⏳⏳Still Waiting for Another Race...

Good morning. Selfishly, I have news…

I recently completed a test in the Praga R1 (pictured below) to prepare for my testing in Europe over the next couple of months. These test days are part of the pre-season preparation for the Supercar Challenge that I will be racing in next year. Going for the championship team!!

In F1 news, it’s been quiet. We have another two-ish weeks to wait for the USGP in Austin. All this has me thinking again about creating an F1 mini tour that takes place in the Americas. Why would F1 not want to host the GPs in the states, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil all in one stretch? Saves driver fatigue and reduces the carbon footprint of the series. Seems like a win-win to me.

I tend to ramble when F1 is quiet…

-Jake

🌎 Andretti Shake Up

It turns out that Michael Andretti may have been the problem all along. At the risk of sounding too dramatic, Michael Andretti has stepped down from his “daily operating activities” at Andretti Global, and this may have been less of a choice for the 62-year-old than we are led to believe. Furthermore, this may be an early move to re-enter a bid to join F1. Let’s break it down.

Andretti F1 Rejection:

You may remember that the FIA accepted Andretti’s bid to join F1 with non other than Cadillac. This acceptance was followed by F1 management rejecting the bid in January of this year, citing something along the lines of the Andretti name not providing commercial value to the sport, whatever that means.

This is when the rumor mill went into overload. Some speculated that America will never have a team in F1. Others claimed F1 was upholding a monopoly of the sport (which was later brought to the US House of Representatives). There were even claims that Andretti himself was the problem.

The latter seems supported by comments from Mario Andretti (Michael’s Father), who claims Greg Maffei (CEO of Liberty Media) would never let Michael into F1.

What’s more, F1's rejection statement seemed much more amenable to a Cadillac Racing Team than a Cadillac-Andretti program.

Andretti Steps Down

The latest development at Andretti Global is Michael stepping down from day-to-day operations. Claiming he wants to spend more time with Family, Michael will be more focused on an ambassadorial role at Andretti Global and will be handing over the reins to his business partner Dan Towriss.

You only need to know that Towriss invested in Andretti Global after joining as a driver sponsor and will spearhead the initiative to restore the Andretti name in IndyCar. This is good news for the organization. Towriss is no slouch. He seems to have orchestrated a new partnership with Cadillac in the IMSA endurance racing series. Andretti Global partnered with Wayne Taylor Racing in the endurance series, which opened the door for Cadillac to join. This is billed as a GM and Wayne Taylor Racing Collab, but we suspect that Towriss was squarely behind the deal.

All this is to suggest that Cadillac is open to working with Towriss, not Andretti.

Speculation

To further risk sounding dramatic or overly speculative, it is too much of a coincidence that Michael is stepping down right when things are heating up for the Andretti company. It isn’t too far fetched to suggest that stepping down was the only way to convince Cadillac to join forces with the organization.

Cadillac may be setting up a bid to enter F1 without the Andretti name but with their support. F1 clarified that they would welcome Cadillac as a works team with open arms. The major American brand would bring fresh power unit expertise and the racing experience. So, Cadillac could team up with Andretti Global as a sort of silent partner to take advantage of the brain power of Dan Towriss and company while satisfying F1’s apparent disdain for Michael.

🚀Headline Sprint

😏Wolff is done flirting with Verstappen: Toto Wolff is stepping back from the negotiation table regarding Max Verstappen. With the driver lineup secured at Mercedes, Wolff believes that he needs to put the team in support mode. There comes a time when you need to buckle up and support the team in its current form. Failing that, drivers will go into every season wondering if they are still wanted. If Max is always looming over your head as a driver, would you be performing your best? Probably not. The real question is would Wolff pursue the Dutchman if it was a more realistic option? We think yes.

🤩Colapinto “wows” Williams: Franco Colapinto was chosen to fill the empty seat at Williams over ‘loan’ options of Mick Schumacher and Kimi Antonelli. This move seemed to be the right one for the team. The Argentinian seems to be at home in the F1 car, scoring points on his second outing ever in the sport. Vowles sang his praises in a podcast interview, saying that he matched the simulator pace with Albon before taking the seat. The big concern for Vowles and Colapinto is getting the Argentine driver a seat in F1 for 2025. If you don’t stay in the orbit of the sport, you can drop out of favor very quickly so every effort is being made to keep Franco in the sport. There is an open seat at Sauber and VCARB. Both of these may be offered to the rookie if he continues to perform.

🏃What explains Hulkenberg’s rise to success at Haas? Hulkenberg is a different driver compared to 2023 according to Haas team boss Ayao Komatsu. This is due to the German driver’s openness to feedback from the team. You may remember Hulkenberg was always a great qualifier but would fall short of the points throughout the 23’ season. A problem that seems to be solved, considering Hulkenberg has scored 54.2% of the team’s 31 points so far, which puts them in contention for P6 in the constructor’s championship. Aside from the new car design, Komatsu claims Hulkenberg’s performance this year comes down to a decision that was made in pre-season testing. The team convinced Nico to focus on tire management and ran several long stings in Winter testing to hone much-needed skills. It isn’t easy to tell a driver to go slower to manage tyres, but it seems to be paying off for the American team.

