Mercedes to follow BMW and Honda out of F1's door?
The combination of the continuing global economic recession and the in-fighting in Formula could soon cause another manufacturer to drop out of Formula One. Mercedes-Benz is considering whether to stay on F1 or follow BMW and Honda in withdrawing. Automakers are questioning the relevance and benefits of competing in F1, and the debate at Mercedes has been going on for several months although no decision has been made... yet. Perhaps if relevance is what Mercedes is looking for, they may go back to sports car racing which is increasingly embracing alternative drivetrains, particularly in the American Le Mans Series.
Mercedes-Benz owns 40 percent of the McLaren team and supplies the engines to both McLaren and Brawn. If Mercedes does decide to pull out, it's not clear how that would affect McLaren. McLaren was an F1 stalwart long before Mercedes came on board and could conceivably continue, perhaps using engines from Cosworth. Interestingly, the withdrawal of automakers could take F1 back to the 1970s when most of the teams were independent and aside from Ferrari and Renault most used Cosworth DFV V8s.
[Source: F1-Live]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
John 9:15AM (8/04/2009)
Does anyone else find this funny...
"If Mercedes does decide to pull out, it's not clear how that would affect McLaren."
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Neil 9:38AM (8/04/2009)
Nope, only you dude. McLaren isn't Mercedes. Mercedes owns a stake in McLaren and provide them with engines. Clearly McLaren could find a new engine partner, such as Cosworth.
krische 9:55AM (8/04/2009)
Well, it's a matter of how long Mercedes waits to pull out. They shouldn't wait too long to pull out or they might end up with a mistake. Where as if they pull out at the right time, they can just call it a day and pack up and leave.
Olivier Parent 10:05AM (8/04/2009)
Mercedes bought Ilmor to develop and produce Mercedes branded F1 engines. I don't know how much it is integrated with the rest of Mercedes (AMG?) now. Maybe they can just sell it to McLaren or some other company.
Neil 10:14AM (8/04/2009)
@Olivier Parent
That's a very good point, the last I heard Ilmor is still completely independent of the rest of Mercedes-Benz, so it's not too hard to imagine them selling it to McLaren or some other entity.
Ian 10:48AM (8/04/2009)
I doubt that Ilmor in Europe is 100% sepoarate from MB as the F1 effort has used a huge amouint of MB technology.
Ilmor in North America was bought out from Ilmor years agoi by Roger Penske, as I recall. This usit does work in many NA series including Nascar.
This is similar to the fact that McLaren in NA become an independant company decades ago and still exists.
The German manufacturers have all followed each other. After MB got into McLaren it annoyed BMW until finally they bought out Sauber 100%. Thereafter MB champed at the bit trying to buy 100% of McLaren. Great news that this failed! Meantime let's not underestimate the effect MB has had on McLaren F1 for so many years. They have bought around 40% of the company stock and provided the whole powertrain gratis and then worked with McLaren engineers to integrate everything into the car. MB pulling out would be a major loss for McLaren but one that would not be fatal.
Matt 8:20PM (8/04/2009)
I think John meant it in a sexual innuendo kind of way
the4thheat 9:45PM (8/04/2009)
I gotta say though, at some point when most of the teams have pulled out there's going to be no point in staying simply because you're going to be competing with yourself half the time and you never really get to beat your major rivals.
Half the point of spending that kind of money was to be able to proclaim once in a while that you had bested your rivals, etc.
Mike 9:29AM (8/04/2009)
Best thing that could happen to F1! My hopeful predictions: all the big money teams leave, all the F1 and FIA management get canned for allowing it to happen, all the older drivers leave, the rules get changed (implement budget caps and delete the silly rules like traction control/KERS/forced induction/etc.), more low budget teams enter the series (the return of Lotus anyone?), ticket prices fall, the season has more races and more street courses...thereby F1 is then more closely in line with real automotive goals...and F1 is back in the hands of the fans!
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hashiryu 2:03PM (8/04/2009)
There are a lot of holes in your theory. Just thought that I should point that out.
In any case, If Mercedes do in fact leave, they will probably still supply engines, unlike Honda and BMW.
Tony Montana 9:40AM (8/04/2009)
The funny thing is the FIA have been working so hard to bring in new teams they've pretty much alienated the current teams.
I think a few manufacturers will be pulling out these next few years to be honest. At one time F1 was the racing cream of the crop. While it isn't wrong to say it was dominated for the most part by only a handful of teams while everybody else didn't have a chance it was about the best drivers and cars in the world bar none.
Now it's starting to become a charity case. A budget race not about the best cars and best drivers but just about putting as many teams as possible on the grid.
The United Kingdom is one of the biggest F1 markets due to the highly inflated price of goods here in the UK. If Mercedes McLaren pull out the amount of people watching F1 in the UK will plummet. It's like trying to host races in Italy without Ferrari participating.
A lot of F1 teams are linked to various nations which is what makes F1 a real international support. Guys like Lewis Hamilton, Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso are national icons and ensure F1 sells out nearly everywhere it goes and makes a fortune in merchandise.
If Lewis Hamilton and McLaren leave what is probably the biggest F1 market dies with their leaving. And for what some nobody team nobody has ever heard of?
F1 is probably going to die in the next few years if these teams start leaving. I know the BBC are extremely unlikely to renew their F1 contract if Lewis Hamilton stops racing as their entire F1 campaign is based around Lewis Hamilton. On the other hand F1 generally only makes it to the papers and the news when its something related to Lewis Hamilton.
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mapoftazifosho 9:49AM (8/04/2009)
Someone should fit Bernie and Mosely with some cement shoes...
