They keep calling it an event to reveal their ”single seater car” which I know includes F1 obviously but I’m so confused why they don’t mention F1 anywhere. Maybe they’re not allowed to because only that shared launch event is supposed to claim the reveal of the F1 cars?
There are probably restrictions in place as to how they can refer to it, so as to not detract from the ‘event’
Duchessa is a really reliable source, especially for Ferrari news and he specifically mentions project 677 which is the internal project number for the 2025 Ferrari car
What tracks do we no longer have that you really wanna see come back, and which ones would you trade out for them if possible?
I’d love for Istanbul Park (Turkey) to come back it’s a great track, it’s random appearance in covid times was chaotic but it’s such a well designed circuit.
On a similar note (and one you’ll be well aware of my thoughts of if you’ve been following me for a while) is Sepang circuit in Malaysia, this is probably one of my favourite tracks of all time, the track design, the conditions, the whole vibes are just incredible, but it’s unlikely to come back, but I highly recommend watching old races from there.
I quite like the Nurburgring in Germany as well, I’d love it if they were able to bring this back as a one off or a rotational European GP again but I think that’s not financially viable.
In terms of tracks that I’d be happy to lose, Imola, Miami, Saudi Arabia and maybe Las Vegas but I’ll give it one more year before I establish my opinion
I know people have mixed opinions on Barcelona but the fact we're losing it to get that Madrid circuit feels like a crime
At the moment it’s not guaranteed that we will lose Barcelona as a track, the only confirmation as of right now is that as of 2026 the Spanish GP will be held in Madrid, but the Barcelona circuit still has a contract for 2026.
So at least for 2026 its likely that the two will both be on the calendar, but with the GP held at Barcelona having a different name (potentially the European GP or the Catalan GP)
Barcelona has also been touted as one of the potential ‘rotational tracks’ so it might not be gone for good after 2026.
But yeah I actually quite like Barcelona as a track, especially now they’ve got rid of that terrible chicane and I really dislike this movement towards so many street circuits.
I know it's the money but still blows my mind how Madrid has such a long contract when they've literally not even driven there yet
do you think the quality of racing will be any good? idk if there's been any confirmed design released yet?
I mean the same pretty much happened with Miami, Las Vegas and Saudi Arabia and I really don’t like this method of agreeing to long term contracts before there’s a single race, when there’s some really good circuits that aren’t on the calendar or have short contracts.
This is the proposed circuit map, I don’t know if it’s changed since but it looks like an elephant
The top section and into the ‘trunk’ has potential to provide good racing (depending on width, surface, etc) and they have a Turkey turn 8 clone (the big sweeping corner at the end of the trunk), which are really good corners.
The rest of the track doesn’t look too promising though, a lot of 90 degree corners and short straights.
do the track contract expiry dates mean that after those dates f1 won't race there again, or just that they won't be racing there again if not renewed before those dates?
The current contract will expire on the date mentioned, at the end of that season.
For quite a few of those tracks it’s likely that a new contract will be announced sometime next year, but with a lot of the talks recently with Domenicalli saying that there’s likely to be some ‘rotational European races’ in the next few years I wouldn’t expect all of them to have permanent contracts.
What they mean by rotational is that you might for instance get Spa one year and Zandvoort the next and they swap in and out (for example)
To be honest I don’t think this is related to F1 in anyway, LM is a pretty big company with multiple divisions.
From the sounds of it there’s quite a bit of stuff happening within LM at the moment but not really connected to the F1 side of things, so other than who is standing next to Stefano Domenicalli at the occasional raceI don’t think this will change much.
Do you know who elects the FIA president? I read it’s the FIA General assembly but that didn’t really clarify anything for me. 😄 Is that just… everyone who works at the FIA? Can someone become FIA president who’s not currently in the FIA?
Okay, this is a relatively complex thing, so I can go quite surface level or very deep but I’ll try to find some middle ground.
