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…