Mercedes group pulls the plug on Formula E.

am Sunday was in a box mercedes Celebrate vigorously. Nick de Vries became the first Formula E world champion. Along with Belgian Stoffel Vandoorne, the 26-year-old Dutchman also won the Mercedes-EQ Team Racing title. This means that the team surrounding motorsports director Toto Wolff has already achieved in its second season what the F1 team needs five years for. Since 2014, however, silver stocks have dominated the First Class, especially with Lewis Hamilton in the cockpit. “We can be very proud of our successes in Formula E, especially the fact that we won the World Championship double, which is a historic achievement in the history of Mercedes-Benz motorsport,” says Wolff.

That was kind of the last word for the episode. Because there will never be a similar success story to the racing electrical department. Just three days after winning the final in Berlin, the Stuttgart-based car manufacturer announced, on Wednesday, unexpectedly, that it will leave Formula E after the 2022 electrification season “wanting to redistribute.

It is claimed that the Formula 1 season cost 30 million euros. The group announced a month ago that the entire range of vehicles should be fully electric before the end of this decade, if conditions in different markets permit. For this, three new electrical architectures must be developed, which will be introduced in 2025. The resources and knowledge gathered in Formula E must therefore be implemented in product development for the series.

Costs should not explode

After Audi and BMW, which ran its last Formula E race last Sunday, the electric series lost another charismatic factory. “It hurts us that they are gone, but we were happy to have them there, and they were great partners. There are leagues with fewer manufacturers,” Formula E President Jimmy Riggle said in a video interview with FAZ.