The Audi team has reportedly chosen against appointing Mick Schumacher as one of their drivers for their 2025 season, putting the German’s career in question.
Mick Schumacher, son of legendary racer Michael Schumacher, might see his F1 career come to a premature close after rumours of a u-turn by Sauber could spell another elongated period on the sidelines for the German driver.
The younger Schumacher raced for two years with Haas in 2021 and 2022, but did not find a team for the following season after a string of disappointing performances. He has spent 2024 as the reserve driver for Mercedes, as deputy for George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, and has also been participating in the long-distance World Endurance Championship, where he had a successful stint with Alpine WEC.
A possible team for Schumacher looked to be the Sauber racing team, ahead of their transition to Audi’s formula arm in 2026. However, recent reports indicate that Sauber will likely extend the contract of current driver Valtteri Bottas, opting for experience over youth. Nico Hulkenberg’s career revival with Haas has seen him already confirm a spot on the roster for Sauber-Audi for the forthcoming future.
Helmut Marko, director for the Red Bull teams, spoke to Sport.de about what missing out on a seat for the to-be Audi team could mean for Schumacher’s career.
“I think the Formula One story is really over for Schumacher if he doesn’t get that Audi seat. Then, he has to concentrate on the long-distance races in the WEC, where he was already very successful,” said the Austrian. “If he wants to stay in motorsport, he has to find something that he likes, but where he also has a chance to win.”
“I think Audi’s car will definitely not be a winning car next year. That means there will be no pressure for Audi or its drivers,” said Marko.
“If the situation is really that Valtteri Bottas gets the chance, then the whole thing is even more incomprehensible to me,” he concluded, sharing his thoughts on a confusing situation for Audi where they might head into the 2026 season with two older and more expensive drivers.
‘Formula 1 is the big goal…’
Despite being a former F2 and F3 champion, Schumacher’s middling F1 performances has meant that he has reportedly received rejections from four F1 teams already. This includes Mercedes, who had chosen young Italian Kimi Antonelli to replace Ferrari-bound Hamilton, while Alpine have opted for Australian Jack Doohan after Schumacher couldn’t convince in a test stint with the team earlier this season.
Schumacher had earlier revealed to Sky Deutschland that September was a deadline for the Audi role, which seems to also have passed him by: “Plan B must be in the back of my mind. I don’t know where that will go at the moment. Formula 1 is the big goal, it always was and it always will be. That’s why everything else has to stand still for now. The options that exist alongside it have to wait.”
In some good news for the son of the seven-time WDC champion, Alpine’s WEC team remains interested in his services. “Let’s see what we do, what will be the final decision. From our side we will be happy [if he stays]. I’m very happy with Mick,” said Alpine motorsport chief Bruno Famin about his stint in the WEC. “He has done a very good job. His adaptation to endurance has been incredible, very fast, very good, everybody knows that for a single-seater driver it’s not easy.”
New Delhi: It was during the pandemic that Hikaru Nakamura saw an opportunity and took it. He had been streaming on Twitch since 2015 but with people being forced to stay indoors from the end of 2019, chess saw a surge (perhaps unexpected) in popularity.
Riding that wave was Nakamura, known as GMHikaru, who was dedicating more than 30 hours per week to streaming. The pandemic ended but Nakamura kept things going with a relentlessness that often characterised his chess. His 2.55 million followers on Youtube, 1.93 million followers on Twitch and 583.6 thousand followers on X have not only made him famous, they have also made him one of the richest chess players on the planet.
But that isn’t all it has done. Given that he is still playing really high-quality chess (Classical Elo rating: 2802, Rapid: 2744, Blitz: 2860), his direct interactions with fans have granted him a unique perspective of what works for chess and what doesn’t.
Most chess streams can be intimidating for newbies. There will be jargon about openings, random historical fact (eg. this particular variation of the opening was last played in 1972 by Fischer against Spassky) and it is generally done at such a pace that the even the experienced followers will only catch bits and pieces of the explanation.
However, the big challenge for chess is now to move beyond the niche. The Queen’s Gambit, the TV mini-series, showed that the regular person can take to the sport as well but replicating that kind of viral success is never easy. So, people try new things — Magnus Carlsen supports the Chess960 variation which employs the same board and pieces as classical chess, but the starting position of the pieces on the players’ home ranks is randomized; at Norway Chess, players are not allowed to agree on a draw until after black’s move 30. If there is a draw in the classical game, then the players will move on to Armageddon; at the Global Chess League, a franchise system sees teams feature men and women in a double round-robin stage before facing off in the final.
Controversy has hit the National Football League (NFL) as players on some teams and at least one club – the Cincinnati Bengals – announced that they would not be doing interviews in their locker room. The decision has been taken to prevent players being caught on camera in uncompromising situations or totally naked.
