Tag: toto wolff

Williams F1 Team and Mercedes Announce Long Term Engine Deal

The Williams F1 Team and Mercedes Benz have announced an engine agreement for 2014.

The agreement covers the engines and the Energy Recovery System (ERS), which will be able to deploy ten times more energy than the current KERS. The new ERS will harvest energy from the exhaust turbine and rear axle. The transmission and the chassis will be supplied by Williams.

Williams founder and team principal, Frank Williams said, “I’m delighted to announce our new association with Mercedes-Benz for the 2014 Formula One season and beyond.”

“We are also pleased to conclude this agreement early in the season and we very much look forward to working with Mercedes AMG HPP (High Performance Powertrains) in developing our 2014 race car,” said Deputy Team Principal, Claire Williams

Toto Wolff, Executive Director of Mercedes AMG Petronas and shareholder at Williams, concluded by saying, “It is a win-win situation for both HPP and Williams, which will ensure HPP is able to supply at least three teams on a long-term basis under the new regulations and could open interesting new perspectives for technology transfer.”

May 30, 2013
Monaco Grand Prix Preview Quotes: Mercedes F1 team

Here are the Monaco Grand Prix Preview Quotes from the Mercedes F1 team:

Nico Rosberg: Monaco is always a fantastic weekend and it’s great to race in the city where I live. Knowing that all my family and friends are watching makes it very special and I love being able to drive from home into the paddock on a scooter! The surroundings definitely make Monaco the coolest track on the calendar and the atmosphere over the weekend is great. I have good memories from the race last year after finishing in second place and I hope we can get another good result this time around. At the moment we have a good car for qualifying which helps in Monaco as it’s the most important qualifying session of the year as track position is so important. So that might be helpful for us but there are so many unknowns, especially with the tyres, so we will just have to wait and see.

Lewis Hamilton: Whilst there hasn’t been a lot of time since Barcelona, we’ve been working hard to put the disappointment of the last race behind us and focus on the opportunities ahead. Monaco is one of my favourite races of the year and I love driving the streets there. As a driver, you know that you have to perform on every single lap and it’s a challenge that I really enjoy. It’s a real experience to see the barriers flashing past at high speed and I love the fact that the fans can get so close to the track making for a great atmosphere. Perhaps more than at many other tracks, qualifying and getting the best possible track position is crucial in Monaco, but we have to keep our focus on Sunday as well and keep working to improve our race pace. Everyone is working really hard and I know we can get there. We just need to keep motivated and work it out together.

Ross Brawn: Monaco is a not usually a race to which teams bring many updates because the track conditions change so much across the weekend. The priority is always to get the drivers comfortable with the unique challenge the circuit presents and to give them a set-up they feel confident pushing to the limit. Both Nico and Lewis have historically been incredibly competitive in Monaco and this weekend will certainly allow their talent to shine. The engineering team will be focused on getting the most from our car on the slow, bumpy layout and there will of course be particular emphasis on achieving tyre consistency and durability. Meanwhile, our work continues back at Brackley and Brixworth to fully understand the reasons for our below-par race performance in Barcelona, in order to develop the right solutions for the upcoming circuits where high tyre usage could once again be a limitation for us.

Toto Wolff: Monaco is the most famous race in our sport and a special moment of every Formula One season. The narrow streets will give our drivers the perfect opportunity to display their talents and, historically, the team’s cars have performed strongly there in terms of pure speed. However, it is clear to everybody in the team that, while we have a strong car right now, we are not able to use that performance properly on Sunday afternoon. Although overtaking in Monaco is difficult, we cannot afford to be complacent in terms of tyre management and we will need to do significantly better than we managed in Barcelona in order to score a strong result. We have only scored points with one of our cars at the past three races and this is something we must improve quickly, beginning next weekend in Monte-Carlo.

May 22, 2013
Mercedes would offer Robert Kubica an F1 test

Mercedes has said that it would be willing to give Robert Kubica a Formula One test as soon as the Polish driver is ready to make a return to single-seaters.

Until now, the German Formula One team has declined to comment on reports that Kubica has been testing in Mercedes’ sophisticated F1 simulator at Brackley.

