Mercedes

McLaren-Mercedes divorce and Cosworth need a new partner.

by

Even though the driver line up’s are mostly sorted for next year, I suspect there are a few exciting news stories yet to break. One of which I believe will be the split between Mercedes and McLaren.

History of the partnership

Having been out of F1 since 1954, Mercedes returned as an engine supplier in 1994, partnering with Sauber and then a year later began their 17 year relationship with McLaren. Since parting company with Honda in 1992, McLaren tried working with both Ford and Peugeot for 2 years with limited success. The 5 year relationship with Honda had delivered both WDC and WCC championships in 4 of those years – 8 titles in all and in just 5 years – 52 pole positions and 44 wins. In stark contrast Mercedes partnership with McLaren has delivered a mere 1 WCC (1998) and 3 WDC titles (Hakkinen 98,99 – Hamilton 08).

In 1999 Daimler-Chrysler (owner of Mercedes-Benz) bought 40% of the McLaren F1 team with Ron Dennis and Mansour Ojjeh each retaining 30% and there was a shareholders agreements which locked Dennis and Ojjeh’s holding together so they could not be sold independently of one another. The arrangement followed a decision by DaimlerChrysler and McLaren Cars to jointly develop and produce the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren super sports car which was launched at the Frankfurt Motorshow in 2003 and was manufactured at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking and at the company’s second production factory in Portsmouth, where the SLR carbon fibre bodyshells are built. The programme was planned for 7 years and around 3500 cars and the last cars were completed by December 2009, although McLaren produced 25 limited edition run of cars in 2011 called the ‘McLaren Edition’.

Read more

Monday Post Korea Blues: Mercedes woeful slide continues, BBC story panics Red Bull and more…

by

Funny how from week to week the Monday morning feeling following and F1 weekend can be quite different. With Japan and Korea being back to back the contrast is stark. Last Monday, I was still buzzing from the Japanese GP. not that the battle for the win was great, but there was a lot of good racing down the pack, the fans were amazing, Kamui getting his podium at last before he loses his F1 seat, Grosjean’s latest incident…lots of stuff to think about and write about.

Today…Zzz…I’m struggling. Part of the reason is I think my post race thoughts posted yesterday for Korea was more comprehensive than the one from Japan, so there are fewer loose ends to tie up today. Another the reason is that the F1 circus is battling its way back from the remote part of S. Korea and today is a quiet news days. Any way let’s see what’s going on.

BBC – Old News and Wrong News

You can spot quiet news days, for example, today the BBC F1 story is a re-hash of something we have known about for months – Vettel/Ferrari possibly/maybe 2014. Even so, someone at Red Bull just told me the team have been forced into action and brought forward their post race debrief from Tuesday to today 3:30pm – to quash the rumours.

Read more

Lauda to sack Brackley personnel, Nascar mother of all pile ups, Lola closes doors, Tooned will be ‘racey’

by

After battling with F1 and global finance until gone midnight on “Ecclestone to load a mountain of debt on F1“, then the day so far has been spent with lawyers – so we’ll start with a News Links post and see if I’ve got enough time and energy for an in depth article later. (Anything in wite on this page is a URL link to the original or pic or video).

Quick thanks to someone on German site MotorsportTotal.com who posted a link to thejudge13 and we’ve had over 50 new German visitors today from their site. Great work.

  1. Last week I did a couple of articles on Niki Lauda, suggesting there may be fireworks at Merceds F1 now he’s the big boss (a position he couldn’t help refering to on TV at the weekend I noticed). Niki’s inability to “suffer fools gladly” is legendary. So today, our favourite German publication Bilde has the following, “Schumi’s car builders are fired”. (I always put the link to prove the source, but be careful with any translation software – particularly verb tenses). Anyway Christian Danner RTL expert pundit and ex F1 driver of note (I’ll come back to this) says today that Niki Lauda needs to fire the designers of this years car. He suggests that after 9 months the car is performing like a Torro Rosso and heads must roll. He urges Niki the hatchetman on, “He is responsible to make the next decision. And the next decisions will be primarily personnel decisions”. RTL commentator Danner, a little bit like Mr. J Herbert for SKY, drove in Formula 1 over 4 years. 2 of those he was not classified with any points and had a career best P4 in USA 1989 when he also had his best season scoring a total of 4 points. WATCH OUT ROSS

    Read more

How Lauda got the top job in Mercedes F1

by

It’s the old tale of ‘not what you know, but who you know’ that matters in life. I was extremely puzzled when I read about Niki Lauda’s involvement in mediating between Mr. Bernie Ecclestone and the board of Daimler Benz.

As I’ve previously documented, Daimler and Ecclestone were at loggerheads following the draft Concorde agreement as published before the start of this season. Such that Mercedes the car manufacturer was seriously threatening to pull out of F1 for good, or until Ecclestone was gone. (link)

Ecclestone in turn dismissed them as having “done nothing in F1” which poisoned the chalice further.

