Formula 1 2024 Season

I think it was a fantastic race, and I'm liking Piastri's guts going after Lando in turn one.....

Ferrari needed this win, it will be good for their moral.....

Not to mention, the constructor's is down to 8 points and McLaren is clearly on a charge to win it.

Driver's is still Max's, but 62 pts is not an insurmountable challenge, all it would take is for Max to DNF or fall out of the points and it would tighten up considerably.......but that race also could go right down to the wire.

I again refer to the MB performance in the first 1/2 lap of British GP. Piastri taking Lando in the 2nd chicane cost McLaren the 1-2.

McLaren may not have thought they had a chance to win much this year but I think they need to get serious because even the constructor's championship isn't won YET! Just like the other teams, RBR may figure out their package in a couple races and then start beating McLaren. 

I would give Piastri a good job then have a meeting before Baku to be clear that if they are the front row they need to fight in formation to be 1-2 on lap 2 as well. 

I am fascinated at how poor a passing track Monza is for these cars. 

So looking down the results...

In one race, Williams didn't make a mistake with Colopino. Solid race, he may have choked some of his practice pace in q1. He did manage to beat every other back team other than Haas (don't really consider AM a back team).  More important, he didn't crash and cost the team money when many did in Parabolica  

KMag kinda got screwed. While he was physical with Gasley, neither crashed. So 10 sec was more than other incidents let alone the points to miss the next race. Score points for a lower team, get a race ban. Geez. 
 

Man, Sauber looks really bad. If not for the owners kid embarrassing Aston Martin, they would have been at the back of the runners for sure. 

Apparently, McLaren is under fire for a flexing front wing. If I were them, I would very much press the fia on RBR and the braking system. It's crazy that the braking system is being brushed under the carpet so fast, but one race with an apparently over flexing front wing is such a big deal. 
 

Especially since the rather dramatic drop off in performance of RBR. Maybe they should lose all of their team points?

alfadriver said:

Apparently, McLaren is under fire for a flexing front wing. If I were them, I would very much press the fia on RBR and the braking system. It's crazy that the braking system is being brushed under the carpet so fast, but one race with an apparently over flexing front wing is such a big deal. 
 

Especially since the rather dramatic drop off in performance of RBR. Maybe they should lose all of their team points?

What was really behind the FIA's F1 asymmetric brake rule change (motorsport.com)

"The nature of the mid-season change to the technical regulations, something which is not very common, fuelled a wave of speculation that the FIA was responding to a device that one or more teams may have been using this season.

There were even wild accusations thrown at Red Bull that its drop of form since the Miami Grand Prix was linked to a potential banning of a system it may have been using - with some even suggesting that Max Verstappen's retirement from the Australian Grand Prix could have been linked to this.

However, the reality of the situation is very different as high-level sources at the FIA have explained that the change was not prompted at all by anything teams were doing at the moment – it was more about future-proofing regulations."

Of course maybe the high level FIA sources are in RBR's pocket as well 

In reply to fusion66 :

That reasoning makes no actual sense in the real world. RBR/Verstappen was so very much out in front that the really obvious solution to their issues is to take a step back to a point they understand the car. And it would be out in front again. 
 

And I can't imagine that Horner and co are so ignorant that they can't rewind the car like we do when getting a virus on our computers and going back to a previous update. To add to that, Perez is still roughly where he has been all season- so only one of the two RBRs has actually fallen off. 
 

So it makes no sense to me that they have gone down some random, confusing, rabbit hole that they can't get out of compared to being forced to change the car and remove a critical part. 
 

To go from very dominant to regularly behind teams that don't really seem to fully understand their cars (Ferrari and Mercedes) just isn't a logical development path that can't be fixed after the first indicators under normal conditions. 

The media is hilarious...OMG team orders ruin the sport....also McLaren needs to pull team orders. 

In reply to alfadriver :

I did find it confusing for a while but now I find it very understandable how RBR isn't dominant. Based on how Ferrari, MB, Aston Martin, vcarb/RB, and McLaren have moved rather large swings in finish positions over the last two seasons. It is VERY likely that RBR may have had swings in performance but the dips were still resulting in a car faster than everyone else. But this year, other teams just plain caught up. I think the budget cap and wind tunnel/other scaled allowances has done it's job. Once RBR HAD to try a big update they are now in the same boat as every other team. Only McLaren seems to have steady progress of new parts being faster. But I do think they could just as easily start to find new parts make them slower as well given how MB had a spurt and Ferrari had a couple moments earlier in the season.

I think we discussed earlier in this thread about how Perez may have maintained an average gap to Verstappen it is just that now 4 other teams are within the same time or faster than Verstappen. 

The rules have been changed in the past to just cover off potential unintended interpretations. I am not sure if the team Ross Brawn tried to establish of technical people pretending to be actually a race team that just spend full time working for the FIA/F1 trying to find loopholes. 

