🎊🍾Lando Gets a Second Win, Verstappen Falls Short

Good morning. Well my predictions were totally wrong. I thought Norris would f*ck up the star (which he did a bit) and Piastri would sail into podium territory. I also thought Hamilton would crush (maybe wishful thinking).

I did have team papaya on the podium so I wasn’t far off.

To be honest, the race was sort of hum drum with the minor exception of a few interesting overtakes and some mid pack shake ups, but I’m still here for it!

-Jake Williamson

📊 Standings

🏎 GP Debrief / GP preview

Lando Norris wins his second ever Grand Prix in Formula 1!

The 72 laps at Zandvoort for the Dutch GP were pretty uneventful for the most part.

Some highlights:

• Norris buggers the race start - again…

• Verstappen takes the lead from the start

• Russell overtakes Piastri immediately

• Norris overtakes Verstappen into Tarzan and ends up creating a 21 second gap to Verstappen by race end

• The one stop strategy ended up being the winner (medium to hard)

• We saw some epic battles at the mid field with Magnussen and some Alpines go almost 3 wide into turn 1

• Russell gets pitted late race to lose 2 grid places - don’t know what Merc was smoking here.

• Hamilton swaps in softs late race to try to clinch fastest lap - he got it briefly

• Norris races his way to race end and squeezes out fastest lap

Perez, Ricciardo, and the Ferraris all surprised fans today with better race finishes than expected. The Astons and the Silver Arrows seemed to fall off from quali to finish much farther back than expected.

Overall this was a great race for brief, glorious moments but pretty ordinary otherwise.

🌎 Liberty Media Selling F1

Formula 1 commercial rights owner, Liberty Media, is making some big financial moves to acquire the motorcycle racing series MotoGP. After a successful acquisition of Formula 1 back in 2016, Liberty media beat out the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar and Ultimate Fighting Championship owner TKO for the series. At a price of $4.2 Billion, Liberty will be acquiring 86% of the shares in Dorna Sports, which owns MotoGP.

The statement from Liberty:

“Liberty Media Corporation announced today that it has priced the previously-announced public offering of 10,650,000 shares of its Series C Liberty Formula One Common Stock (“FWONK”) at a public offering price of $77.50 per share. Liberty Media also granted the underwriter of the offering an option to purchase up to an additional 1,597,500 FWONK shares.

“The offering is expected to close on August 22, 2024, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, and is expected to result in approximately $825,375,000 in gross proceeds to Liberty Media, before deducting the underwriter’s discounts and estimated offering expenses payable by Liberty Media.

“Liberty Media intends to exercise its option to deliver additional cash in lieu of shares of FWONK as part of its previously disclosed proposed acquisition (the “Acquisition”) of Dorna Sports, S.L., such that all the consideration paid will be comprised of cash and no shares of FWONK will be issued to the sellers.”

So what the hell does this mean?

Basically Liberty Media is selling a stake in F1 to raise just over $800 million. Between that and debt, Liberty will be buying a majority of MotoGP.

Clearly, Liberty Media has seen incredible success in Formula 1 and wants to continue its upward trajectory in the live events industry.

There likely won’t be any cross pollination here, but with a shared parent company, we could see the sharing of ideas between the two world class sporting organization similar to what the UFC and World Wrestling Entertainment has done under TKO.

As a fan of either MotoGP or Formula 1, not much will change.

🚀Headline Sprint

🚒Sargeant crashes out in FP1: In case you’re wondering, crashing in free practice is generally frowned upon and completely unnecessary. Free practice is for testing tyres, setup, and track conditions. Mistakes happen unfortunately. After wet conditions plagued the track, Sargeant dropped two wheels into the slick grass and lost control. He ended up hitting the wall on the exit of turn 3 and destroying the car. The team said the chassis looked okay and it clearly got done before race start. This doesn’t bode well for Logan’s future.

🚫Albon gets DQ in Quali: Alex Albon has always been an impressive driver. He consistently qualifies well and is an all around pleasant person. At the Dutch GP, Albon qualified P8, a great result for the Williams team after removing some weight via a redesign of the roll bar. However, P8 was stripped from Albon when it was discovered that Williams was running an illegal floor.

🛞 McLaren Nails Upgrades

Car upgrades are a key topic of discussion lately. Why you wouldn’t just make the car fast from the beginning is beyond comprehension, but the next best thing to an out of the box fast car is upgrading your way to success throughout the season.

Joking aside, every year teams bring a new car to the season. Brand new car equals brand new problems. What wasn’t an issue the previous year, may be an issue in the current year. Red Bull’s suspension and high downforce setup in 2024, for example, has caused curb riding issues. This is in stark contrast to their blisteringly quick RB19 from yesteryear.

So, as a new car starts to turn laps in a new season, the race engineers and eggheads back at home base are churning through data to understand how to make the car better. That process spits out occasional upgrades to the build of the car.

What isn’t an upgrade?

