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          German GP diary: Mercedes rues bad karma after fancy dress celebration

          • Laurence Edmondson
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            Laurence Edmondson
            F1 Editor
              • Joined ESPN in 2009
              • An FIA accredited F1 journalist since 2011
          • Nate Saunders
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            Nate Saunders
            General Editor, F1
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          Jul 25, 2019, 01:09 PM

          HOCKENHEIM, Germany -- The Formula One paddock is a busy place that hosts a lot of serious business over a race weekend, but this here we try to bring you some of the news stories you might otherwise miss ahead of the German Grand Prix.

          Bad karma

          Mercedes went all out to celebrate its 125th year in motorsport this weekend -- on reflection, it might wish it hadn't given how the race panned out.

          The world champions had fun with the anniversary -- they changed the livery of their car (see below) to give a nod to the story behind why it's cars switched from white to silver in the 1930s, while on Saturday and Sunday its employees wore throwback clothing supplied by Angel's Fancy Dress. It didn't just extend to the hospitality staff either, with Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas joining team boss Toto Wolff and the team's mechanics to roll back the years in style.

          It was all good natured fun, and something Netflix's cameras were on hand to film ahead of the company's second series of 'Drive to Survive', something Mercedes is fully on board with this time around.

          Sunday's race didn't quite give the team a reason to celebrate, however, as Hamilton and Bottas were two of the chief protagonists in the most dramatic race in recent memory. At one point, Mercedes was caught unawares by Hamilton pitting with a damaged car, prompting mechanics dressed like a 1950s crew to scramble around the car.

          Wolff was quick to deny embarrassment after the race, although he did confess the team should have been braced for such an outcome.

          "It shows that you shouldn't fool around with this stuff," he said. "You should concentrate on the job. We are not superstitious but we believe in karma."

          When you're as far ahead in the championship as Mercedes, maybe it's OK to tempt fate once every so often, but it's fair to assume we won't be seeing the team making any other big splashes in future.

          Going nowhere fast

          An elevator must be near the top of the worst places to get trapped inside -- although being stuck with half of the modern day F1 grid would probably make it a more memorable experience. Daniel Ricciardo, ever the joker, suggested that exact thing had happened on Friday evening.

          After Friday evening's driver briefing, half of the grid could be found in one (very confined) space -- an elevator at the Hockenheim circuit. Ricciardo shared a video to his Instagram with the caption "Elevator got stuck. Still here... race is cancelled."

          The video showed Ricciardo with George Russell, Valtteri Bottas, Pierre Gasly, Daniil Kvyat, Romain Grosjean, Lando Norris, Nico Hulkenberg, Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc.

          Speaking after qualifying that day, Ricciardo said they hadn't really been stuck in there, laughing off his cheeky accompanying caption. He also revealed that Alexander Albon was hiding somewhere in the crowd of people, meaning the final tally was probably 11,

          Next stop: Hollywood

          Lewis Hamilton has his eyes set on a big future -- and not just in Formula One.

          The reigning world champion is on course to beat Michael Schumacher's remaining records but has been laying the foundations for whatever follows this current part of his life story. The Englishman has launched several fashion ranges with Tommy Hilfiger and has dabbled in the music industry. He has also dipped his toes into the water in the movie industry as well, with cameo appearances in "Cars" and "Zoolander 2."

          Hamilton has now teamed up with "Titanic" and "Avatar" director James Cameron to work as executive produce on a documentary called "The Game Changers," which focuses on the rise of plant-based diets in sports. The project saw him work with action movie legend Arnold Schwarzenegger and tennis star Novak Djokovic.

          Hamilton sees it as the first of many forays into Hollywood projects.

          "I have a lot of meetings, particularly in film and entertainment," he said. "That is an area I am interested in. TV and movies.

          "I heard James Cameron wanted to get in touch with me about this project. I am a huge fan of his and jumped at the chance.

