Force India’s Adrian Sutil has suggested he and Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton are still some way off sorting out their differences after the two came face-to-face in an FIA press conference today for the first time this season. The duo were once good friends, having got on well as they made their way through the various junior formulae and in their first few years in Formula 1 together. The situation changed in 2011, though, when Sutil was involved in an incident in a Shanghai nightclub following Hamilton’s Chinese Grand Prix win. Sutil had hoped Hamilton would serve as a witness, but More…
The long running saga of Paddy Lowe’s move from McLaren to Mercedes was resolved today when the technical director was released early from his contract to begin work on June 3rd. Originally Lowe was being held to his contract and was set to be blocked from starting work in Brackley before the end of 2013. But the announcement that McLaren is to move from Mercedes to Honda engines meant that Mercedes had a bargaining chip to negotiate his early release. Which means he will be able to play an active role in preparations for 2014, a year which Mercedes has More…
JA on F1 technical adviser and former Williams chief engineer Mark Gillan thinks that Mercedes will be hurt by Pirelli’s decision to make a small tweak to the hard tyre compound. Last week the Italian tyre manufacturer said it will change the hard tyre, rather than the soft as expected, to be closer in specification to the 2012 tyre, which would make it more durable. It will likely have a larger working range, so will be more versatile, and Gillan adds that the move will help every other team on the grid except for Mercedes. “Pirelli specified at beginning of season More…
While they work behind the scenes on their car ahead of the start of the European season, Mercedes is aiming to be three times faster than the opposition when it comes to the increasingly important area of transferring data from the car at the race track to the factory and back again. And a new deal announced today could ultimately lead to F1 teams taking smaller numbers of staff to the race track in future. Mercedes has become the first F1 team to follow the lead of Formula One Management, which signed a deal last year with Tata Communications, for More…
Nico Rosberg made it two Mercedes pole positions in as many weeks as he produced a sensational final lap to take the spoils in Bahrain, ahead of Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso. It was the second pole position of his career and means that Mercedes and Red Bull have both taken half the pole positions this season. But the race could be a different story. After being off the ultimate pace throughout the weekend’s practice sessions Rosberg showed his speed from the outset of qualifying, although he only topped the times in Q3. And after coming close already this year More…
Lewis Hamilton says that Mercedes’ positive start to the season, with a pole and two podiums, is much better than he expected, but believes there is a lot more to come from the Brackley team. Pre-season Hamilton had managed expectations carefully, not wanting to over promise and under deliver given how poor Mercedes were in the second half of 2012. However he is right there in the championship with the group of title contenders, Sebastian Vettel, Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso, on 40 points. On the eve of the Bahrain Grand Prix, Hamilton has been speaking extensively about the work More…
Nico Rosberg says he is confident that there is no number one and no number two at Mercedes despite being asked to hold position behind team-mate Lewis Hamilton in Malaysia. Rosberg, 27, was quicker than Hamilton, 28, in the closing stages in Sepang and asked if he could overtake the 2008 world champion. However team principal Ross Brawn refused his request citing that Hamilton had been asked to back off due to concerns over fuel consumption. Hamilton went on to finish third, scoring his first podium for the team and saying after the race that Rosberg deserved to be on More…
Force India have today announced an extension to their engine agreement with Mercedes-Benz, which will see the German firm supply the team with the new powertrain system from 2014. The deal will see Mercedes supply Force India with the full Power Unit, transmission and all necessary systems for when the new regulations are installed next year. With 2014 bringing back turbo engines, Mercedes have spent much of their recent years developing the new 1.6 litre Power Unit that is expected to be the leading system in Formula One. The change to small, turbo charged engines has been driven by the More…
