Great closing laps to the Sprint.

Q3: oprah.gif
You get a P2
You get a P2
You get a P2
Everyone gets a P2!

Team strategy could get interesting tomorrow and the front runners have both cars there.

All but Aston Martin anyway. How much longer can they keep making excuses? The gap seems to get bigger by the race.

Ricciardo looking more like we expected but he needs to keep it up for a few races in a row.

Bottas must be hoping for a one stop race to minimize the chances of another pit stop debacle. Car seems decent here.

Hamilton looked great in the sprint race. Decent speed and he showed his maturity vs Lando in turn one. Qualifying today? Nowhere and even without a mistake he was just slow. George showed it wasn't all just the car.

Unless the Red Bulls manage to get tangled up at the start, we'll just have to forget they are there and watch the rest.
It's too bad because the racing throughout the rest of the field is fierce. As tight as it's ever been since I've been watching and that's been decades.

quote:

Ricciardo looking more like we expected but he needs to keep it up for a few races in a row.

So maybe there was "something" to his complaint about there being something wrong with his original chassis.

It might just be a coinicdence that his uptick in performance happened after getting the new chassis in China...I guess we'll have to wait an see

That was a weird combo of boring and schmozzles one after the other.

Safety car about mid race, Max comes in for tires followed by Checo. 1.9 secs. for Max, 2.0 for Checo with an average Red Bull stop of 1.95. The Sky TV boys were too busy amusing one another to notice. BTW great drive from Hulk.

quote:

Hamilton looked great in the sprint race. Decent speed and he showed his maturity vs Lando in turn one. Qualifying today? Nowhere and even without a mistake he was just slow. George showed it wasn't all just the car.

Another vid on YT cited that Hamilton had his car 'tinkered with' by the crew after the sprint race in the hopes that even more speed could be extracted. Instead the opposite happened, and by the time Wolff found out what was happening he was absolutely livid. However there wasn't time left to reset whatever adjustments were made (or perhaps Wolff decided to let him go with the changes to prove a point), and Hamilton ran with the eventual hot mess that he initiated and created. Wolff supposedly gave Hamilton a verbal tongue lashing, with Hamilton having to apologize and admit his error.

It seems pretty evident that Wolff is resigned to accepting the uncompetitive nature of Merc's '24 chassis, at least against the likes of Red Bull and at times even up against the second tier runners. But when the team finally gets a workable setup, he doesn't want anyone including his drivers sabotaging that effort. That said, I find it kind of hard to fault Hamilton (or Russell if it came down to it) wanting to try to find more speed out of the chassis. No one enjoys going racing with the ultimate goal of finishing runner-up, even if that's the most realistic result that's attainable for them.

HP signed as sponsor for Ferrari.
Don't think the blue really works with the Ferrari Red
Not as bad as the awful MissionWinnow lime green a couple years ago, though.

AMUS and others reporting Newey is leaving Redbull. Autosport forum is going nuts. Nothing official yet though.

Saw that earlier this morning as well.
I'm sure many eyes are on Max now.

I'm not sure Newey would really want to go elsewhere at this point.
He's 65 and to start over in 2026 on a car spec design he's already said he wasn't fond of seems a long shot.
If he's really leaving he might be more inclined to hang it up and do something more fun. He has some hobbies and probably plenty of money at this point.

Sounds like Nico Hulkenberg is about to be announced as the first of Audi's signings. That's also going to be a long term project for whoever goes there but I guess any team is a gamble at this point with the rules change for 2026.

Feel bad for Carlos, having the best season of his career and really not great options, Audi is a long term project and Carlos wants to be in a winning team. The odds of them winning right off the bat are slim & none. Mercedes only offering a one year contract because they're going to bring kimi up in 2026, we presume, and the Mercedes is not the greatest car at the moment and Red Bull while a great car, he's up against Max so he may get a win or two here or there if Max has an issue or dnf. Aston Martin needs to dump Stroll and bring in Carlos. That'd be fun to watch, him and Fernando going at it.

I thought the blue Ferrari livery was for the Miami race and a throwback to early F1 livery in america. It seems like I read that somewhere anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by redstone:
I thought the blue Ferrari livery was for the Miami race and a throwback to early F1 livery in america. It seems like I read that somewhere anyway.

You are correct. The blue livery is for the Miami GP and is a throwback. If I remember correctly 2 other times Ferrari has had a blue livery. I don't believe we know yet how the HP branding will be incorporated into the Ferrari livery.

Some nice history from one of my favorite YouTubers...

Back to the Newey story, I'm thinking he'll just retire. The man's 65 and like Jeremy Clarkson says he needs to charter a 2nd helicopter to carry his wallet in. What's been pointed out by others online, he has a contract with Red Bull that lasts until the end of 2025. Even if another team snags his services, the earliest he could start with them would probably be 2027 after his "Gardening Leave" is over which would put him at 68.

quote:

Originally posted by DanH:
Back to the Newey story, I'm thinking he'll just retire. The man's 65 and like Jeremy Clarkson says he needs to charter a 2nd helicopter to carry his wallet in. What's been pointed out by others online, he has a contract with Red Bull that lasts until the end of 2025. Even if another team snags his services, the earliest he could start with them would probably be 2027 after his "Gardening Leave" is over which would put him at 68.

It will be interesting to see what happens because I have read reports https://www.bbc.com/sport/articles/cmm3v9ny78eo to the contrary that says he has clauses in his contract with RB that will enable him to leave and begin work with another team almost immediately.

To be honest, I don’t care any more. I don’t care if Newey leaves. I don’t care if Max leaves. I don’t care who replaces Hamilton at Mercedes. And so on. It’s just become an endless cycle of media speculation with pundits and experts and sources getting their opinions out there so they can claim to be the first to scoop everyone else. It’s not even about racing anymore, although it’s pretty much obvious it will be a Max dominated season. Still best of the rest and other racing stories to follow.

quote:

Originally posted by cfiore:
It will be interesting to see what happens because I have read reports https://www.bbc.com/sport/articles/cmm3v9ny78eo to the contrary that says he has clauses in his contract with RB that will enable him to leave and begin work with another team almost immediately.

Even still, that would probably just cut 1 year off the timeline since there's no way that clause would be written where he could jump free and immediately work for someone else. Lawsuits would probably draw that out anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by Dwill104:
To be honest, I don’t care any more. I don’t care if Newey leaves. I don’t care if Max leaves. I don’t care who replaces Hamilton at Mercedes. And so on. It’s just become an endless cycle of media speculation with pundits and experts and sources getting their opinions out there so they can claim to be the first to scoop everyone else. It’s not even about racing anymore, although it’s pretty much obvious it will be a Max dominated season. Still best of the rest and other racing stories to follow.

This is because most of the reporting on Formula One is British based and the British “press” are notorious for fabricating anything to sell a story.
Take everything you read and see from them with a block of salt…