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F1 2024

1%er said:
We are so happy that McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari have stepped up, it really looked like F1 would be all Red Bull until the big change in 2026. It has made F1 much better :thumbs:
Click to expand...
Even my Missus is watching the GPs from lights-out to Champagne fight.

And what baffles me is that Max was winning races by 30 seconds. Suddenly he began losing by the same(-ish) amount.

That's not an upgrade story. Something in Red Bull has been switched off, and something smart in McLaren has been switched on.

Have RB surrendered some dodgy component on the proviso the FIA keep it secret?

I like a good conspiracy theory.
 
That's more like it from Lando, it's the kind of drive that can win championships.

As for Redbull? Looks like they went down a wrong design path, might have had something taken away and look to be scrambling to figure out what went wrong.
Apparently they've pulled resources from the '25 car to try and fix the '24 car.

2025 should be a fun season. 2026 is going to be an engine formula, so either one manufacturer runs away with it or it's much
closer. Active aero in 2026, so no more "The wings bend too much" whining from Redbull.
 
Starting to have some question marks about Albon. I wonder who Williams will choose between Albon and Colapinto to partner Sainz next year if they were given an option.
 
Ualan said:
Starting to have some question marks about Albon. I wonder who Williams will choose between Albon and Colapinto to partner Sainz next year if they were given an option.
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I think Albon is under contract to Williams until the end of 2026. That doesn't mean they have to keep him, but if they defenestrate him it'll cost them a few bob. Albon is paid $3m a year which, while not the stratospheric Max, Hammy, Alonso level, is a big lump from the annual budget for a non-driver.

I think they'd want to see more from Colapinto before that decision.

Caveat: I know nothing.

:)
 
aye for 3 million pound a year they are getting a lot of team and experience from Albion for 3 million a year
and reasonable competitiveness


plus unlike all the other rookies they had into the car

he not costing them more than 3 million pound a year is car damage

so swing in round about
 
Ualan said:
Starting to have some question marks about Albon. I wonder who Williams will choose between Albon and Colapinto to partner Sainz next year if they were given an option.
Click to expand...

Albon is signed until the end of the 2026 season. I think Albon has just got used to having a crap teammate and probably
wasn't expecting Colapinto to be as good as he has been thus far. He'll have to pick up his game with Carlos Sainz arriving in 2025.

2025 wise?
Looking forward to the teammate battles.
Lando vs Oscar.
Lewis vs Charles.
Max vs Whoever they shove in the car.
Albon vs Sainz.

George vs Antonelli should be fascinating. If Antonelli is everything he's cracked up to be and
destroys George? George might have to look for a new team. Toto seems determined to sign
Max. George's contract is up at the end of 2025 I believe.

And of course, Newey wondering around with his clipboard in Aston Martin team clobber will be
amusing if he crosses paths with Horner.

Ax^ said:
oh dear did someone question golden ballocks Verstappen
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He's always threatening to quit F1. Though I could see him quitting Red bull at the end of the season, triggering a release clause.
Then sitting out 2025 so he can sim race, before signing for Mercedes in 2026. I could write clickbait F1 news, but I have
ethics.
 
www.bbc.co.uk

Formula 1: 'Rookie race' plan delayed until at least 2025

A plan to host an end-of-season race for aspiring drivers, dubbed the 'rookie race', is delayed until at least 2025 by Formula 1 bosses.
www.bbc.co.uk

They should do what we used to do back when I was karting - after the last race of the season, they'd "close the track" (i.e. no RACMSA rules applied) and have a mechanics' race.

Better still a team owner and/or chief engineer race!

Have Newey in one RB, Karen Horner in the other. Toto in a Merc. (would they be able to squeeze Briatore into an F1 cockpit now?) Fred Vasseur in a Ferrari. Zac in a Mac. Bring back Guenter Steiner to settle a few scores on the track, etc. Etc.

I'd pay to watch that 😁
 
a_chap said:
www.bbc.co.uk

Formula 1: 'Rookie race' plan delayed until at least 2025

A plan to host an end-of-season race for aspiring drivers, dubbed the 'rookie race', is delayed until at least 2025 by Formula 1 bosses.
www.bbc.co.uk

They should do what we used to do back when I was karting - after the last race of the season, they'd "close the track" (i.e. no RACMSA rules applied) and have a mechanics' race.

Better still a team owner and/or chief engineer race!