Mercedes team boss Ross Brawn believes his outfit have the best driver line-up in Formula 1 in Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. The Brackley-based team signed Hamilton to replace seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher alongside Rosberg. Though the car struggled to score points towards the end of last season, Mercedes have shown good pace in testing. Rosberg set the fastest time of winter testing in Barcelona, with Hamilton clocking the third best. And Brawn believes Rosberg, who made his debut for Williams in 2006, has stepped up his performances after spending three years as Schumacher’s team-mate. “If we are honest, More…
Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes made a firm statement of intent today as they finally ran the Pirelli soft tyre and dominated the penultimate day of pre-season testing in Barcelona. Having been the only team to not yet run the yellow banded soft tyre, the F1 paddock would not have anticipated that Hamilton would shave over a second off the fastest time that we have seen in Barcelona so far this year. Mercedes themselves believed their gain to be closer to half a second, so their improvement will be thought provoking for their rival teams. Mercedes’ tyre difficulties have always appeared More…
It has been confirmed today that McLaren is to lose its Technical Director Paddy Lowe to Mercedes and the company has appointed Tim Goss to replace Lowe in the role. Lowe had been planning a move to join Toto Wolff at Williams before the Austrian was offered the chance to head Mercedes motorsport operation. The plan then evolved for Lowe to divert to Mercedes and this was openly discussed a month ago, with Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn asserting that he remained in charge at Brackley, while new recruit Lewis Hamilton insisted that Lowe would not be moving to Brackley. More…
Lewis Hamilton is doing a great deal of his work in the media at the moment setting out his stall in the early stages of the Mercedes relationship. And an interview in today’s L’Equipe with Fred Ferret is a good example of how the 2008 world champion wants to draw some lines in the sand; to get some basic understandings out there, knowing that the world’s commentators, media and public will all have plenty of opinions and judgements on the rights and wrongs of his move down the grid, as he goes through the first year at the Mercedes team. More…
Robert Kubica, the former F1 driver who is recuperating from a partially severed arm, today tested a Mercedes from the German Touring Car series DTM, in Valencia. The 28 year old Pole, who was badly hurt in a rally accident almost two years ago, covered 114 laps, or 456.570 kilometres today. Kubica has said that it is too early to talk about a return to F1 competition, but he has taken part in some rallies and is gradually stepping up the intensity and level of his driving activities. Today he experienced downforce again – although nothing like the levels and More…
Mercedes F1 team principal Ross Brawn spoke today about the goings on behind the scenes at the team in recent days, suggesting that the move for Paddy Lowe is part of his long term succession plan but emphasising that he is very much in charge of the team. “I am the team principal. I am in charge of sporting, technical and racing matters,” he said emphatically, when asked if Mercdes ran the risk of emulating the failed Jaguar Racing experiment, where no-one was sure who was in charge. News has surfaced in recent days of a plan formed by Mercedes More…
Williams F1 team has been left in a tricky position by a decision by one of its shareholders and senior managers, Toto Wolff, to take up the role of executive director with Mercedes F1. Wolff will become a 30% shareholder of Mercedes Grand Prix, Niki Lauda will hold 10%, however in a rather awkward conflict, Wolff will retain his 15% shareholding in the Williams team, for the time being at least. It was important that Wolff’s retained shareholding was part of the message from the point of view of the financial picture at Williams and with regards to share price, More…
Following on from our analysis of the head-to-head record of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button over three years as McLaren, here the second in the series, analysing Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg’s similar stint at Mercedes. Schumacher brought the curtain down on his Formula 1 career for the second time at last weekend’s Brazilian Grand Prix and in doing so ended a three-year and 58 race relationship with Mercedes alongside fellow German Nico Rosberg. It would be fair to say the seven-time world champion’s comeback with the Silver Arrow didn’t quite go to plan. Throughout his career, Schumacher has consistently More…
