😵‍💫😵‍💫Sprint Weekend, McLaren May be in Trouble

Good morning. Ok team this is a special week. I get to spend the weekend in my backyard at the Circuit of the Americas watching a showdown between Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull, and Mercedes. I have spent the past handful of years attending the USGP and it ALWAYS delivers. This one is proving to be the grand daddy of them all.

Austin should prove to be pivotal for both world championships. Will McLaren hold onto the constructors? Will Red Bull solve their issues and help Verstappen clench the world title?

Whatever happens, Austin is going to be a banger and I’m here for it.

Although, I could do without the traffic.

-Jake Williamson

🏎 GP preview

Time to give you a quick brief of what you can expect over the weekend now that FP1 and Sprint Qualifying is over. In addition, we will go through my predictions that have no scientific backing at all.

FP1 recap:

Let’s use one word to describe the first, and only, free practice session at COTA yesterday - Spinny. COTA is sporting a fresh new coat of tarmac this year after many many years of complaints from F1 and MotoGP drivers. The track was too bumpy and had high tyre degradation for many years. Finally, the complaints can stop. The track has been complete resurfaced and somewhat smoothed out. This is great for drivers but it has made the circuit a little more unpredictable.

The combination of unusually low temperatures and new pavement made the hard tyre runs in FP1 quite crashy. Hamilton had a particularly nasty off track over near the esses section.

Sprint Qualifying:

As you know, this weekend is one of three remaining sprint race weekends. So, Friday consisted of a single practice session and the sprint qualifying. The drivers ran for three sessions, similar to a normal GP quali, but they were required to run certain tyres. SQ1 and SQ2 required medium tyres and were followed by SQ3 in which soft compounds were required.

The drivers seemed to come alive on the softer compound tyres, which is no surprise considering the hard tyres are so difficult to heat up in a colder environment.

The biggest SQ surprises were Piastri dropping in SQ1 due to track limits at turn 19 and Colapinto going into the run off out of turn 12 (which happened right in front of my seats).

Tyre strategy note:

We don’t know what the teams will choose for their pit strategy. In the previous years, thermal degradation and older tarmac dictated a two-stop strategy. However, this year the new pavement and colder temps could make this a medium-hard tyre strategy (one-stop).

Pay attention to the following this weekend:

• Liam Lawson in his first GP with VCARB after replacing Ricciardo

• McLaren brought a new floor upgrade, which doesn’t look promising so far

• Red Bull also brought a major floor change and they seem to be solving some of their issues

• Ferrari didn’t bring major upgrades so they will feel the most comfortable with their car/strategy this weekend

Predictions - unfounded and unreliable 🙂 

P1 - Verstappen

P2 - Leclerc

P3 - Russell

P4 - Sainz

P5 - Norris

Other predictions:

• There will be a safety car after the first round of pit stops due to the slippery hard tyres

• Someone will go off in Turn 19

• Colapinto will finish in the points

🌎 Front Bib Controversy - Innovation or Cheating?

All eyes are on Red Bull this week after the discovery of a controversial “front bib device” on the RB20.

Feel free to read all about the bib device in detail, but stay put for the basic breakdown and how it affects the championship.

What is the “bib” anyway?

The bib is also known as the T tray (See profile view below). This bib started out life as a way to secure the wear plank to the floor of the car. This plank serves as a way to measure whether or not a car’s ride height is in compliance throughout the weekend. You may remember Hamilton and Leclerc being DSQ’d for excessive plank wear after last year’s USGP.

So, this T-tray, or “bib”, has always been there to hold the plank in place. Which means it sticks out quite a bit on the underside of the car. Therefore, in the more recent ground effect era, engineers and other car nerds at the factories have played with the shape and form of the bib to enhance car performance.

Technical designers realized they could direct air left, right, and center on the underside of the car to achieve desirable aerodynamic performance. That just means better lap times.

The controversy

So, we know that the bib holds the wear plank in place and can be used to direct air around the car to produce positive aerodynamic characteristics. We also know that the plank under the car is there solely to make sure the cars aren’t setup to run illegally low to the ground.

It stands to reason that being able to adjust the height of the bib would have a significant impact on the team’s ability to play with different ride heights. If you lower the bib, you can lower the front wing, which would create extra front downforce and reduce understeer. You could also raise the bib height to allow the car to run a lower ride height at full race fuel. Both of these examples would give a team an edge in a race. Furthermore, neither of these instances is illegal by itself.

What would be illegal is making any of these adjustments after the cars go out for Q1 on Saturday. This is a time called Parc Ferme. Basically, from Q1 through the race, no cars can be significantly altered by their teams. You can make maintenance adjustments for brake problems, ride comfort, fluid loss, etc. You can also fix broken parts. But, you cannot make performance adjustments during parc ferme.

This is where the drama heats up.

The FIA announced earlier in the week that it would increase its scrutineering efforts ahead of accusations that a team may be using a bib height adjustment device in the car's cockpit. In other words, an unnamed team may be employing a device that can easily control the height of the bib to keep the car’s ride height in the optimal zone even under parc ferme conditions.

