🌶️RE: Race Week in Azerbaijan, Championship Heating Up🌶️

Good morning. It’s been a relatively slow week in F1 news and when F1 official news is slow, rumors will fly. Who knows what the rumor mill will spit out next. Maybe Zak brown starting a band with Toto Wolff and Christian Horner. Perhaps the FIA considering making F1 a multiclass series paired with spec Miatas. Both of which, I am completely on board with!

In all seriousness, the rumor mill does kick into overdrive when the news cycle clows and the latest in F1 speculation is Max Verstappen potentially fielding an offer from the team made of money, Aston Martin. This comes behind the news that Lawrence stroll is selling a stake in Aston. Many changes over in that green garage.

Keep an eye on this, these rumors have an abnormally high hit rate for being correct.

-Jake Williamson

🌎 Don’t Sleep on Ferrari

Ferrari is coming off of an historic win at Monza. A Ferrari winning at Monza is quite the spectacle. You could hear the roar of the Tifosi coming through the TV broadcasts starting in the last 5 laps of the Italian GP, where Leclerc took home an emotional victory.

But how did Ferrari pull this off? Well, Ferrari doesn’t really seem to know the answer to that for certain.

The first stop of the investigation into their wins is the Scuderia’s upgrade package. The team brought some Monza specific upgrades as well as some performance upgrades that are aimed at long term improvement. The centerpiece of this upgrade was their new floor geometry. Now, floor geometry sounds a bit boring and complicated and it is. But, your should know that floor geometry is a new shape for the floor that runs underneath and along the length of the car. Its job is to direct air in a way that sucks the car into the track in fast corners while reducing that suction on the high speed straights. The problem is that you usually sacrifice one of these for the other. Meaning, you can setup a car to create downforce for high speed corner but you will sacrifice straight line speed on the straights, for example.

This is exactly what Ferrari did at the Spanish GP. They introduced a floor that created more suction and induced a huge amount of bouncing which is unpleasant for the driver (imagine being inside of a washing machine that is inside of another washing machine) and is detrimental to lap times.

Monza Upgrade Success

Obviously something worked for Ferrari at Monza. But, was this due to McLaren losing a real shot at the win, a bold one-stop strategy, or the new floor that the Scuderia introduced? The answer is probably all of the above but that isn’t good enough for Ferrari to gauge their future success.

Team boss at Ferrari, Fred Vasseur, says, "It’s quite difficult to understand the impact of the upgrade on a track like Monza, because we are in such a different configuration compared to the rest of the season,"

"I'm honestly not sure. We need more samples on this new floor and we need to go to more normal tracks. I guess the next normal one is Austin because the ones coming up are very particular, Baku and Singapore. Austin will tell us how good we are with this new floor."

What he means here is that Monza, Baku, and Singapore are all unique tracks that require specific configurations. Monza is blazing quick while the next two GPs are street circuits that are plagued by multiple low-speed corners. Nothing on these tracks can be used to predict future performance of upgrades because they are two extreme examples of circuits.

The next chance Ferrari has to see if their new floor works for them is in Austin.

🚀Headline Sprint

🚫KMag banned and already thinking of retiring: When an F1 driver turns 30, the dark clouds of age start to form and retirement from the pinnacle of motorsport starts to creep into consciousness. For K-Mag, it is no different. 30 is not old by any stretch of the imagination but it’s relatively ancient in the world of F1. A fact that Magnussen is considering right now. With only 2 seats open on the grid for 2025 and no mention of a team who wants the Danish driver, Magnussen must consider his future options. He doesn’t want to finish his career in racing as a mid pack driver just to be forgotten and he has admitted to the idea of IndyCar and Endurance racing looking quite fun. Should he move to a different race series? Yes, yes he should. Kevin should use his young age and extensive racing experience to go dominate another motoring series. The problem is leaving F1 is like trying to kick a heroin addiction, impossible.

😎Speaking of Haas: Ollie Bearman will be promoted to F1 to replace K-Mag for the Azerbaijan GP. Although Bearman will be missing out on the F2 sprint and feature races over the same weekend, he will get his second chance at a real F1 race after his outing in the Ferrari when Carlos Sainz was attacked by his own appendix. Bearman finished P7 at the Saudi Arabian GP for Ferrari and impressed even the most skeptical F1 critics. This is why you should be excited to see what he can do in the VF-24 for Haas, a team he will be driving for full time next year. It’s rare to be able to drive your team’s car for a real race before your career with them starts, so keep a keen eye on Haas this weekend because it will likely tell you how that car will do next year.

🛞 RUMOR MILL - 2025 Mercedes Shootout

Will Kimi Antonelli and George Russell be teammates after the 2025 season? Nico Rosberg has weighed in and says, “George Russell is not safe at all because Toto still wants Max and he will try again for 2026 because ‘give up’ does not appear in Toto’s vocabulary.”