But Kubica himself confirmed the reports, prompting chief executive Toto Wolff to admit that the former BMW and Renault driver is currently “helping” the Mercedes Formula One team.

Wolff told the BBC, “If there’s any chance of getting him back in a DTM touring car or F1 cockpit, we’d love to do it.”

“Any team would love to have a Robert Kubica.”

Wolff did however clarify that Kubica’s main focus is still rallying. “He is somebody I have known for 10 years but it’s absolutely his call how he wants to help us and his main focus is rallying,” he said.

In January, Kubica tested a Mercedes DTM car at Valencia’s Circuit Ricardo Tormo in his first taste of a high-performance track car since injuring his right arm in a near-fatal crash during a rally in 2011. He is currently taking part in the European Rally Championship and WRC2, but Kubica himself said that he believed he could still make a return to Formula One as soon as he regains movement in his wrist.

Wolff said that it is up to Kubica to let him know when he would like to test.

“This is where he wants to be successful and what he wants to do in the future.”

Kubica last took part in a Formula One Grand Prix back in 2010 with the Renault team. He has worked very hard on his recovery since then and many an F1 fan has expressed their hopes of seeing him return.

May 3, 2013
Spanish F1 Grand Prix Preview Quotes: Mercedes F1 team

Here are the Spanish F1 Grand Prix Preview quotes from the Mercedes F1 team:

Nico Rosberg: I’m looking forward to traveling to Spain next weekend. We know that the car went very well at the Circuit de Catalunya in pre-season testing so I am hopeful that we can have a strong weekend. We will have to wait and see how our pace compares however. I’ve been in the factory for a couple of days this week, on the simulator and meeting with the team, and everyone has been working hard to make progress on our race day performance. It will be an interesting weekend and once we see how everyone performs in Barcelona, it should give a good idea of how the rest of the season will look.

Lewis Hamilton: It feels like a long time since Bahrain so we’re all looking forward to getting to Barcelona next weekend and starting to get into the routine of the European season. The short break has been good however, and I’ve had the chance to catch up with family and friends, and also spend some time at the factory with the guys, working on our efforts to improve. We’ve been boosted by the results that we’ve had at the start of the season and to come away from the first four races with two third and two fifth places feels like a real achievement. I’m feeling very comfortable in the car now and we know the areas that we need to improve so a lot of effort is being put in to close that gap to the front-runners. Barcelona should be a good test as we know the circuit so well having completed most of the pre-season test programme there. The weekend should be a good benchmark of the progress we have made since then.

Ross Brawn: In the two weeks since we returned from Bahrain, there has been a lot of hard work taking place in Brackley and Brixworth to prepare for the start of the European season in Barcelona next weekend. We have focused our efforts in two key areas; finalising our upgrade package for Spain and understanding our comparative lack of race pace in Bahrain. We have made progress in the latter area and will evaluate some developments over the upcoming race weekends to help improve the situation. We’re not there yet but we are making progress and of course, performing in the race is what really counts. The Circuit de Catalunya is a circuit that we know well and we have a lot of data from the two pre-season tests to help prepare for the weekend. However in the late spring conditions, we can expect the track to be of a very different nature to what we experienced earlier this year. Overtaking is more difficult there than at some of the early season tracks and, of course, every team will be bringing new developments so the weekend should provide an interesting challenge.

Toto Wolff: The three-week break between the Bahrain and Spanish Grands Prix was welcome, as it gave us extra time to analyse in detail what happened at the last race. We have built a good picture of our varying levels of race performance and why we under-performed overall in Bahrain. In Barcelona, we will test some solutions aimed at improving our tyre management in addition to our planned upgrade package. The circuit itself is well known as a benchmark for aerodynamic performance and we performed strongly there at the end of winter testing. The track conditions and temperatures will be very different on the race weekend, though, so we must dial the car in to those circumstances. Our target is to improve our Sunday afternoon performance to match what we have delivered on Saturday in the past two races. It will certainly be interesting to see what gains everybody has made since the last time we were at the circuit and how the planned upgrade packages work from car to car.

May 3, 2013