Formula 1 2024 – WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS

In a statement, it noted that he will have “a brief to maximise the team’s potential through employee empowerment and structural process and efficiency.”

You’d have to be mad to take that job!

slowoldman

Indeed, Checo’s detractors always seem to miss this bit.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not easy to be in the second RB seat (as my username attests 😥) but the RB19 was one of the most dominant cars of all time, and his team mate more-than doubled his points tally.

Komatsu?? They’re digging a right hole for themselves now.

This deserves more recognition 👏

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/guenther-steiner-haas-importance-legacy/

No one focking told me!!! https://t.co/ChzfHJD3nm

— Guenther Steiner ➐ (@HaasF1TeamBoss) January 10, 2024

I can only think of Hunt, Kimi and possibly Keke Rosberg who won the championship due to the failure of others who did have the fastest car.

Schumacher’s first championship wasn’t in the fastest car. Yes, I know there were some dodgy things going on at Benneton, but Schumacher really drove that thing well. I’m pretty sure that Senna would have won the title if he hadn’t been killed but Schumacher really was able to win in cars that weren’t the best on the grid.

struggled all the way to 2nd in the WDC?

He’s only 50 pts clear of Hamilton. Checo’s driving the best car to ever take to the F1 circuit and Hamilton’s driving a mongrel dog of a thing. Yeah, I’d call that struggling. 

I think the problem with Perez is that the Red Bull is difficult to get the tyres warmed up in qualifying. Newey deliberately prioritized race pace over qualifying pace and the anti-dive suspension makes tyre warm-up tough. Verstappen is much better at getting the tyres warmed up so he could get enough pace out of it in qualifying to be up at the front whereas Perez would get buried in the pack. Ferrari had the opposite problem – quick tyre warm-up, but it destroyed the tyres in the race. Leclerc could put it on pole quite often but there was nothing he could do once Max (and others) got their tyres warmed up.

Haas would be better selling the team to Andretti and staying on as title sponsor or something along those lines. All I can see Guenther leaving doing is letting them slip even further back.

Haas has said many times that he’s happy to just “be in F1” it gives him all the marketing opportunities he needs and his his investment is worth loads more than he paid for it. Keeping the team is all upsides, selling has loads of downsides

Komatsu?? They’re digging a right hole for themselves now.

This deserves more recognition 👏

15hrs late I’ve just got this joke – sharp as a knife I am! 🤣 🤣

Haas would be better selling the team to Andretti

Yes, I really don’t see what Gene Haas is thinking. Surely, selling most of the team to Andretti and renaming it Andretti-Haas, then letting Andretti run it and Cadillac pay the bills would give Haas the marketing that he wants and probably let him make a profit instead of having to pay for it.

I hope I’m wrong, but I suspect Komatsu is going to struggle badly. I think everybody at Haas thought the world of Steiner and I can’t see him leaving is going to help. Haas didn’t want to invest enough to make the team competitive so there’s not really that much that Komatsu can do to move them up the grid now that all their rivals have invested in better facilities.

would give Haas the marketing that he wants and probably let him make a profit instead of having to pay for it.

He has all the marketing now all to himself, he’s made a massive profit already, which he doesn’t have to share with anyone, and he’s not paying for anything anyway – which is why Steiner has left

Decent article below – but it seems Haas can sit at the back of the grid with modest financial input and watch his investment rise and rise. As a business it’s golden – for F1 it’s terrible…

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/andretti-gm-is-logical-answer-to-confused-haas-existence/

As a business it’s golden – for F1 it’s terrible…

This is where you need Bernie back. He would change the rules without consultation so Haas has to either pay him shitloads or get their arse in gear and improve. Probably both

Perez – qualifies badly, races well

Haas – qualifies well, races badly

2023 figures. Excluding first lap and places made up in the pits or through retirements. On track overtakes only

Expect Gunther to be back in the paddock before the start of the season with a new book deal. Otherwise would be hilarious to see him as the team principal at Andretti

Another good article from The Race about the Haas situation…

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/gene-haas-mistaken-modern-f1-steiner-firing/

2024 Livery launch for McLaren yesterday – I predict this livery will last 2 races before they announce a new ‘special’ livery – and then a dozen more special liveries through the season!… 🤣

McLaren present livery for their 2024 F1 car – MCL38

Yes not much new there.
I guess the biggest thing it shows is they’re still struggling to reach the weight limit (given the bare carbon on show).

This is an interesting insight into what it’s like being second driver to Max, interview with Albon.

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.its-eye-watering-albon-shares-the-secrets-of-verstappens-unique-driving.3Dlce2QkRGzUDLMtDf3dOs.html

“What ended up happening was, especially during my year, you start off being a little bit behind, but not by much, and then as the season goes on, Max wants this front-end in the car, he wants his car to be sharper, sharper,” the Thai-British racer commented.  “As it goes sharper and sharper, he goes quicker and quicker, and for you to catch up you have to start taking a little bit more risk. You might be a couple of tenths behind one session, just try a little bit more, ‘OK, I’ve gone off, I’ve had a crash’, and you’ve got to restart.

