Triple world champion Lewis Hamilton and team mate Nico Rosberg will be given more freedom to race each other this season, Mercedes motorsport head Toto Wolff said on Friday.
Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel, McLaren's Fernando Alonso and Williams' Valtteri Bottas have all been highlighted in media speculation but 22-year-old German reserve driver Pascal Wehrlein remains the bookmakers' favourite.
World champion Nico Rosberg's retirement announcement on Friday came as a complete surprise even to the man who knows most of Formula One's best-kept secrets, commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone.
Japan's Kazuki Nakajima will race for Williams next season, the Formula One team confirmed on Wednesday.
McLaren have formally lodged an appeal against the decision not to penalise three drivers in the Brazilian Grand Prix because of fuel irregularities.
Jenson Button made the best possible start to his quest for a third successive Formula One victory by setting the quickest lap time in Friday's two practice sessions for the Chinese Grand Prix. The Briton, who won the first two races of the season from pole position, again showed the pace of his Brawn GP car with a storming lap of one minute, 35.679 seconds late in the second session.
Jenson Button clinched his second pole position in a row for the new Brawn GP team at the Malaysian Grand Prix on Saturday while McLaren's world champion Lewis Hamilton could qualify only 12th.
Kimi Raikkonen led a Ferrari one-two in Malaysian Grand Prix practice on Friday with the world champions back up to speed after a difficult start to the season. Raikkonen, the 2007 world champion who won at Sepang last year, fired in a quickest lap of one minute 35.707 seconds in the afternoon to end Nico Rosberg's four-session run at the top of the timesheets. Brazilian team mate Felipe Massa was second quickest in 1:35.832.
Force India drivers Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil will start Sunday's French Grand Prix at the back of the grid after being eliminated in the first qualifying session in Magny-Cours. Due to the 10-pace grid penalty on Williams' Nico Rosberg from the Canadian Grand Prix, Fisichella and Sutil avoided a 19-20 start by finishing 18th and 19th respectively.
Formula One leader Nico Rosberg felt sore enough at losing Sunday's Italian Grand Prix without then having to face conspiracy theories suggesting he had done it deliberately.
Nico Rosberg was hoping to savour, but it must have tasted sweeter than the champagne he drank out of Daniel Ricciardo's boot as the German inched closer to his maiden Formula One title.
Williams halted a pre-season Formula One test at Barcelona's circuit de Catalunya on Friday after Japanese rookie Kazuki Nakajima crashed the team's new car into the barriers.
Germany's Nico Rosberg put Mercedes on pole position for the US Formula One Grand Prix on Saturday with championship leading team mate Lewis Hamilton qualifying second. Mercedes-powered Williams filled the second row with Finland's Valtteri Bottas third fastest and Brazilian Felipe Massa fourth.
Nico Rosberg ended the Formula One season on a winning high in Abu Dhabi on Sunday with team mate and triple world champion Lewis Hamilton following him home in a record 12th one-two finish for dominant Mercedes.
Red Bull's four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel won the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Sunday to chalk up his seventh successive victory and equal the longest winning streak in the modern era of Formula One.
Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton has fueled speculation that he is in a romantic relationship with pop star Rihanna.
Austrian test driver Alexander Wurz will replace Mark Webber in the Williams race line-up next season.
Former world champion Kimi Raikkonen has renewed his contract with Ferrari and will race for them again next season, the Formula One team said.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff indicated that the potential sanctions are sufficiently draconian to make both think twice if not three times.
Lewis Hamilton avoided mayhem around him to open the F1 season with a pole-to-flag victory in a crash-strewn Australian Grand Prix.
Williams have vowed to be more aggressive in Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix after scoring points with both cars in Bahrain's season-opener.
Reigning F1 champ warns Bottas about Hamilton rivalry
Formula One championship leader Nico Rosberg's hopes of an eighth successive win, and fifth of the season, disappeared on Sunday after a collision with Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton on the opening lap of the Spanish Grand Prix.
World Champion Lewis Hamilton has poked fun at Sebastian Vettel's remarks that Mercedes' recent dominance has made F1 'less exciting', saying that the German's run of four years in Red Bull was more boring than his two years supremacy.
Nico Rosberg won the Austrian Formula One Grand Prix for the second year in a row in a Mercedes one-two finish with team mate Lewis Hamilton on Sunday.
Formula One's new qualifying format was given a second chance in Bahrain on Saturday after flopping on its debut in Australia but team bosses and drivers declared it as bad as before.
Williams called an end to their Barcelona test a day early on Wednesday after Nico Rosberg wrecked his car in a high-speed crash.
'I'm the first one to say we shouldn't be speaking bad about things on TV, but I think the new qualifying format is pretty rubbish'
Newly-crowned Formula One champion Nico Rosberg issued a stinging rebuke to Niki Lauda after the Mercedes boss slammed the former for leaving the team in the lurch by announcing a sudden retirement from the sport.
Rosberg and triple world champion Lewis Hamilton shared testing duties on Tuesday, with the Briton taking over in the afternoon for a race simulation. Together, they did 169 laps without a hitch
The McLaren driver has only one piece of advice for Formula One's rookie drivers: 'Let us past.'
The 18-year-old completed 65 laps with a best time exactly three seconds slower than Ralf Schumacher.
Nico Rosberg invited Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel to attend Mercedes' Friday debrief at the Malaysian Grand Prix after a light-hearted exchange between the Formula One rivals last weekend.
Lewis Hamilton will start Sunday's Belgian Formula One Grand Prix from near the back of the grid as the world championship leader takes a hefty grid penalty for exceeding his allowed allocation of engine components.
Nico Rosberg is refusing to get carried away by thoughts of celebrating a maiden Formula One title triumph at the end of the season, despite getting one hand on the championship crown with victory in the Japanese Grand Prix. The German eased to a maiden win from pole position at the Suzuka circuit on Sunday, chalking up his ninth win of the year, to lift himself 33 points clear of Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton in the overall standings.
The Italian grabbed the third pole position of his career, knocking Honda's Jenson Button off the top spot as the seconds ticked away at the end of the session.
"It was unbelievable, to have a fastest race lap under normal conditions in your first ever Grand Prix," Nico Rosberg's father, 1982 champion Keke said.
Mercedes will take a firm line with Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg to make sure their clash at the US Grand Prix has no repercussions for the team, says motorsports director Toto Wolff.
The Williams Formula One team have boosted Indian Narain Karthikeyan's hopes of a reserve role next year by calling him back for more tests in Spain.
The Indian was faster than German rookie Nico Rosberg who has secured the team's second race drive for 2006.