On the eve of their championship deciding race in Brazil, Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso paid tribute to Michael Schumacher, who will start his 306th and last Grand Prix on Sunday, aged 43. The pair come at it from different angles; Alonso raced hard against Schumacher from when he got a competitive car in 2003 and they contested the 2006 world championship, which Alonso won. “I think we will always remember the privilege to race and compete with someone like Michael that will be record in history of Formula One, maybe for a very long time and we’ve been there, More…
This is a fun video with Mercedes F1 driver Nico Rosberg showing Manchester City striker Sergio Aguero how much faster a real racing car is than a high performance sportscar. It’s part of a series by Puma, which brings sports people from different disciplines into contact with F1 and motorsport. It all helps to spread the word about our sport. What works well here is that Aguero is very cocky when it comes to driving the road car, texting on his phone while Rosberg is trying to show him the lines around a rather damp Donington – to the extent More…
Lewis Hamilton’s father, Anthony, has given a revealing insight into how his relationship with his son has evolved over the last couple of years and why the move to Mercedes is another example of him flying the nest. Hamilton Snr’s presence in McLaren’s post-race celebrations of Hamilton’s brilliant victory in Austin pointed towards father and son having firmly been reconciled this year after a period in which their relationship, publicly at least, has appeared more distant. The pair had been famously more akin to a double act as Lewis came through the motorsport ranks and into his record-breaking early years More…
Michael Schumacher said yesterday that he would understand why Sebastian Vettel might want to move to Ferrari to compete with Fernando Alonso at some point in the next few years, as has been mooted recently. In an interview with Gazzetta dello Sport at the launch of a new watch he has developed with Swiss luxury brand Audemars Piguet, Schumacher said that at a certain point in the career of all drivers there comes a need to challenge yourself anew. Asked whether he sees Vettel moving to Ferrari alongside Alonso he replied, “There’s a lot of talk about it. I think More…
Lewis Hamilton has spoken today of his desire for a fresh challenge in Formula 1 and admitted that he has felt that way “for some time now”. The 27 year old underlined that he relishes the challenge of trying to turn a “struggling” team around, rather than “cruise” in one of the best cars in the field. Hamilton announced his move from McLaren to Mercedes last week and faced the cameras in Suzuka today. Speaking to the BBC, he said, “To stay would be easy, I had two similar offers on the table. To stay in a great car didn’t More…
The news that Michael Schumacher will not race for Mercedes next season unsurprisingly continues to dominate the sports news agenda in Germany, as the country’s media speculates on what the seven-time world champion may or may not do next. It’s from the angle of Schumacher’s departure from the race seat, rather than Lewis Hamilton’s arrival, that the newspaper articles have naturally generally been pitched from with the consensus being that there is no escaping from the blunt fact that Schumacher was dropped by Mercedes, with the 43-year-old’s own indecisiveness over his future having ensured he is no longer the master More…
Former McLaren driver turned driver manager Mark Blundell suspects that the “timing is right” for Lewis Hamilton to begin a new chapter in his career with Mercedes and predicts that the move will pave the way for the Briton’s management to take ‘Brand Hamilton’ to a whole new level. Blundell is ideally placed to analyse the switch from both a racing and commercial point of view having driven for McLaren in 1995 and then in more recent time conducted test driver Gary Paffett’s contract negotiations with the team, in addition to the driver’s long-standing relationship with Mercedes in DTM. Speaking More…
[Updated] Lewis Hamilton has cut his 14-year umbilical cord to McLaren and announced he will join Mercedes at the end of the season on a three-year deal. In a huge coup for Mercedes and major shot in the arm for its ambitions of winning consistently in Formula 1 that was predicted by JA on F1 earlier this month, the 2008 world champion will replace Michael Schumacher in the team’s 2013 line-up, reuniting him with his old karting team-mate Nico Rosberg. Sauber’s Sergio Perez will replace Hamilton at McLaren. Intriguingly, however, there was no mention in the Mercedes press release of More…
FIA Race Stewards in Singapore have handed Michael Schumacher a 10 place grid penalty for causing a collision with Toro Rosso’s Jean-Eric Vergne in the Singapore Grand Prix. In front of the stewards, Schumacher is reported to have accepted the blame for misjudging the braking distance to Vergne in front and smashing into the back of him on lap 39. Schumacher had just pitted and was fighting Vergne for 10th place. The race had jet restarted after the first safety car period. Vergne’s tyres were 14 laps old, Schumacher’s had done only five laps behind the safety car. It is More…
