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Mercedes Launch new-look Formula 1 2024: Aims to Challenge Red Bull Dominance

Mercedes Launch new-look Formula 1 2024 Aims to Challenge Red Bull Dominance

(CTN News) – Mercedes has introduced the drastically redesigned car, dubbed a “complete relaunch,” which they think will help them to ascend the “mountain” and catch Red Bull in Formula 1 2024.

In addition to the long-awaited revisions in the car concept for the W15, the team has announced a revamped livery, with Mercedes’ classic silver returning on the nose and the green of title sponsor Petronas to complement the black of recent seasons.

The car will also be Lewis Hamilton’s 12th and final for the team, following the surprise announcement earlier this month that he had inserted a break clause into his new two-year Mercedes deal to leave for Ferrari in 2025.

“It’s going to be our last season with Lewis, so we are keen on really bringing a quick car,” said team boss Toto Wolff after Mercedes failed to win a race for the first time in 11 years in 2023 and only once in 2022.

Hamilton attended the Silverstone launch ceremony alongside Wolff and teammate George Russell, his first public appearance since announcing his Ferrari move.

“It’s been emotional,” Hamilton stated of recent weeks. “It’s odd to be here because I joined the team in 2013 and am in my 11th year.

Mercedes’ Strategic Shift: Chassis Redesign and Focus on Predictable Rear Downforce

“This is the first time I have seen the car come together as a whole, but to know everything underneath the hood, which people won’t get to see, but George and I will experience on the track, it’s exciting.”

Hamilton and Russell, starting his third year with Mercedes, will perform their maiden circuits in the W15 at the British Grand Prix venue later on Wednesday. Next week, the car and team will go to Bahrain for pre-season testing, which will be shown live on Sky Sports Formula 1 2024 from February 21 to 23.

Wolff stated that the W15 represents a “complete relaunch” of the team’s approach to the current period of regulations, which has been dominated by rivals Red Bull, who won 21 of the 22 races last season from the beginning of 2022.

“We understand we have a mountain to climb to battle at the front. “There are no miracles in this sport,” conceded co-owner Wolff, who signed a new three-year contract this winter to continue his long-held responsibilities as team principal and CEO as he seeks to lead Mercedes’ return to the front of the grid.

“However, our ambition and determination are great.

“Since charting this new course, development has developed nicely. We had several items on our priority list for this vehicle. We’ll soon see if we’ve taken the steps we wanted.”

The team’s technical director, James Allison, said: “We feel like we had a decent winter, but Formula 1 2024 is a relative game, and only time will tell how far we’ve come.

“We’re focused on getting the most from the car we launch, but we are excited by the development race that will follow as the regulations are still young and opportunities abound.”

Even before learning that this would be Hamilton’s final season at Brackley, Mercedes knew they had a massive year ahead in 2024, following two years of underperformance since Formula 1 2024’s technical rules were altered.

Wolff publicly admitted almost a year ago, after the 2023 season’s first qualifying session in Bahrain, when their new car qualified 0.6s behind Max Verstappen’s Red Bull on pole, that Mercedes were not on the path to success with the design approach they had taken with the W13 and W14 ground-effect cars and needed to make wholesale changes moving forward.

While this influenced their approach to upgrades to the W14 for the remainder of last season – with the unique but ultimately unsuccessful ‘zero-sidepod’ concept abandoned from May’s Monaco GP – and they finished a respectable second in the Constructors’ Championship ahead of Ferrari, who undoubtedly had the faster car at the end of the year, the team stressed that it could not fully embark on a different development path until this year’s brand-new W15.

“This is a complete relaunch of a car,” Wolff stated.

“This is quite different. Not only on the aerodynamic surfaces but primarily beneath, we have made numerous mechanical upgrades that we think will result in increased performance, predictability, and a car that drivers can push.

“We will see it next week in Bahrain.”

Mercedes modified the chassis design for 2024, focusing on building a car with more constant and predictable rear downforce, allowing drivers to attack corners with confidence.

Allison, who returned to the hands-on technical director post midway through last year in a job swap with Mike Elliott, who has since departed the team, stated, “A major focus has been on fixing the previous car’s unreliable rear axle.

“We worked hard to guarantee that both axles, particularly the rear axle, have superior tyre control than the W14. There has also been some housekeeping in areas where we have potential to improve, such as the DRS effect and pit stop performance.”

And, in what appear to be broad alterations, particularly on the critical floor and adjacent parts underneath the car, where Red Bull has demonstrated such strength, Allison added: “With this current generation of cars, so much of the performance comes from how the floor interacts with the road.

“Whether or not a car is effective is down to how well that floor is permitted to behave aerodynamically.”

What are Mercedes’ goals for 2024? Hamilton: ‘The focus is first’

Since Red Bull won every race last year and won the Constructors’ Championship at a canter, scoring twice as many points as second-placed Mercedes, all of their immediate rivals have been cautious when talking about whether they’ll be able to take on the world champs right away when the season starts in Bahrain on February 29.

“Our goal is to consolidate our positions towards Ferrari and McLaren, sometimes Aston Martin, while also racing at the very front,” Wolff said.

“Our goal is to do that, but we know how hard it is because you’re a step behind your main competitor who got it right from the start.

“But we like a challenge, so I’m so eager, and all of us are so eager, to see the car finally driving.”

Mercedes in Formula 1 2024

 
Driver Lewis Hamilton
Driver George Russell
Team boss Toto Wolff
Car name W15
Engine Mercedes
2023 championship finish 2nd
Best championship finish 1st (x8)
Race wins 125
Podiums 289

The team hasn’t won since the end of the 2021 season, but Hamilton says he’s focused on getting back on top in 2024.

“It’s all about ‘first’ – getting back to where we once were,” said the seven-time world champion going for an outright eighth title.

“We’ve had these tough couple of years, which I think has been grounding for us. We have regrouped, had to look at things, and now we just have to be diligent with our work, understand the data, understand the car, and maximize from it.

“Georgia and I may get a taste of what’s to come even if we only get one lap today.”

Russell says the team is energised to return to the front despite an inconsistent second campaign with Mercedes.

“Most of the people there [at Mercedes’ factories in Brackley and Brixworth] are winners and champions, but there are also a lot of new people there who are motivated to bring Mercedes back,” Russell said.

“Everyone is so excited and motivated.

” It’s exciting to see the car as one, but it won’t matter until we see what the lap times produce.”

When is Formula 1 2024 pre-season testing?

Testing for the new season occurs from Wednesday, February 21, to Friday, February 23, at the Bahrain International Circuit.

When is the first Formula 1 2024 Race?

Formula 1 2024 race starts On February 29 and runs until March 2. The Bahrain Grand Prix will kick off the 2024 season.

Ramadan is a Muslim holy period, so the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grand Prix will be on Saturdays.

We’ll do practice one and two on Thursdays and qualifying and final practice on Fridays.

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

google

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

google

Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

google

Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

trump

Washington — Trump Media,  The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.

The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.

The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.

trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.

Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.

trump

Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.

The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.

musk trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.

He also welcomed back a vast list of previously banned users, including Trump, and endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.

SOURCE | AP

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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Could Last-Minute Surprises Derail Kamala Harris’ Campaign? “Nostradamus” Explains the US Poll.

Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

US Inflation will Comfort a Fed Focused on Labor Markets.

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