The king is dead, long live the king.
Only 102 days to lights out for 2023..
I love this place.
I miss the pacman emoji, would have been perfect here
The safety in modern motorsport really is incredible. A crash at 130R in Super Formula this morning and it's amazing drivers can walk away from that kind of accident, it's crazy looking back now people were against new safety procedures in the likes of F1
Lots of Alonso to red bull chat on twitter today I see
This was all started by a cryptic tweet from a journalist and then Will Buxton hinting as well.
I do not see it happening at all, I just can't.
Me neither, but interesting to say the least.
Alonso with Taylor Swift was more credible then this.
If Lance, however, finally gives up that delusion he's a racing driver then I could see Perez team up with Alonso at Aston Martin
Other rumours that Charles could move to RB as Max wants someone to challenge him. All pie in the sky stuff. Or Carlos moves out to RB, or even Aston. I couldn't see him in AM as he's want a competitive car.
Another comment I saw what that lots of AM stock was sold yesterday. Maybe the Saudis are buying a stake in the AM team and Lawrence is getting out finally? Then Lance can move onto playing tennis.
None of these stories have substance but it's all fun reading anyway!
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Mike Elliott has left Merc
A few report flying around there's a slim chance of Malaysia making an appearance on the calendar again. Petronas agreed a deal to rename the circuit, you'd be hoping with that funding and Petronas Merc connection it would be enough to get it back on the calendar
Zero sidepods meant zero hope.
It's a cruel business. He was supposedly side stepped into a more suitable role. Ya right.
Treated like an old dog. He was in charge of the zeropod concept, which on paper gave them huge optimism for being fast. In the real world though...
They are nearly 3 years now behind RB and while this car is better, it might be a false dawn with RB not developing since the Hungaroring.
Zero sidepods is sackable offence
I wonder will the Zero side pod Mercedes car end up like the F1 Fan car, the six wheeler car etc? Just concepts that were just too far fetched and crazy for there time. Sure they seemed like a great idea but in reality thet were just not as good as the concept suggested they could be.
Well the fan car and the 6 wheelers were concepts that worked but worked so well they had to be banned.
The merc was just pants.
Not sure if already posted but Elliott leaves Mercedes.
That's quite a few senior heads gone at Merc the last year or two
He’s going on gardening leave I wonder does that mean he’s headed for another team? Maybe following James Vowles to Williams.
Ah yeah but that's been happening for years. When they were at the too, they lost people to other teams. Now red bull have lost people to other teams. I remember a lead designer going to AM in the last year or so.
When the team wins, team members market value goes up. When the team fails, the team fires some people. It's always happening. Mercedes will now be on the lookout for opportunities to recruit top people from other teams rather than looking to avoid losing thier top people which has been their issue for the last number of years.
I reckon that's a standard approach regardless of their future plans - it's always safer to keep them tied up for a period of time before they can start working elsewhere when it's competitive technical work like F1.
Can't imagine he'd be in great demand at the moment considering where he's put Mercedes-Benz. If you're trying to coax away the "Adrian Newey" equivalent who's responsible for Mercs pre 2021 domination you'd be looking at James Allison. Williams probably thought they'd hit the jackpot in 2017 when they got Paddy Lowe in exchange for Bottas, but we all saw how that turned out. Same could be said for James Key at McLaren.
I'm looking forward to this
I think Merc find themselves in a bit of a holding pattern of sorts. A few years back, I think it was 2018, maybe 2017, their car was described as a "diva" with set up. Their solution, like any big team, was to throw money at it which solved the problem.
These new rules really do a great job at preventing that now. I also think losing James Vowles to Williams was a bigger loss than expected, look at how well Williams have been progressing this year with a fraction of the resources that Merc have.
Allison will probably help, he was at Ferrari though when things weren't very great, so he isn't a guarantee of things.
I also see parallels with last year where they got better towards the end of the year and won a race. It is hard to measure where they could end up, just look at McLaren now, I would have them closer to RB overall in the past few races. Ferrari can't be written off just yet and even Aston Martin showed how much ground can be made up over a winter when you are nowhere.
Whoops, old tweet and boards won't let me delete.
5 years ago.
Whoops, and Boards won't let me delete. Feck Musk highlighting that on my X app.
Ya bollox!!!
I had a mini heart attack there haha!