Lewis Hamilton faced the media today, 24 hours after BBC’s Eddie Jordan launched the story about him moving to Mercedes. So too did Mercedes team boss Ross Brawn, who said that he wants Mercedes to be a team every driver would want to drive for. Hamilton denied that a deal was done with Mercedes, but did not say he wasn’t talking to them. He also said he didn’t know where he would be driving next season. Mercedes did not deny that they were negotiating with Hamilton, but said that they wouldn’t comment. McLaren say only that Hamilton’s management have told More…
Mercedes F1 boss Ross Brawn says that there is every reason to believe that the sport will see its eighth different winner this weekend in Valencia, tipping his own driver Michael Schumacher to be a possible victor along with the Lotus drivers. “With the tyre situation predictions are very difficult, but I expect Valencia to be a good track for us and I expect us to be competitive as we have been at most of the races this season,” said Brawn in an interview on Mercedes You Tube Channel. “There’s every opportunity that at the next race in Valencia we’re More…
The F1 driver market is starting to move for next season as drivers who are out of contract at the end of the year review their options and start discussions. Unlike football, where there are rules about players being “tapped up” by rival teams without their team’s permission, as well as defined transfer windows, F1 drivers and their agents talk quite a bit and stay in touch with other teams. This constant ebb and flow leads to rumours of driver moves, which turn out to be wrong. The key to the 2013 driver market is whether Michael Schumacher retires at More…
Michael Schumacher is a five times Monaco GP winner, but he arrives in the Principality this weekend with a cloud over his head after his third retirement in five races this season. It leaves him with just two points, his worst ever start to an F1 season. In each of those three retirements he has lasted no more than 12 laps. Schumacher’s frustration is evident; he has fired several salvoes against Pirelli and called Bruno Senna an “idiot” for the collision in Spain which eliminated both cars. The stewards in Barcelona agreed with many commentators in calling it 100% Schumacher’s More…
On the eve of the new F1 season Michael Schumacher has said that he is still one of the sport’s top draws and expects to compete for podiums this season in the new Mercedes. Speaking to Gazzetta dello Sport the seven times world champion said, “I was out (of F1) for three years, I’m now 43 and I don’t know if I can compare myself to when I was 30. But I know I’m still one of the best in the world, that I’m motivated, that I enjoy myself and that most people are happy to have me still in More…
Nico Rosberg has extended his contract with Mercedes, for a period that will take him into his 30s. It puts to an end all suggestions that he may join Ferrari as replacement to Felipe Massa any time soon. Rosberg was already under contract for 2012, but the new deal adds a “multi-year” term to that, likely to be three years from 2013 onwards with options. Mercedes statement claims that the 26 year old has demonstrated that “he belongs to the top group of drivers currently racing in Formula One.” Meanwhile Rosberg himself confidently asserts that “To win in a Silver More…
McLaren’s Martin Whitmarsh, Mercedes’ Ross Brawn, Virgin Racing’s Graeme Lowdon and Force India’s Robert Fearnley met face to face with 300 F1 fans at the FOTA Fans’ Forum, UK at McLaren Technology Centre to discuss topics raised by the fans and hear their points of view. Top of the agenda was fans’ concern that F1 should stay on Free to Air TV and the rumoured NewsCorp take over was discussed. The team principals also tackled the subject of F1′s green credentials, with Fearnley putting forward a slightly different tone from the others, describing F1 as “a celebration of excess.” “The More…
Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Juan Manuel Fangio, the five times world champion racer from the 1950s. Fangio raced for Ferrari, Maserati, Alfa Romeo and won two world titles with Mercedes-Benz, the last time they were in F1 in 1954 and 1955. He once had a playful debate with Ayrton Senna on the podium at the Brazilian Grand Prix 1993 about who was the greatest F1 driver of all time. Each was proposing it was the other. Fangio is the source of one of the most poignant quotes I’ve come across about what makes a racer, More…
