🧯🧯Logan Crashes Out of F1, Upgrades All the Rage

Good morning. So…it turns out if you put the results of the race in the title of the post, people get a bit frustrated with you. I made a miscalculation in the last newsletter and spoiled a race result. To those of you who got the news from my last post, I apologize.

BUT, spoilers will happen…

So, from now on, no more spoilers in the title. 🙂 

Now that we are through with that, let’s look forward to our entry into the (cue the dramatic music) TEMPLE OF SPEED! Monza Baby!

-Jake Williamson

🏎 GP preview

It should be obvious to you (and if it isn’t, that’s ok) that the image above is of a very fast track. This is Monza.

Facts

• 5.7 ish km

• 11 corners

• 53 laps

• 350+ kph top speed

From a racing perspective, Monza is an easy track but very very fast. They call this the “Temple of Speed” because the cars are flat out (full throttle) 80% of the time. When the drivers aren’t at full throttle, they are exercising their frightfully small brakes into some tight corners. Turn 1, 4, and 8 are all preceded by heavy braking off of long straights and will be key passing zones during the race.

No can promise this will be an action packed Grand Prix, because it probably won’t be. This is the type of track that will see some shake ups on the out lap and, possibly, after the pit stop.

Predictions:

• P1 - Lando Norris

• P2 - Oscar Piastri

• P3 - Max Verstappen

• P4- Charles Leclerc

• P5 - George Russell

• P6 - Lewis Hamilton

• P7 - Alex Albon

These predictions go a bit deeper than past guesses (because that’s basically what this is, a guess) because Albon showed up last year at Monza and it would be great to see him up there again.

What to watch for

McLaren has yet to prove that their rocket to the top of the field is sustainable. Team papaya is clearly riding high on new upgrades but Monza is a unique circuit that will put the Mac against another fast car, the RB20. Red Bull is struggling with setup but that car is still quick and should favor Monza.

Lastly, don’t count out Ferrari. They are bringing an upgrade package to match their shiny new livery.

🌎 Logan Sargeant Axed

The big story this week is obviously the decision to eject Logan Sargeant from the Williams seat and replace him for the remainder of the 2024 season with F2 contender and F1 rookie, Franco Colapinto.

Why Logan and why now?

Well, the fact the Logan is out really doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone. First of all, he was going to be out at the end of 2024 regardless. Williams team principal, and relentless optimist, James Vowles made it clear early in the season that Sainz needs to sign with Williams for 2025. So, Logan was going to be replaced no matter what happened.

The shock is less about Logan being out and more about when it happened. Williams decided to give Sargeant the boot after the Dutch GP just last weekend (we will talk about why in a bit). This decision is not even a mid-season decision. This is a move made with only 9 races left on the calendar.

It is extremely rare for a team to eject a driver in the middle of the season. Why? Well, this comes down to the amount of prep that goes into an F1 season. Regardless of your feelings on Logan Sargeant, he was still in that car for more than a season and accustomed to how the team and the car operated. That is not a small thing to replicate in a new driver with only 9 races to go.

So why did Logan get shown the door?

Probably pure frustration. Williams, of course, has a diplomatic answer to this, but the team has put enormous effort into developing Logan as well as the car underneath of him. In fact, Sargeant was given a second season as a gesture of support from Vowles as the team boss believed securing a spot in the 2024 season would boost Sargeant’s confidence and reflect in his points haul. After only scoring 1 point in 35 race starts, Logan has had a lack luster journey.

As far as the car goes, James Vowles has made it very clear that Williams should be fighting for points if not race wins. Placing Sainz in the seat next to Albon is proof of this effort. As part of the trip to the top of the grid, Williams engineering is working endlessly to develop the car to be as fast as possible.

Car upgrades overshadowed

A big push for performance came in the form of a major upgrades package brought to the Dutch GP at Zandvoort. An upgrade package that Logan Sargeant sent into the wall at the exit of turn 3 after putting 2 wheels in the wet grass. This crash and subsequent repair job is estimated to have cost the team seven figures and will have set back the engineering plans by some significant amount.

This is not just a major crash, it is another crash for Logan Sargeant. His hit rate is almost one in three for crashing which doesn’t come cheap and creates a lot of headaches for a factory that has to hand build parts.

Enter Colapinto

The disastrous sophomore campaign for Sargeant led to his termination in favor of Franco Colapinto.

Colapinto was in his first F2 season and sitting at sixth in that championship. He comes from the Williams Academy and will be making his F1 debut with only 9 races left on the calendar.

As the first Argentinian driver in 23 years, the F1 fandom welcomes him to the grid.

In closing

Logan Sargeant’s performance was… not great. But the fact that Williams is replacing him with an F2 rookie who is only 6th in the championship at a very late point in the F1 season just goes to show how frustrated the team was with Sargeant’s efforts.

As for Colapinto, we all wish him luck in his new seat and hope to see him on the F1 grid for many years to come!

🚀Headline Sprint

Magnussen in a ‘grey area’: If you didn’t catch the fight for P10 at the Dutch GP, go watch it. At one point, 4 cars were fighting their way into turn 1 in the quest to get their team a point in the race. Magnussen who was running P10 behind his teammate, Nico Hulkenberg, was accused of some ‘dangerous’ obstructive driving to defend his position and hold off opponents from fighting with his German counterpart farther up the field. Alex Albon sees this type of driving as a “gray area” and should probably be policed better by the stewards.

