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 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. 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.

We just need to define what it is,” Wolff said. “Restarts are mega, but when they come as a surprise and you can’t really understand then maybe not so much. I am generally in favour of making great entertainment, but the rulebook of the sport is the key DNA so let us define together what is a safety car, what is a VSC and what is a red flag.” 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. In the first stint Russell was told by his engineer “target plus eight” – indicating they wanted him to run eight laps more on the soft tyre than originally planned. That is 15% of the total race distance, so represents a large change to expectation. And that decision will have to be made now because the architecture and the layout and the concept of the car will get signed off by April for all the teams. So in the next couple of races, they have to make the decision on whether to abandon the concept and go with a whole new concept for next year." 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.

Olaf Scholz has had to break with Germany’s policy of ‘change through trade’. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images However, after a frustrating weekend his post-race claims that the team "didn't listen" to him regarding concerns over the W14, reignited speculation as to whether he could consider what once seemed an unthinkable move away from Mercedes. On his pace throughout the weekend, he added: "I think in practice the pace was there, there was just a couple of big mistakes in every lap. I went into qualifying and I hadn't done a clean lap all weekend so I made life a bit more difficult for myself. Q1 messy, Q2 I got it together finally and it was pretty good in Q3. Happy with that just close but not quite close enough." 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. It is a very proud moment for us to welcome INEOS to Mercedes in their new capacity as principal partner. The company's ambition, dynamism and entrepreneurial flair are a perfect fit for the spirit of Mercedes-AMG Petronas,” he said.

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Verstappen declared the situation a “mess” of the FIA’s own making and noted he could not understand why a safety car or a virtual safety car (VSC) had not been used instead of a red flag. Similarly, George Russell called the red flags unnecessary and McLaren’s Lando Norris implied the FIA was making decisions in an attempt to improve the show. READ MORE: Red Bull and Ferrari are ‘too far ahead' says Russell as Mercedes end Friday practice looking for pace