The rumour mill is spinning like crazy that Red Bull will announce RIC's gone then 10 minutes later that Lawson is in.
And there is the not-always-reliable Joe Savard soying PER will announce he is leaving after Mexico. [link] (https://joesaward.wordpress.com/2024/09/26/green-notebook-from-somerset/)
No one can trust Red Bull, obviously, but yes, that is the rumour.
But this is one of those situations where I hope both sides lose (the team's other personnel is the sad collateral damage, which sucks). So if RBR can be in the low midfield next season and then both Horner and Marko get the sack, that would be splendid.
The exodus continues. Behind the smiles and jokes in the press conferences, the atmosphere must be horrendously bad for top, middle, and bottom people be heading for the exits as if the ship is sinking.
Low-key hoping next year is humbling for Horner and Marko. A pity for everyone else that works there, but those two really needs a swift kick in the arse.
Updated the qualy battles plot, but did not want to burden the servers with it, so if you want to see a gif from the start to Singapore, here it is: https://i.imgur.com/KrbkqQF.gif.
And now we wait for the avalanche of stupid/crazy/ridiculous rumours about RIC until the next race.
The king of malicious compliance. And one of the best Brooklyn 99 guest stars.
I love it. Malicious compliance is the best form of protest. To hell with MbS (both of them, actually).
Featuring Albon, Tsunoda, and Verstappen. Yet, here we are.
Telemetry Comparisons and Track Dominance plots
And, if you want to help me out, here are many Track Dominance graphics with different mini-sectors (numbers are under the images in the link): varied track dominance graphics What do you think is the most useful to understand where each car goes better?
I think one of the issues he was adamant about was no 1 year deal. So I would guess he is at least 2 years.
But Audi has a vacant seat...
Verstappen and Albon finally lost one this season!!!
Yes, Albon was pretty severely compromised in the last Q3 attempt by extra weight on his car, but still here we are. Williams and Red Bull no longer have zeros on the board (sorry, Logan, you remain at zero).
PER finally beats VER in qualy!!!
Plus, Williams helped ALB get beaten for the first time as well.
I love when this kind of thing happens. SAI sets the FL with no purple sectors, VER does the 2nd best with 2 purple sectors.
The Brake Magic race alone is a huge swing between them, as VER was getting 25 and ended up with zero that day.
Yeah, me neither. I knew PER had a good record there, but best of everyone? Unexpected.
Let's see what he can do this weekend. It is a good time for the supposed street track specialist to deliver, with 2 of them coming up.
With a 30 points lead over Hamilton for points scored at Baku, Pérez will retain his lead, no matter what happens.
But with the current competitive state of the Red Bulls in tracks with slow corners, the lead could suffer a dent if Hamilton has a good weekend.
If Norris has a good weekend, he could jump a few spots, and Piastri could finally enter into the conversation, as he failed to score a point in 2023.
He would design a car for Satan if Lawrence still paid 30 million, gave him shares, gave him authority over his dept. and some people who tried to run away from him (Fallows CANNOT be happy), allowed him to remain at home, etc.
Lance is no all-time great, but it 100% beats designing cars at Williams for better drivers with a much shittier infrastructure. Or having to move to Italy (which anyone not willing to do is clearly insane, but that's another matter) when he does not want to, having to play office politics at Ferrari, etc.
That is my fear too. Especially because that is what usually happens, especially with such a complete revolution of the regulations.
It will be a pity, just as this set of regs is becoming super competitive...
100%, but I was imagining that, since Newey is still around the F1 team during races, he would be forced to sit out 2025, which would mean he would join AM even later in the process.
March is late but much better than in the 4th trimester or something like it.
But yeah, it will be exciting, just hoping there is no one that hits the bullseye and totally dominates at the start.
Adrian Newey says he has joined Aston Martin to help lead them to the Formula 1 world championship.
Anyone else surprised at the short gardening leave? Him starting in March changes things. I thought he would be out at least until September of 2025,which would hurt his participation in the 2026 design. If, however, he does start in March, he can absolutely be a major part of the redesign and that changes the calculations for who might be a force in 2026.
Hum, had never seen that one. I used this one: https://i.imgur.com/1Khmn9X.jpeg to figure out where to start but ended up doing chronological anyway.
It is interesting that even Pratchett (GNU Terry Pratchett!) seemed to think the first two were meh considering what came after them.
There are many ways to read the series, obviously, so I am curious as to what are people's preferred method.
I read them chronologically by publishing date the first time, then once by theme (Watch, Witches, and Moist novels first) and then been reading books here and there kinda randomly (although when I read one Watch novel, I tend to read all of them to the end, plus Raising Steam).
What do others do?
The way the graphic is presented, it does look like it is a count of this season only.
VER has almost 100 points scored in Monaco alone in his career and LEC has 100 in Jeddah and Baku added up, for example.
It might be a combination of factors, but it is weird for an academy backed driver to be bumped as the season is almost done.
And yes, I would guess that Williams was not paying 100% of the cost. Which again is weird, because the concept, as I understood, was support in exchange for exclusivity of driver's services and less leeway for the driver to choose his path.
Just to cement the point we were discussing: https://x.com/ZakOSullivan/status/1833177788628476134
Race winner, challenging at the front with some consistency, but out of a seat. Not sure what happened, but F1 academy drivers should not lose funding to finish an F2 season....
I have been toying around with F1 data and python plots, and got some average gap graphics in gif form, starting at Bahrain and up to Italy.
- Team Averages (only Q1): https://imgur.com/a/f4nBIO6
- Driver Q1 averages: https://imgur.com/a/kkJABGV
- Driver Q2 averages: https://imgur.com/a/VLhdOta
- Driver Q3 averages: https://imgur.com/a/ZFsGCzy
They are gifs, so check your wi-fi upon entering because there are many on each page, obviously.
Would have posted a few examples here, but apparently Lemmy is not keen on it. Hope imgur's servers do not crap out on me.
Examples:
- McL's averages: https://i.imgur.com/1nWQ1GT.gif
- Intra-team qualy battles: https://i.imgur.com/ayVxwJI.gif
Un mercoledì con doppio test Pirelli in Italia: Lawson ha girato a Monza con la Racing Bulls, Bearman a Fiorano con la Ferrari
Main points of the article:
Pirelli ran two tests of the 2025 tyres, one in Monza with Red Bull's junior team, one in Fiorano with Ferrari. It was wet in Monza and Lawson had some PU trouble in the VCARB01, while Fiorano was artificially wet for Bearman in the Ferrari.
Next up, Aston Martin will be the first to test the 2026 tyres at Barcelona after the Baku GP and then Mercedes at Magny-Cours with the 2025 tyres (1-2 October).
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The irony of Fiorano being artificially wet and it was just raining in Monza is pretty great, yes.
Also, great practice for Bearman if he will indeed be in Baku in place of Magnussen.