Mercedes’ non executive chairman Niki Lauda says he was surprised to see such little TV coverage of the Mercedes cars during the Japanese Grand Prix.
The Austrian has demanded a meeting with Bernie Ecclestone to address the matter as the cars were only seen on very few occasions for a few seconds at a time.
“It was funny, to be honest, because I was watching TV, it rolled along and funny enough I saw Saubers and a lot of Honda cars,” he said.
“I don’t know why: someone must do the filming here, I have to ask what is wrong with him.
“So I have to ask – I want to see Bernie next week and ask him what is the reason? If you ask the question, you get an answer.
“At the moment I can’t say much but it was funny today, with the pitstop of Lewis, the leader, you only saw him driving out. You didn’t even see how he changed his wheels, so it was interesting to see.”
There were many conspiracy theories doing the rounds on social media, one of which related to Mercedes’ decision to refuse Red Bull engines, something which is known to have angered Ecclestone.
Lauda doesn’t believe the two are related however: “You cannot go in that direction because I spoke to Bernie on a couple of occasions about this engine deal and it was very clear that [Dietrich] Mateschitz never really approached us, for the reasons that he never really liked Mercedes from the past.”
