Ola Kallenius, CEO of Daimler, has put an end to speculation by announcing that Mercedes will remain in Formula 1 for a long time.
Recent speculation has suggested that Mercedes will sell its F1 operations to the main sponsor Ineos. However, the rumors were definitively refuted by the team principal Toto Wolff which confirmed that Mercedes will remain in Formula 1.
Mercedes recently signed the Concorde agreement like all other teams in F1, but this did not exclude the possibility of changing the owner of the team.
Kallenius explained that Mercedes has no reason to give up F1 because next year’s budget will be lower than that for 2020.
“We have no more reason to retire from F1 than Bayern Munich have to retire from football“, told Kallenius to TV6, quoted by Grandpx.news.
“The costs required to support the team in F1 for the next three years will be reduced by half. In this way we have achieved a higher cost reduction than in other departments of Daimler”, said Kallenius.
However, something will change in the sense that the AMG sports division will be more present in the future operations of the F1 team.
AMG has been part of the F1 team’s name since 2012, but now, according to the new strategy, the two brands need to be closer starting next season.
The German magazine auto motor und sport announced that “the sub-brand’s association with F1 is to be intensified in the coming year in order to give greater emphasis to its identity as a high performance brand”.