Wolff to take Chase Carey's role as head of Liberty in the near future??? God No...please. Brawn yes. Not Wolff.
Would that mean Wolff stepping down from his role as Mercedes-AMG CEO, or Mercedes pulling out of F1? Wolff had some Financial and business management background before entering F1, so he could look like a credible candidate for the job. Brawn ? Well, for an engineer, I was very disappointed with what he came up with to limit the aero so far. But has he any business experience to lead a company like Liberty? That's the point.
To answer your first question, yes, he would have to step down from the team. As far as MB role(rule) in F1, it's plausible they could find someone to take his place. Brawn, IMO, is having to deal with 2 big elephants in the room, namely MB & Renault so in that sense he's having to take "baby steps" going forward instead of "shooting from hips" and making drastic changes in F1 (which I'm for the latter). If they leave, so be it but that's me in making drastic changes. Brawn's having to accommodate everyone from a PR perspective. Not easy as you know this given your knowledge & history of F1.
The article on Planet F1 says : "Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has been tipped as a potential successor to Chase Carey as Formula 1’s CEO once his current contract with the Silver Arrows expires. According to RaceFans.net and their sources, Wolff is reportedly considering his future with Mercedes as the team principal. His current deal runs until the end of the 2020 season, the same time as Carey’s contract as CEO and chairman of Liberty Media is also due to expire. There is due to be a changing of the guard at Mercedes, with current CEO Dieter Zetsche set to step down at the end of May and replaced by Ola Källenius, a strong supporter of electric cars and Mercedes’ entry into Formula E in 2020. The departure of Zetsche and the imminent arrival of Källenius, with Wolff’s relationship with the latter said to be not the most healthy, are the reported possible factors in the 47-year-old Austrian considering his future. RaceFans have also reported that Wolff’s 30 per cent stake in the team, along with Niki Lauda’s 10 per cent share, is subject to a pull option which would allow Mercedes to reacquire the total 40 per cent. Carey was due to step down as CEO at the end of the 2019 season, but signed a 12-month extension to help with the transition towards the new regulations coming into effect in 2021. Carey is expected to remain part of the picture as chairman post-2020, which has created a possible job opportunity for Wolff." With Mercedes entering FE in 2020, I can see them stopping F1 before long. What they would have achieved is colossal already. FE is more "relevant" to a big car manufacturer to sell new products, etc ... If Mercedes pulls out, it means one engine supplier to 6 cars on the grid going. A substantial loss for F1, I would have thought. In these condition, there would be no conflict of interest, since Wolff wouldn't be able to help Mercedes.
[Scarbs] The fuel system parts in blue will be spec items for #F1 in 2021. No real impact on performance or differentiation, only cost reduction. As there are already 2 homologated high pressure 500bar pumps in F1 (Marelli & Bosch). I suspect the tender will go to one of them. Image Unavailable, Please Login The high 500bar pressure pumps sit on each cylinder head driven off the cam. Image Unavailable, Please Login
[AMuS] Newey wants the rules for 2021 to be introduced as late as possible and not in June already because Mercedes has such a big advantage now, so that they could be the only team benefiting from it. He wants the rules to be introduced in December. Newey: "The Mercedes aero department is twice as big as ours. With their lead, they can use 50% of the people to concentrate on the current car and 2020 and the rest can already work fully for 2021. The less time there is, the fairer the starting point for all teams." Mercedes agreed with the rules being introduced in October and not June but Racing Point disagreed. Red Bull is convinced that Mercedes are using Racing Point for their own interest. Because a single vote against it is enough to prevent the postponement to October.
With Daimler's new interest in cost savings to compete in an industry in tumult, isn't it likely that Toto (and all other Mercedes F1 people) will be looking for jobs after 2020? That would make Toto available to replace Carey.
An easy fix is significantly reduce complexity of the aero therefore employing an enormous field of aero boffins won't have a huge advantage.
[Autosport] or [Motorsport] Porsche has built and tested an engine that would have been F1 compatible and formed the basis of a 2021 entry had it committed to joining the world championship.
That doesn't come as a surprise to me. I am sure several F1-compatible power units have been built by differnt companies. That may be simply for evaluation, research or maybe to sway their board to enter F1. It's an excellent engineering exercise if a company has a good R&D department. A prolific company like Porsche in particular revealed in the past that at different times, they had several engines and race cars on the drawing board, some even built as prototypes and tested on the track. Maybe if Red Bull had been knocking at their door with enough cash, they may have had their bespoke power unit long time ago?
Porsche has benefit from sports car racing and associated events. Sales are good and marginal benefit from F1 adds little to the concern.
Why should be applaud what Mercedes is doing? They came into the sport having bought a WCC team, then, as one of the worlds richest car companies, hired more people than most teams put together and spend more money than anyone, lobby to have the rules written for them to a T and influence everyone so much that they get away with almost everything and their closest competition gets harsh punishments whenever possible. That's not racing. Yet somehow we have people telling us how great they are? They have by far the largest team in every department. Mercedes employ some 1500+ people. Ferrari employs 1000. Red Bull only employs 750! It's no wonder they're the most efficient. Red Bull didn't lobby the FIA to get the rules changed for their benefit. They got given the rules and designed the best car and won. And when Ferrari/Mclaren complained, FIA invented rules on the fly in the hope that Red Bull wouldn't pass the tests the next week. The sooner this mess is cleaned up the better. I wonder if FIA/Liberty will learn at all from all the public failures they can take example from when this goes on too long?
I don't think having a Porsche team in F1 would add much to the brand, but becoming an engine supplier like they were once could make sense.
[AMuS] I ntroduction of synthetic fuel starting from 2021. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
They better hurry up to agree on the "new" rules or on maintaining the existing ones. There is only 18 months before the start of 2021, and there are cars to be designed, components to be selected and tested, etc... Also, there are budgets to be raised, and sponsors to convince. I am curious to know who will be accused of having influenced the FIA next time, since paranoia has embrassed F1 after Mercedes repeated success.
https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/144002/fia-plans-thursday-summit-to-break-2021-deadlock The FIA is hoping to get Formula 1 team principals and technical representatives together for a summit in Paris on Thursday to break the deadlock over 2021 rules. Following a frenetic series of discussions over the Canadian Grand Prix weekend to try to make progress on Liberty Media's plans for F1's 2021 overhaul, the situation appears far from settled. With a number of concerns aired by teams about potential problems with the rule proposals that were presented ahead of the Montreal weekend, there is a growing consensus to delay finalising the details of the 2021 changes until later this year. While such a delay had initially only been considered with regards to technical regulations, it is now understood that there are requests to hold back on other matters related to sporting and financial rules too. The situation is complicated by the fact that not all teams agree with the delay - with Renault in particular sceptical about abandoning the intention of having things sorted by the end of this month. The FIA had hoped to get all teams to sign up to delaying the rules decision until October with a letter it circulated over the Canadian GP weekend, but it is understood that Renault had still not committed by Sunday night. Renault fears that if the rules are not set in stone now, there is a danger top teams could drag the process out to stop the rule changes being as dramatic as originally anticipated. There is mounting time pressure to resolve the matter, because the FIA's World Motor Sport Council is due to meet this Friday and it offers the last real opportunity to get the process sorted.
This is exactly the strategy in play now by the top 3. THis is far from over I feel. What they dont like will not arrive in writing to be implemented??
