sport news JONATHAN McEVOY: Mercedes badly miss Niki Lauda... he would have shaken them ... trends now
Mercedes will find out over the next 72 hours whether there is life after Niki Lauda.
It is now just over four years since that inspirational man died aged 70, 43 years after the accident that left him burnt, scarred but unbowed.
He was a ‘warrior’, as Bernie Ecclestone wrote in Mail Sport at the time of the Austrian’s death, adding: ‘I wish in some ways he could have lived a peaceful life but that would not have suited him. He was not a peaceful man. He was a fighter.’
He was also the man who glued Mercedes together. The leader who would cut to the chase. His role, as non-executive chairman, in establishing the team and in bringing in Lewis Hamilton was imperishably important, not least in acting as the link between the team and the board in Stuttgart.
So why bring his name up now? Because Mercedes have finally introduced an upgrade, and you can’t help wondering whether if Lauda were still around this may not have materialised sooner, rather than 15 months into the new regulations.
Formula One legend Niki Lauda (above) was the man who glued Mercedes together
Lewis Hamilton has not been impressed by the recent Mercedes' upgrade
Mercedes long stuck to the line that the car’s performance did not match their simulated figures. I can imagine Niki declaring: ‘Bull****, I’ll give you some data — ONE SECOND behind the Red Bulls,’ and then calling for a change of direction on the spot. Vacillation was not Herr Lauda’s middle name.
Toto Wolff is a team principal more given to procedure and balance of evidence, and seems to have acted slowly in remodelling the car with the new floor that was trialled in Monaco last week and gets another outing this weekend in Barcelona, having stuck with Mike Elliott as technical chief for longer than the evidence of his work suggested was wise. Elliott has since swapped places with the highly respected James Allison, a switch that has oddly been dressed up as a promotion for Elliott.
This loyalty and evolution of design persisted despite Lewis Hamilton saying how glad he was never to drive last year’s car again.
Then on the eve of the opening race of the season, Wolff made the extraordinary statement that the car was irredeemably poor. The concept was flawed. What this gloomy forecast did for team morale is barely imaginable.
Now Wolff has prophesied the upgrade won’t, after all, put them ahead of Aston Martin and Ferrari, Red Bull’s other pursuers. That doesn’t sound much of an ‘upgrade’, then. And yesterday Hamilton declared it is ‘definitely not the step forward we were hoping for’. Oh dear, squared.
But let’s see what the timesheets tell us over the next few days at the Circuit de Catalunya before making a definitive judgment.
A few other observations about Mercedes’ malaise. They have shipped staff and appear to have taken their