After the rumor mill kicked into high gear and the FIA announced their increased efforts to scrutinize cars for such devices, Red Bull raised their hand and admitted that they have such a device that lives in the cockpit under the driver’s heel.

Red Bull’s Response

Red Bull stepped up in a very public way to address this controversy. They maintain that the bib adjustment device is not easily accessible by drivers or engineers and has not been used under parc ferme conditions. They proved as much during a publicly recorded video that showed how the team adjusts the height of the bib in real-time.

The team had to remove panels and the nose cone from inside the cockpit before making the inflammatory adjustments. A process that convinced more than one witness that the act would be too obvious to get away with under parc ferme conditions.

Will the FIA take action?

No. In short, the FIA doesn’t have any proof that this bib height adjustment device was used when it shouldn’t have been. Yes, the device exists, but there needs to be evidence of a regulation breach to penalize a team.

The only thing the FIA has done to protect against illegal usage is to place a seal on the access to this device in the cockpit of the RB20 cars.

Thoughts

Honestly, the public demo of the height adjustment and the fact that this device has been in open-source technical documentation all season have us thinking that Red Bull is on the up and up regarding this matter.

McLaren CEO Zak Brown thinks differently, though. He didn’t mince words when responding to a question about his thoughts on the matter. "Also, what doesn't quite stack up is the comment that you can't modify it. Well, then why does the FIA feel they need to put a seal on it? If it's not accessible post or during parc ferme, then why put a seal on it?

He also added that, "They chose their words very carefully, saying 'when the car is fully assembled', but you're allowed to not have the car fully assembled in parc ferme when you're working on driver comfort.

Although one could argue Brown’s point that things don’t quite add up here, Red Bull seems to have put the drama behind them with the plan to have the FIA seal the device. Rest assured, however, the FIA will be stepping up their testing and regulatory compliance assessments for the remainder of the season.

🚀Headline Sprint

McLaren makes adjustments to its ‘mini-DRS’: As you may remember, McLaren found itself in hot water with some eagle-eyed fans after the GP in Baku several weeks ago. Fans watching Piastri destroy the competition in Azerbaijan noticed that the McLaren rear wing slightly opened its upper plane on the long straights under high aero load. Accusations followed shortly after the race with fans and other teams complaining of McLaren receiving an unfair advantage from this ‘mini-DRS’ effect. Although the FIA didn’t penalize the Woking team, they did ask for a change to the rear wing for future races. McLaren agreed to tweak their rear wings for the remainder of the season starting with Austin. The FIA is now fitting all of the cars with more camera and reference dots to help understand flexible bodywork that may be employed up and down the grid.

Ferrari didn’t bring upgrades to Austin: Mclaren, Red Bull, and Mercedes are all fitting major upgrade packages to their cars for the USGP this weekend. Red Bull is looking to solve its balance issues, McLaren is trying to stay ahead of the curve with a long-awaited floor, and Mercedes is trying to reel in Ferrari. Notably, however, Ferrari is coasting into Austin without significant changes to their cars. This is due to a major upgrade the team brought before Monza. Basically, Monza, Baku, and Singapore are too unique to evaluate the effectiveness of major upgrades. So, Scuderia needed to wait for Austin to know whether or not their previous improvements were improvements.

🛞 No More Fastest Lap

2025 will be the year that F1 will no longer award a championship point for the fastest lap.

This development was announced on Thursday after a recent FIA meeting in Paris.

The fastest lap point has been awarded to the driver who drives the…well… fastest lap of the race, provided they finish in the top 10. Meaning a driver at the back of the field can’t simply snatch easy points for swapping on soft tyres at the end of the race. This point, in particular, brought the fastest lap point issue into clear focus at the Singapore GP. Daniel Ricciardo pitted late in the race for soft tyres only to steal the fastest lap from Lando Norris. This move helped keep Max Verstappen slightly ahead of the British Driver, who is a close second in the Driver’s championship.

Many fans and teams called into question the relationship between the sister teams at Red Bull. Some went as far as saying that Daniel was actively told to steal the fastest lap to help out the prime Red Bull team, an accusation that was dispelled by the Austrian teams. They said the fastest lap was a way to reward Ricciardo for his hard work over the years as he prepared for his F1 exit.

Whatever the reason for Ricciardo’s fastest lap incident, one should question whether the fastest lap award should still exist.

Well, wonder no more. The FIA is doing away with the award for the 2025 season.

💨 Hot Laps

Zhou Guanyu will receive a five-place grid penalty for fitting a new energy store that exceeds his allotted pool.

Zak Brown didn’t mince words in response to Helmut Marko’s ill-advised comments about Lando Norris’s mental preparation ahead of race weekends.

Read about the upgrades brought by Red Bull, McLaren, and Mercedes here.

Liam Lawson has received a 60-place grid penalty for a power unit swap ahead of the USGP. Don’t fret, he won’t start all the way in downtown Austin. He just moves to the back of the grid.

🛞Marbles

Random links from the authors not always car related

✅Take a Look: Nikon hosted its annual small world photo contest that showcases microscopic photography.

✅Play: Ever wonder what it’s like a run a G8 economy? This game lets you do just that.

✅Workout: This site lets you design a workout routine based on experience level, your goals, and available equipment.

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