Formula 1 2024 – WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS

More apparent drama at RB post-race as Tsunoda takes a dive down the inside Ricciardo’s car on the slowdown lap ?#F1 #BahrainGP pic.twitter.com/P3B0LqNqKM

— Autosport (@autosport) March 2, 2024

😊

Ha, its so much worse than that pic shows, video here

Daniel Yuki Bahrain

So by making the teams richer with the cost-cap and basically creating franchises – they’ve ruined the racing as no-one can spend more than a fiver to try and catch up. And engine dev is frozen too. What we saw today is what we’ll have till 2026.

I’m off to catch up on WEC on Eurosport…

“Well I had a good nod on the sofa with the sound on, so not that good a race”

To be fair, it was having a hungover snooze in front of the telly on a Sunday afternoon that got me into F1 in the first place

To be fair Bahrain is a non-typical track and they had 3 days of testing in similar conditions, so you’d expect them to finish in pairs.

Like last season Max will walk to the title (plus ’25) but there should be some good racing further down the pack.

The cost cap has closed the field up, but its always going to be the top teams at the top, due to the historical investment and the positive cycle of being able to attract the top talent.

Leaving a sinking ship?

https://www.crash.net/f1/news/1044988/1/alpine-nightmare-worsens-technical-director-and-head-aero-quit-jobs

the-muffin-man

Full Member

So by making the teams richer with the cost-cap and basically creating franchises – they’ve ruined the racing as no-one can spend more than a fiver to try and catch up. And engine dev is frozen too. What we saw today is what we’ll have till 2026.

I’m off to catch up on WEC on Eurosport

I think the cost cap is sound as a concept, it’s the aero handicap that hasn’t work.

Weight the handicap on constructors points instead of just the table position or make the handicap cumulative over the last 3 seasons.

I’m off to catch up on WEC on Eurosport…

Where they BoP’d the top 2 teams completely out of contention?

Ha, just seen Danny rics radio message after the video I linked above…

Ricciardo on the radio: “Wha… what the fu… — I’ll save it. He’s a ****ing helmet.”

Boring

7 minute highlights on YouTube covers it.

Christian not looking as “cocky” as he normally is as he’s being interviewed

Not as slimey as recently?

Looked like his smug-ometer has been turned down a bit and he gave answers that seemed well briefed and well rehearsed. But he doesn’t exactly look like he’s losing sleep over it either. TBH I think he loves a scrap (or power game?) especially one played out in front of the media so this is energising him rather than wearing him down.

One glimmer of hope is that LeClerc’s brakes were definitely gubbed. 100 degree temp difference between left and right for some reason. They are checking.

Jos has had his say now

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/horner-jos-verstappen-red-bull-f1-team-risks-torn-apart/10582527/?

Sorry, but Jos must remember who helped Max to his 1st title,  Abu Dhabi 2021…..

As an aside,  how much stuff is tested at RB(alpha-tauri) or whatever before going to Red Bull Racing, and is that taken into account with budgeting etc

One glimmer of hope is that LeClerc’s brakes were definitely gubbed. 100 degree temp difference between left and right for some reason. They are checking.

Apparently Ferrari misjudged the size of the brake ducts and their brakes were undercooled. Merc were caught out by warmer than expected temperatures so the car was undercooled and they had to lift and coast. Hopefully that means that they will be much closer to Red Bull when they don’t trip over themselves.

how much stuff is tested at RB(alpha-tauri) or whatever before going to Red Bull Racing

That is not permitted under the rules.

That is not permitted under the rules.

😂🤦🏻

As above not permitted and very closely policed.

Jos…. Words fail me.

The chaos will unfold if Horner GOES not if he stays.

For someone who’s been around racing teams so long I’m surprised he can’t figure that out.

I’m off to catch up on WEC on Eurosport…

Where they BoP’d the top 2 teams completely out of contention?

Toyota qualified second 🤷‍♂️

Ferrari lead early on.

Jos has had his say now

That’s unfortunate. The only face in F1 I’d never be tired of punching more than Horner’s smug mug is his. So now I don’t if I should take Horner’s side just to disagree with the tosser!

That’s unfortunate. The only face in F1 I’d never be tired of punching more than Horner’s smug mug is his.

This. I agree with this!

I think you would need to watch your back taking on Jos, he has previous for serious violence

 I’m surprised he can’t figure that out.

