Mercedes 2018 championship celebrations

Lowe expects no loss of motivation at Mercedes

RaceFans Round-up

Posted on

| Written by

In the round-up: Williams chief technical officer doubts the team will be suffering from a loss of motivation as it aims to continue its streak of Formula 1 success.

What they say

Mercedes are aiming for their sixth consecutive sweep of the championship titles this year and the team’s former executive director for technical sees no sign they my relent:

It’s always very difficult to maintain motivation to continue to win when you’ve already been doing it. I think that’s a problem we already faced when I was there before. I think they have the right approach to it so I think they’re going to be difficult to beat.

We saw that again [last] year. I think it was a competition between two teams and two drivers and the better ones won, of each. Because you saw the cracks appearing eventually in the opposition. Mercedes is a great team. I know how good it is. It will be very difficult for anyone to beat them.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

Social media

Notable posts from Twitter, Instagram and more:


https://twitter.com/TomGaymor/status/1087389338814558208

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

Comment of the day

There’ll be more live coverage of testing this year – but is it on the wrong platform?

For a minute there I thought it was going to be broadcast live on YouTube like Formula E. But no, stick it behind a paywall. Thanks Sky!
@Dave124

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Nathan and Salut Gilles!

If you want a birthday shout-out tell us when yours is via the contact form or adding to the list here.

Author information

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...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

24 comments on “Lowe expects no loss of motivation at Mercedes”

  1. I will save you the clickbait, Indycar’s “star rookie” for that article is no Pato O’Ward. As it should have been.

    ;)

    1. @faulty Ha! And “plucked” nonetheless!

  2. Why are people concerned about the platform for the testing stream? Re-streams for motorsports are as easy to find as a google search. Sure it’s legal greywater and there’s some minor inconvenience finding another as they get pulled. But grow a backbone people.

    I don’t imagine anyone is expecting the Vietnam race will last the ages, a few years and then done is my bet. It’s a street-circuit after all, half the problem with Malaysia and Turkey were the empty stadiums… If they just came and went without that sad imagery it probably would have been “job well done.”

    1. @skipgamer as a frequent “streamer”, yeah it’s no biggie, but it would be amaizing if they showed a very irrelevant on track action on youtube for free just for the heck of it. They could well make a show out of it and turn testing interesting, interviewing people, showing the changes for the season or whatever.

      Also, going through streams is a huge effort… for testing, I’d not do it at all…

      1. Especially that more and more sites force you to disable Adblock ans then you have to close dozen of various pop-up and ad before finally reaching the video then set full screen and better not leave it… Except that the steam will freeze and you will have to start again. Quite irritating but that’s the price for “free” content.

        Actually I think they would earn a lot more by having testing on YouTube and accessible to all. That’s not the kind of content critical for those paying sky, only a nice addition. And surely it won’t make someone suddenly decide that it is worth paying sky for F1. But in the other hand it would be a great door for those not yet watching F1 to have a first glimpse at it without having to go through annoying streams or pay a fortune. F1 is really missing an access door to the sport to attract new viewers.

  3. i don’t get why cotd is blaming sky for testing not been on youtube as even if they didn’t have the rights it wouldn’t be on youtube because the bbc & itv both had the same sort of exclusivity deals as do many broadcasters around the world. plus there is the f1tv service which f1 themselves want people to subscribe to.

    also let’s not ignore the likelihood that the bbc, itv or even channel 4 would likely not broadcast any coverage of testing at all, they never bothered with it in the past & why would any of them dedicate a whole afternoon of tv time to something not many are actually going to watch?

    sky or no sky live testing or any other live track action would never be on youtube so your blaming the wrong people just because it’s cool to hate sky who have done a far better job with covering f1 with far more coverage that’s far more in depth than any of the fta broadcasters ever managed. as i say when did any of them ever bother with testing?

    and let us not forget that in 2013 sky themselves produced live coverage of testing, can’t see any of the other broadcasters ever doing that.

    1. How dare you bring logic into the senseless moaning about Sky! They’re meant to ignore the fact that they paid a hefty sum to get exclusivity to the content, even after allowing C4 to broadcast the British GP live, pay their employees to go out and cover the testing just to give away the content that they do produce for free!

  4. What’s with these numerous quotes from Lowe pontificating on all matters F1? It feels like we get at least one each week.

    Let him get back to fixing the Williams car :-)

    1. @phylyp: It’s fixed. Now Lowe is looking to ‘fix’ all the other problems in F1. One soundbite at a time.