“Then you’ve lost a little bit of confidence, it takes a little bit more time, that gap is growing a little bit, and the next time you try and go out and do another job, [it’s] another spin or another whatever – it just starts to snowball. Every time the car becomes sharper and sharper, you start to become more tense.

“It’s like any sport, if you start to not be in that flow state, and you’re having to really think about it, and every time you go into a corner, you don’t know how it’s going to react, you don’t have that kind of… It’s purely the confidence in the car, the flow. It doesn’t work, it never works.”

Will you be at Silverstone waving your flag for team Visa CashApp RB!!!???… 🤦‍♂️ 🤦‍♂️

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/visa-cashapp-rb-worst-f1-name-red-bull/

Looking forward to seeing you all at the F1 opener in Melbourne.

— visacashapp (@VisaCashapRB) January 19, 2024

Looking forward to seeing you all at the F1 opener in Melbourne.

Missing the first two rounds then!!? 🤣🤣🤣

Looking forward to seeing you all at the F1 opener in Melbourne.

Missing the first two rounds then!!? 🤣🤣🤣

They will probably be on hold waiting for customer service for the start of the season

Are McLaren sponsored by Hasbro this year then? Simon Says maybe.

Visa CashApp RB

So close to being abbreviated to the

V Crap B team

Oh joy, another street circuit

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/madrid-lands-spanish-gp-from-2026-as-barcelona-fights-for-f1-future/10568322/

Can’t say I’ll miss Barcelona though.

simondbarnes
Full Member

Oh joy, another street circuit

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/madrid-lands-spanish-gp-from-2026-as-barcelona-fights-for-f1-future/10568322/

Looks crap

Also now I have this Monkey Dust sketch stuck in my head…Madrid. Barcelona. Madrid. Barcelona. MADRID. BAR-CEL-OOOO-NA

The last thing the sport needs are more street circuits. At this rate the cars will be designed not to work on a race track

Yep, couldn’t agree more. Ok, Barcelona wasn’t great, but street tracks are almost unremittingly awful (and i include Monaco in that)

Twodogs
Full Member

Yep, couldn’t agree more. Ok, Barcelona wasn’t great, but street tracks are almost unremittingly awful (and i include Monaco in that)

Obviously we need to reserve judgement a little, until the cars get on track.

But it doesn’t look very flowy, there are a lot of 90 deg corners.

chrismac
Full Member

The last thing the sport needs are more street circuits. At this rate the cars will be designed not to work on a race track

That’s a very good point, especially as these cars are particularly ill suited to bumpy tracks…

Its just disappointing where they are saying to classic tracks that they need to spend millions to bring them up to standard, inherently dangerous with zero run-off and concreate walls.

I actually quite like Baku and Jedah🤷

Obviously I’d rather see Spa, Monza, Silverstone, Imola but at least Baku and Jedah give interesting races, much better than most of the new circuits

Makes me laugh that F1 says they are heading towards net zero carbon offset yet they keep adding street circuits that need permament buildings built

Then they have to have the circuit’s fencing, stands and everything else needed to keep everyone safe built for 3 days before being stripped back down and stored until the following year, think how much machinary, man power and disruption this causes when they could just use the perfectly good circuit thats been built for decades, has all the infrastructure there permanently and can be used all year round by other catagories of racing and track days etc….

Just makes no sense to me! street circuits should be only used in countries where they have no space or demand for a full time circuit

The Montjuic circuit often used in the Vuelta would have been much better.

Makes me laugh that F1 says they are heading towards net zero carbon offset

Makes me laugh that anyone takes the zero carbon offset thing seriously. FFS, there are tens of thousands of fans flying around the world to watch. At the European races, there are hundreds of trucks hauling equipment back and forth from the UK bases to the race circuits, at the fly-away races, all that gear is airfreighted. Honestly, setting up a temporary street circuit is a drop in the bucket compared to the overall carbon footprint of the sport.

Can’t help thinking that “Visa CashApp” rhymes with “squeeze the cost cap”.

Oh, and street circuits are shit. Right angled corners have no place on a race track. Even when the Americans lost the run of themselves and decided that for some reason corners were rubbish, they built ovals instead of rectangles.

It’s just depressing the way F1 is going, street circuits , the pantomime continues grrrr.

Lol it’s official, Minardi/Torro Rosso/Alpha Tauri is now “Visa Cash App RB”

Visa Cash App RB is the worst team name in #F1 history and is an embarrassment to Red Bull and F1 as a whole.

Edd Straw's verdict ➡️https://t.co/2QaEqMFOG5https://t.co/2QaEqMFOG5

— The Race (@wearetherace) January 24, 2024