F1 2022 thread - see post 1 for rules

And how many people have been killed by lung cancer after getting addicted to Marlboro products? Or Rothmans? Or Camel? Or West?

If anything pumping money into Nikita's F1 career means it's unavailable to Putin. Stop paying Nikita and they start paying Putin instead.

I don't think you understand the scale of what's going on here.

Uralkali is owned by Rostec which is owned by Sergey Chemezov, who is a close Putin confidante, and himself a former KGB agent and high ranking General in State Security.

Putin uses sport and sports-washing to provide a civilised face to very uncivilised activity. The World Cup, the Winter Olympics, the Sochi Grand Prix, all are front operation to move people and money where they are most valuable to Putin. Uralkali was only in F1 because Putin wanted a presence. When that Uralkali money was taken by Haas, there was no question that the car livery wouldn't be a Russian flag.

It's not a matter that the money going to Mazepin is better than it going to Putin, its like a bent penny in the gutter outside a bank branch by comparison to the couple of trillion dollars in commodities and foreign held assets that Putin has put in place to enrich himself and his yes men and to fund the massive military spending of the last 20 years.

It is a matter of erasing every bit of corrupt Russian funded presence in all sport and culture and if that includes Mazepin and if it includes Danil Kvyat and his G-Drive team in the WEC, then so be it. Tough **** on them for being part of the Russian kleptocracy machine.

New contract for max

Mazepin is in a unique situation where his father, and benefactor, is directly supporting the putin regime. So he should suffer the effects of those sanctions. That shouldnt affect all Russians as they're not in mazepins position

IMO it was a farce in the Olympics because at the Olympics you are representing your nation, and are part of your national team set up. Allowing them to compete is ROC was stupid because the Russian Olympic Commitee is defacto the country when it comes to the OG, as is the apparatus that was supposed to be getting punished.

In F1, you are not. You are a driver for your team. There isn't a Russian F1 team, or German or English etc. Same for football at club level. Playing for Man United doesn't mean you are representing either England or your own Country - you are representing Man United - and afaik Soccer hasn't banned russian players from playing for non-russian teams, just banned Russian teams from playing (so a Brazilian at a Russian club can't play for them either).

Tennis has a mixture of players playing as idividuals, mostly, but also some team related events.

Considering the pressure the other oligarchs are getting, like Roman Abramovic, I wouldn't say there too far off getting those sanctions. And yes the FIA have seriously dropped the ball, but they don't have a great track record when it comes to humanitarian policies

Seen on sky sports that he wouldn't be allowed to race at the British gp by a decision by motorsport UK

I wonder could Mazepin get a licence from another juristiction and race at Silverstone? I doubt he would as he may not get a very warm welcome. He wasn't very popular to begin with.

Hopefully Haas can sort themselves out. Otherwise 206 people will be out of a job.

Kvyat isnt the official one this year. They gave the official reserve gig to Piastri.

I also think I remember something about Kvyat possibly taking up Italian citizenship when the ban on Russians was first being introduced, before the "neutral" became an option.

I'm surprised he's signed such a long 5 year contract. He's established himself as the undisputed top driver in the world, while there are zero guarantees that Red Bull will get the new regs right or will find themselves a solid engine partner after Honda. If things did go south for RB he'd be in a position to walk into any other team, and if they went well for RB he'd be able to renew regularly at his leisure. Doesn't seem to make sense to me to commit for so long in advance. If Hamilton made that kind of long term commitment when McLaren were strong he'd still be a one time WDC right now. While being tied to a team with an underperforming car is a hard situation to recover from, as we've seen with Alonso who despite his undoubted excellence has been never been in the running to get back into a top seat while far lesser drivers like Bottas or Albon have done.

An interesting take on the testing times. I think it would be great if this was remotely accurate.

Russian GP contract terminated

As long as Adrian Newey is there I think the car will always be top 3 at the very least.

I'm surprised to see that they actually terminated the contract after they'd already replaced it with Turkey for the coming season. I wonder is it more to do with the effect of the sanctions as opposed to any moral conundrum they're having?