      1. Hahaha – both of you.

  5. ”Because you saw the cracks appearing eventually in the opposition.”
    – He isn’t exactly wrong although more precisely on the driver-side.

    Regarding the ASEAN post-article: It’s 20 drivers from ten teams, not 18 drivers from nine teams.

    Bruce Mclaren’s quote from 1967, though.

  6. Regarding comment of the day… Not sure the FE race in Marakesh was live on YT. Tried to watch it but on the official channel i only found some kids commentating about it. Was it really live on YouTube?

    1. Well sort of (not) @gechichan, in that yes you could in principe see it on YouTube, but only if you (or your VPN) were in a locale without any broadcast contract for it. Otherwise only practice was viewable.

      They should have communicated that a whole lot better. (and finding a VPN-able locale to see it was a lot of trouble).

      I was sort of lucky that the Dutch hospital I was in (successful kidney transplant, Jay) had a near-instant EUR2.99/day deal, which included eurosport as a channel, so I could still see the 2nd half of the race.

      Now out of the hospital and temporarily in NL, I guess I will be looking for a Ziggo weekend pass or something, just miss it, or find time to cycle through all the locales with VPN, not yet sure.

      1. Rigth you are there @bosyber – for me, it told me to go and look at the race on Eurosport @gechichan – I guess I could get that with a cable provider who has EUROSport in a sports package, an IPTV package that offers them or on sattelite (realistically the second and third options only since no one offers cable where I live). Off course all of these are pay2view options.

  7. There you go Britain, Bruce Mclaren said it.

  8. Sometimes, IndyCar manages to out-IndyCar itself. Where else in the world would Marcus Ericsson be considered a ‘star rookie’? Where else would it be ‘thrilling news’ when Max Chilton adds another year to the running joke without a punchline that is his career?
    Only in IndyCar.

    And they say Formula E is basically a bunch of Formula 1 rejects who spend most of their time patting each other’s backs …

    1. I’m confused by your comment. I think Ericsson would be considered a ‘star rookie’ in most series. He has 5 years experience in what is considered by most to be the top open wheel series in the world. Pretty strong CV.

      1. I’m confused by your confusion caused by my comment. I mean, have you seen his career stats? Like Chilton (who spent two years in F1, speaking of strong CVs), he neither earned his seat in F1, nor justified a single one of his contract extensions (as evidenced by his failure to outscore, outrace or outqualify any of his quickly changing and mostly very inexperienced team mates) with any other argument other than money.
        It speaks volumes about the sorry financial state of F1 that he managed to occupy a seat for so many years, and it speaks volumes about the sorry state of IndyCar when a driver with such an appaling CV in F1 can arrive there and be celebrated as a ‘star rookie’.

        1. Don’t be ridiculous! Of course IndyCar is going to say star rookie. Why wouldn’t they? They’re not going to call anyone crap, AND if they come out of F1 they deserve to be called a star rookie whether they are Lewis Hamilton or not.

        2. nase, Ericsson did in fact outqualify Nasr over the course of the 2016 season – the final score was 12-7 in Ericsson’s favour at the end of the year, with an average advantage of +0.213s over Nasr. He’d have also beaten Nasr if it hadn’t been for the fluke 9th place that Nasr scored in the 2016 Brazilian GP (up until that point, Ericsson had recorded Sauber’s best finish of the season).

          I believe that, if you account for the fact that he had to run overweight relative to Wehrlein (around 8-10kg heavier), Ericsson was also quicker than Wehrlein. Wehrlein’s average advantage in qualifying over the season, which was only a few hundredths of a second, was less than the time that Ericsson is likely to have lost on average due to that weight penalty – it’s been suggested that might have been part of the reason why Mercedes has moved away from Wehrlein over time.

  9. I love the fact that Lewis is the only one still wearing his hat, whilst waving his hat along with everyone else!!! :)

    1. It’s called a “Hat Trick”.

  10. Have Mercedes replaced many staff? given we’re told they built a slower car than Ferrari.

  11. In reference to COTD. Even if Sky didn’t have the broadcast rights in the UK you wouldn’t get the live coverage of testing on platforms like youtube because the wider broadcast contracts don’t allow for it.

    While newer contracts that have been signed under Liberty have added a clause for F1TV there is nothing beyond that.

    And while this is only a test since all the teams will be there & a full world feed production will be made available it fall’s under the same broadcast deals as a race weekend would.

Comments are closed.