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Frustratingly for Mercedes, their hopes of challenging for titles this season already appear to be extremely low, and the question for many is whether they can rebuild for the 2024 campaign. Mercedes-Benz’s Jörg Burzer says the company is confident in its strategic decisions. Photograph: Frank Bauer/The Guardian Mercedes has full faith in its recent strategic decisions, says Burzer. “We are very closely connected to China on the product and market side, and of course we are a promoter of global trade.” These decisions include its push towards more electric vehicles and “preparing products for the future and according to market conditions in China and the US, and our ‘luxury’ strategy”, Burzer says. Germany’s businesses and households had grown accustomed to plentiful Russian gas and oil for many years. Russia accounted for more than half of the country’s natural gas supply in 2020. In addition, Mercedes lost the head of their mechanical engineering division, Ben Hodgkinson, to Red Bull last year as their rivals went on an aggressive recruitment drive for their new powertrains division, which saw around 15 other employees make the move.
Olaf Scholz has had to break with Germany’s policy of ‘change through trade’. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images Lewis Hamilton was clearly in pain getting out of his car after his Mercedes suffered more porpoising issues last year in Azerbaijan, prompting Toto Wolff to apologise to him Mercedes have opted to celebrate by running a ‘Pride Star’ emblem on both their W13 challenger and Hamilton and George Russell’s helmets for the next three Grands Prix, as part of their wider ‘Accelerate 25’ programme, with Hamilton – who earlier this week wished a “Happy Pride” to his social media followers – revealing what the move meant to him.Pride Month is held in June, and focuses on raising awareness and celebrating the work of the LGBTQ+ community. The reduced degradation and extended tyre life resulted in the optimum race strategy changing from the pre-race prediction of a medium and hard plan, to a soft and medium combination.
While a transfer to the Red Bull team he fought so fiercely against appears impossible, Hamilton was linked to Ferrari several years ago and has in the past expressed his respect and admiration for the Italian team. Sky Sports F1's live Saudi Arabian GP schedule
The big decision
A developing subplot around Mercedes' struggles is the future of Hamilton, and his designs on becoming the sport's first driver to win eight world championships. Any new car concept is most likely going to be something arriving for 2024, so the question is how soon does Mercedes switch off work on the current car? One scenario, which sources say the team is open-minded to, could be in abandoning the work coming for the Imola upgrade and instead embark on the new concept work immediately. It would mean some short term pain, but long term gain. But those changes take time to turn into a faster solution in the wind tunnel - you can't do them overnight. There is quite a lot of development that you've got to do around any sort of big change in geometry in that area. Data on electrical consumption and range are provisional and were determined internally in accordance with the “WLTP test procedure” certification method. So far there are no confirmed figures from an officially approved testing organisation, nor any EC type approval or certificate of conformity with official figures. Differences between the stated figures and the official figures are possible.
Mercedes appeared to produce a highly reliable engine from the off, whereas other teams, such as Ferrari, perhaps went for a more aggressive approach of producing a higher performance engine that they could then make more reliable. INEOS already has a wide sports portfolio with interests in athletics, cycling, football and the America’s Cup yacht race and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said the company is a natural fit for his team. Mercedes-Benz Group (MBG) produces hundreds of thousands such vehicles a year from eight German factories: Rastatt is one of three in the state of Baden-Württemberg, near the company’s physical and spiritual home in Stuttgart. The carmaker lends its name to a whole area of this affluent city – the Benzviertel, where its headquarters and museum are located – and to its Bundesliga football club’s stadium. Germany’s largest manufacturers, including Mercedes and the other carmakers, have enjoyed booming sales in China, while the country’s Mittelstand of small and medium-sized engineering companies have powered Chinese production. But Mercedes and the country’s wider economy now stand at a crossroads. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted a race to find new energy supplies amid sanctions and Russia’s throttling of gas pipelines – a crisis that has already forced Germany to extend the life of its three remaining nuclear power plants.
The shift in the country’s diplomatic approach has been perhaps more seismic. Putin’s war has prompted the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to effectively break with the decades-long approach of Wandel durch Handel: the belief that social and political change in other countries can be brought about by trade. The electricity consumption was determined on the basis of Regulation 2017/1151/EU according to WLTP.
Furthermore, this new partnership is an important cornerstone of our future plans in Formula One. It once again serves to demonstrate the attraction of the sport for ambitious, global brands with a long-term vision for success." With Mercedes having made a poor start to the season, Sky F1's Naomi Schiff contemplates whether Hamilton will ever win a record eighth world title It was therefore a major surprise when it became clear they had been caught out by the new regulations and were suffering - more than any other team - with porpoising, a bouncing phenomenon that was an unexpected consequence of the way the 2022 cars had been designed under the new rules. Last month, accompanied by a high-powered economic delegation, Scholz was the first western leader to be granted a state visit to China since the outbreak of Covid and Xi Jinping’s moves to strengthen his power.While just about every team suffered to some level, Mercedes' issues were the most severe, and heavily impacted the performance of their W13, along with the comfort of their drivers. I was looking at my arm, not really sure what was going on and didn’t realise I had been hit by a piece of debris. People behind me were scrambling around, fighting over who gets this piece of wheel and I’m like ‘what’s that?’ We pieced it together and I realised: ‘Holy shit, that’s just hit me in the arm.’” for showing your flags and banners and are much more long-lasting and professional-looking than every Mercedes is less dependent on these supplies than some of Germany’s energy-intensive industries, notably steelmakers, pharmaceutical companies and chemicals producers such as BASF, which said in October it would permanently “downsize” its European operations. However, the carmaker still relies on gas for certain production processes, particularly in its foundries. Teams were required to submit a final design of their power units before the start of the 2022 season, with changes only allowed to be made to improve reliability or safety.
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