The German publication Bild has been busy today with two stories that will have some interesting repercussions if they turn out to be true. One is that Timo Glock is leaving Marussia by mutual consent and is looking to start a new career in DTM. This would not be a surprise. Glock has been with the team since the start but the progress has been slow and the team needs money. Glock had a deal to be paid but it is quite possible that a driver with money has turned up who will make it worthwhile for the team to pay off Glock and still have plenty left to put into the kitty in 2013. The big question is who that person might be. There has been some speculation that it could be Vitaly Petrov, the Russian being a sensible choice for the Russian team, particularly given that there is a Russian GP coming up in 2014. A Russian in a Russian team would probably be a big help getting the team sponsors. It could be any number of others if the team has decided to go for a pay-driver. Given that the team’s budget is going to be missing TV money this year, unless the Formula One group has a change of heart, it makes some sense to find a second pay-driver to race alongside new boy Max Chilton. It would not make much sense for this to be another new boy. Glock was quoted in Bild saying that he is leaving the team on good terms and speculates that he might join the BMW DTM team.
The second suggestion is that Williams F1 shareholder Toto Wolff is going to leave his Executive Director role at Williams to take over Norbert Haug’s job at Mercedes. This makes some sense but is not going to be easy to achieve because Wolff has around 19 percent of the shares in Williams, unless of course he was representing others when he bought into the team, which is possible. Wolff is well-connected at Mercedes and is a shareholder in HWA GmbH, the company that prepares the Mercedes DTM cars. Wolff’s MarchSixteen Finance owns 12 percent of HWA, but he brought others into the company, notably Nasser Bin Khaled al Thani Holding from Qatar. There is the suggestion that he may also buy a share in the team. The Mercedes team announced recently that it had acquired the shareholding that had belonged to Abu Dhabi investment group Aabar and so might be open to selling the shares again if the money was right.
It will be interesting to see how these stories develop in the next few days.
Autosport seem to back this up;
“Sources with knowledge of the situation have revealed, however, that a deal has been agreed in principle but that there remain issues to still be resolved.”
Will be interesting to see just how qualified they (at Williams) believe Susie Wolff to be once Toto leaves. Will she continue on as their test driver?
I expect Mercedes will suddenly realise she’s the answer to their test driver needs. Not sure it’s doing much for women in F1 but there you go.
It does make a measure of sense… She already competes in DTM, so there’s a bit of cross-series marketing potential and she can continue to test if she desires it.
She’s never destined for a F1 race seat, so what does she have to lose?
It’s unfortunately here doesn’t seem to be any women currently competitive at the level required to be anything other than a marketing tool and/or a back-marker.
She used to compete in DTM. She has now stopped that.
Jo how do you think this will leave Williams if the move goes ahead? It sounded like Toto was becoming very integral to their future plans. Will Mercedes be able to benifit technically as well?
Jo?
Joe, is Williams locked in with Renault for next year? If Force India go to Ferrari, that leaves Mercedes with only one customer. Although that , Ayers constitute a conflict of interest for Wolff.
Gotta love auto-corect, ‘ could constitute ‘
Interesting news regarding Glock. It seems that also from his own perspective he must have known that he was not going anywhere with that team, and with no other options on the table it seems like the right move to look elsewhere, provided the DTM rumors are correct.
One minor thing… Don’t mean to be a smart ass but that newspaper is called “Bild”.
Ja.
I love the Bild. Never read the damn thing, but I went to the cinema once during a German exchange trip (Erin Brockovich, not bad) and they had an advert on during the trailers.
It was just spliced together footage of dozens of Germans sportsmen and women (including Schumi – I forget if any othe F1 drivers were involved) saying “umm” and “errr”, hestitating during interviews and so on. It went on long enough to get deliberately slightly comic (to a Brit, maybe not to the Germans) and then just cut to the words “What they really want to say, is in The Bild”.
Says something about the ad that I remember it so many years later. And can’t remember much of Erin Brockovich.
“I love the Bild. Never read the damn thing [...]”
There’s your problem right there
Poor Sir Frank — he hasn’t had much luck with his successor management, has he? I wonder who the next lucky individual will be.
Although it is interesting to note that Adam Parr’s bio page on the Williams website is still active for some reason. Could be just carelessness of course, or that they haven’t got round to deleting the page yet (although that would not be typical Williams behaviour).
But maybe it’s possible that the sword that Adam Parr fell on to get Williams signed up to the Concorde Agreement was one of those comedy retractable ones, with no actual blood shed, and that if Toto Wolff moves to Mercedes, Adam could mysteriously turn up at Grove again?
No.
Did he and Mr E really did not see eye to eye?
I think that is self-evident by what happened.
It would be ironic in a way if Petrov was to go to Marussia as a pay driver as didn’t his drive in Brasil cost them $10m?
Yes.
Nothing like creating demand for one’s service.
Hah!
Who will be the second caterham driver?
No idea.
Wow, not even a sniff, given your connections at the parent company?
Read the Blog Rules and it is all explained very carefully.
Interesting times Joe – Marussia makes sense and the other nonsense. Quite a shocker for Williams I think, if it pans out
Joe,
Almost all the teams on the grid could now be described as ‘troubled’. Even Ferrari (potential trouble making a success of in house design of 2014 engine) mclaren (less insight into new merc engine as it develops)
Then there is Mercedes (indifferent board) Williams (obvious woes) marussia (no money) lotus (fake title sponsor) caterham (under pressure) force india (owners in trouble)
Tough times
Fake title sponsor? The team does not have a title sponsor – as yet.
Lotus ( or proton/drb hicom/whatever you want to call them just license the name to Genii. But havent Genii been considering selling the team on???
They announced they weren’t (well, ‘currently considering it’) a few weeks ago.
Any chance of Jonathan Williams stepping up from advising Isport International?? Long time in the coming seeing as Clare is now Head of Communications. Would be nice to see Williams run by Williams
As a Dutchy it ticks me off tat everyone is like “A Russian team should hire a Russian driver. especially with the Russian GP coming up…” or “An Indian team should hire an Indian driver. especially with the Indian GP”…..
But when Spyker took the gamble to buy Midland all Dutch companies ignored them and ING went to Renault because “sponsoring a Dutch team wouldn’t reflect well on their international ambitions”
How things could have been if the Dutch companies did support them….
I can’t wait for Toto’s graphic novel outlining his story. “Art of War” was v. informative.
Joe – Timo seems to be a talented individual. Any idea why his career never really took off in the sport? Did the sporting directors not really rate him? Is it a sponsorship thing?
With a number of good drivers leaving F1 this year, I hope it bodes well for other categories which can be strengthened as a result. In decades gone by, there were multiple strong motorsport categories and that was great for the fans.
Timo was highly regarded but he was beaten too often last year by newboy Charles Pic. This took him off the shopping list of most teams. Ditto Kamui, ditto Kovalainen. If you are going to be paid in F1 these days, you have to be beat the youngsters and be worth the money.