The king is dead, long live the king.
With the 2024 season done and dusted and lots of chatter now about drivers and how they will perform for the 2025 season, thought it would be no harm to start a 2025 season thread.
Go!
If it's Sky F1 English, then what do you actually expect? A dispassionate review of all teams regardless how much interest the UK audience has in them? Or do you expect them to focus on the British interests? And presumably other Sky F1 language services are focusing on the things their audience wall watch.
Like, Will you get thick if you find out Sky F1 Italia focus a lot on Ferrari?
Trigger warning
https://sport.sky.it/formula-1
I tend to get their content primarily from the podcast feed rather than YouTube for the race, and they've been pretty broad in their coverage in the lead up. I think they had 1 pod for Hamilton's first day alright.
I don't speak German, so haven't checked.
Is This just the Sky F1 English site? Does Sky F1 Deutschland have different content?
The Race are pretty bad lately, as much as it is great to have Jon Noble there also, his bias towards Hamilton is quite open.
Just looking at the sky sports f1 youtube feed. In the last 2 weeks they have had 9 videos related to Lewis Hamilton, 2 about the Mercedes team (1 of which was also about Lewis) and 1 generic "what did drivers get up to over winter".
People complain about the British bias in F1 while others say there isn't one. Sky are the global broadcaster for an awful lot of the english speaking countries and this is what they are prioritising. What a dose.
Having said that, it's very much the same as last year's stuff just with added 3 white stripes.
Hard to go wrong with the black base though. And the white shirts the team members wear look the same too.
Adidas aren't exactly being subtle about their Mercedes Benz kit.
You were welcome. Yes before 2016 Fiat owned both Ferrari and Alfa Romeo. But in 2016 they flouted Ferrari to the markets.
Happy to be corrected. I always thought they were… on both counts mentioned! Thanks!
You are wrong about this. Fiat no longer own Ferrari but the son of Enzo Ferrari does have shares in Ferrari. Ferrari is mostly owned by the public now. It was put on the stockmarket in 2016. Alfa Romeo are not owned by Ferrari either. They are owned by the Stellantis group.
They should have gotten Logan Sargeant. He'd crash anything for
In unrelated news Ocon has made his acting debut in some netflix film called Honeymoon Crashers
A couple bits of Alex Dunne news, firstly he will be taking part in the Formula E Rookie practice session for McLaren over the Valentine's weekend in Jeddah.
Secondly he's confirmed to be racing for Rodin Motorsport in Formula 2 for this season.
26th - 28th Feb. Sky covering it…
when does pre-season testing begin being aired?
There is no Alfa Romeo team in F1. Alfa were essentially a title sponsor of the Sauber team from 2019 to 2023. That team is now the Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber (terrible name), who are themselves (primarily I think) owned by Audi, and will become the Audi F1 team from 2026.
And yes, Ollie Bearman drove 3 times in 2024. Once for Ferrari in Saudi (finished 7th) and twice for Haas in Baku (10th) and Sao Paulo (12th). As a result, he finished 18th in the championship, finishing ahead of Colapinto, Zhou, Lawson, Bottas, Sargent and Doohan. Only Doohan started less races than him.
They do yes. Infact Fiat, who own Ferrari, are owned themselves by the same company who own Alfa.
he did?
Does ferrari own the alfa romea team?
He drove for Ferrari last year in Saudi and did excellent.
No, I reckon Zhou will get the nod if Hamilton or LeClerc become unavailable. He wasn't anything spectacular but he was solid enough and kept the Sauber between the ditches most of the time. Bearman is still young and inexperienced and if he drives like a typical Haas driver then he might not be as attractive as he was last year.
Zhou Guanyu announced as reserve driver for Ferrari alongside Antonio Giovinazzi. He won't end up in a Ferrari F1 car (you have to assume if something happens during the season they'll just move Bearman into car and let Haas fill their seat), but could be a way for him into the hypercar for Le Mans?
Interesting that Sauber creating a new technical centre in the UK even tho Audi wanted a 20% increase in the cost cap for them as their working out of Switzerland
We got the on track start times. Australia is 4am,China sprint is 3am and race at 7am then Japan at 6am so early start to the season for us
Hope so, much prefer the red & white over red &black
What bit are you asking about?
The launches used to be much bigger amd more expensive. Celebrities and gimmicks. Recently they've had to cut back amd it's more like a light show and a livery reveal amd am interview with the drivers. No need to watch, you can just see the pictures of the new livery afterwards.
Having lots of livery reveals together in one event cuts costs and at least makes it interesting again.
Why is that?
Oh I see. Good idea. The days of glitzy launches is gone. A joint event makes way more sense.
There's a big event this year in the o2 where all teams are launching together (sort of)
I think they put them on the team website.
These days it's really just a livery reveal amd team branding opportunity. It would make sense to make it as publicly available as possible
