Audi and Mercedes received’t face one another on the System 1 grid till 2026 on the earliest. However the Ingolstadt producer is already shaping as much as renew hostilities with its home rival.
“Rings are the brand new stars” Audi declared on social media because the long-rumoured information of its impending arrival within the premier class of motorsport was confirmed. However we must wait 4 years to see the 4 rings of Audi sharing a monitor with the three-pointed star of Mercedes.
Audi additionally made some extent of reminding everybody that Mercedes’ dominant F1 operation shouldn’t be primarily based in Germany, the house of each manufacturers. Mercedes’ chassis are constructed in Brackley – on the website beforehand utilized by Brawn GP, Honda and British American Racing – and its engines are in-built Brixworth.
Now Audi is getting ready to provide its F1 engines close to its Ingolstadt headquarters, at its Competence Heart Motorsport in Neuburg an der Donau. “That is the primary time in additional than a decade {that a} System 1 energy practice might be in-built Germany,” it proclaimed on the prime of its press launch asserting its arrival in F1, referring to BMW’s engine operation which ceased in 2009.
Certainly, Audi’s digs at Mercedes started nicely earlier than their F1 entry grew to become public information as we speak. Again in December, when Audi wrote to the FIA indicating it meant to enter F1, Audi made some extent of congratulating the game’s governing physique for making certain a good conclusion to the 2021 season till the ultimate lap of the championship.
The importance of that would not be missed, for on the time Mercedes was nonetheless deliberating whether or not to submit a proper enchantment over the controversial ultimate lap of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, throughout which the championship slipped from the grasp of its driver Lewis Hamilton. The row which solid a shadow over the conclusion of the season ultimately led the FIA to dispense with the providers of the one that took the decision.
The rivalry between Audi and Mercedes stored the DTM well-supplied with motion all through the noughties. At occasions this spilled over into some spectacular controversies.
On the Circuit de Catalunya 15 years in the past Audi staff principal Wolfgang Ullrich took the astonishing step of ordering its seven remaining vehicles to withdraw mid-race after a number of clashes with their Mercedes rivals. “The Mercedes drivers used each alternative to remove our vehicles,” the producer alleged in a post-race assertion.
Eight years later the boot was on the opposite foot. Ullrich was banned from the pit lane for the rest of the 2015 season after ordering driver Timo Scheider to ‘push out’ two of the Mercedes vehicles on the Pink Bull Ring, which he did. Audi had been additionally stripped of the 62 factors they scored within the race and fined €200,000.
Within the greater pond of System E, the rivalry between Mercedes and Audi by no means flared up in fairly the identical approach throughout the temporary interval each had been lively within the collection. However Audi’s non-too-subtle digs at their home market rival might be pink meat to the producers of Drive to Survive as they make plans for season 10.
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2022 F1 season
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