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Last month, accompanied by a high-powered economic delegation, Scholz was the first western leader to be granted a state visit to China since the outbreak of Covid and Xi Jinping’s moves to strengthen his power. We just need to define what it is,” Wolff said. “Restarts are mega, but when they come as a surprise and you can’t really understand then maybe not so much. I am generally in favour of making great entertainment, but the rulebook of the sport is the key DNA so let us define together what is a safety car, what is a VSC and what is a red flag.”
The three-way agreement between the members of the country’s ruling coalition – Scholz’s SPD, the Greens and the Free Democrats – has labelled the relationship with China a “systematic rivalry”. It also refers to human rights issues and Taiwan, as well as the need for economic diversification. And that decision will have to be made now because the architecture and the layout and the concept of the car will get signed off by April for all the teams. So in the next couple of races, they have to make the decision on whether to abandon the concept and go with a whole new concept for next year." READ MORE: Red Bull and Ferrari are ‘too far ahead' says Russell as Mercedes end Friday practice looking for pace The electricity consumption was determined on the basis of Regulation 2017/1151/EU according to WLTP. Any new car concept is most likely going to be something arriving for 2024, so the question is how soon does Mercedes switch off work on the current car?Mercedes-Benz Group (MBG) produces hundreds of thousands such vehicles a year from eight German factories: Rastatt is one of three in the state of Baden-Württemberg, near the company’s physical and spiritual home in Stuttgart. The carmaker lends its name to a whole area of this affluent city – the Benzviertel, where its headquarters and museum are located – and to its Bundesliga football club’s stadium. But Mercedes and the country’s wider economy now stand at a crossroads. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted a race to find new energy supplies amid sanctions and Russia’s throttling of gas pipelines – a crisis that has already forced Germany to extend the life of its three remaining nuclear power plants.
A developing subplot around Mercedes' struggles is the future of Hamilton, and his designs on becoming the sport's first driver to win eight world championships. Mercedes is less dependent on these supplies than some of Germany’s energy-intensive industries, notably steelmakers, pharmaceutical companies and chemicals producers such as BASF, which said in October it would permanently “downsize” its European operations. However, the carmaker still relies on gas for certain production processes, particularly in its foundries. Germany’s businesses and households had grown accustomed to plentiful Russian gas and oil for many years. Russia accounted for more than half of the country’s natural gas supply in 2020. Damon Hill believes Mercedes may have got their 2023 concept fundamentally wrong, and will struggle to close the gap on Red Bull this season Germany’s largest manufacturers, including Mercedes and the other carmakers, have enjoyed booming sales in China, while the country’s Mittelstand of small and medium-sized engineering companies have powered Chinese production.Given the gap to the front, of course we are going to look at bigger departures and more radical changes," Shovlin said. Mercedes have opted to celebrate by running a ‘Pride Star’ emblem on both their W13 challenger and Hamilton and George Russell’s helmets for the next three Grands Prix, as part of their wider ‘Accelerate 25’ programme, with Hamilton – who earlier this week wished a “Happy Pride” to his social media followers – revealing what the move meant to him. His predecessor, Angela Merkel, has come under fire for Germany’s diplomatic failures, but refuses to criticise the decision to facilitate even greater Russian gas supplies through the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, halted by Scholz just before the Kremlin’s troops poured into Ukraine. Lewis Hamilton was clearly in pain getting out of his car after his Mercedes suffered more porpoising issues last year in Azerbaijan, prompting Toto Wolff to apologise to him Olaf Scholz has had to break with Germany’s policy of ‘change through trade’. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
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