What was with Mercedes bizarre second stop at the Dutch GP? So merc stopped both of their cars mid-late race at the Dutch GP to make their run a two stopper. Admittedly, the soft to hard tyre strategy was the winning strategy, but Hamilton had a lock up that ruined 1 or more tyres and Russell was pulled in because of a rapidly closing Sainz and Checo behind him. The thought for Russell was to get on a newer set of softs and regain the positions they volunteered but the car didn’t have the pace. In hindsight, the team should have kept Russell out. Sainz probably would have overtaken the Brit but Checo likely wouldn’t have gotten past him by the end.

🛞 Williams Upgrades and Loses

Williams had a rough weekend at Zandvoort. The British team brought upgrades to both cars only to have one obliterated by, now axed, Logan Sargeant and the other to be disqualified from Saturday qualifying due to a measurement error.

Upgrade Package breakdown:

1. New floor geometry for the FW46 to offer more aerodynamic opportunities downstream

2. New side pod inlet with an enhance upper lip to reduce aero losses from the front of the car.

3. New side pod geometry to widen the rear and reduce the gulley beneath the inlet. This also enhance downstream airflow.

4. The team removed weight from the roll hoop that sits behind the driver’s head. This reduces overall weight but also takes weight away from higher on the car which lowers the center of gravity.

This is a major upgrade package for the mid pack team.

However, all of this was overshadowed by Sargeant’s wreck and the aforementioned DQ for Alex Albon.

Albon went on into Q3 to secure a P8 starting position for the main race only to be DQ’d from Qualifying when the FIA scanned the car for compliance with regulations. The new floor scanned in at over 1600mm wide which falls outside of permissible width, so the car was found to be non-compliant. Albon got backed up to P19 and ended up finished P14 in the race.

Although Williams missed out on points, the P8 qualifier shows that the team is onto something with their aero upgrades and weight reduction efforts.

🏎 Tiny Tech Corner: Aerodynamics

Why is everyone so obsessed with upgrades and aerodynamics lately?

Great question with a simple answer. As evidenced by Red Bull potentially hitting the development rev limiter, aero upgrades seem to be the only way for other teams to catch up to the formerly dominate Austrian team. You can’t bring new power unit technology or major mechanical changes like brake lines or wheels. These are all carefully chosen and approved by the FIA before the cars are released each year. Furthermore, a team wouldn’t have the budget or time to manufacture new mechanical parts throughout the season even if they wanted to.

So, the best way to extract performance is enhancing the aerodynamics of the car.

Since this is a “tiny tech corner” let’s keep this short.

What is aerodynamics?

The study of the properties of moving air and the interaction between the air and solid bodies moving through it.

Put another way, aerodynamics are the reason the F1 cars are shaped the way they are. They are known as “aero” or “downforce” cars.

Think of an airplane wing. The wing, or airfoil, is designed to create a low pressure system above the wing and high pressure system underneath. This plus a few other physics principals, create a lifting action that opposes gravity. That’s how we can hurtle through the air at 500 miles per hour.

What if you turn this wing upside down?

You guessed it, the lift will be directed toward the Earth. So this lifting force facing downward is called “downforce” pretty creative right?

What is downforce good for?

Keeping a very fast car stuck to the track. Think of it this way, if your car was lifted off the ground, your tires and brakes wouldn’t be effective at all. This is kind of what happens in a fast car. Wind starts to catch the car and lift it off the ground. This makes the grip from the tyres and the braking force less effective. So, we have to create a force that keeps the car on the ground so we can use the these crucial elements.

The grippier the car and the more effective the brakes, the faster the driver can send it through the corners.

Is high downforce always good?

No. Downforce can create excessive tyre ware and lots of drag on the car (for reasons you need a physics professor to understand). So optimizing the car for downforce is a tradeoff where you sacrifice straight line speed for cornering speed.

Reality

Most of the teams in F1 strike a balance between low and high downforce setups. In fact, a team can shape the bodywork to have higher downforce in certain areas while other parts of the car create less of this downforce. This is called local aerodynamic force, meaning local to a specific part of the car.

Furthermore, beyond downforce, the teams will shape the car to direct airflow to certain areas like the brakes to enhance natural cooling.

Bottom line

These cars are basically big upside down airplane wings and the teams bring major aero upgrades to affect race performance. Some tracks have tricky slow corners that require high downforce and softer suspension while other tracks, like Monza, require stiffer suspension and low downforce, low-drag, configurations.

💨 Hot Laps

Bottas is after a multi year deal with Audi

Wolff and Verstappen are keeping open communication about jumping the Red Bull ship.

Colapinto is the first Argentinian F1 driver in 23 year

Hamilton lock up at the Dutch GP forced the team to stop for new tyres and led to a P8 finish

Ferrari bringing upgrades to Monza

How safe is the safety car? Check out the Aston Martin safety car stuffing it into a wall at Monza.

🛞Marbles

Random links from the authors not always car related

✅Finns are not only great racing drivers, they are also obsessed with empty buckets…

✅Check out this disaster resistant, ultra expensive, luxury camper thingy…

✅Can this YouTube video dry out your phone?

✅ The US Government set traps to catch UFOs. What a way to welcome an all powerful being.

🤯Brain Food

Can an F2 driver join the grid in Formula 1 and then return to F2?

📖Answer

Yes! The only rule for F2 is that a person who wins the F2 championship can’t participate in a successive championship. So Franco Colapinto could potentially finish the 9 races in the Williams and return to F2.

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