Lewis Hamilton has been at the headquarters of Mercedes Grand Prix team for the last couple of days, driving the 2013 car on the simulator, meeting all the staff and facing a select group of UK media, including JA on F1, for the first time as a Mercedes GP driver. He dismissed stories about team principal Ross Brawn being replaced by McLaren’s Paddy Lowe and said that he was not expecting miracles from the 2013 car, given that Mercedes was two seconds per lap of the pace at the benchmark Suzuka circuit in October last year and implied that the More…

Mercedes’ F1 programme is set for significant change after it was announced today that Motorsport Director Norbert Haug has left the company after 22 years at the helm. Haug recently celebrated his 60th birthday, so there is a sense that his time had come to move aside and let a new generation take over. However there is more to it than that. It is a major moment for Mercedes and signals a change of direction and of culture. Haug, a former motoring journalist turned corporate player, has been at the helm since 1990 and brought Mercedes into F1 in 1993, More…

The fall out from Wednesday’s Gribkwosky verdict has many aspects and the stories from Germany about Mercedes threatening to pull out of the sport because it cannot be seen to be involved in corruption are worth dealing with briefly. A story appeared yesterday in Handelsblatt, the German business paper, which claimed that Mercedes would have to withdraw from F1 if Bernie Ecclestone were to be indicted in relation to the conviction of Gerhard Gribkowksy, for tax evasion, bribery and breach of fiduciary trust. Shareholders and Daimler officials were quoted as saying that it would be a breach of the company’s More…

Mercedes this morning officially unveiled its 2012 car, with team principal Ross Brawn describing it as “detailed and sophisticated” and highlighting the very close integration of the AMG engine and chassis departments in Brixworth and Brackley as key to the progress the team has made. “We’ve set our objectives over the winter and we’ve met most of them,” said Brawn, who admits that he has only two ambitions left in motorsport: to see Michael Schumacher take a 92nd Grand Prix win and to see Nico Rosberg win his first. The W03 got down to intensive testing alongside its peers following More…

The car everyone is waiting to see is the new Mercedes, which will make its debut alongside its rivals at the Barcelona test next week. Yesterday Mercedes shook it down at Silverstone and issued another “teaster” of the car, this time a video which gives little away about the nose of the car, but shows the concept of the main monocoque, which is very scooped out on top. Red Bull design guru Adrian Newey suspects that this car may hold some design secret everyone will soon be copying, perhaps something to do with a front wing F Duct, perhaps another More…

The first day of the new season kicked off with a trip to a Mercedes dealership on a highway out of Bahrain’s capital Manama, to see Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg. This was one of those occasions which was more interesting for what it looked like rather than what was said. It was a bit of a mess organisationally, with the principals over an hour late and then delayed further by a decision to do a TV scrum before the formal press conference, rather than the other way around. So by the end of it we had lost a whole More…

Nick Fry perpetuated the rumours about Michael Schumacher making a comeback with his team as he spoke to the press today after his appearance at the Motor Sport Business Forum in Monaco. He declined to comment on whether the team was talking to the 41 year old and said that they had a shortlist of “3 or 4 drivers”. He said that nationality wasn’t important because Mercedes already has a German driver but he said that experience was vitally important. They may announce the identity of Nico Rosberg’s team mate this year but it would more likely be next year. More…

I’ve just been invited to take part in a conference call later this morning with Dr Dieter Zetsche, the CEO of Daimler which owns Mercedes Benz and Norbert Haug the head of Mercedes Benz motor sport. The subject of the call is to discuss the future of Mercedes’ engagement in Formula 1. Discussions have been ongoing for Mercedes to buy a controlling interest in Brawn GP and to leave McLaren at the end of the existing contract at the end of 2011. McLaren has been seeking to extend its engine supply arrangement to the end of 2012, the final year More…