F1

Mercedes ask fans for advice over Twitter on Belgium crash

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  • #272545
    Bradley Downton
    Participant

    Mercedes have clearly failed to come up with a reasonable solution to the issue between their drivers at the moment and have asked fans to have their say via their official Twitter account.

    It started with a vote between Team Order’s and Free Racing:

    but quickly escalated to what looks like Mercedes asking for advice on what punishment to dish out to Nico Rosberg:

    They have since asked for advice on how to potentially handle team orders:

    And asked what the Twitter public would do!

    Unusual step, and a lot of comments I’ve read have called for a race ban. I just wonder whether this is Mercedes simply seeing what their fans think, or seeing what they want…

    #272546
    Theo Parkinson
    Participant

    If one Mercedes driver is continuing to cause a problem, then putting them out for a race and replacing them with a decent driver who knows their place for a weekend will do the trick. But doing it for Monza would be too harsh. Thanks for sharing this though.

    #272549
    Force Maikel
    Participant

    Have no idea where they are going with this but I have to say great job by them to involve the fans.

    If only Bernie/FOM could understand the value of social media….

    #272550
    Steven
    Participant

    It’s a bit silly, but ultimately, penalising the drivers through race bans and such are going to be damaging to the team as well.

    I’d propose something like taking away FP1/FP2 time and giving it to a reserve or young driver; it makes the Merc driver lose out on setup/data collection time, but still leaves them with the equipment to be ahead of the rest of the pack.

    Anyways, most solutions (that I can think of, anyway) would be damaging to the team. I think it’s up to the drivers to come to some sort of gentleman’s agreement. The precedent has been set within the team where drivers can ignore team orders anyway.

    #272551
    Todd
    Participant

    I think this clearly shows that public perception is the MOST important thing to Mercedes/Stuttgart, without question.

    I think they’ll put Nico on internal probabtion, and if he does something stupid/cheaty again, they ban him from a race or practice sessions depending on severity. I think deep down the heads at Mercedes know that a lot of the questionable incidents involving ROS were down to him attempting to gain an unfair advantage. They’ll never admit it though, but the reaction from Lauda, Toto and gang seem to give me the impression that this incident wasn’t the first time.

    #272565
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Ha, I see some Rosberg fans/Hamilton detractors panicking, talking about ‘trial by Twitter’. The mood overall is pretty hostile to Rosberg I reckon.

    I think consulting by social media is great. Trial by Twitter beats the timid jobsworth stewards any day of the week IMO.

    Kudos to Merc for even talking about squaring up the points with a suspension.

    I voted for a suspension. Justice in F1, via social media. Bernie would go APE lol.

    #272567
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Mercedes dropping Rosberg for one race would not only show the drivers that Merc management is not to messed with – it would be a clear message as to who is really in charge. At the moment Merc management looks like a huge collection of vaguely defined directors of this or that (Wolff, Lauda, Lowe, Bob Bell – until he left, and probably others).

    Asking advice via twitter shows a lack of leadership, and being too easily influenced by the ‘white noise’ of media and enthusiasts. Could you really see Ron Dennis, Helmut Marko or Luca Di M being so unsure of themselves, they have to resort to social media to make a decision?!

    Some of you might remember the team that had the gumption to drop Ayrton Senna for one race, when Senna signed a contract with a new team whilst still under contract to his existing one. That existing team was the unassuming (or so we thought) Toleman outfit!

    #272569
    Bradley Downton
    Participant

    I agree with you completely @junior-pilot!

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