He can, but he loves the chaos.

He just wants to have a fight again

I think you would need to watch your back taking on Jos, he has previous for serious violence

That’s what would make it so pleasurable! There’s no fun in punching down on a baby robin. That would just be being a massive egotistical bully….like Verstappen Snr!

When it comes to the source of the WhatsApp leak, you have to wonder who in Red Bull would do it ( if it wasn’t alleged victim)

“Jos…. Words fail me.

The chaos will unfold if Horner GOES not if he stays.”

I’m assuming this is more about control than anything else? Looking at Jos’ history, he seems like the sort who would prioritise that over anything positive, like Red Bull (and by extension, his son) winning championships

Red Bull are bigger than one man. Everyone is replaceable.

thols2

That is not permitted under the rules.

Correct but can you really prevent cross-pollination of ideas when the team formerly know as minardi and RB are both based on the same campus, sharing a canteen, wind tunnel etc? Likewise the RB-AdvTech engineers that are working on (purely coincidentally) a ground effects based hypercar?

Correct but can you really prevent cross-pollination of ideas

Copying ideas is fine, you can’t stop that. Engineers switch teams constantly and take their understanding of the concepts with them.

What you cannot do is share data or technical documents. Every component should have a documented history of its design and testing right from the first iteration. This was what got Aston Martin caught in the “Pink Mercedes” scandal – they buy components from Merc so they had access to technical drawings of parts that cannot be shared. They just copied those instead of developing their own parts. IIRC, they had all their points for the season deducted. If Red Bull were found to be using RB to develop and test parts for the Red Bull car, probably both teams would be disqualified for the year and given an enormous fine.

Edit: Following the Pink Mercedes scandal, the FIA clamped down and you aren’t even allowed to use photographs of rival cars to reverse engineer parts. Sharing data or drawings is utterly forbidden and would be pretty easy to prove.
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-design-copy-3d-cameras-pink-mercedes/4904156/

F1 2024 season over by the first corner, thats a new record. Snooze.

The season being held afloat by the Horner scandal and intrigue of Hamilton’s 2025 Ferrari move says it all. More drama off the circuit than on.

“F1 2024 season over by the first corner, thats a new record”

Yup

Switched the race off after 10 laps and tidied the garage..

I think the only realistic chance of it being anyone other than Max disappearing over the horizon with the driver’s championship, is if Red Bull continue to very publicly tear itself apart

To be fair I think if and when Ferrari, Merc and McLaren can fix their issues and bring useful updates, they’ll be in the mix with Perez. I think certainly Ferrari and maybe Merc can be right there very soon, depending on how the next couple of tracks favour different cars. The real problem is the gap between Max and Checo, which—despite Perez making favourable noises about how he feels in the car—is huge. It’s hard to draw much of a conclusion other than Max being on another level compared to everyone else—yes, even Hamilton and Alonso. If they gave the trophy to Max now and told him to bugger off and sit on a beach until next March, I think we’d have an incredible season on our hands. And I hope Sainz carries on being that punchy—I’ve rated him above Leclerc since before he joined Ferrari.

thols2

Full Member

Copying ideas is fine, you can’t stop that. Engineers switch teams constantly and take their understanding of the concepts with them.

It doesn’t break a rule but it’s not fine, this is one of a number of discussion points.

Engineers moving from team to team will usually have a notice period followed by gardening leave to mitigate that. But not at Red bull and TR, people can be moved freely from one team to another.

They also have two votes over technical regs.

They also are able to use the sister team tactically during the race.

Red bull top brass even has direct control over who drives in torro rosso.

I respect Dietrich for taking on minardi when they were in the can, but under the current rule set owning two teams just isn’t fair.

But not at Red bull and TR, people can be moved freely from one team to another.

And yet they haven’t. They’ve discussed any personnel moves between the 2 teams with the FIA and agreed on appropriate gardening leave with them.

But not at Red bull and TR, people can be moved freely from one team to another.

Which is not the same as:

how much stuff is tested at RB(alpha-tauri) or whatever before going to Red Bull Racing

Basically, all that engineers can take to a new team is their understanding of concepts, they can’t take data or technical documents. I’m not saying that Red Bull and RB won’t benefit from having the two teams together but the idea that RB will be feeding test data to Red Bull is silly – it would be easy to detect and would incur extremely harsh penalties.