🎲F1 Is Away, We Play🎲

Good morning. F1 is over for now and the world gets to enjoy a bit of a break at the end of the year. For many of you, this means happy holidays!

The end of a Formula 1 season usually means we all go back to our normal lives and try to find things to occupy our time until the racing returns. This is especially true now because we all need a distraction to keep our minds busy. Next year should be quite a year for racing due to the regulation changes sort of leveling the playing field in 2026.

For now, I will keep the regular newsletter updates short and really only when needed. You will also have to excuse my shameless racing plugs as me and my team go race in prototypes. Please check out our new YouTube channel focused on my racing journey and highlighting those in the racing community around the world.

🌎 Liam Lawson to Red Bull

Red Bull has filled the seat left unoccupied by outgoing Sergio Perez. Liam Lawson will be taking a seat next to Max Verstappen in 2025. The New Zealander has been on the F1 grid before. You may remember hs replaced Daniel Ricciardo for five Grands Prix starting a the Dutch GP in 2023. This is ironic because Lawson ended up replacing Ricciardo permanently after the Singapore GP at VCARB.

Now, after several years as a reserve driver in the Red Bull system, the Kiwi driver will post up next to the four-time World Champion to help secure future constructor’s championships.

How did we get here?

This is a long story but let’s give you the short version. First, we all know that Red Bull was having performance issues this year. This got so bad that both world titles seemed to be slipping away from the Austrian team along with all of their key personnel. The future was looking bleak for Red Bull from Miami onward. Luckily, Verstappen adapted to the crap car and held onto his title but the team lost the Constructor’s championship due to Checo finishing P8 in the standings, a full 285 points behind his teammate.

Is it Checo’s fault that the RB20 was such a disaster, no. However, Max seemed to adapt well enough to the car so another driver should have been able to extract some performance. A lot of pundits and fans will say that the car just didn’t mesh with Checo’s driving style but as a racing driver, you should be able to adapt. In fact, Lawson said just that, “I think as drivers, we’re professionals, we have to adapt to whatever we’re driving.”

Regardless of Checo’s performance, or lack thereof, the rumors of his departure started before the 2024 Summer break. The whole paddock thought the Mexican driver would be booted at the Summer break but the team doubled down and held onto him. This is most likely due to the major sums of money that Checo brings to the team through his sponsors.

Then, we saw a Ricciardo departure after the Singapore GP after a pretty lackluster run with VCARB, R.I.P. Ricciardo. This opened the door for a test. A test of potential Checo replacements if management chose to part ways with Perez at the end of 2024, which at this point in the year seemed inevitable.

This is where Liam Lawson entered the scene. He got 11 races to prove himself worthy of the Red Bull seat, which apparently he did. To be sure, Yuki Tsunoda also received some end of year testing the RB20 to gauge his potential as a Checo replacement. Much to Yuki’s disappointment, the team went with Lawson.

This may not be permanent though

As we’ve seen already, Lawson has to watch his back. Red Bull goes through driver’s like a fat kid with candy at this point so Lawson should consider his tenure at risk if he doesn’t perform.

F1 Grand Prix winner, Ralf Schumacher, seems to think the same. “I think he will get half a season,” Schumacher predicts. “And if he shows it then, he will have a good seat.”

So, Lawson will be under a microscope for part of the season. Rest assured, Red Bull won’t make the same mistakes that they made with Checo or Ricciardo again. If they see a driver underperforming in a high stakes season like 2025, they will likely give him the axe.

But, good luck Liam!

🚀Headline Sprint

Hadjar to VCARB: Isack Hadjar will be joining VCARB after signing to the last available seat in F1 alongside Yuki Tsunoda. Hadjar has been racing in Formula 2 with Campos Racing and finished runner up to Gabriel Bortoleto, who took the open Audi/Sauber seat. Hadjar comes from the Red Bull junior program and that makes him the 19th driver to get an F1 seat out of the junior system.

Bottas back at Mercedes: "Despite the challenges of the past few years, I know that I've still got so much more to contribute to F1.” Valtteri Bottas will be back at the Silver Arrows starting in 2025 as a reserve driver. After a rough three year run at Sauber, Bottas admits he made the wrong move to join the team that started as Alpha Romeo. But, the Finn knows he has what it takes to be fighting for championships so now he is on a mission to support George Russell and Kimi Antonelli in doing just that. As a reservist, Bottas will provide valuable data and input from endless sim sessions and testing of previous cars. Additionally, he will be first on the call sheet if a race seat needs filling.