Have Newey in one RB, Karen Horner in the other. Toto in a Merc. (would they be able to squeeze Briatore into an F1 cockpit now?) Fred Vasseur in a Ferrari. Zac in a Mac. Bring back Guenter Steiner to settle a few scores on the track, etc. Etc.

I'd pay to watch that 😁
Click to expand...
They'd all crash on the first lap.
 

Will Hamilton drive for Ferrari at the Abu Dhabi test? Mercedes reveals​

Lewis Hamilton has had incredible success with Mercedes throughout his career. The seven-time world champion has driven all 18 of his F1 seasons with Mercedes power, six of those with McLaren and 12 with the Mercedes works team. This long-lasting partnership will soon be ending, however, as Hamilton's last race with Mercedes will be in Abu Dhabi in December. There will be no chance to see the Brit in Ferrari red early, as he will not participate in the post-season test at the very same circuit. The succesful pair have achieved 105 victories, 201 podiums and 104 poles throughout their time together in the sport. Hamilton's Ferrari move was announced in February, and it's safe to say the announcement shook the F1 world to its core. How quickly, then, will we see the seven-time world champion with his new team? It will not be this year, Mercedes has confirmed.

Mercedes rules out early chance to see Hamilton in red
Mercedes has confirmed that Hamilton will not be driving at the Abu Dhabi post-season test nor for Mercedes, nor for Ferrari. The reason? The seven-time world champion will not even be in the country at that time. The team confirmed that George Russell will participate in the tyre test, while Andrea Kimi Antonelli will participate in the Young Driver test. Hamilton's replacement is young Italian star Andrea Kimi Antonelli. The 18-year-old will be getting to grips with the 2024 challenger at the end of the season. Lewis Hamilton is under contract with Mercedes until the end of the year, meaning there will still be a fair amount of farewell work before his contract expires. The seven-time world champion will sit out the test, with Mercedes and Ferrari opting for a different lineup.
 

How much Alpine are set to pay if they use Mercedes power units from 2026​

Alpine will undergo an important change for the 2026 season when it ditches its in-house power units in favour of switching to a customer team. Bosses at Renault finally decided on the fate of their Formula 1 engine project after months of speculation, with the French manufacturer set to reallocate staff in its Viry Chatillon base to other projects relating to their road cars. Chief executive Luca de Meo said he was ‘saddened’ by the closure of the project, after hostility from members of the Alpine team which included protests at the recent Italian Grand Prix. Renault had planned to produce a power unit for the 2026 season having been named as one of the six PU manufacturers by the FIA, but the board of the company has since voted to scrap it to reduce costs. It is now expected Alpine will switch to Mercedes engines for 2026 onwards, having reached an agreement during the Monza weekend. Details of how much it would cost for Alpine to become customers were revealed in a recent interview with De Meo for L’Équipe.

Alpine to spend millions on becoming a customer for Mercedes
Rather than spend millions more producing their power unit for the 2026 season, Alpine will pay upwards of £15 million to use Mercedes power units when the new regulations come into effect. De Meo explained the reason for switching to a customer engine for 2026 was in part due to the headcount at Viry Chatillon not matching what is seen at Mercedes at their facility in Brixworth. “They [Mercedes] have test benches that we don’t have. The transition to the hybrid era required powerful investments that were underestimated at the time. We operate, structurally, with three cylinders when others have eight,” said De Meo. “When I arrived four years ago, the group wanted to stop F1. If it’s still there, it’s because I saved the thing. But we don’t have the structure to be at the forefront of battery chemistry development, software management, energy recovery.”

Alpine makes ‘humiliating’ admission over future
While it is nothing new for road car manufacturers to run different engines in F1, with Aston Martin currently running Mercedes engines and set to switch to Honda for 2026, there is something different about how Alpine has arrived at its current position. Not only is it a loss of decades worth of history in F1, which French F1 driver Romain Grosjean labelled ‘sad’ when he learned of the closure, but Alpine has also admitted defeat before they have started. Renault was always the weakest of the four current PU manufacturers, which is due to how much the Viry Chatillon operation was scaled back before the switch to hybrid engines in 2014. This was done amid the 2008 engine freeze, which led to F1 using the same 4.0 litre V8s for six years before the full hybrid switch.
 

Adrian Newey reveals concerns over F1 2026 regulations ahead of Aston Martin move​

Adrian Newey has shed light on his concerns about the F1 2026 regulations, particularly on the power unit rulebook. The F1 2026 season will see Formula 1 introduce radically different rules, tearing up the current rulebooks, for the start of a new regulation cycle.

