F1 Fanatic

@yogibaer – This appears to be a re-hash of some rumours that started about a month ago. All the players are the same; Erebus Racing bringing Mercedes into the sport via SBR. At the time, Tony Cochrane and Mark Skaife confirmed that they had approached Mercedes, but the marque had quickly decided against joining as the category didn’t fit their brand positioning. Mercedes confirmed as much, while Ross and Jimmy Stone seemed as surprised as anyone else about the rumours as they had not been involved in any negotiations, despite having been named as the team that would take on Mercedes support.

I’m guessing it’s because the series recently got granted “International” status from the FIA, so they’re free to expand out into other countries (they just can’t go any further west than Istanbul; Europe is off-limits for now). Mercedes has a strong motorsport presence in Formula 1 and DTM in particular, but they have no representation in the Asian markets. V8 Supercar races in India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong and a return to China have all been kicked around, and while nothing has been confirmed, it’s probably for Mercedes to establish a presence in the region with.

Nevertheless, those events have been planned. And even if they don’t happen in 2013, there is nothing preventing them from happening in 2014.

if mercedes or anybody elese joins, and these events happen in 2014, they should introduce their cars halfway through next year, giving time to the teams to prepare them properly

Actually, the only real point of difference between the cars next year will be the bodywork and the engine. Most of the chassis and rollcage will be a spec part, maybe with a few minor differences from team to team. It would not be difficult for SBR to build a chassis to fit a Ford and then modify it for Mercedes. As for the engine, I imagine Mercedes would supply the same enigne their DTM cars use, possibly tuned to fit V8 Supercar regulations.

I don’t think a mid-year start is as viable an option as Cochrane makes it out to be.

On the one hand, if they can produce a contract with a manufacturer to run at any point in 2013, then their existing manufacturer is going to ask when they should only receive support for half a season before switching. So the manufacturer will either ask them to change sooner, or leave it until the end of the year. The end of the year isn’t an option for the new manufacturer, who will want to get involved as soon as possible. So they’re back at square one, entering at the start of 2013.

As far as the engines go, I believe they’re actually quite similar. Both use V8 engines with similar specs, but might need a bit of tweaking to work. At the very least, they won’t need to build an entirely new engine.

Ford have not committed one way or the other to any works funding to any team.

Yeah Mercedes and Nissan we’re the only brands that I’ve heard being connected to the v8′s. The official v8 website has confirmed it here