New regulations new season....
Can redbull keep up the pace
The wins by bottas, massa, and barachello dictate otherwise
Does anyone else think that Sainz is more then pleased watching Leclercs downfall.
Leclerc was 1 or 2 races away from becoming Ferrari’s No1 Driver and you could sense Sainz’s frustration when talking to the media.
Once a driver becomes the No1 driver in a team the No2 driver is pretty goosed.
I said from the start that piastri action in tweeting as he did was foolish given he is just starting out on his F1 career.
He could find himself in a Williams.
If Alpine win, I guess that makes his initial contract with them still valid which was for an alpine or loaned out race seat for 23.
I can't see alpine putting him in the car now and McLaren might not want to pay what alpine want to release him so he could be in a Williams next year leaving alpine and McLaren a driver short.
Think back to Singapore 2017. It was a year which was defined as "this circuit" is a Mercedes-Benz circuit and "that circuit" is a Ferrari circuit. Well Singapore definitely fell into the Ferrari camp with Red Bull even out qualifying Hamilton into 5th and nobody expecting him to challenge. Then this happened.
So, even in this state never rule out Mercedes-Benz for a race win.
Side note, I miss the Setanta/Eir Sport days
Cheers for the link
Their data pointed them towards this current concept, and it was totally off. So switching concepts doesn’t guarantee better results even if other teams are doing it, they have to have an understanding of it before they commit.
Their concept would have be go beyond changing the pods, this article sums it up pretty well and the position they find themselves in -
Mick dropped by ferrari
Alpine were lining him up with the Williams seat, and an Alpine drive the following year. The reason Alonso jumped ship was that the team wouldn't give him a 2 year contract as they wanted to leave room for Piastri.
If Alpine do win the contract dispute, he's likely to find himself on the sidelines for another year due to his actions when he could have been racing next year. He's also tainted now - look at comments made by both Toto Wolff and Christian Horner last weekend. If he gets a drive and he's fast on track it will all eventually be forgotten, but he's given other teams a reason to think twice about whether they should hire him if he might not honour his contract if they do.
It's looking like there is some form of three way negotiation going on where Alpine will allow McLaren to take Piastri if McLaren allow Herta to go to Alpha Tauri if Alpha Tauri allow Gasly to go to Alpine. Gasly doesn't have a long term future at Red Bull so I can see why that move would make sense for both him and the team, but there's a lot of other parts to fall into place. I could imagine Mick Schumacher being on the shortlist as a Gasly replacement given the upcoming Porsche tie up with Red Bull, or if not both he and Ricciardo's best chances to stay in the sport look like they lie with Williams right now.
Another big difference is that the Red Bull isn't actually dominant at all. They've only managed 4 pole positions in 14 races. It's a far cry from Mercedes routinely locking out the front row race in race out for most of the hybrid era. It's much more similar to the titles that Vettel won - people wrongly describe his car as dominant just because they won four in a row when the reality was that multiple teams had competitive race winning cars, every weekend was unpredictable, and the championships regularly went to the final race. Only in 2013, when the teams stopped pushing in order to focus on 2014, was that Red Bull ever truly dominant.
This year, both Max with his driving and the team with their strategy have made the absolute most of every possible opportunity on a Sunday with brilliant racecraft and decision making while their opponents have underperformed and made mistakes and that's made the difference in the championship. The same was true last year. Assuming Max does win his second title this year, neither of them will purely be thanks to a dominant car that's guaranteed to turn up and win every week by default the way the previous 7 world championships were. Maybe the second half of the year will be different as Red Bull clearly had the advantage in Spa, but honestly that's the first time all season that this has been the case so clearly.
I don't think Mercedes' dominance will ever be repeated as the rules will never be so heavily stacked in one team's favour again like the hybrid Formula was. The FIA may have been willing to sell the rules to the highest bidder previously but Netflix has shown how much potential the sport has to make money as an actual platform for sporting entertainment rather than just a vessel for manufacturers to advertise cars, and fair competition is the best way to make that money.
I presume Alpine are only pursuing the case over Piastri's contract so they get a pay out from mclaren. Next year could be devilish expensive for mclaren. They're paying DRic NOT to drive for them, then paying Piastri's wage plus paying Alpine for Piastri NOT driving for them. Essentially paying 4 times for 2 drivers.
