Month: November 2019

Ross Brawn believes his former Mercedes Formula One team will have prepared well for 2017’s radical regulation changes and expects the triple world champions to remain at the sharpest end of the grid.

Next year will see the introduction of wider and faster F1 cars, with series bosses keen to shake up the pecking order from the last three years.

Since the last overhaul in 2014, with the introduction of 1.6-litre V6 turbocharged power units, Mercedes has steamrolled the field, securing a trio of championship doubles, 51 race wins and 56 pole positions out of 59 grands prix.

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Brawn, who was at the helm of the German manufacturer’s works outfit from 2010 to 2013, believes the scope of the team’s dominance has enabled it to switch their focus to next season “very early”.

“Mercedes will have been pulling resource off this year’s programme onto next year very early, once they saw where they were with the car,” the 62-year-old said in a wide-ranging interview for the latest issue of the FIA’s AUTO magazine.

“If I was there, and I’m sure they’ve carried on a similar philosophy, I’d be saying, ‘Right, we’ve got a strong car, we can only beat ourselves, let’s get everyone onto next year’s programme’. I don’t know how many other teams could do that. Success breeds success. Mercedes will be strong next year, despite the greater emphasis on chassis.”

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Sharing his opinion on the new regulations, Brawn, who has been increasingly tipped for a senior F1 management role in recent weeks, is confident these will succeed in delivering quicker and more aggressive-looking cars.

“I’ve not been involved in the process to generate these regulations. When you are involved you know them intimately. I’ve read this set broadly and they’re a big step in a certain direction.

“Outwardly they should make the cars a lot quicker. They’ll look racy, with wider track, wider tyres, and the way the wings are profiled the cars are going to look pretty exciting.

“It will be fascinating, though, as it’s putting the emphasis back on the chassis. There is a view that it was too much towards the engine, but actually I think it brought some balance.

“We went through a phase where the influence of the engine was almost neutral because everything was frozen and they were almost just a bracket between the gearbox and the chassis, whereas now people talk about the engines.”

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As the world watches in horror Israel’s ongoing bombardment of the Gaza strip—which as of Monday has killed over 550 Palestinians trapped in the sealed-off territory—a unified call for an end to the assault has come in the form of worldwide demonstrations because, as one protester wrote, “silence is consent.”

“People across the world are coming out in condemnation of Israel’s crimes and in condemnation of U.S. support for those crimes,” said Hatem Abudayyeh with the Chicago Coalition for Justice. Abudayyeh was one of tens of thousands of Chicago-area residents who took to the streets on Sunday in an outpouring of support and solidarity for those in Gaza.

Many of the global protests were held by citizens frustrated by what they see as their own government’s complicity in Israel’s military bombardment that has now last two weeks. Observers note that the massive crowds clearly contradict comments made by Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday that there is “very strong support within the international community for the activity that the IDF is doing.”

Hundreds of peaceful protesters gathered outside the U.S. State Department headquarters in  Washington D.C. on Sunday, demanding an end to the violence in Gaza and criticizing the U.S. government’s continued and “unconditional” support of Israel while ignoring the plight and suffering of Palestinians living under occupation.

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“The U.S. is the primary patron of Israel and provides unequivocal diplomatic and military support,” Noura Erakat, a Palestinian lawyer and professor at George Mason University, told reporters with the Washington Post. “It’s a complicit third party in what amounts to a massacre of the Palestinian population entrapped within the Gaza strip.”

Sixty-four notable figures—including seven Nobel laureates—published a letter on Friday calling on the United Nations and “governments across the world” to implement an arms embargo on Israel. “Israel’s ability to launch such devastating attacks with impunity largely stems from the vast international military cooperation and trade that it maintains with complicit governments across the world,” the statement read.

In London on Saturday, tens of thousands marched from Downing Street to the Israeli embassy to denounce what they said was Israeli “apartheid.” Sarah Colborne, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said the demonstration gave people from “across the country the chance to say enough is enough, Israel’s siege of Gaza and its occupation of Palestinian land has to end now.”