I specified F1 to avoid that point
Unfortunately, so many,
many,
many folks on t'internet equate "F1" to Grand Prix Racing. And they
aren't the same thing. The world championship, as held from 1950 onwards, has been held to Formula 2 rules before in fact ('52 and '53, to avoid a Ferrari walkover.....someone should have told Ferrari....). So my default position on this forum has been to assume that when someone says F1 they mean Grand Prix racing. It generally works out. Very occasionally, someone surprises me by actually knowing what they're on about.
Very occasionally.
Except when sunama's posting about anything pre-2004, then all bets are off.
Mercedes today are worlds apart from the pre/post war era of motor racing imo.
Ain't that the God-damned truth.
Had they continued through the years then they should rightly so be held in the same regard as Ferrari but as they stand today they dont even come close.
And much like Honda, they got out of the kitchen every time it got too warm.
Actually, I'm being unfair. Under the pre-war era, Mercedes' Grand Prix programme ended on account of a
minor fracas....along with GP racing in its entirety. In '55, after a couple of great years
* Merc dialled back on racing after the Le Mans sports car tragedy. They didn't come back to sports cars until the the Group C era (IIRC?), did do a spot of factory backed touring car racing in the '80s, but didn't come back into F1 until '93 with Sauber.
* - and they were great. With a blank cheque, and Alfred Neubauer at the helm, they built an incredible....dog. Honestly, the W196 was a beautiful, epic, legendary pile of
crap. It flattered on it's debut at Reims, utterly sucked at Silverstone, and was reworked thereafter. But not before the low-mounted intake clogged up and cost them at least one race in '54 (certainly the non-championship Spanish GP IIRC?). But even leaving that aside, it was a tail-happy barely driveable beast. Rudi Ulenhaut was a great designer, but he favoured a loose car. And it took a damned good driver to make that a winner, hence Messrs Fangio and Moss. But Mercedes did bring professionalism to the party, and that went a long way. Didn't hurt of course that Maserati were close-but-not-quite with the 250F (Fangio won with it in early '54, but no-one else won a World Championship race with it that year I think?), Ferrari didn't yet have their **** together, Lancia were dead in the water for the most part (especially after Ascari died), and Alfa had pulled out of racing by then....
!
