Mercedes rubbishes Eddie Jordan’s claim they will quit after next season

2018 F1 season

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Mercedes has categorically rejected Eddie Jordan’s claim they will revert to being an engine supplier only and cut their factory F1 team at the end of 2018.

Jordan’s quote, reported in Auto Bild Motorsport following the Monaco Grand Prix weekend, prompted a firm denial from the team’s executive director Toto Wolff.

“Monaco is a place where people like to party and it seems like somebody did a bit too much of that,” he said.

“The reports are completely baseless and reflect nothing more than the mischievous speculation of one individual.”

“Mercedes has firm contracts for its participation in Formula One until the end of 2020 – and is currently in discussions about the next competitive cycle with the sport’s new owners.”

Mercedes has participated in Formula One continuously since 1994, when it returned as an engine supplier to Sauber. It switched to McLaren the following season and enjoyed championship success with them in 1998, 1999 and 2008.

At the end of 2009 Mercedes took over Brawn GP to create its own factory team. Since 2014 Mercedes cars and drivers have held a monopoly on championship success. However the team is facing stronger competition from Ferrari this year, prompting Wolff to admit they are no longer the title favourites.

Lewis Hamilton is contracted to the team until the end of next season. Valtteri Bottas is yet to have his position confirmed beyond the end of this year.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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30 comments on “Mercedes rubbishes Eddie Jordan’s claim they will quit after next season”

  1. Matthew Coyne
    7th June 2017, 21:10

    Eddie Jordan is just the clown of the grid, it is very rare he says something that turns out to be true he just says sensationalist things to get attention.

    1. Out of interest….I wonder how many of Jordan’s past scoops have turned out to be true…

      I do not want to call it a bull(expletive)-ometer …but some kind of statistic would be nice.

      I seem to remember a few of his scoops turning out to be true…cannot recall which though.

      I very much doubt this is true though.

      1. I believe he genuinely broke the news of Mercedes hiring both Schumacher & Hamilton, Ferrari letting Massa go and Bernie being effectively kicked out of FOM.

        1. @optimaximal The thing with EJ is that he takes stories that are already out there & ‘confirms’ them. Sometimes he gets it right but more often he actually misses the mark. When he gets things right he & whatever broadcaster he’s part of at the time talk it up like he pulled a rabbit out of a hat from nowhere when in reality what he was saying was something that was already floating around.

          It’s often made to look at if EJ brought up Hamilton leaving McLaren for Mercedes from nowhere & that it was unbelievable until it happened. However that was actually a story that had been going around as far back at Silverstone weekend that year. I recall Sky talking about it quite a bit during there coverage that weekend & how it was more than just paddock speculation.

          It was the same with Schumacher, EJ was the 1st to go on record saying it was happening but it was something that was already out there & looked certain before EJ ‘confirmed’ it.

          Same with the Massa story, It was obvious they weren’t keeping him & the same can be said with Bernie, Martin Brundle did a pretty good interview with Bernie just after the Liberty deal was done & he came away from it saying that he believed Bernie wasn’t going to be around once the takeover was complete based on what Bernie was saying to him.

        2. @optimal He also said in 2013 that Alonso would join McLaren Honda in 2015. That was a good prediction though.

      2. He predicted Hamilton’s move to Merc in 2012.

        1. Even a broken clock

    2. Matthew Coyne, to be fair to Eddie Jordan, in this case his original comments have been misinterpreted by a number of organisations.

      What Eddie Jordan said was that, if he were the head of Mercedes’s motorsport division, he would revert back to being just an engine supplier after the 2018 season as, in his opinion, Mercedes had already achieved their marketing goals with their team and it would be more cost effective for them in the longer term to cut back to their core business, which was their engine division. He then went on to say that he had had that discussion with Dr Zetsche, the chairman of Daimler AG, and that Dr Zetsche had not said anything to the effect that he thought that Jordan’s position was wrong.

      In some ways, what Jordan was saying was more of a personal opinion that, if he were in Dr Zetsche’s position, he would close down the team after 2018 and revert back to being an engine supplier only.

      1. Thanks @anon That makes sense. Not saying I agree with EJ’s opinion but it makes more sense that this was just his opinion as opposed to him claiming what will be.

        Personally I don’t see how they would get the same marketing impact by reverting back to just being an engine supplier while they are such a solid factory team. And I would ask EJ about the current concept that one pretty much needs to be a factory team to succeed under the current format. Seems assigning pu’s to non-factory teams is a sure way to not win the Championships.

