently, a significant electrical issue sidelined him in the first 14 laps of the Singapore Grand Prix.

The Singapore failure had huge consequences for Rosberg; for only the second time this year he relinquished the championship lead. In fact, both times he’s failed to finish a race he’s handed the points lead to Hamilton.

Drivers not making it to the checkered flag is part of the sport, but there is a bigger issue that’s causing heartburn.

We’re not talking about Ned & Fred’s garage team here, this is Mercedes-Benz, the organization that invented the automobile and is renowned for its engineering excellence. For Mercedes-Benz, finishing second might hurt, but failing via mechanical mishaps en route to the finish is a heart attack.

Toto Wolff (RIGHT, with Lewis, Paddy Lowe and Nico) head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport, did not tiptoe around the issue in his post Singapore race comments; “When he (Nico) came back to the garage, I told him we were sorry to have let him down - and he handled the whole situation in a very professional way. We have a missile of a car this year but these reliability issues keep tripping us up.

“The parts will be sent back to base tonight for forensic analysis by our reliability group. We have an excellent team dedicated to quality and we will track down this failure and make sure it does not happen again. We will not stop until we stop suffering these DNFs”.

When you think about what the Mercedes-Benz brand represents, it is everything other than failure. It is prestige, it’s class, and it’s wealth, style and quality. That’s why these failures aren’t just about not finishing a motor race; it’s about a blue chip brand getting a black eye in the world’s most watched form of motor racing. The irony is when these blows

are being dealt to one side of the garage, usually the other side is sipping the champagne of victory. It’s the epitome of bittersweet!

We have been treated to a thriller of a season in F1 this year and I’m sure none of us want to see a title decided by DNF counts as opposed to win counts. That being said, however, perhaps we ought to pause for a while, to amble down memory lane.

The incredible Jim Clark, the master of win or fail (25 victories and only one second place), got to within a handful of laps of winning a world championship, when an oil leak curtailed his chances, not once but twice. The two-time world champ could so easily have been a four- or five-time champion.

In 2005, Kimi Raikkonen scored seven wins (same as Fernando Alonso – that’s year’s champion) yet retired from three further races while leading, costing him 30 points. He lost the title by 21 points.

One of the more memorable championship losses due to unreliability was Nigel Mansell in 1987. Six wins and eight poles (both twice as many as Nelson Piquet), lost certain wins in Monaco and Hungary, and retired while running second in Germany and Portugal – all because of mechanical failures. His season ended with a practice crash at Suzuka with two races remaining, and yet still he finished only 12 points behind the champion Piq

uet.

It has also happened to the four-time and defending World Champion Sebastian Vettel. In 2009 – a year dominated by Brawn GP (the very team that is now Mercedes AMG Petronas), Vettel won four times but retired from two races due to mechanical dramas.  He lost the title to Jenson Button by a mere 11 points. So it’s not like we’re in uncharted F1 territory in 2014.  

Mercedes has done a stunning job of getting it right with the complexity of the new power units in contemporary Formula 1. Ask anyone who’s been in the paddock for more than a decade and they’ll tell you that F1 2014 is like working for NASA. The German automotive giant got the preseason jump on its competition and has rocketed to an unassailable lead in the Constructors’ Championship. But there’s a sore point to this success.
 
To use a culinary analogy, it’s like the seven dinner guests who said they loved your new recipe…and the one who didn’t. What part of the evening do you remember? Most likely it’ll be the conversation-quelling moment when Jerry

said your new green chicken curry sucked!

Mercedes AMG Petronas is enjoying a season that sees F1 pundits comparing them to the near invincible McLaren empire circa 1988 (15 wins in 16 races) or Williams in 1992 (10 wins in 16 races); indeed their current level of dominance even compares with Red Bull’s 13 victories from last year’s 19 Grands Prix. All of this is hugely flattering but perhaps, it carries more weight when you talk about the good ol’ days!

There are just five races left in the 2014 season. Will Mercedes AMG Petronas be the Constructors’ Champions – yes! Will one of the team’s drivers be crowned world champion – almost certainly, yes (and I say “almost” because with double points on offer in Abu Dhabi don’t discount Daniel Ricciardo (ABOVE) – the only driver to beat Hamilton and Rosberg this year).

So how will the team grade itself at season’s end? If the last five races are run with 100 percent reliability, I’d say they’ll be quite generous in self praise. If not, it will bug them, drive them and motivate them even more to come back in 2015 and get that perfect F1 season.

Now, given the domination of this year’s season, that’s a scary thought to ponder for the opposition!