A driver like Norris who just keeps his head down, works hard, drives well and signs a long term contract, is worth his weight in gold.
Piastri only got offered the Alpine drive because Alonso jumped ship. He was dead right to seek alternatives elsewhere and control his own destiny. He didn't want to risk another year on the sidelines and possibly end up like De Vries in Formula E or like Russell in a bad Williams for years.
I hope Piastri and Norris can push Mclaren forward next season. Ricciardo has been a drain on morale for the past two seasons and all the progress made before Sainz left has been lost.
Yeah they are trying to gather data on two concepts they are not used to. Ground effect AND a shell with no sidepods, there are bound to be issues. They can't escape the ground effect regs but nothing is locking them into the sidepod concept except themselves.
Stick to what you know, go back to the sidepods, they have more of an understanding already on the sidepod design.
Two options with budget caps in mind.
Stick with the dodgy data they don't understand with the current sidepod design and pour money and resources into that one problem until they hopefully make a breakthrough.
Go to a sidepod concept they already understand and can work through the data on. Might cost half the amount of resources because their main focus can be ground effect.
Nothing to date makes you think the unlocked performance is just around the corner or that they are improving anywhere.
Merc's big problem is a data problem.
Their data clearly says their car is or should be fast.
Their data does not correlate, at all, to the real world. and they have no idea why that massive disconnect exists. So even if they change concept, the way in which they gather and process data will be the same/evolutionary, and they will have no reason to trust that either.
They are quite blind as to what the actual problem is, and if you don't understand the problem you can't find a solution.
Also, with the cost caps, they simply won't have the money to go b-spec and copy others - because the development of those cars will cost a lot more than Merc can spend on swapping over and trying to follow. The cost-cap somewhat commits them to the concept they have gone with.
Isn't that due to the narrow setup window and track temps etc? I would imagine the reason for the narrow setup window is everything is reliant on the floor and front/rear wings and also reg changes on brake ducts means they don't have brake magic which may have been a bigger performance player than people once thought.
They must switch to the car that has sidepods because its proven by other teams to work significantly better than one without sidepods, more surface area to control air flow and extra stays etc etc
True, they never raced the original spec but by no means does that mean they shouldn't run it in future.
Just go with the classic design like everyone else.
Also, who thinks Danny Ric may not be mentally ready for another season no matter what seat he gets??
Mercs issues are more than just aero it seems. There is genuine confusion as to why the car can be fast (Hungry) and slow the very next race.
The no sidepods is very unique but it seems to cause more issues, but it does seem to go deeper with issues with mechanical grip and set-up windows.
They never even raced the original spec from Barcelona.
Surely they just go to their second spec and improve that. No way they are that thick that they threw a mule out on track to throw everyone off their actual concept.
They have already let RB and Ferrari come up with aero concepts this year. We have seen two attempts at replicating those already.
Merc have to redefine it’s concept which might take time. They still don’t fully understand this one, so simply switching to a new one won’t necessarily mean back to the front just like that.
I suspect RB might be the team to beat for a long while yet.
Interesting development but not surprising in the least. Piastri is coming out very much the worst of all involved. Horner didn't seem too impressed with the situation either when he was giving an interview with Sky over the weekend, and I'd imagine that goes for a lot of teams/team principals.
Obviously Otmar's main issue is the wording used by Piastri in the now infamous tweet. It was a very poorly worded tweet and unnecessarily disrespectful towards the team that invested heavily in him. Apparently they'll be seeking monetary compensation from Piastri should the ruling go in their favour (rather than force him to drive). It'll be very interesting to see what sort of compensation they'll be seeking, because McLaren have already taken a big hit getting rid of Danny Ric and might not be keen to fork out again.
Personally I don't think it would have been too much to ask for Piastri to have acted with a bit more class. Alpine invested heavily in him, and while that doesn't assure loyalty, it should at the minimum ensured a bit of respect. The more time passes from that tweet, the harder I find it to root for Piastri. And unless he's lives up to his potential, he could find himself out of the sport very early indeed, and he'll only have himself to blame.
Agreed, I was very impressed with RB and Honda throwing everything into last year to give Max a car that could challenge, when it would have been so easy to just do what everyone else was doing and focussing on 2022.
