Ferrari Mailing List: Re: Mercedes F1

[Erik Nielsen (judge4re]

LH is RD's choice, not the powers that be in Germany.  Schumacher has
to fit in the jigsaw puzzle somewhere...

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 3:50 PM,  <clyderomero [at] worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> No mentioon of LH at all
> He may be toast!
> Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Larry B <larrybard [at] hotmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:38:02
> To: clyde<clyderomero [at] worldnet.att.net>
> Cc: The FerrariList<ferrari [at] ferrarilist.com>
> Subject: [Ferrari] Mercedes F1
>
>
> Mercedes Gets Back Into Formula One
> By BRAD SPURGEON
>
> PARIS — Bucking a trend in the car manufacturer exodus from Formula One, 
> Daimler announced Monday that it would buy a controlling interest in the 
> reigning world champion Brawn team and race under the name Mercedes Grand 
> Prix next season.
>
> The German car manufacturer, which is buying the team in a joint deal with an 
> Abu Dhabi investment company, also announced that it would sell back its 40 
> percent ownership of the McLaren team to that team, ending a 10-year 
> partnership. But it will continue to provide engines to McLaren, which it is 
> has powered since 1995 and with which it has won four world titles with since 
> 1998.
>
> Daimler said the company was buying 75.1 percent of the team with Aabar 
> Investments, which is based in Abu Dhabi and is the largest shareholder in 
> Daimler. Daimler will take 45.1 percent of the team, Aabar will take 30 
> percent, and the remaining 24.9 percent will remain with the team’s current 
> owners.
>
> Khadem al-Qubaisi, the chairman of Aabar, told Bloomberg News that Daimler 
> and Aabar were paying about £110 million, or about $185 million, between 
> them. Nick Fry, the Brawn chief executive officer, told Bloomberg in an 
> e-mail that the fee was “far more modest” and partly linked to future 
> performance.
>
> The announcement was made on the 75th anniversary year of the introduction of 
> the Silver Arrow Mercedes cars in Grand Prix racing. The Silver Arrows 
> dominated racing between 1934 and 1939.
>
> Honda Motor pulled out of Formula One in December, citing the financial 
> crisis. In July, BMW announced it would quit the sport at the end of the year 
> and sell its BMW Sauber team, then Toyota announced this month that it would 
> withdraw effective immediately.
>
> The car manufacturers that withdrew did so because they did not want to be 
> perceived as wasting money on racing during a financial crisis.
>
> But the series has been striving, sometimes acrimoniously, over the past year 
> to reduce the cost of running a team and to distribute more of the commercial 
> rights to the teams. These include reduced costs on design, construction and 
> running of the cars.
>
> Daimler cited these developments as its reason for increasing its involvement 
> in the series.
>
> “Due to the new Formula One environment, we will face the competition in 
> future on the most important motor sports stage with our own Silver Arrow 
> works team,” said Dieter Zetsche, chief executive of Daimler and head of 
> Mercedes-Benz Cars. “Our new Silver Arrow Formula One team is a great 
> sporting and technical challenge and we will tackle this with sporting spirit 
> and full of enthusiasm.”
>
> At the financial peak in the last decade, one team’s annual budget was said 
> to have reached nearly $500 million to run two cars for a single season of 18 
> races.
>
> Daimler also cited the “significantly higher income” available to a Formula 
> One team generated by the commercial rights as laid out in the new agreement 
> among teams, the series promoter and the International Automobile Federation, 
> the sport’s governing body.
>
> The new Mercedes team will be built on the Brawn team, which won the 2009 
> constructors’ and drivers’ title with Jenson Button driving. Brawn was formed 
> in a management buyout of the Honda team last March.
>
> The team used Mercedes engines this year, so the deal will not involve a 
> difficult transition to a new engine, and it could mean a continued 
> domination next year.
>
> Ross Brawn will continue to be the overall director. The Englishman, who was 
> technical director of Ferrari during the Italian team’s domination in the 
> early 2000s, remains a shareholder.
>
> This season, Formula One held its first race in Abu Dhabi, at the 
> season-ender on Nov. 1, as part of a strategy of geographical 
> diversification. Aabar cited its home race as one of the reasons for buying 
> into the team.
>
> “Bearing in mind the recent outstanding success of the Abu Dhabi G.P., which 
> brought Formula One to the United Arab Emirates for the first time, it is 
> especially exciting to realize that next year, our own cars will be in the 
> field,” said Qubaisi, the chairman of Aabar. “It is a fantastic prospect, 
> which makes me both pleased and proud for my country.”
>
> In July, Aabar invested about $280 million to buy about a third of the Virgin 
> Galactic space travel start-up company, which is controlled by Richard 
> Branson and his Virgin Group, to help Abu Dhabi develop a space program to 
> broaden its economy beyond the oil sector. Virgin Group was the principal 
> sponsor of the Brawn team this year.
>
> Mercedes did not return to Grand Prix racing after World War II until 1954, 
> when it joined the Formula One championship with its Silver Arrows. By the 
> following year, it again dominated, winning the title with Juan Manuel Fangio 
> driving. But in June of that year a Mercedes sports car was involved in an 
> accident at the Le Mans 24 Hour race in which more than 80 spectators were 
> killed.
>
> Mercedes withdrew from all racing, finally returning to Formula One as an 
> engine supplier to the Sauber team in the early 1990s, before joining up with 
> McLaren in 1995.
>
> In 1999, it purchased 40 percent of McLaren Group, which comprises not only 
> the racing team but companies as disparate as a catering company, an 
> electronics company and a sports car building company.
>
> The McLaren Group also announced on Monday that it would spin off the McLaren 
> Automotive sports car company, which had built road cars with Mercedes. It 
> said it would start building its own high-performance sports cars in 2011.
>
> The team has agreed to continue to use Mercedes engines to power its Formula 
> One cars until up to 2015 or beyond.
>
> “This is a win-win situation, for both McLaren and Daimler,” said Ron Dennis, 
> the executive chairman of McLaren Automotive and a founding shareholder of 
> McLaren Group. “I’ve often stated that it’s my belief that, in order to 
> survive and thrive in 21st century Formula One, a team must become much more 
> than merely a team.
>
> “That being the case, in order to develop and sustain the revenue streams 
> required to compete and win Grands Prix and world championships, companies 
> that run Formula One teams must broaden the scope of their commercial 
> activities.”
>
> Mercedes Grand Prix has not yet announced who its drivers will be next 
> season. Button visited the McLaren factory last week, however, fueling 
> speculation that he might join that team next year to partner the 2008 
> drivers’ champion, Lewis Hamilton.
>
> It is also expected that Nico Rosberg, who was born in Germany and speaks 
> fluent German — although he grew up in Monaco and is the son of the Finnish 
> world champion Keke Rosberg — and has said that he will leave the Williams 
> team, may join the newly formed Mercedes Grand Prix team.
>
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