Adrian Newey: PU rules were fixed without chassis consideration
An unusual facet of the F1 2026 regulations is that the power unit regulations, ie. the engine, was decided upon first, with the criteria of increasing the electrical output relative to the power output of the internal combustion engine to a 50/50 split. To make this happen with the current limitations of electrical generation hybrid systems, the fear has been that F1 2026 cars will be slower around a lap and, critically, may even slow down while going along long straights due to running out of battery power. To combat this, the chassis regulations have been agreed upon with these potential hurdles in mind, leading to the now infamous quote from Red Bull boss Christian Horner in which he expressed concerns over the possibility of the sport running with ‘Frankenstein’ cars.

Adrian Newey, Red Bull’s current chief technical officer who departs for Aston Martin in 2025, will be assuming technical lead for the Silverstone-based squad when he starts work with Lawrence Stroll’s team, and spoke about the challenge facing the teams and manufacturers to make the regulations work for 2026. “They’re a huge change,” he told Autocar following the announcement of his switch to Aston Martin. “I mean, I can’t remember – it probably has happened at some time in the distant past – but I can’t remember the last time we had completely new power unit and chassis regulations at the same time. In reality, the power unit regulations because there’s a much longer lead time associated with power unit research than there is with the chassis side. Then the power unit regulations were fixed quite a few years ago without, in truth, properly, considering what chassis regulations were then needed to suit those PU regs. That’s something that the FIA, with support from teams, has been battling with since. How it will work out is, in truth, still not clear.”

Adrian Newey: F1 2026 regulations a concern for the show
With the confirmation of the F1 2026 power unit rules convincing Audi to sign up for F1 as an engine supplier and team owner, as well as attracting Ford to partner with Red Bull Powertrains and Honda’s full-time return as a supplier for Aston Martin, Newey said there’s no doubting the rules have worked to keep the manufacturers happy. But the legendary car designer said he has doubts over the spectacle of Formula 1, remaining unconvinced that the new F1 2026 regulations won’t detract from the show. “The original idea that the FIA wanted was 400 kilowatts from the PU and 400 kilowatts from the hybrid side – the electric machine,” he said. “They then started to realise that 400 from the electric was too much to be sustainable, in terms of sustainable from lap to lap, so they’ve reduced that to 350 but even now there is still a lot of concern that, actually, the cars will be going significantly slower at the end of straight than at the start of the straight because they just run out of battery. It was a regulation that was brought in really, I think, primarily to keep the existing OEMs, the manufacturers in, and hopefully attract new ones. In that sense, you can argue it’s been successful. Audi is coming in. Honda has reversed their decision to exit and are staying in but what the show and the spectacle will be, I think it’s a concern. But Formula 1, somehow, seems to have a habit of being all right on the night!”

What would Adrian Newey have done to create a new rulebook?
While Newey could have opted to stay away from F1 for a few years following confirmation of his pending split from Red Bull after almost two decades, the British engineer has put pen to paper to embrace the technical challenge for 2026. But, asked what he would have done if he had a part to play in the rule-making process, Newey said he would have done the opposite and outlined the chassis regulations first and foremost. “I think, first of all, the most important thing for Formula 1 is the individuality of the cars,” he said. “So if the chassis regulations, which in particular and of course, means the aerodynamic regulations, become overly restrictive, then all the cars look the same. If you look at other categories who have kind of gone one make – IndyCar, perhaps being the worst example…or best example – then they went from a very successful series with many manufacturers in it through to the mid-’90s, to then going the one-manufacturer route with Dallara. Then everybody runs the same car, and public interest waned. You could argue, to an extent, that’s also happened in sports cars, at times. I’m not saying necessarily that prescribed aerodynamic performance is the route, but I would have done the opposite. This is the big question of does Formula 1 need manufacturers, OEMs, in the sport or not? Because, to me, the value is in the teams, not the manufacturers. Manufacturers come and go – they change CEOs, who decide suddenly that, actually, they’d much rather sponsor a tennis tournament than Formula 1, and they go off in a different direction. And that happens regularly. We’ve seen it. The teams themselves, that’s their sole livelihood. So, unless they get themselves into deep financial trouble, they’re not going to go away. From a spectator point of view, I’m not sure they’re that worried about whether it’s more fuel efficient or so on and so forth. I also feel, frankly, that the prescribed electric route, which most European governments have gone down, is not the right route. They’ve done the typical governmental thing of rather than saying, ‘This is a problem’, which I totally agree with, we need to do something to help save the planet, to improve ecology, etc, rather than say, ‘Right, this is the target, you OEMs go away and come up with some proposals’. They’ve said, ‘This is what we want, and this is what you will do. You will now go fully electric’. Don’t get me wrong, I think electric has definitely has its applications. It’s a great technology. It’s clearly developing fast. But to say that’s the prescribed technology and that’s all you can have, without allowing the manufacturers to go away and do the research to come up with alternatives, I don’t agree with that. It is very anti-engineer, and it’s by no means guaranteed that it’s going to produce the right solution in all cases, it won’t.”
 

