Tales from the paddock: F1 enters home straight with last double-header of the campaign

Comunicato Stampa disponibile solo in lingua originale. 

As the 2022 motorsport season draws to a close, #formulaone arrives in #Brazil for the first instalment of the final double-header of the year

• News from the Mercedes-AMG Motorsport teams
• Social media news: What's new online?

News snippets
 
São Paulo, here we come: The penultimate fixture on the 2022 F1 calendar takes the drivers and teams to São Paulo. This coming weekend, #Brazil will be hosting the top class of motorsport for the 49th time; most of the races (38) have been contested at the #autodromojosecarlospace in Interlagos, with the other ten having been held at Jacarepagua. The record winner of the Brazilian GP is Alain Prost, who has six victories to his name, ahead of Michael Schumacher on four. Lewis Hamilton has won three times in #Brazil so far (2016, 2018 and 2021). In the run-up to the 2022 São Paulo Grand Prix, Lewis received the highest accolade the country could bestow when he was made an honorary citizen of #Brazil. McLaren lead the team statistics with a tally of twelve wins, closely followed by Ferrari on eleven. The Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team has won on five occasions at Interlagos since 2014, three times courtesy of Lewis and twice with Nico Rosberg at the wheel. The most successful engine manufacturer in the Brazilian Grand Prix is Ferrari (eleven victories), just ahead of Mercedes and Renault on ten wins each. The absolute lap record dates back to 2018 and is held by Lewis with a time of 1:07.281 minutes. The fastest race lap (1:10.540 minutes) was set by Valtteri Bottas in a W09, also in the 2018 season.
 
Mercedes-AMG Motorsport honours drivers and teams at the Customer #racing end-of-season gala in Barcelona: Mercedes-AMG invited its Customer #racing teams, drivers and commercial sponsors to a celebration of a successful 2022 motorsport season last weekend. The winners of the brand's internal Customer #racing Championships were honoured at the W Barcelona Luxury Boutique Hotel, which has a prime location on the fabulous Barceloneta beach promenade. High-value prizes were provided by brand partners, including BWT, Cube Controls, IWC Schaffhausen, PUMA, Santoni and SIMPLON. An especially poignant moment came with the official farewell to Maximilian Buhk (GER), who is ending the active phase of his career in motorsport.

Waldow Performance celebrate class victory number four in the Nürburgring Endurance Series: The 2022 Nürburgring Endurance Series (NLS) concluded with the official second round, postponed from earlier in the season. Max Lamesch (LUX), Andreas Patzelt and Janis Waldow (both GER) contesting their sixth race of the campaign in the number 177 Mercedes-AMG GT4 of Waldow Performance secured a fourth win in class. Janis Waldow had already clinched the SP10 drivers' trophy at the previous event. Also on the grid was the number 55 Mercedes-AMG GT3 entered by Team Landgraf Motorsport. Patrick Assenheimer and Luca-Sandro Trefz (both GER) set the fourth-fastest time in qualifying but were then extremely unlucky in the subsequent race, having to park their vehicle after just a few minutes due to a damaged suspension.
 

Customer #racing teams in Japanese Super GT finale at Twin Ring Motegi: The Super GT season concluded with a 63-lap race at Twin Ring Motegi. Competing in the event were the Japan-based Customer #racing outfits GOODSMILE #racing & TeamUKYO, K2 R&D Leon #racing and R'Qs MotorSports. Best placed among the Mercedes-AMG GT3 contingent were the GOODSMILE #racing & TeamUKYO duo of Tatsuya Kataoka and Nobuteru Taniguchi (both JPN) in the number 4 car, who finished in seventh position. Over the course of the eight-round season, the three Mercedes-AMG Customer #racing teams recorded one overall victory and two further podium finishes.
 

Le Mans Virtual Series: Mercedes-AMG Team Petronas Esports won the third round of the Le Mans Virtual Series on a computer-generated version of the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. Starting from sixth on the grid, James Baldwin, Graham Carroll (both GBR) and Bono Huis (NED) steered the #63 Oreca 07 LMP2 to their first win of the campaign. The Mercedes-AMG Team Williams Esports trio of Jakub Brzezinski, Nikodem Wisniewski (both POL) and Michael Romanidis (GRE), who had claimed the runner-up spot in the previous race, also put in a strong performance to finish the race in sixth position.