The FIA general assembly is made up of 243 clubs across 147 countries, and these clubs are categorised as either ‘mobility’ or ‘sport’ list here (it’s from 2021 so there might be some missing) and each of these clubs will have a president who will attend the general assembly
Now each of these clubs will get to vote in the election, each country has, in principal 24 votes (there is some variation with some countries with only one club getting 12)
In addition the head of the FIA drivers commission gets a vote (this is currently Felipe Massa)
You would have to be part of an FIA club first and foremost, and likely have been the president of your club before going for president status, as in order to put yourself forward to be president of the FIA you need backing from at least 18 clubs. So you’d likely need to hold a position of authority under the current president first.
The maximum amount of time you can be president of the FIA for is 3 four year terms (12 years)
am curious, would u happen to know any information about the working/labor conditions of non-driver f1 employees? :0
I work in engineering and a few of the people at my previous job used to work for F1 teams, some more recently than others.
One person in particular, worked as a mechanic in the 80s and 90s and then took on a more engineering focused role later on, before leaving F1 in the 2010s and he would always say that things were bad for the mechanics and engineers back and expected it to be a lot worse nowadays.
He’s mentioned in the past that he’s seen many marriages fell apart because of the stress that the job puts on the couple and he quit the trackside role because of the strain it put on his own family
Typically on a race weekend mechanics are at the track a minimum of 12 hours a day from Wednesday morning until Sunday evening, and this routine often results in many of them relying on painkillers and alcohol to get through.
It’s not just the mechanics though, catering staff are often some of the first people to the track Friday-Sunday and the last ones to leave
Also the mechanics and engineers and other staff aren’t going to be flying anywhere in luxury and between races they will have jobs and responsibilities at the factory as well.
Historically jobs in significantly underpaid compared to similar ones (not in F1) and that is because of the draw of working in motorsport (and this isn’t helped with the cost cap)
There’s a really good article from a few years ago here
I personally think they worded the statement quite well and clear.
Yeah it’s well worded, but I think I’ve mentioned it before, I’m not the biggest fan of them lumping in the jewellery and underwear rulings along with the swearing stuff, as the jewellery and underwear rules have been in place for many years (even decades), just not policed much and they are there at their basis for the safety of the drivers, whilst the swearing rules are new and don’t have a basis is safety at all.
Like it’s a bit of a weird stance in my opinion, to try to push back on the jewellery and underwear rules and I feel like they were just mentioned for the sake of it, maybe to appease a driver or two.
But overall I think the statement was good but I just feel like it’s weird to push back on rules that aren’t new additions and in addition that, ones that are there for safety.
Like argue as much as you like about the swearing thing, it’s right to do so, but maybe not the safety related rules.
Not to mention Gabriel incredible performance making him the only F2 driver to have won a race coming from last position. He's good, has good management and the timing worked in his favor, he's not a nobody people just don't follow base categories
Yeah, I’m not able to watch the junior races as much as I’d like to but I personally like to stay somewhat in the loop through highlights videos etc and he looks impressive and he also looks to be quite an intelligent driver. But I would have loved to watch that race live
Would Bortoleto have to be released from McLaren or could it be like something with Russell where he drove for Williams but was still part of Mercedes academy?
He was released, confirmed by McLaren, it’s not a loan
it’s not mandatory to follow the feeder series but bortoleto was linked as a potential sauber driver even before Franco took Logan’s seat like do people not follow the news?? I remember first hearing about this in july 😭😭😭
Yeah he’s been rumoured to be linked to the seat pretty much from the start of the season and the rumours have stayed constant throughout and actually grew around the summertime.
He did a test for McLaren a little while back in Austria and Binotto remarked then that he was a contender for the Sauber seat.
I think most people weren’t really paying attention to him as an actual contender for the seat hence why this seems kind of left field to some.
I think also people sometimes forget just how long it can take to sort out contracts, especially in a case like this where he would need to be released from McLaren.