Cincinnati Bengals’ Ted Karras, who is also the team’s union representative, said, “As you’ve heard from a couple of teams now and the NFLPA is going to come out with a statement, in an effort to protect the sanctity of the locker room and the comfort of the players, each team is going to figure out a program to where we conduct our interviews outside of the locker room.”
“Now, this doesn’t bar you from the locker room. We can’t do that. But what we want to do is get cameras off guys in private moments in our locker room,” he added.
The new ruling is not for NFL’s game-day media policy. On game days, players are not allowed to decide that they be interviewed outside the locker room.
New Delhi: The Sanjay Singh-led Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) on Friday undertook before the Delhi high court to withdraw its September 24 circular for conducting selection trials for Indian Senior Wrestling Team for 2024 Senior World Wrestling Championship, during the day.
The undertaking was made after a bench of Justice Prateek Jalan reprimanded the WFI for issuing the circular despite the court passing an order of restoring the mandate of the ad hoc committee & granting it the authority to conduct selection of athletes.
On August 16, the high court had restored the mandate of an ad-hoc committee appointed by the International Olympic Association (IOA) to manage and control the affairs of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), saying that its dissolution was “unwarranted” and “incongruous”.
A bench of justice Sachin Datta opined that the disbandment of the ad hoc committee was incompatible with continuation of union sports ministry’s December 24, 2023 order and the same enjoyed ministry’s “tacit approval”, as the ministry neither expressed its reservation nor protested against the dissolution.
Taking note of the union sports ministry’s December 24 decision of continuing the suspension of the Sanjay Singh led WFI committee, the court said that the elected WFI committee had no jurisdiction to hold the selections and the same could only be conducted by the ad hoc committee.
The bench added, “He (counsel for the WFI) states that on instructions from Sanjay Singh that the circular will be withdrawn & the withdrawal will be communicated to all the recipients of the circular. No such circulars will be issued again. This order will not come in the way of the ad hoc committee to continue to hold selections. Contempt petition is disposed of.”
The WFI gave the undertaking in response to a contempt plea filed by wrestler Satyawart Kadian, contending that the Centre, WFI and the WFI ad hoc committee had failed to comply with the court’s August 16 order.
In his petition before the high court argued by senior advocate Rahul Mehra and advocate Chaitanya Gosain, Kadian had also sought for staying the selection trial for the Indian Senior Wrestling Team for the 2024 Senior World Wrestling Championship and directing the newly constituted body to conduct the trials to select the teams.
The plea claimed that the union sports ministry had neither complied with the directions in general nor set up the ad hoc committee in particular. “That the non-compliance by the Contemnor/ the Defendant has caused significant prejudice to the Petitioner and other wrestlers, who are at risk of being denied a fair, and transparent selection process for international competitions. The absence of the ad-hoc committee raises concerns about bias, favoritism, and lack of accountability in the decision-making process besides all the concerns raised and highlighted by UOI/MYAS which today continues to persist,” the plea added.
“The IOA should have raised the consideration amount from ₹35 crore to ₹59 crore as the consideration amount of rights of six games was ₹35 crore which was calculated on an average of ₹6 crore per games.
“Thus, there was loss of ₹24 crore to IOA due to faulty agreement with RIL and undue favour to RIL,” the report noted. “The reason for not enhancing the amount by ₹59 crores may be intimated to audit.”
IOA president PT Usha has been asked to reply on the half-margin issued by CAG.
Ajay Kumar Narang, executive assistant to IOA president Usha, said the agreement had to be renegotiated because of a ‘flaw’ in the tender.
“When the agreement was signed and naming rights were granted, it was in the name of sponsors — Reliance India House. In 2022, the International Olympic Committee allowed sponsors name with the country house. But in 2023 the IOC changed the conditions to say that the sponsor cannot use a name and it will have to be a country-named House,” said Narang.
“The sponsor came back to us saying they will not get the mileage, so they had to be compensated. So additional rights of four events were given. Also, CAG has calculated pro-rata per event which will be ₹6 crore per Games. It is calculated on the visibility a sponsor gets. In Winter Olympics and Youth Olympics India’s participation is much less compared to Summer Olympics.”
“In the agreement made in 2022 they should have specified that it would be subject to the conditions of naming as approved by the IOC. That was the flaw in the agreement and flaw in the tender itself.”
IOA treasurer Sahdev Yadav, however, said the executive council and the sponsorship committee were not consulted when the agreement was being amended.
“RIL has benefitted and it is not in the knowledge of the executive board or finance committee and sponsorship committee. The president should answer why the agreement was changed and who signed it? It has led to a loss of ₹24 crore to IOA. This should not have happened,” said Yadav, who is also president of the Weightlifting Federation of India.
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