The future of three time world champion is a hot topic as of late despite his contract with Red Bull running through 2028. Aside from the fact that contracts in F1 are like teenage hearts, constantly broken, many respected voices in F1 speculate that Max could be considering a move to a new team if the latest troubles at the Austrian team can’t be resolved.

Red Bull finds itself in a pickle. They are a mere 8 points ahead of McLaren who came out of nowhere to take a run at the constructor title. Not to mention, Lando Norris is in contention for the driver championship after several poor outcomes from Red Bull. What’s more, Red Bull have lost some key figures to other teams and the leadership has casted doubts abut their ability to turn their troubles around by 2025.

Max doesn’t like where his team is at right now. A point he makes very clear every time he gets the opportunity to punch his steering wheel really hard. In fact, Max has admitted that winning both titles in 2024 is “not realistic” with the way the car and team are performing.

How could Max leave?

A fact we learned during the investigation into Christian Horner’s behavior with a former employee, Max’s contract includes some “opt-out” clauses that are based on performance. Verstappen’s dedication to winning trumps his desire for huge sums of money, so if the team isn’t performing up to his criteria, then he will have the freedom to explore other options.

Enter Mercedes

So, with Red Bull underperforming and other teams catching up, it may be open season on Max. A chance at Max would be just what Toto Wolff wants as he has made his regret over not signing the Dutch driver very clear.

If Mercedes can continue on the upward swing, which they are likely to do, Max may be tempted to make a move to the team that has won 8 world titles with Lewis Hamilton.

This creates a bit of a sticky situation for George Russell since there are only 2 seats on any F1 team and you just don’t turn down a Max Verstappen just like Ferrari doesn’t turn down a Lewis Hamilton.

This means 2025 could be a bit of a shootout between George Russell and Kimi Antonelli. He who performs best gets the seat next to Verstappen in 2026.

🏎 More Headlines…

🔍Red Bull narrowing down its issues: Red Bull have brought a smorgasbord of upgrades through the season. Partly because that’s just what a team does, but mostly this has everything to do with their panicked efforts to regain the dominance that they are accustomed to. The latest from team boss, Christian Horner hints at a possible major issue. He says, “It's disconnected front and rear. We can see that. Our wind tunnel doesn't say that, but the track says that. So it's getting on top of that, because obviously when you have that, it means you can't trust your tools. Then you have to go back to track data and previous experience.” This is good news and bad news for RB. If you know you can’t trust your wind tunnel, then you can focus on track data. However, track data comes from test sessions and race data, which is much harder to come by. This doesn’t bode well for Red Bull being able to turn their problems around quickly.

🍹Lando Norris doesn’t drink during races: The driver rapidly chasing down Max Verstappen in the Driver’s championship has admitted that he still gets massively nervous before races, especially when there is so much on the line. Although he has never been driven to physical sickness, Norris finds it difficult to eat or drink anything leading up to a race and has said, "I think I've drunk from my water bottle twice ever in Formula 1 - and both those times when I've just been very ill, like in Barcelona a couple of years ago. 

"I do try and do it. I just really struggle to and often just forget. [I] don't like drinking during the race.

Could this be a source of his launch issues or loss of concentration during crucial moments in races? Perhaps. But, McLaren wouldn’t let this get in the way of a championship so he is surely in great hands.

💨 Hot Laps

Oscar admits to a bit of ‘selfishness’ in his quest for F1 glory after the Monza debacle.

Stroll set to sell 20% + of Aston Martin F1 to some private investment funds, probably to increase the budget for new initiatives.

Former F1 team boss accuses Red Bull of arrogance after not brining Monza upgrades.

Colapinto was rattled by his race at Monza but is happy to have provided a great result for Williams after replacing Logan Sargeant.

Oscar Piastri is already showing signs of becoming one of the F1 greats of days gone by.

🛞Marbles

Random links from the authors not always car related

✅Maps: Does anyone else stare endlessly at old maps? no? Well check these out anyway.

✅Advice: Seek advice from random stranger or give some of your own.

✅Space Junk: Garbage in space is making it hard to launch new rockets, so who will clean it up?

🤯Brain Food

Window shopping. We give you the car and some highlights and you give us your best guess one what it sold for at auction.

Dubbed “Project Nasty” this 1985 Porsche Carrera Coupe was extensively modified to give modern 911’s a run for their money.

• re-engineered 3.6L flat six from Rothsport racing and Goritz Sixfix

• Ceramic coated long-tube headers

• 991 Gt2 RS titanium muffler

• Carbon fiber hood and spoiler

• Custom roll cage

• Recaro seats

• Actual miles unknown

📖Answer

$265,000 sold at auction and another feather in the cap for resto-mods.

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