        1. @robbie, I imagine that the reason he was suggesting that Mercedes should cut back to being an engine supplier is because their core engine manufacturing division does still turn a slight profit, albeit that division does also include profits derived from all of the racing series that Mercedes is involved in (such as DTM, Formula 3 and so forth).

          With regards to the question of needing to be a factory team, the reasoning might be that Mercedes could instead choose to work closely with one team that effectively becomes the factory team, much as they used to do with McLaren or Renault did with Red Bull.

          It is commonly asserted that a team needs to be a factory team these days to win a championship, but that may be in part because they are also the wealthiest and best resourced teams in the championship – adopting a very close relationship with a particular customer would probably still be quite competitive.

    3. It is my view that Eddie has lost the plot and rarely say’s anything intelligent these days.

  2. That was really poor form from Jordan. I know he likes to be the exception to the rule and outlandish in his comments but I think he went too far with this. While I agree that I think Sebastian will stay with Ferrari next year, it is definitely not for the same reason!

  3. a lot of his crazy scoops turned out to be correct

    1. a lot of his crazy scoops turned out to be correct

      Jordan is nothing more than a clown, a foolish one at that. Look at him hopping up & down in front of the camera while he makes a statement.

      If someone like him predicts 50 possibilities, by the law of averages 6 or 7 may come to pass. He will then latch on to those and make it appear that he is the next Nostradamus while the rest are quickly forgotten.

  4. If this would be true (it isn’t) then Max Verstappen would be switching to Mercedes next year. Toto Wolff recently said “yes” in a yes or no interview where he was asked “Will Max Verstappen drive for Mercedes in the (near) future?”.

    But then again, why would he switch, even if it’s a WDC winning car? Even though he has lots of years ahead of him, Red Bull won’t want to have him back in 2019 and something tells me switching to Ferrari isn’t an option, so that would leave him somewhere in the midfield.

  5. I don’t believe that Eddie Jordan has that filter between your brain and mouth that screen out the stupid comments. The BS just flows.

    1. Most brains don’t need a filter

      1. No, mouths do.

  6. While I hit reply on my previous comment, the following popped into my head: “Why is Mercedes trying so hard to have everyone know that this is NOT the case?”

    I mean, isn’t it strange that a huge multi-billion euro company responds this quickly and in such an official way to something one possibly drunk Irishman has said?

    1. If it was just Eddie being his usual self they probably would have ignored him (just like everyone else does). I think the only reason Mercedes felt they had to respond was because it was repeated in a leading German language motor racing journal.

    2. That is how Merc reacts to things. They did the same with the sabbotage theories for example, there are a couple more instances where this happened. For some reason they think this is the best way to handle things

    3. petebaldwin (@)
      8th June 2017, 14:00

      @addvariety I don’t believe for a second that they are going to walk away from the sport in 2018 but if they were going to, I would expect them to strenuously deny it now! Saying they are planning to leave soon will mess up their technical partnerships, will stop any new sponsorship coming in and will lead to all of their staff looking to leave. If they leave (they won’t), it’ll be a sudden announcement at the end of a season

      1. @petebaldwin I agree, though there’s a difference between actively denying it and just ignoring it. That’s actually the point I tried to make, since normally companies just don’t respond to gossip.

  7. It is not like Toto is in charge of decisions at Merc. He just repeats what he is told by his bosses. Eddie is just saying what he would do if it was his decision to make. F1 is run on BS. You cannot believe 100% what anyone says.

    1. Hmm, well, not in charge of the decisions at Mercedes the conglomerate, but as far as their specific F1 effort goes, methinks TW has few overlords.

  8. Tony Mansell
    8th June 2017, 14:13

    Well when you dress like a drunk parrot, chances are you’re going to speak like one. Ejit.

    1. Well when you dress like a drunk parrot, chances are you’re going to speak like one

      But even the drunkest parrot would not hop around as if someone has got a mini-tazer up the proverbial every time it makes a comment on TV.

  9. Neil (@neilosjames)
    8th June 2017, 17:25

    Not saying I necessarily believe Eddie Jordan, but given the history of major manufacturer involvement in F1 it wouldn’t really be a shock.

    Renault are on their third foray, having done eight full seasons the first time, then nine the second. Honda’s lastest visit only lasted three years, Toyota did eight, BMW did four (with Sauber), Ford (Jaguar) managed five.

    Big manufacturers have a habit of only hanging around for as long as it suits them, and 2018 will be Mercedes’ ninth year. If their board have decided – now the period of dominance seems to be over – that they feel like doing something else, it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

  10. richard cantelo (@)
    16th June 2017, 20:23

    Of course if you repeat a one hundred pieces of rumour, by the law of averages, some will turn out to be true!

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