Generally you aren’t “upgrading” your power train (engine, gearbox, MGU, etc.) These are limited in quantity and it costs too much to develop brand new versions of these parts. Additionally, you can’t just switch engine manufacturer mid season.

What is an upgrade?

Today, an upgrade is generally having to do with the aero package of the car, structural pieces, or simple mechanical pieces.

A couple examples:

• Rear wing

• Front wing

• Seats

• Floors

How much can you upgrade a car in the season?

Theoretically as much as you want. The upgrade cycle for the teams is really limited by the length of time it takes to design the part or the pace at which the part can be manufactured.

“It really depends on which parts you’re making,” he says. “For something like a front wing, it’s a team of designers working flat-out on it for four to six weeks after it’s come out of the wind tunnel. Then it goes into production and they’ll be flat-out as well. However good your resources are, you’re always left thinking: ‘if I had a bit more, I could do it quicker', says Nick Chester formerly of Renault Chassis Development.

What about the cost?

This is where the budget caps came in to help smaller teams. Previous to the budget cap, the larger teams could just outspend everyone and have people designing, redesigning, and manufacturing new parts. Now, you must stay under the set budget which makes upgrade packages more precious.

So why does McLaren stand out?

Frankly, this is because McLaren is the only team that has brought major upgrade packages this season and seen consistent improvement in pace. Something is just working for the team.

At the Dutch GP McLaren brought the following upgrades:

• Completely new rear wing

• New beam wing (sits underneath the rear wing)

• New front brake scoop for improved downstream airflow

• Front suspension mods to aid in the airflow from the new scoop

• Revised floor edges to improve localized downforce

• Updated rear suspension to improve airflow around the rear wing/beam

This is a laundry list of upgrades and would constitute a “major upgrade package” which is a sort of term for big changes to the car. Teams will bring little upgrades throughout the season but a package like what McLaren brought to Zandvoort and Miami a few months back are much more significant.

With McLaren opting to bring major upgrade packages every few races or more, versus bringing little upgrades at each race, we will likely see a big jump in performance as the engineers sort out how the latest upgrades work. Furthermore, we are unlikely to see another major upgrade package from team Papaya for several races, potentially closer to the USGP in Austin.

The next team to potentially bring major upgrades will likely be Red Bull or Ferrari as they have been struggling with consistency in the past few races.

🏎 What’s with Horner and Marko?

What is going on with management at Red Bull?

This is a question we’ve been asking for awhile now because we often get conflicting information and massive rumors coming out of the Austrian team for the past year or two. Most recently, Helmut Marko issued a statement that Liam Lawson will “definitely be in one of our cars next year”. A statement that was swiftly dismissed as false by team principal, Christian Horner. He reiterated, ““If we don’t take up the option on Liam, then he’s a free driver for 2025.”

So the question is, why are we hearing two sides of this story? Why is Red Bull not on the same page internally?

This could have been a simple miscommunication or a fumble of words, but this does make us think about the ongoing feud between Marko and Horner.

A bit of history

Since the death of Red Bull cofounder Dietrich Mateschitz late 2022, reports of internal fighting have plagued Red Bull. Helmut Marko, a close friend of Mateschitz, and Christian Horner clearly didn’t see eye to eye when it came to Red Bull’s way forward in the wake of the ground effect era. These disputes came to a head when Horner was accused of inappropriate conduct with a former Red Bull employee (an accusation that he has been cleared of).

Evidence of infighting came from Max Verstappen’s father, Jos, in his statement, “There is definitely a certain power struggle going on. We'll see, I can't say too much about it. I hope peace returns soon and they start concentrating on racing because that's what it's all about. But this is not good.”

Where are they now?

According to Marko himself, “We have made a truce. We will combine all our forces.

"Even if we are no longer superior, we want to win. But we definitely want to get the maximum out of it and look towards the world championship title."

So, Horner and Marko have made amends and are now focused on overseeing Red Bull’s return to dominance as competitors start to catch up.

What to look out for

It’s crucial to remember that rumors and miscommunication from teams is common place in F1. However, with these too knuckleheads, it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that the infighting may continue as Red Bull struggles to find pace in the car.

💨 Hot Laps

Hamilton out in Q2 and a penalty for impeding makes for a disappointing race weekend.

Toto spills the beans on Antonelli joining the Silver Arrows in 2025

Russell jokes about Raikkonen joining Merc in 2025, this would be fascinating :)

Haas transfers some dollar bills to Uralkali but no confirmation on whether or not they get to leave the Netherlands.

🛞Marbles

Random links from the authors not always car related

✅Music - find new music based on artists you like with this music map.

✅Take a look - If you’re in the mood for some old school Vince Vaughn humor, check out his latest dramatic comedy.

✅Adrenaline - Here’s how to pick the best seat on a rollercoaster according to a rollercoaster engineer.

✅Past vs. Future - What did illustrious thinkers predict for our future back in 1974? Read what 2024 should have looked like according to the 70s.

🤯Brain Food

When was the last time McLaren won the constructor’s championship?

📖Answer

1998

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