🛞 My Racing Journey

Shameless plug time. As some of you know, I am on my own racing journey. At 31, I am not headed to Formula 1 but I still have high aspirations in the world of motorsport. I am lucky enough to have a little bit of funding to enter the world of prototype racing. Furthermore, I am at a young enough age to build my skills and reach the highest levels of sport car racing, which is the 24 hours of Le Mans.

This is a multi year effort and will require significant focus and training to get there. Luckily, I have a team around me to help me get to that point. A friend of mine named Danny Soufi and myself are building a race team that will be based out of Austin, TX. The plan so far is to create a simulator center here in Texas where Danny and I can develop future drivers and train ourselves when we aren’t on track. In addition, I will work my way into LMP3 racing to join Danny as his co-driver. From there, we will race LMP3 and LMP2 before fielding our own cars and eventually entering/winning the 24 hours of Le Mans.

I have already been testing the a baby version of the LMP3 called the Praga R1T and will be racing in 3-4 rounds of the Zeo Prototype series in the UK next year.

The cool part is that we are documenting this whole journey as well as other interesting car/racing related things on our YouTube channel under the Racing Recap name. You can follow along our racing journey, the process of building the sim center, or event my efforts to learn how to drift. This is meant to be a racing focused entertainment platform to give you guys more of what we all love - motor racing.

So, it would mean the world to me if you checked out the YouTube channel and subscribed to follow along. With your help, we can reach our goal of getting to Le Mans!

🏎 When will Max leave Red Bull?

This is a tricky question that can only be answered by the man himself. However, there are hints at Max’s thought process here. What follows is total speculation and gossip garbage but follow along and I may have you convinced that there is something to this.

Back to the gossip. The hints that Max and his camp have dropped in the wake of the 2024 season fall into two categories: personal reasons and team performance.

Personal Reasons

The F1 news headlines had a field day when Max and Kelly (His partner) announced they were due to have a baby of their own. They’ve been raising a child that Kelly had from a previous relationship already but the news of the baby announcement set the rumor mill on fire. This is because Max has made claims in the past that he would leave F1 or take a break if he had a child.

When asked about fulfilling his 2028 contract with Red Bull in Abu Dhabi this year, Max quickly dispelled the rumors and said, “No, I never considered taking a year out. It’s not on my mind.”

So that’s definitive, for now.

Team Performance

This one is a developing story. From what I understand, most high performing drivers include a team performance clause in their contract. These clauses essentially say that a driver can break their contract with the team if they aren’t performing at a high enough level.

Helmut Marko confirmed the existence of such a clause in Verstappen’s contract when the Red Bull performance started to suffer in the middle of the 2024 season.

The reason this is coming up now is because of the regulation changes in 2026. Red Bull have partnered with Ford so that the Austrian team can not only produce their chassis but also their own power units. The outgoing power unit supplier for Red Bull, Honda, is jumping over to Aston Martin which is now home to design godfather, Adrian Newey.

The concern here is that Red Bull will take a while to warm up to their new engine and may lag behind the grid in their learning phase. This will definitely spark concern for Max Verstappen’s future at Red Bull. When Max’s father was asked about the progress on the new engines he said, “nobody knows how good the engine and car will really be in 2026. You only find out when it’s actually on the track.” This comes after comments about Max needing to be at a team that will at least keep up with the front of the grid if not get him more world titles.

Max has proven to be a loyalist so far, but with Honda and Newey setting up shop at Aston Martin and Toto Wolff itching to sign Max Verstappen if that door opens, we could see a switch from the Dutchman in 2026.

For now, he gets to bask in his four-time world title glory, congrats Max!

💨 Hot Laps

10 racing films everyone should watch while the on track performances have gone.

Fred Vasseur doubles down on his belief in Lewis Hamilton, even after Hamilton claims that he isn’t fast anymore.

Red Bull could have saved themselves a lot of money and stress if they had timed Ricciardo and Checo’s departure a bit better.

🛞Marbles

Random links from the authors not always car related

✅Cars: Honda and Nissan have signed an initial agreement to merge which would make them the third largest auto manufacturer on the planet.

✅Drones: With all this talk of alien invasions in New Jersey, I thought a DJI video of climbing mount Everest would be a breathe of fresh air.

✅Tech: Read about the 8 biggest flops in technology of 2024.

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