Hello I'm new to F1 so this might be a very basic question, but what aspect does a track can be considered hard or easy to overtake? And for track that are known to be hard for overtake how would the drivers do "battle" on the track since that basically one of the main charm of F1.
Hello,
Typically for overtaking zones you want to have long straights (ideally with DRS) followed by hard braking zones, which are slow sharp corners. These are typically known to be the best opportunities for overtakes.
Also a lot of overtakes happen on the straights due to DRS (drag reduction system), these are typically ‘boring’ overtakes as the overtaking car kind of just zooms past.
Baku (below), has long DRS straights followed by 90 degree corners, which gives cars the opportunity to brake as late as possible and potentially pull off an overtake
For cars to battle, you kind of want one of two things, back to back DRS zones or a series of flowing corners.
The back to back DRS zones gives more opportunities for the fight to continue throughout the lap and can often result in the drivers changing positions multiple times.
With Bahrain (below) the car behind will get DRS along the start finish straight and if they manage to get ahead, then Car A (originally the leading car) will get DRS along the straight between T3 and T4 and have an opportunity to retake the position
The series of flowing corners, although harder for cars to follow in, if they are side by side or particularly close, they can try to fight for a better exit out of a corner, and if there is a sequence of corners, getting a better exit out of one corner will likely help at the start of the next corner.
With Silverstone (below), Turns 10-14 are great battling opportunities because of the corners, it can be difficult for cars to follow through here, but when they manage, it is something special.
It's honestly a huge shame Ferrari and Leclerc don't try to fight penalties more. I feel like they have such a huge case with Leclerc getting a larger fine over something that affects nothing with the race Vs the other drivers who could have done some serious harm or gotten a huge advantage in the race.
Especially with Leclerc having such a stellar weekend. Held up the McLaren rocket and was the driver that forced Max to change his overtaking approach, which clearly worked out since Max couldn't overtake him. Sucks Ferrari won't even fight the Norris penalty to try and gain those extra few points needed to help boost Leclerc to p2 in WDC.
There’s nothing there to fight as there is no precedent to use as an argument.
And for an appeal/right to review you need to have new relevant information.
Even a 10 second penalty to Norris wouldn’t drop him a singular position, so there’s no benefit in trying to fight it, because they aren’t going to jump from nothing to a penalty greater than 10 seconds.
In addition I wouldn’t necessarily call the McLaren a rocket ship on Sunday, Saturday they were very strong but they changed their set up for Sunday and they definitely lost their pace advantage, especially so in the race.
Hi Al - I remember at one point you shared a great online resource that had telemetry data/statistics etc. but now I can’t find the website. Any chance you remember? Bc every other site isn’t doing it for me 😂
So there’s 2 that I used to use, one of which I think might be the one you are talking about and I can’t for the life of me remember the name (but it was really good for comparing lap times)
The other one, which is good for telemetry is F1 Tempo
But I have found another website called Pitwall and although I haven’t used it, I think it looks promising, you can compare lap times and it generates race reports and pit stop data.
I don't think the fia is fixing the championship, but hypothetically would the fia get anything from a closer fight?
Surely not because they are a non-profit and I doubt very much individual employees have any bonuses dependent on that kind of thing. I can imagine liberty milking it but they don't have control of race control and regulations for that very reason. But obviously there may be another factor I'm missing. I'm just confused why everyone thinks the fia would get involved in this stuff
No, other than some publicity there’s nothing for the FIA to gain
FOM/Liberty Media pay them a flat fee regardless of the profit that F1 makes, so they don’t see any additional money that Liberty Media and the teams get.
The amount that the teams and drivers pay is dependent on their previous years championship points, so they’ll get the same amount of money (in total) from the teams and drivers each year regardless of a championship fight, but the individual amounts will fluctuate.
Stewards don’t get paid, all they get is their expenses covered for the weekend (so hotel and food and possibly travel)
If anything the championship battle is making them look worse because of the people getting annoyed with each decision
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