1998 Mercedes-benz Slk230 Kompressor on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Here's how wildly expensive it is to participate in F1

The cost of competing in Formula One racing is extremely high. Not in the physical and lifestyle sense, although that too takes a major toll on each team and driver, but in a literal hand-over-the-cash sense. Each F1 team pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to enter, plus a fee for every single point the team earned in the previous season. Motorsport.com recently detailed just how absurdly pricey entering the F1 field is. According to the piece, the price of entry goes up each year due to the U.S. Consumer Price Index. For 2019, the entry fee is $546,133, and it doesn't stop there. There are additional dues required of each team based on where the team finished in the previous season. Interestingly, the winners pay more. For example, Mercedes-Benz, the constructor champion for the past five years, must pay $6,553 per point it scored in 2018. With 655 points scored, that's $4,292,215. All other teams must pay $5,459 per point. For a full rundown of what the teams will be paying for 2019, check out the full article here.Related Video:

Bahrain Grand Prix proves that Formula 1 finally has parity

Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel claimed victory at the Bahrain Grand Prix 6.6 seconds in front of Mercedes-AMG's Lewis Hamilton. In so doing, Vettel vaulted into first place in the driver standings ahead of Hamilton, with two race victories to the Mercedes driver's one. The decisive moment in the race came with 16 laps remaining, as Hamilton served a 5-second penalty for holding up Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo in the pit lane in an earlier pit stop during a safety car period. Hamilton was able to reclaim second place in front of teammate Valtteri Bottas with 10 laps remaining, and he cut Vettel's lead from 13 seconds to 6.6 seconds at the finish. Bottas went on to finish third, followed by Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen in fourth. Ricciardo crossed the line in fifth, meaning there were three constructors in the top five places in Bahrain. Perhaps more than anything else, the 2017 season has been unpredictable and entertaining, marking a break from the last several years in F1 where one marque has been dominant. Here's hoping the rest of the year provides similar thrills and spectacle. Related Video: Image Credit: Lars Baron/Getty Motorsports Ferrari Mercedes-Benz Racing Vehicles F1 Lewis Hamilton Sebastian Vettel

Mercedes-AMG promises something fast is coming

"Something fast is coming." That's all that Mercedes-AMG is saying to accompany this latest teaser video. Don't get us wrong: we don't doubt the power-hungry nuts from Affalterbach for one second. They've got a pretty good track record of delivering the performance goods, after all. We just don't know what it is that they're on about is all. Not that something like that would stop us from hazarding an educated guess, though. Crank up your speakers, play the 19-second video clip and you'll hear what sounds very much like a V8 winding up and down through its rev range. In fact it sounds a lot like the note coming out the back of the Mercedes-AMG GT, which emits a pretty raspy, burblesome noise despite the pair of turbochargers that would ordinarily muffle the song. Couple that noise with flat handling around what looks like Hockenheim and our best guess is that we'll soon be treated to a more hardcore version of the AMG GT – something to slot in between the road-going GT S and the race-spec GT3 (which, it's worth noting, carried over the atmospheric engine from the previous SLS). We spotted such a beast undergoing testing at the Nurburgring just a few months ago, and have been anticipating its arrival ever since. The resulting track toy may not be called the Black Series, but we bet it'll be plenty wicked all the same - whatever it's called.