🛞 Alpine/Renault Run Out of Gas

“All the staff representatives, representing the voice of the employees and a majority of the stakeholders, regret and deplore the decision to stop using F1 engines in 2026,”

This was the statement by the representatives of the staff at Viry Chatillon in response to Alpine’s decision to halt Power Unit efforts in Formula 1.

The fate of the French F1 engine program has been in the balance for several months but we finally have an answer. The factory at Viry Chatillon will be transformed into a state-of-the-art engineering hub for the Renault group which will be led by the former Alpine team boss Bruno Famin.

This seems to be purely a business decision. Alpine sits at P9 in the championship and has been on a downward slide for several seasons. This will have surely caught the eye of shareholders and sponsors. Renault CEO, Luca de Meo punctuates this situation by saying, “The team has become invisible in recent years. Two more years like this and the whole project was out of control.”

The historic team and French auto manufacturer has been looking to reduce it’s financial exposure to the declining performance in F1 and ultimately decided to focus on the team instead of the power unit manufacturing. De Meo came to the conclusion that, “most fans end up coming for the race team, not the engine.” A point that rings true to most race fans. There are those F1 diehard fans that like to peek under the hood and know every in and out of the cars, but ultimately the marketing appeal of an F1 project is the livery and the performance no matter what logo is on the engine.

Although the representatives of the employees at Viry are appealing to the French Government for support, it is likely that Alpine will hitch their wagon to another auto manufacturer for their 2026 power unit. The most likely candidate seems to be Mercedes AMG at this point.

🏎 Why is DRS a thing and will it go away?

There’s been a lot of talk about aerodyanmics, upgrade packages, floor design, and ‘mini DRS’ lately. It can all be a bit overwhelming to new and casual fans. We appreciate this and want to bring some simple answers to overly complex questions over the next few newsletters. So, this section is dedicated to that.

We are going to focus on DRS this time for two reasons. First, it appears in every race, and second, it’s been mentioned in the latest design scandal at McLaren.

Before we get to what DRS is, it’s important to appreciate how exciting it is that we are even talking about upgrades this much. Frankly, the last several years have been all talk about Red Bull’s dominance and how it made F1 a snooze fest, which it did. However, now that Red Bull seems to be unraveling and/or other teams have caught up in car development, it seems that car upgrades and car design will make or brake the championship.

Now to DRS

DRS stands for Drag Reduction System, and in plain English, it is a system designed to make the cars go faster at certain points on the track. When a driver is allowed to use DRS, they push a button that opens the top flap on the rear wing. This reduces drag and increases top speed.

Think of DRS like your hand sticking out of a car window at high speeds. If you face your palm toward the front of the car, the wind will push your hand backward. This is drag. If you place your palm flat facing the pavement, you can move your hand forward with little resistance. This is DRS, but for hands.

Why does it exist?

DRS was introduced in 2011 because the egg heads at the various F1 teams started to get better at designing an aerodynamically efficient machine. This means they could use airflow to create downforce and extract better lap times. However, creating downforce over the car created huge burbles of turbulent air behind the cars. This, in turn, made it near impossible to keep up with cars ahead, let alone pass them.

So DRS was introduced as a “temporary” experiment to keep racing exciting.

Criticisms

Some drivers love it and some hate it. Juan Pablo-Montoya famously compared DRS to “giving Picasso Photoshop.”

What changed in 2022

2022 was the year “ground effect” came back to F1. Basically, the FIA wanted to reduce the dirty air coming off of the cars with certain regulation tweaks. The major design overhaul was how the cars generated downforce. To prevent your eyes from glaznig over suffice it to say that the 2022 era of cars were required to generate their downforce through their floors. By creating a low pressure zone under the car, the F1 teams could stick to the track better without creating a ton of dirty air behind them.

This created issues of its own but worked to create closer racing.

So why does DRS exist still?

Some people find this a mystery. Without benchmark data to compare it to, we don’t know how the ground effect cars would race without DRS. The FIA would have to conduct racing tests to see if DRS is still necessary, but that seems unlikely with 2026 regulations coming soon.

It’s unlikely that DRS will go away anytime soon. It has too much commercial value to the sport. Watching cars zoom past rivals on long straights provides excitement for fans and that is what the sport is built on, fan engagement.

💨 Hot Laps

Verstappen thinks Monza was Red Bull's low point, and they will be on an upward trajectory from here on.

Alonso is cautious about his protege stepping into F1 too early but definitely wants to see him take a seat soon.

Schumacher doesn’t blame Horner for the major departure of talent from the Red Bull team. That may be due to a lack of advancement.

Szafnauer gives us a reason to like him even more

🛞Marbles

Random links from the authors not always car related

✅Jake’s Drive: Jake has been driving the Praga R1 in preparation for racing and can’t wait to share his experience.

✅Vintage: This website celebrates old car logos, so car nerds rejoice!

✅Nintendo: Japan now has a shiny new Nintendo museum for all the gamers out there.

🤯Brain Food

You may know which country has produced the highest number of F1 world championships but do you know which country comes in at second place?

📖Answer

Germany has produced the second highest number of F1 world championships with 12 titles coming from 3 drivers (Rosberg, Schumacher, and Vettel).

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