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Rich 9:50AM (8/04/2009)
The closing sentence doesn't quite spell it out: the period from the 70s to the early 80s was when F1 was exciting, drivers and driving were the focus, and it was actually worth watching!
Advertisers take note.
The current problems all started when they began allowing turbocharged 1.5 l motors alongside the 3.0 l Cosworths, and when teams introduced ground effect. The first year or two of of turbos and ground effect were interesting. After that, it was dull. Like watching slot cars.
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davedrastic 9:55AM (8/04/2009)
I agree that the manufacturers leaving is a good thing for F1. The teams I support(ed) are Williams and Jordan. Williams have been a shadow of their former selves when up against the bloated manufacturer teams. You can see even with Brawn it's a struggle for anyone to keep up with their endless spending. Teams like Williams and Jordan are the heart and soul of F1. Not bankrolled entities such as Force India and Red Bull. Not temporary fill-in's like Midland, or should that be Spyker. Things didn't go wrong when we lost Honda. Things went wrong when we lost Prost, Sauber. Jordan, Arrows. I could care less about Ferrari - they're obviously perverting the sport to suit their ends. Let them start up their own tournament, leave them to it.
F1 would do well to look after McLaren and Williams, nourish the new teams and the rest can go rot.
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AZZO45b 11:37AM (8/04/2009)
Williams sucked off the corporate tit as well... remember BMW? Their results were average at best. They also use a customer Toyota (& Toyota might be the next to go)
BTW, Force India is also the other Mercedes Powered F1 team. All of you cheering this possible exit.... WTF do you expect to power this "new" F1? Cosworth?? This ain't the 1970's & 80's gents!!!
davedrastic 12:11AM (8/05/2009)
Azzo - yes i'm aware of the above. As has McLaren been sucking the corporate teet, albeit with more success than Williams. But if you look at McLaren, what do you see? I see a huge corporate entity, with a seemingly endless budget, willing and able to deploy unsportsman like tactics to ensure victory. There is no soul anymore. Each season there budget either pays off, or perhaps it doesn't. They're half as bad as Ferrari nowadays.
Take a look at Williams and what do you see? A racing team with an impeccable and enviable track record up to the point that the sport gets taken over (temporarily) by manufacturer teams willing and able to throw billions of dollars away as a mere marketing exercise, with or without successful results achieved. Essentially they've been shat on from above. They've always had partnerships with manufacturers and engine suppliers, that is of course normal, but you'll also remember that they were the first to step away from FOTA in it's recent attempts to spoil the F1 party.
I don't understand your dismissing of Cosworth either. I don't have the facts or the stats to show exactly how wrong you are, but I'm pretty sure it's fair to say that Cosworth have a tremendous record of success within F1, across a numnber of decades and with a number of teams. In any event, even if the engines are considerably slower than Mercedes offering, I personally don't see that as a bad thing. F1 cars are plenty fast and we've seen that no matter what the technical restricitions are, that the teams somehow find significant improvements in speed year in, year out. So Cosworths engines will be just fine and dandy. More to the point, if a sizeable proportion of the field are using the same engines, and working to a similar (low) budget, then we have the prospect of new teams building great sporting heritages. Perhaps USF1 will become as loved as Jordan, not likely but the potential is there. And the spectacle would be improved if the over budgeted cars were to leave and allow the smaller, newer teams to get on with it, in their own messy way.
As to the drivers, how difficult is it for the viewer to clearly identify who is a good driver. Button has been relatively sidelined for a number of years, give him a faster car, and bamm he's no.1 and considered a truly great driver. Well what about if you put Sutil in that car, Piquet even. We don't know because at present and for the last 10-15 years, the strong cars have been so far ahead of the rest of the pack. Sure we can see that Hamilton is better than Kovaleinen, that Raikonnen is better than Coullthard (who isn't). We need the evening up of the field so that we can see more spectacular races, with on-track overtaking and the building up of new drivers that we can actually see are good as opposed to being told they're good by the pundits.
In any case F1 had a plenty good fanbase in the 70s' and I could care less if the girlfriends were to stop following this sport.
Pat 11:09AM (8/04/2009)
You have to stop harping on the past.
You can't simply snap back to 1978 or 1981 and have the success you had then with today's conditions! That's like expecting to make killer sales with a new Radio Shack franchise in your local (un)dead mall!
This is now, and whether you like it or not, major manufacturers play a major role in the race.
You can blame manufacturers and Bernie and Max as much as you want but they all got to where they are today with the help (willing or otherwise) of the greats from those past eras.
Look at 2009! People like generic things, people like gadgets, people like change, and people get bored very quickly.
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JZeke 11:18AM (8/04/2009)
Seems like what F1 needs is an "open" formula again. One where all the innovations that made F1 from 1967 to 1985 so interesting. Just cap the cost structure, but let manufacturers build whatever the hell they want. Vacuum traction, turbo 4 cylinders, active aero... why not? Thats what would appeal to a company like Mercedes - a proving ground for some really crazy tech to sell on a road car in the future.
If the budgets were capped low enough, and safety regs really the only un-negotiable part of the deal I think the interest for manufacturers and fans alike would keep F1 from becoming an expensive NASCAR.
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kfj 11:27AM (8/04/2009)
The MB rumor has been going around for a while. The last rumor I heard is they are just want out of Mclaren but they want to to continue to supply F1 teams with engines.
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hyundaifans.com 2:00PM (8/04/2009)
I just cannot see Mercedes completely exiting F1. Its not going to happen.
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