I think if they introduce a rotating calendar Imola would be an ideal track to have in the rotation. The racing usually isn’t great, but it’s not the worst, and it would still keep an iconic circuit in F1. Seems like a good compromise.

Plus Senna being absolutely dominant year after year at Monaco.

Absolutely! I really hope they figure out a design that allows them drive in extreme wet contlditions.

The best potential sponsorship location since the LED hubcaps on the 2022 reg concept car.

I agree that Lance’s time on the grid should come to an end, but what’s wrong with the team aside from him?

They’ve done a great job at moving a midfield/backmarker team into being competitive for podiums. I’d much rather keep AM and add a new team.

I assume he would go to another F1 team?

I remember in his book he mentioned wanting to compete in the America’s Cup, but I’ve also seen rumors recently that he is strongly opposed to being put on the Red Bull hyper car project and wants to stay in F1.

In the 2024 Sprint races, Free Practice 1 is held as normal on Friday, but then the Sprint Shootout qualifying session takes place.

Parc ferme then kicks in for the Sprint which takes place on Saturday morning, before parc ferme is then reopened ahead of qualifying on Saturday afternoon with the main race on Sunday as normal.

Sounds interesting. I’m glad they’re experimenting with the format. I wonder if this will result in more creative/unique setups now that the teams don’t have to make a single compromised setup for the sprint and GP.

That would be really cool. I’m not very familiar with MotoGP, but they have different curb/runoff/etc. requirements, right? Are there a lot of F1 races that meet requirement for both series? I know they already share some tracks on different weekends.

Honestly I expect the overall laptime to be about the same as current after a couple seasons. I’m just guessing too though.

They’ll probably gain some speed in low/medium speed corners, and lose speed in high speed sections. Although additional active-aero will help some.

A lot of people don’t realize a major objective of technical regulations is to intentionally slow the cars down and keep them below a particular speed.

Sainz is either going to Mercedes or Redbull. And my money is on Redbull.

Hate to say it, but hopefully they replace Ricciardo with Lawson at RB.

Well duh, of course he wouldn’t jump out if he did think someone was coming. The issue is that he chose to ignore the team’s signal.

That’s definitely worthy of a penalty point.

I couldn’t agree more. People who don’t like fundamental differences in car performance would enjoy spec series much more than F1. F1 not being a spec series and still having this close of racing is pretty great.

What do you mean F1 now is like getting edged for an hour and a half? What specific era would you prefer going back to? Aside from RB the teams a much closer than recent history.

Battles don’t necessarily have to be overtakes. Although there were great overtakes (or at least attempts) with Bearman, Albon, and Piastri. Piastri’s long stint and the Kmag- Hulk strategy were also exciting.

And of course there is the overall closeness of the teams. Track to track there’s no clear pecking order (excluding RB), even if within a particular weekend teams aren’t necessarily close.

If you can’t appreciate the amazing battles down the rest of the grid, then F1 simply isn’t the sport for you.

That’s definitely a finger.

Agreed. However, I’m skeptical the rumors about RBPT being behind or Mercedes being ahead are true. I haven’t seen anything besides speculation that’s the case, and if Mercedes was showing strong 2026 engine development I think Lewis would have been more inclined to stay with the team.

This rumor doesn’t even make sense. Max is going to leave a clearly dominant team to go to the team Lewis jumped ship from because they’re not competitive? Ridiculous.

That’s interesting. So this year’s car was designed under that structure? Hopefully the strategy works out for Alpine.

Absolutely no chance Max leaves Red Bull over the Horner drama while the car is this dominant. Clearly no other team is even close, and that probably won’t change until new the new regs.