The final test session of the 2011 pre-season continues this morning in Barcelona. The test lasts five days, of which the teams are allowed to do four days running with a single car. It’s a crucial test for both Mercedes and McLaren, who would normally expect to be competing against Red Bull and Ferrari, but who appear to be behind after the tests so far. With extensive updates to their cars, this has to be the week when they close the gap to the pace setters. McLaren was on track yesterday and will have a break tomorrow, while Mercedes hit More…
Mercedes has announced today that parent company Daimler and its partner Aabar has bought the final 24.9% stake in the team, which had remained in the hands of Ross Brawn, Nick Fry and the management team. That management team, which saved the Brackley outfit from closure in 2009, operated as Brawn GP that year and then sold a controlling interest in the team to Mercedes, will remain on board but without holding equity. This is a very logical step for all parties. For team principal Ross Brawn this is the completion of a process which has made him a very More…
Michael Schumacher will compete next year in Formula 1, but how well it goes depends on the quality of the car that Mercedes gives him. The seven times world champion has had a torrid time this season, scoring 76 points less than his young team mate Nico Rosberg and generally being outpaced by him everywhere. The old Schumacher, who’s presence always dominated the paddock and the race track during race weekends, is a far more anonymous competitor these days. It is often easy to forget that he’s in the field. The reason why he has struggled is because what he More…
Mercedes has decided not to go through with the appeal into the stewards’ decision to punish Michael Schumacher for his opportunistic pass on Fernando Alonso in the final corner of the Monaco Grand Prix on Sunday. In a statement this morning the team said it had instructed Schumacher to race in the final corner, as they believed that the track was green and therefore the race would not be finishing under the safety car. “We believed that the combination of the race control messages ‘Safety Car in this lap’ and ‘Track Clear’ and the green flags and lights shown by More…
Amid all the furore over the Renault race fixing scandal, this week has seen another important development in shaping the next generation of F1. I posted last week on the news that Mercedes was set to take a controlling interest in the Brawn team. It appears that the deal has been worked with the backing of the Abu Dhabi investment vehicle Aabar, which bought 9.1% of Mercedes’ parent company Daimler earlier this year. It is the company’s largest shareholder. Aabar is an interesting company with a wide range of investments in many different sectors. They bought a 32% stake in More…
I want to write about something other than the FIA/FOTA war today. There will be plenty of that tomorrow. It has been well reported that Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button have exchanged fortunes from last season to this. Button has gone from the back of the grid to the front and Lewis the opposite way. But there is a common factor in the success of both men and that is the Mercedes engine, which is made in Brixworth, about 20 minutes from Silverstone. Button visited the staff yesterday to say thank you for giving him an engine which has won More…
Today’s Financial Times has some shocking information about the state of the motor industry. And as F1 is seen as an extension of that industry because of it’s reliance on, and domination by, the car companies, you need to know about this. One story says that for most manufacturers, sales of new cars in the United States are down between 40-50%. That includes Toyota who have taken a 40% hit. A little lower down on the page there’s a story from Tokyo about how Toyota is seeking a $2 billion bail out from the Japanese government. The company is facing More…
There is a story doing the rounds on the websites at the moment, based on an article in a German magazine called Focus, to the effect that Mercedes’ continued participation in F1 was the subject of a recent vote by the board of parent company Daimler and that the vote only just carried, by three votes to two. Sounds dramatic, another warning sign to F1 from the crumbling empire of motor manufacturing. Except that it isn’t true. I rang Mercedes to find out more about this and it turns out that the story is completely bogus. “There was no voting More…
Fernando Alonso
Kimi Räikkönen
Felipe Massa
Sebastian Vettel
Mark Webber Nico Rosberg
Paul di Resta Jenson Button
Sergio Perez Daniel Ricciardo Sebastian Vettel Kimi Räikkönen Fernando Alonso Lewis Hamilton Felipe Massa Mark Webber
Romain Grosjean Paul di Resta Nico Rosberg Jenson Button Sergio Perez Daniel Ricciardo Adrian Sutil Nico Hulkenberg Jean-Eric Vergne Esteban Gutierrez Valtteri Bottas
Pastor Maldonado Jules Bianchi Charles Pic
Giedo van der Garde Max Chilton
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