But Max not breaking a sweat from 14th isn’t what we need. 4 or 5 genuine title contenders are on the grid if they get the car sorted, which practically guarantees intrigue. Thankfully the other teams aren’t years behind RB and could put themselves in a position to challenge next year.
Every time there’s a significant period of domination from one team F1 is poorer for it, so hopefully the other teams get their act together!
And given the renault engine is poor anf mercedes engine is good, it probably means the alpine car, apart from the engine, is at least as good as the mclaren and maybe better.
The Renault engine is not poor. They have done very good this year. Have they even had any reliability problems this year? I don't think they have.
And mclaren has had good form for making decent chassis. Even the Honda cars had decent chassis and aero.
No they didn't. They were terrible. They kept saying they haveca great chassis it was just the engine was not fast yet but they were proved wrong on a few occasions. Mclaren do not always make good chassis. Its not just when they were with Honda. Go back to 2012 I think. The Mclaren with the-U shaped sidepods. It was terrible. They admitted afterwords they tried to be too radical. Before that they were too Conservative. So Mclaren have not always been good at the chassis.
The difference with the merc domination and what Ferrari/RB are doing now is that Merc had a significant head start on regulations that they lobbied for. Ferrari and RB are ahead on pure merit this time around. The RB car domination won't last past this season because Merc shouldn't mess up their concept again and Ferrari should sack most of their back room staff. Their are ways to fight back against RB, they won't always be chasing two years off where Merc entered.
Huge difference.
I listened to an interview with Leclerc on BBC where he talked about being far more professional away from the track this year. Working on his mental game and being more serious about diet and exercise. Bodes well for him getting the most out of himself in the future.
He'll keep fighting for this year but I'm surely He'll have to start focusing on next year before too long.
I've been supporting Max for the last while, particularly when he was the main one fighting Lewis. But I'm not a fan of the idea of Max dominating for a number of years as Lewis did. I've no problem with Max (or any driver) winning titles, and if he won a few in a row with serious competition until the last race, I'd be delighted with that.
Hopefully Ferrari and Mercedes can get it together for next year.
True that most would rate Norris over Ocon. And given the renault engine is poor anf mercedes engine is good, it probably means the alpine car, apart from the engine, is at least as good as the mclaren and maybe better.
I'd stick with Mclaren for a couple of reasons. Mainly thr fact that Renault have never gotten on top of the engine means they are always fighting with one arm behind their back. And mclaren has had good form for making decent chassis. Even the Honda cars had decent chassis and aero.
So mclaren will always have the engine advantage and if they get their chassis even equal with Alpine, then it's the better choice. Neither are poor teams, neither regularly make big balls-ups. Neither is a bad choice and alpine would mean DR lands on his feet. That's what makes Alonso's decision so hard to understand.
Clearly just moved for the long term seat. Hard to blame him as if Alpine dumped him end of 2023, he would have been finished.
Makes you question Alonso's decision.
That’s fair, but at this stage there’s very little between Norris and Ocon points wise and I’d say most would rate Norris as a better driver.
There seems to have been a definite improvement from Alpine too, with consistent top 10 finishes from both drivers since Monaco(excluding Ocons Silverstone retirement).
If I had to choose a seat between both until 2026, I think right now Alpine is the more attractive option.
Norris on Ricciardo:
When you want drivers of the same level your not suprised at the decision McLaren have made. He doesn't have sympathy for Ric, saying he himself could be in the same position with a new team or even with his car in the future. He said its not his job to focus on other people or be a driver coach or help and those kinds of things, it's his job to performe at his best and that's it so it's difficult when people start to have an expectation that it's also my job to do those other things. Ric is extremely talented and iv enjoyed working with someone who has won races and scored more podiums than I have.
From what I gathered over the weekend, Gasly seems likely at Alpine, Riccardo to Haas and Colton Herta to Alpha Tauri, not sure where that leaves Schumacher? Williams, or out of F1.
Yeah, plenty of people have suggested that he's lost his motivation and is just there to collect a paycheck, but I think that's bollox tbh. He clearly very much wants to do better, but just isn't able to for whatever reason.
The Mclaren is arguably better this year. Norris is 12 points ahead of Ocon and 25 ahead of Alonso.
Alpine is 20 points ahead in the constructors championship but that's because DR isn't contributing his fair share of points - only a quarter the points Norris has scored.
