Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has perhaps thrown the most potent log on the Schumacher to Mercedes GP fire by giving the seven time world champion a green light to reunite with Ross Brawn.
Schumacher recently stood down from his advisory role with Ferrari’s F1 team, but still had a three year agreement in place to consult with their road car program. When asked recently if this agreement would deny Schumacher the freedom to join Mercedes GP di Montezemolo said, “No, [it’s] not binding. It’s clear that if he decides to take another road our [consultancy] agreement will no longer be valid, that is logical. You can’t work with a competitor and with us at the same time.”
With this new revelation following the weekend’s news that Schumacher and Mercedes have reached a verbal agreement it would now appear the only thing standing in the way of an official announcement being made is time.
Things aren’t all plain sailing for Mercedes GP, though. According to The Press Association an £80 million pound sponsorship deal is about to go horribly wrong. It would seem that someone got a bit ahead of themselves by signing the agreement without authorisation.
While the motorsport world is salivating at the thought of Schumacher and Brawn starting a new competitive relationship there is a jilted lover in all of this. Spare a thought for Nick Heidfeld. The 32-year-old German is widely tipped to be the man Mercedes GP sign if the Schumacher deal doesn’t come to fruition. And, yet, he must wait in the shadow of Schumacher’s hype to see if he has a job in 2010. Mind, Heidfeld claims he has knocked back concrete job offers, so if he is without an F1 seat in 2010 he may only have himself to blame.
[Source: Telegraph.co.uk]
4 replies on “Red team gives Schumacher the green light”
That $80m hole will plug itself quick fast if MS signs anyway. Which sponsor wouldn’t want to get onboard Mercedes GP now? Maybe Nike, Gillette and Accenture would like to get onboard now that they have no leading man to represent them…
Yes, I meant to make that point about sponsorship at the end of that para, but got sidetracked. 😛
Its going to be soooooo German fantastic!! Hopefully they will be sooooo overwhelmed by the excitement they will forget to barrack for their national side in the World Cup and Australia will kill them!
[…] only a few days since Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo gave his approval for Schumacher to leave his advisory role with Ferrari’s road car program. Well, now, good old Luca has come out with this piece of […]