South African Minister of Sport: F1 will “definitely” return to the country​

According to South Africa's Minister of Sport, Art and Culture Gayton McKenzie, Formula 1 will return to the country in the future. This comes after Lewis Hamilton's plea for the sport to return to the continent of Africa earlier in the year. "I can tell you this, F1 is definitely coming [to South Africa]. F1 told us they’re keen to come, they told us what they’ll need to come, and we are going to give them what they need to come.” This is what South Africa's Minister of Sport, Art and Culture Gayton McKenzie said in a conversation with motorsport social media personality LalliesF1.

F1 has not raced on African soil since 1993 when Alain Prost took victory at Kyalami and in the 30 years since that race, the sport has visited every continent except Africa and Antarctica. Formula E did race in Cape Town in 2023, but according to McKenzie, it is undecided whether the F1 event would be held in Cape Town or South Africa's other largest city - Johannesburg. “There’s still a big fight at the moment. Is it Cape Town, or is it Joburg? That decision has not been taken.”

Earlier in the year before the Dutch Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton made it clear he believes the sport should already be visiting the continent rather than visiting the same countries multiple times a year. "We can't be adding races in other locations and continuing to ignore Africa, which the rest of the world just takes from. No one gives anything to Africa." Hamilton had said to GPblog and others.
 

Several African GP bids fighting for F1 race deal​

This year's FIA prize gala will take place in Rwanda, with the East African country also working on a grand prix project that F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali has described as a good plan. There are concerns, however, not only about the Marburg virus outbreak in Rwanda, but about how poor the country is. A country whose GDP is made up 40 percent by Western aid should not be allowed in Formula 1, an unnamed F1 team boss told Auto Bild.

Another African GP project is shaping up in South Africa as well. South Africa's sports minister Gayton McKenzie told the 'The South African' newspaper: "I can tell you this - F1 is definitely coming. F1 told us they're keen to come, they told us what they'll need to come, and we are going to give them what they need to come, he added.

The last grand prix on African soil took place at Kyalami, north of Johannesburg, in 1993. Minister McKenzie continued: There's still a big fight at the moment. Is it Cape Town, or is it Joburg? That decision has not been taken.
 

Toyota returns to Formula 1 with Haas​

Some months ago, after Toyota officials were spotted in the small American team's garage at Silverstone, experts concluded that the Japanese manufacturer was probably just looking for a new tenant for its Cologne wind tunnel. McLaren, Toyota's former wind tunnel client, recently began using its own state-of-the-art facility at its Woking factory. "It is also possible that Toyota will take over some of the contracted manufacturing (for Haas) that is currently carried out at Dallara in Italy", Auto Motor und Sport correspondent Tobias Gruner reported at the time.

However, Haas on Friday announced "a multi-year agreement" with Toyota Gazoo Racing, involving a partnership packaging "design, technical and manufacturing services". The deal will also involve Toyota branding on the Ferrari-powered Haas cars as of next weekend's US grand prix in Austin and beyond. Team boss Ayao Komatsu says the deal has Ferrari's blessing. "Together with Gene Haas, I'd specifically like to thank Stefano Domenicali and Fred Vasseur on that front", said the Japanese.

Auto Motor und Sport said a new, Toyota-constructed front wing will debut on the 2024 Haas car in Austin. "More and more parts will be added bit by bit", said correspondent Michael Schmidt. "The aim is that by mid-2025, all components will be supplied by Toyota, with the exception of the chassis and the drivetrain elements produced by Ferrari". Toyota pulled its Cologne-based works Formula 1 team out of the sport at the end of 2009.

[My understanding is that Toyota joining with Haas is just a technology and resource sharing arrangement and not a step towards a return as a chassis or engine builder]
 
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