Such was the heated animosity between the parties you would think it was time to call upon one of history’s enigmatic peacemakers; one who had attained Alfred Nobel’s greatest honour; the like of Mother Theresa or Mahatma Gandhi.

As these 2 are unfortunately no longer with us, we must look to the land of the living and would probably settle on someone with the political nuance of Kofi Annan and the humility and wisdom of the Dalai Lama.

Enter the dragon’s den – Niki Lauda!

Read more

Schauber or Ferrari? Schumacher’s options

by

Considering the Hamilton and Perez moves were announced practically simultaneously, the mystery surrounding Michael Schumacher’s future remains. As usual picking the bones out of what the different parties say is not easy.

Schumacher’s manager Sabine Kehm (Bild), suggests Michael had opportunities with Mercedes and “could have been able to sign if he had wanted to earlier in the summer.” So, we are led to believe it is Schumacher’s indecision over whether he wishes to continue driving at all that has forced Mercedes hand in taking advantage of the Hamilton opportunity.

This may have been the case in the end. Michael’s maybe have been holding out for a 2 year deal instead of the 1 year deal Mercedes had on offer and it is this prevarication that has cost him the seat within the team he has been helping to build. But that does not mean he feels he is done with driving in F1.

Strangely there has been no talk of an offer for Michael to join Mercedes management team and they have already made the slightly inexplicable appointment of Niki Lauda last week to the board. It appears as though there is no room at the Mercedes table for the man who has surely helped build this team since Mercedes acquisition.

Suddenly in 2012, he is the fastest driver in Monaco qualifying and has out qualified Rosberg in 8/14 race weekends. He has only finished 7 races, but in 6 of those he finished ahead of Rosberg (Bahrain being the exception). His average time behind the pole time is (0.936 secs) against NR (1.145secs) and he has also qualified on average 7th and Rosberg has managed 8th.

So without a couple of crashes and some poor pit work meaning a lost tyre and without the numerous gearbox failures, Schumacher would be close if not ahead of Rosberg in the championship and that would be a big story.

Suggesting that Michael may want to retire again would have been more credible after year 2 of his comeback when he clearly struggled get to grips with the driving style required to maximise the off throttle engine blowing that dominated car design. But now?

Read more

Nicole kisses Chris, Thai GP announced, Mercedes not yet seen Concorde? Ecclestone offers cash to settle bribe claims, Mr. E Wants Australia at night

by

Well,  2 weeks since the launch of the blog – over 3000 hits and some very complimentary comments. I’ve quickly learned in social media though, you need a thick skin as some comments are not just au contraire but pretty abusive. Hey Ho.

Its not been too bad so far. We called the Jake leaving the BBC the week before it was announced and suggested in the “Shrinking Calendar” piece there may be trouble yet for New Jersey (You can see the date published on each article)

Well today was the day that wasn’t. We’ve had an FIA executive meeting with no news, a Mercedes car company board meeting with no news and the much awaited Eddie Jordan prediction was also – no news.

So here’s some links to a few things that have occurred.

Read more

Petrov to lose his seat, Mercedes appoint Lauda, 2013 NY Grand Prix in trouble, Pictures from Russia 2014

by

Please click on the link to the right and follow the blog by email. I will notify you only when new material is published. Alternatively follow me on twitter (again click to the right) – and a retweet for each new publication would be appreciated.

I did suggest in my article before the Singapore Grand Prix that there may be trouble ahead for the F1 2013 calendar. After a blaze of publicity on Saturday it appears the shrinking calendar may yet be true. http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/sep/25/grand-prix-america-contract-torn-up?newsfeed=true

Petrov after losing his seat at Renault Lotus last year found a reprive late in the testing programme of 2012 when he replaced Jarno Truli at Caterham. It seems like his backers have run out of roubles and his manager is running out of patience.  http://en.rian.ru/sports/20120925/176212683.html . Enter Jaime Alguersauri?

Read more

2013 Mercedes: To race or not to race?

by

I am going to be otherwise engaged after today until after the weekend, but there are a few stories knocking around today, so we’ll have a brief look at a few of them.

Mercedes pulling out of F1?

Today a number of German publications have been carrying the “Mercedes pulling out of F1” story, in particular Auto motor und sport. Mercedes have consistently refused to sign the new Concorde agreement with Ecclestone’s FOM to commit to the sport until 2020.

It appears that earlier this year, Mercedes were not happy with the proposed slice of money they’ve been offered which has prevented them from entering into the Concorde agreement. Since then there have been rumours that the main board of the German car manufacturer wish to distance themselves from association with Bernie Ecclestone following his alleged involvement in the bribery scandal that has seen a German banker Gerhard Gribkowsky sent to jail for nearly 9 years.

Then Mercedes announce today they will not decide on Schumacher’s future until October. This is significant because the he deadline for teams to register their 2013 entry is now 30th September 2012 and there is speculation Mercedes will not meet the deadline.

Read more