A Daimler shareholder has called on the company to pull the Mercedes team out of formula one racing.
Fund manager Ingo Speich, of the Daimler shareholder Union Investment, said at Daimler’s annual general meeting that he is disappointed Mercedes-Benz has lost ground to road car rivals like Audi and BMW.
“Mercedes is no longer the measure of all things in the premium sector,” he is quoted as saying by Die Presse.
Speich referred to “a lost decade” for Daimler, and called on the company to follow BMW’s recent lead and pull out of formula one.
According to reports, his speech received applause from several other shareholders.
Mercedes is the biggest F1 team to not yet follow the likes of Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull in signing the 2013 Concorde Agreement. Fort those of you left wondering what the Concorde Agreement is, it is a contract between the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), the Formula One teams (currently represented by the Formula One Teams Association (FOTA)) and the Formula One Administration which dictates the terms by which the teams compete in races and take their share of the television revenues and prize money.