          "It is really cool. I met Schwarzenegger at a GP in Australia and I am also a huge fan of his. I remember watching his training regimes.

          "It was interesting to see different people's perspectives while making the film. I had gone along the same journey as some and achieved another level of physical fitness.

          "Look at Djokovic. There is an extra little bit there that people seem reluctant to look into. Time wise it is not easy managing it all but there is more work that I am doing in this segment, so there is more to come."

          Baby Button

          Jenson Button has become a dad after welcoming a baby boy to the world with fiancée Brittny Ward.

          The 2009 world champion announced the news on his Instagram story this week, sharing a post Brittny put online showing a black and white picture of their son's feet with the caption: "He's here, he's healthy and our hearts couldn't be more full."

          On Saturday, Button introduced baby Hendrix to the world on social media.

          A new look...

          Mercedes has paid tribute to its history in motorsports with a commemorative livery for this weekend's German Grand Prix. To mark the team's 200th start in Formula One and the 125th anniversary of its time in motorsports, the cars have been painted in a distinctive one-off design. The livery gives the impression of white paint that has been scraped away to reveal the car's usual silver and green paintwork underneath.

          It pays homage to the legend of the first 'Silver Arrow' at the 1934 International Eifel Race at the Nurburgring. The story goes that Mercedes' brand new W25 car weighed one kilogram more than the permitted 750-kilogram maximum weight limit. Mercedes team manager Alfred Neubauer ordered the team to strip the car of its white paintwork -- the national racing colour of Germany -- leaving its silver aluminium bodywork bare and saving the crucial kilogram.

          The next morning Manfred von Brauchitsch won the race in the lightened W25 with a dominant performance, later telling the media: "To drive a Silver Arrow is an honour." A period of success followed for the 'Silver Arrows' in pre-war grand prix racing and the stripped silver bodywork soon became silver paint everywhere Mercedes raced as a manufacturer team.

          This weekend's W10 race car features a retro Mercedes logo on the white part of the bodywork and a modern three-pointed star on the silver. The car's Halo is half white and half silver, incorporating both logos in a split design.

          Lights out...

          It's been a bad year for people driving non-F1 cars on F1 circuits, hasn't it? First a recovery vehicle drove into a bridge at Baku during practice for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, while recovering George Russell's Williams car to the pits.

          That theme has continued ahead of this weekend's German Grand Prix, with a bus slamming into the lights which hang above the starting grid on Thursday.

          Fear not, race fans, the lights were fixed by the evening...

          Late drama online

          Lando Norris and Max Verstappen were teammates last weekend in a 24-hour endurance race online. The pair are avid online racers and they were on route for a dominant victory in the race when disaster struck.

          Things had been going smoothly until the final laps when Verstappen's actual brake pedal, rigged up to his console at home, broke, forcing the pair's team into a late, unscheduled pit stop. They had already lapped everyone and had enough of a buffer to actually win the race.

          - Laurens Stade (@StadeLaurens) July 21, 2019 Verstappen proabably isn't the first young man to admit he could have prevented something happening by being a little bit more proactive.

          "My brake pedal failed, my actual brake pedal at home," he said. "I already had new ones laying there because I wanted to swap them anyway but I was OK to do that race, I was a bit too lazy to swap them at the time because it is not so easy to get to, and with 15 minutes to go it came undone and the brake pedal you could literally hear it falling off.

          "It was not good but we still managed to win it. It was a good reason to immediately swap my brake pedals."

          Norris admitted he initially thought the Dutchman had been winding him up.

          "I thought Max was joking about all of it -- I was like 'yeah right!' But you can hear it. I was streaming [the race online] and you can hear the bearings and everything fall off. We got quite nervous because he stopped at the side, get towed back to the pit lane -- it all took 3 minutes, driver swap took 30 seconds. So I had to get in. Everything was optimised for my streaming and not my driving, so it was a bit hectic. But we did what we needed to."

          More to follow throughout the weekend.