2024 Formula 1
 

Ok, lets start talking about 2024 Formula 1

don't agree, if he was with HAAS, he would have been dumped because of the crashes

F1 is getting silly, now they are talking about partial reverse grids in the sprint races.
Getting tired of the changes. Just leave it be.

They have full fuel tanks, well if they want more entertainment, just make them run the same tires for the whole race...

tired of all the changes, thou change is the only constant in life

Here is the schedule
March 2: Bahrain
March 9: Saudi
March 24: Australia
April 7: Japan
April 21: China (sprint weekend)
May 5: Miami (sprint weekend)
May 19: Imola
May 26: Monaco
June 9: Canada
June 23: Spain
June 30: Austria (sprint weekend)
July 7: Britain
July 21: Hungary
July 28: Belgium
August 25: Netherlands
September 1: Italy
September 15: Azerbaijan
September 22: Singapore
October 20: USA (sprint weekend)
October 27: Mexico
November 3: Brazil (sprint weekend)
November 23: Vegas
December 1: Qatar (sprint weekend)
December 8: Abu Dhabi

Too many races for me.. 20 would be ideally

I can live with smart changes, even some thoughtful trials. But not the gimmicky ones.

Reverse grid simply means that Logan Sargeant will be passed 19 more times in a race. Nothing more. Why punish teams and individual drivers who are performing. They need to do things to allow all teams to improve their performance. Lifting the cost cap would be one.

The cost cap as it stands, makes no sense. Nor does limiting wind tunnel time. You muffed up this year's car (talking to you, Toto) because you spent all of your money going down the wrong rabbit hole last winter, and you were too high in the previous year's placings to test it sufficiently. So you're stuck with a POS for the year. And forget about trying to fix something unexpected like porpoising. If you come up with a solution, someone will only find it to be illegal so your drivers can just get their teeth rattled out of their heads for half the season.

Meanwhile, if the driver truly represents 50% of the success equation, why is there no salary cap on them? The current cost cap excludes drivers and key team staff, which seems dumb to me.

:iagree:

well now what happens to HAAS?
Not looking good, have read some articles
where he wants to team to perform, but without putting more money in it....
maybe they should let Andretti in and force HAAS out somehow

I found this article interesting
https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/ex...uLhg%3D.Vbb5eh

And the company he help start/build
https://www.fibreworkscomposites.com/about-us/

I laughed about it a bit of being a USA small business. review the about section.

Thanks for sharing. F1 is a complicated and expensive endeavor. I’m really not sure why HAAS is even considered an American entry. :rolleyes:

Because Gene Haas owns them, thou it was Steiner team, he just found someone to fund it , which was brilliant

My company that I’ve worked for the last 18 years has now teamed up with Mercedes for 2024. Of course we all know Red Bull has been spanking the field. I wonder if Mercedes can make any gains this year?

https://news.sap.com/2023/11/sap-mer...ve-efficiency/

that is so neat, I worked for a team once that had teamed up with McLaren. They brought a show car to the yearly customer convention. I was able to get a couple of free t-shirts from them. So you should try and reach out....
enjoy :ughdance:

On the other news, Las Vegas will be at 10PM PST again.....
Just for the other side of the Atlantic......
:(

Good idea. I ned to check into that

I read The-Race a lot I found this interesting on HAAS and Komatsu

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/g...-boss-cant-do/

I agree, its all about communication, in everything you do, even your personal life with your significant other.

2024 F1 will be a bit more interesting because of the HAAS drama

Maybe this shake up will yield some improvements in the next 2 seasons, but then things will change again in 2026 :-)

Seemingly big news (yes, this rumour has come up at least once a year, but BBC News is now carrying the story):
https://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/68163799

From the BBC website linked above:

"Lewis Hamilton will make a shock move from Mercedes to Ferrari for the 2025 season, BBC Sport understands.

A number of sources say a deal for seven-time world champion Hamilton to join Charles Leclerc at Maranello from 2025 has been agreed.

Ferrari and Mercedes have refused to comment.

Mercedes F1 staff were told in a meeting with team principal Toto Wolff and technical director James Allison on Thursday afternoon.

The move could be announced officially as early as Thursday evening.

Hamilton, 39, signed a new two-year deal with Mercedes only last summer. His contract is understood to have contained a break clause after one year, which Hamilton has chosen to exercise.