In reply to trigun7469 :

Yeah if it was up to me I don't think they need to prioritize Lando so much as work as a team to improve their chances of either car winning. Team orders for that purpose seems attainable. I do recognize that for Monza which ever McLaren was leading would have a significant advantage. But it could have been handled to ensure they had a 1-2 and still allowed them to race each other if they pulled enough gap. 

In reply to Advan046 :

Does it really make sense that all 3 teams made the same big jump all at the same time?  Doesn't to me. 
 

And Perez hasn't changed much- finishing 7-10 consistently, max has dropped off a cliff in relative performance. Again, just undo the mistakes and he should be back up front. 
 

one car, one driver to drop off that much that fast makes more sense than 3 teams all improving at the same rate at the exact same time. 

I don't see it as 3 teams moving forward all at the same time.  Mclaren has been making steady progress over the last year and a half to get to where they are now.

Mercedes has a good car that shines at certain tracks and is basically invisible at others.

Ferrari is similar to Mercedes, but seemingly opposite type tracks.

There are certain points in a season that it makes the most sense to bring upgrades.  You will see big swings in performance as some teams nail the upgrades and some other teams actually go backwards. (McLaren nailed it, Aston Martin did not!).  The races right after summer break are one of those points and we are seeing it up and down the field.

Red bull has been steady losing performance (gap back to everyone else decreasing) since about the 4th or 5th round of the year.

The flexi wing thing...  I understand RBRs frustrations.  In 2021 a rule clarification came out and they had to make changes.  Right now the FIA is saying they are watching, but not going to do anything yet.

Looking at the actual race results this year. Max may have had 4 wins out of 5 at the start of the season. But after Miami, race 6, he struggled with only spurts of dominance. 

And based on race gaps as early as China, race 5 his winning gaps had been halved. 

I can agree that maybe RBR started to fall vs all the others rising. But it started a bit before any brake rule clarifications.

In reply to Advan046 :

You mean clarifications made public. And it's not really a technical clarification, it's a far more rare mid season rule update. 
 

Play with the timing all you want, but for Max's car to drop relative performance that much and not get it back....  sure seems suspicious to me. 

stroker said:

I look at Red Bull and wonder just how dedicated/involved Adrian Newey is at this point...

 

I saw an article more or less confirming Newey's been "less than fully involved" in the team and pretty much laying a lot of the loss of performance on this.  Didn't think to save the link, unfortunately.

In reply to stroker :

If this collapse of dominance over half a season is all because Newey isn't paying full attention, RB will be in a world of hurt in 2026.

I think it is something maybe new for Formula 1. So new that it is boggling everyone's minds. The top 8 or so cars are within 1 second for pole. 

Then the races are sometimes runaway wins, but by different drivers. Or one team or another just misjudges strategy and if the races were a few laps longer, the winner would change. 

After dominance since 2014, a blip with the 2021 battles and pandemic related back and forth, dominance for a couple years, now any of 8 drivers have a chance. So almost 10 years of basically the same thing to bam. Crazy that 7 drivers on the current grid were also on the grid in 2014

In reply to Keith Tanner :

If that is the case that is amazing on top of that his schedule was pretty laid back. I just wonder if next years car and philosophy were put in the for front because he was a big loss and perhaps they will be back on par next year. 

It's always curious to me how a team can look so good for half of a season then fall off a cliff - Aston did that last year with Alonso getting a podium in the first 6 (?) or so races, then foundering most of the rest of the season, and winding up pretty much where they are now.

I agree that it seems all Red Bull need to do is go back to the configuration they had at the beginning of the season for Max and see what happens. No idea what it would take for Checo to regain his form......

I liked hearing "Papaya rules" coming over the McLaren radio! Funny stuff......

There is nothing else like a Ferrari F1 victory at Monza. Not Max at Sandwort, nor Lewis at Silverstone holds a candle to the passion of the Tifosi at the Holy Cathedral of Speed.

Forza!

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to stroker :

If this collapse of dominance over half a season is all because Newey isn't paying full attention, RB will be in a world of hurt in 2026.

I think the more important point is why Newey is off his game (and why he's moving to Aston Martin)--supposedly he's shying away from all the drama associated with the rest of the RB personnel, which then begs the question of whether the cause of all that drama is causing the entire team to lose focus.  I don't find that possibility to be a particularly difficult leap of speculation.

Was it confirmed that newey is going to AM?

In reply to stroker :

Not sure if it's team RB feeding these article/rumors but it was reported that Newey hardly worked and that all the crashes by Perez have stopped any improvements to the current car, which timing wise would make sense. 

In reply to stroker :

Memories are unreliable. Still I did recall reading about significant unrest inside RBR at the time of the internal investigation of wrongdoing by Horner. I think I said something on this forum about experiencing a similar sequence of an isolated incident inciting a much wider lack of trust across a large part of the company. Newey, being at his level, he may have witnessed more than others. Been part of some of the questionable conversations. This found it a convenient excuse to leave or like some at my company, were actually so disgusted by the events that they transferred out of the group or left the company. 

In reply to Advan046 :

For sure.  Newey seemed pretty agitated by the event.  

I also think he is tired of working with shiny happy people.