I agree with Taz, “there is more to this than they (Haug included) are making out”, in my opinion (and a note is attached with it that I might be wrong) Haug's sudden departure has more to do with the drivers reshuffle decision taken than with the (performance being the sole reason), Mercedes performance over their 3 years being in F1 is normal, a lot of people makes the mistake and say that they (Mercedes) bought a winning team as what they actually bought was less than a skeleton of that winning team resources, now about the normal and reasonable time expectancy for a team to achieve success , how long did it took FERRARI after rebuilding their team?, how long did it took RBR after buying Jaguar from Ford?. Red Bull's championship achievements, 2005-6th, 2006-7th, 2007- 5th, 2008-4th, 2009- 2nd. Mercedes championship achievements, 2010-4th, 2011-4th, 2012-5th.

The rules are to provide parity or equal chance for all. Merc has made no gains using the same formula for three years. They actually lost ground this year. The real reason in my opinion is performance and leadership. It was time for a head to roll.

3 years was not a reasonable time for a head to roll (in F1) and as I said, in my opinion it was not the real reason.

So you think Haug quit because Lewis came aboard??

Dont forget that management is looking at the budget of the other teams as well. If Sauber or Force India had Mercedes' budget they would be doing much better than this.

When mercedes bought the team everything was new, the transporters, the motorhome. They did a major overhaul, to bring in excitement. They only bought Brawn because it won a championship. They expected to get at least regular podiums. If Nico and Shumi could manage 3 podiums a year each, I think the team would have been happy.

I thought Merc grabbed BrawnF1 because of their unhappiness with McLaren.

sunny. there is a big shake up in daimler. zetsche was the one who spearheaded the purchase of brawn and he is being replaced. zetsche is the one who said extra finance was being made available for the f1 team, but this has since been overruled by the board. haug may well be the sacrificial lamb to try and appease the board, but at the end of the day, i cannot see what he has done to improve matters in the team, apart from being a stumbling block for ross. interestingly, the other prime merc series, dtm, has also not delivered as expected.
daimler need RESULTS, and only a shake up has the ability to either make or break merc f1.

Rob, I said that 3 years is not a reasonable time for heads to roll, and that in my opinion it was not the real reason, as for Mercedes unhappiness with mclaren you are correct, love was lost.
Richard, up to this year the Mercedes F1 team was still being build-up, so what shake-up regarding the F1 team are you talking about?

sunny. merc bought an existing team, so no real need to build up again. they also claimed that they would be going for both titles in their "first " year. in fact, only the name of the team had changed. but then zander walked, for whatever reason. but this late summer, they have been making wholesale changes in their team make-up, poaching staff from other teams. the problem is that there has been damn all development during any of the last three seasons. merc ignored the benefits of the coanda exhaust and only tried it very late and then dropped it again.
next years team will be a big difference to this years team. but will it be any more successful? who knows? but i am not holding my breath

Richard, so did Red Bull, and for progress see my post (statistics).