The possibility of Hamilton moving to Ferrari in 2025 was initially reported in the Italian and Spanish media on Thursday. BBC Sport has since confirmed the move through multiple sources.

There have been intermittent rumours of Hamilton moving to Ferrari for years. Until now, these have turned out to have little substance, but a number of sources say this is different.

The Hamilton deal has happened quickly. Ferrari were in negotiations over a contract extension with Carlos Sainz, whose deal runs out at the end of this season.

But Ferrari president John Elkann then discovered that Hamilton was a possibility and moved to secure his signature. The two are friends and have met each other socially on a number of occasions in recent years.

Hamilton won the most recent of his seven world titles in 2020 and signed his latest two-year Mercedes deal in August, which would extend his period with the team to 13 years.

Ferrari admitted to holding talks with then-reigning world champion Hamilton in 2019 about joining them in the future.

Red Bull have dominated the sport over the past two seasons since the controversial 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, when Hamilton lost out to Max Verstappen after former FIA race director Michael Masi ignored the rules in operating a late-race safety car period.

Since then, he has been driven by the desire to avenge what he believes to be an injustice and win his eighth title.
At the end of last season, Hamilton was sounding equivocal about his belief in Mercedes' ability to recover from two difficult seasons and challenge Red Bull.

In an interview with BBC Sport and other selected outlets at the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi, he said: "I do believe we have a North Star now. Which I don't think we've had for two years. But still getting there is not a straight line.

"I think we understand the car so much better. They have developed great tools in the background. So naturally, I'm hopeful, but I'm not going to hold my breath."

Ferrari have also had a difficult few seasons, and the two teams were locked in a battle for second in the constructors' championship last year, which Mercedes narrowly won despite the Ferrari being the faster car by the end of the season.

Hamilton's move will send shockwaves through F1 - similar to those when he chose to leave McLaren for Mercedes for the 2013 season.

At the time, many questioned Hamilton's decision, but it turned out to be remarkably prescient - he and the team dominated F1 from the 2014 season, making the Briton the most successful driver in F1 history.

The lure of Ferrari, the sport's most historic and evocative team, is strong for many drivers. Until now, Hamilton seemed to be immune to it - he has said on several occasions that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Mercedes, and the pair have a number of projects together, especially on diversity and racial equality.

But it seems the chance to spend the final years of his career driving for Ferrari may be too good to turn down - it is something Hamilton's boyhood idol Ayrton Senna was also planning to do before he was killed in a crash while driving for Williams in the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.

Hamilton's move will explode the F1 driver market.

Mercedes would be looking for a replacement for Hamilton at the end of the season, Ferrari's Sainz would be looking for a new job.

And other than Fernando Alonso, whose Aston Martin contract expires this season, none of the recognised top drivers would be available to join Mercedes alongside George Russell.

Max Verstappen is contracted to Red Bull until 2027, Leclerc is committed to Ferrari and Lando Norris has also just signed a new deal at McLaren.
Analysis - Has Hamilton got it right again?

Hamilton's move to Ferrari is one of the biggest - and most surprising - stories in F1 for years.

Hamilton has always insisted he wanted to spend the rest of his career and beyond with Mercedes - likening his situation to that of the late Stirling Moss, who was a Mercedes ambassador for his whole life.

But things have changed and Hamilton has decided he cannot turn down the lure of Ferrari, whose history, legend and mystique is always a strong pull for any F1 driver.

Hamilton remains the biggest star in F1, as well as its most successful ever driver, having the joint most world titles with Michael Schumacher and the most race wins outright.

His decision to leave Mercedes is a huge blow to a team with whom he signed a new two-year contract only a few months ago.

His decision is as big a vote of confidence in Ferrari's team principal Frederic Vasseur - with whom Hamilton has remained close since working with him in the junior categories - as it is the opposite for Mercedes.

Both have struggled against Red Bull in the last two years since new rules were introduced but Hamilton must see something in Ferrari's progress over the latter part of last season.

It's impossible to consider the reasons behind this move, or its consequences, without the context.

Hamilton was badly hurt by the events of the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. He believes he was robbed of an eighth world title by race director Masi's failure to follow the rules correctly with the operation of a safety car late in that race.

Since then, he has been driven by a desire to avenge that injustice - even if he has not quite put it that way in public.

With Mercedes, back in 2012, his judgement was remarkable - he proved wrong everyone who doubted his decision to move from McLaren, and embarked on the most successful period an F1 team and driver have ever had together.

Has he got it right again, or has he just made a decision he will ultimately regret?

The season hasn't even started yet and it's already fascinating!!!

What!!!!!. Shocker

I am so far behind in keeping up with this along side F1 Commercial telling Andretti NO

Looking forward to the Lewrrari and hope it delivers.

Just finished reading a bit about the rejection on Andretti,
Sorry F1, if you are going to leave HAAS run, and then have Sauber running now
and that awful name for the 2nd Red Bull team...

Politics, are you afraid that they might show you up.....

another question, can Andretti test without restrictions now, develop a car, get an engine and just test...

So how will this work at Ferrari with two top-tier drivers? We should ask Nico? :-)

I can’t wait to see how this all goes down and evolves

He doesn't have much longer. Might as well take the money and run. LOL

I like the look of the new Sauber/Stake
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/s...f1-car-livery/
Interesting, is the fact they talk about putting money in the infrastructure. Read about Williams to doing that.
Maybe Guenther had a point... Time will tell

The Stake livery does look good.
But I hope that they haven't budgeted on a lot of merchandise sales revenue.

People bought Alfa clothing because it was Alfa, and that brand has a loyal following around the globe (myself included), regardless of it's results in F1. But other than the drivers' mothers, I'm not sure who is going to invest in overpriced tee shirts of an F1 back marker sponsored by a brand nobody's ever heard of...

Not particularly pretty, but they could've done so much worse.

I'm still peeved that Alpha Tauri didn't become RB Sugar Free

The knives are out for Christian Horney now...
Hmm. Got to think that's being stirred up by a lot of haters - not sure how much is real, and what is wishful thinking or unscrupulous journalists so intent on getting a scoop that they will gamble that what they report might turn out to be true.
He's certainly made as many enemies as friends over his career. But I can't imagine he'd be so stupid as to risk it all when he has everything.
Still, power corrupts. And tremendous success if often followed by bad judgement.
We shall see...

Ho hum...

Nobody crashed in practice either :tup:

I sure hope 2024 is more competitive than the last 2 years

something of interest - before the start of F1 this week






enjoy..

Thanks for sharing. Very cool!

PSA:
Remember, it is a SATURDAY race this weekend.

Yes!!!

interesting FP2
Mercedes 1/2,

1 Hamilton (Mercedes) 1m30.374s
2 Russell (Mercedes) +0.206s
3 Alonso (Aston Martin) +0.286s
4 Sainz (Ferrari) +0.395s
5 Piastri (McLaren) +0.410s
6 Verstappen (Red Bull) +0.477s - Max is unhappy, lots of comments on track..
7 Hulkenberg (Haas) +0.510s
8 Stroll (Aston Martin) +0.517s
9 Leclerc (Ferrari) +0.739s
10 Perez (Red Bull) +0.741s

So is this all about 1 lap pace... time will tell
we'll see what happens in FP3

I hope Mercedes is back. We shall see in FP3 and qualifying.

FP 3 top 10
1 Sainz (Ferrari) 1m30.824s
2 Alonso (Aston Martin) +0.141s
3 Verstappen (Red Bull) +0.238s
4 Leclerc (Ferrari) +0.270s
5 Norris (McLaren) +0.294s
6 Russell (Mercedes) +0.366s
7 Piastri (McLaren) +0.386s
8 Perez (Red Bull) +0.424s
9 Hulkenberg (Haas) +0.454s
10 Stroll (Aston Martin) +0.572s

going to be interesting for the pole.
RB - has not been number 1 in any practice.
Qual going to be fun to watch

Qualifying is 11AM ET on ESPN.

Qualifying was interesting

1 Verstappen (Red Bull)
2 Leclerc (Ferrari)
3 Russell (Mercedes)
4 Sainz (Ferrari)
5 Perez (Red Bull)
6 Alonso (Aston Martin)
7 Norris (McLaren)
8 Piastri (McLaren)
9 Hamilton (Mercedes)
10 Hulkenberg (Haas)

Hope the race is tomorrow