In the round-up: Williams team principal James Vowles does not expect the team will challenge Alpine or Aston Martin in 2024
In brief
Fighting Alpine 2024 ‘not realistic’ for Williams
Williams will be stronger in 2024, but will not be able to compete with the likes of Alpine or Aston Martin, believes team principal James Vowles.
“That’s not realistic,” Vowles told AMuS. “I know the true gap between the two teams and I know our speed of development.
“What we want to change is still too far away to allow us to take this step next year. I am confident that we will be better off next year. But I won’t do anything that jeopardizes our long-term goal.”
Ferrari’s Taponen and Neal take FRMEC wins
Ferrari academy driver Tuukka Taponnen won the first of three races in the Formula Regional Middle East Championship at the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi yesterday, with Theophile Nael taking victory in the second.Taponen led home Martinius Stenshorne in the opening race of the weekend, while Nael took his first victory at Formula Regional level in race two, ahead of Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak and Mari Boya. Mumbai Falcon team mates, Ferrari’s James Wharton and McLaren junior Ugo Ugochukwu, collided while battling for top five positions in race two, putting both out of the race.
Stenshorne leads the championship by one point ahead of Taponen with a third race of the weekend taking place today.
FROC opens with victory for Bilinski
Roman Bilinski kicked off the Formula Regional Oceania Championship in New Zealand with victory ahead of F3 racer Christian Mansell.
Bilinski led every lap of the race after passing pole-winner Mansell at the start to win by six seconds. Michael Shin completed the podium in third.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Links
Motor racing links of interest:
Gene Haas embarrassment a sign of commitment to F1 team (Speedcafe)
Komatsu: ''At the moment, Gene wants to get off the back of the grid. You saw how unhappy Gene was. Who is going to be happy competing in last place? It is embarrassing. It really is embarrassing. So I think it's positive Gene is unhappy with where we are. If people in the team think, ‘Okay, we are last, we're not sure where we're going and Gene doesn't say anything, then is he happy just making up the numbers and being P10?' That's clearly not the case.''
''It’s become trickier. You have to get into more detail so we have to be more careful in how we invest the money. I don’t think this year has been as successful as the A522. That’s why for the following year’s car we have had to unlock some real estate again, which is why the car is completely new from front to back. You’ll see that up and down the grid because the car has to last for a couple of years while we look for the future.''
Bruckheimer named Rolex 24 Grand Marshal (Sportscar365)
'Cameras will be rolling as famed film and television producer Jerry Bruckheimer will deliver the most famous words in motorsports to kick off the 62nd running of the Rolex 24 at Daytona, as Daytona International Speedway today announced the grand marshal for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season opener.'
Jenson Button and Jordan Taylor in IMSA GTP at Daytona (IMSA via YouTube)
'Formula 1 world champion Jenson Button and sports car champion Jordan Taylor tell us about their reunion and reaction to racing in IMSA's top class at Daytona International Speedway for the Rolex 24 At Daytona with Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti in the hybrid GTP class with their No. 40 Acura ARX-06.'
F4 UAE round 4: Yas Marina (F4 UAE via YouTube)
2024 iRacing 24 Hours of Daytona | Hours 12-18 (iRacing via YouTube)
Live coverage of the iRacing Daytona 24 Hours top level race.
We always endeavour to credit original sources. If you have a tip for a link relating to single-seater motorsport to feature in the next RaceFans round-up please send it to us via the contact form.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Social media
Notable posts from X (formerly Twitter), TikTok and more:
Life's too boring to blend in 🩷 pic.twitter.com/vFnkb7srtt
— BWT Alpine F1 Team (@AlpineF1Team) January 20, 2024
Locked in 🔐 pic.twitter.com/ig8nfbcEIt
— Williams Racing (@WilliamsRacing) January 20, 2024
Bringing it home 🐐@CSainz_oficial
–@vistajet pic.twitter.com/7iFhGkvW80
— Carlos Sainz (@Carlossainz55) January 20, 2024
Looking good @unitedautosport 👌 The #22 topped the timesheets in the first practice at Daytona yesterday, now the hard work continues through the ROAR weekend. Good luck to @PatricioOWard @FROsenqvist and the whole crew 👊 #Roar24 pic.twitter.com/n0rCRUA3XM
— Zak Brown (@ZBrownCEO) January 20, 2024
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
- Find more official F1 accounts to follow in the F1 Twitter Directory
Comment of the day
The upcoming season is a major one for Aston Martin’s ambitions to become a world championship contending team, says SjaakFoo…
This is the year where we see if Aston Martin will be a player from 2026 onwards with Honda or not. With McLaren stepping up and Mercedes and hopefully Ferrari finally getting their ducks in a row, it’s up to Aston to prove they can hang with the big boys. Last year was a decent start, but this year there can be no more excuses, the facilities are there. The personnel is there. Now’s the time to prove your worth.
SjaakFoo
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Oukilf1, Bruno and Ehsansatti!
Tristan
21st January 2024, 2:18
If Alpine is going to tease a render like that, they could at least turn up the subdivisions…
Haas still sounds like a hot mess, there’s no solid reasoning here. Gene isn’t engaged enough, and doesn’t understand what it takes to achieve their objective of not finishing last… And that was reason to get rid of Steiner?
Wouldn’t it be more motivating for the team to be told “you’ve worked so hard and we believe in the foundation, so we’re going to invest, bring new people in, develop new facilities so you can spend time implementing improvements you’ve identified to improve our competitiveness.”
Exactly that is happening at other teams and leading to results. If Gene can’t see that, he’s blind, or just doesn’t want to.
PacificPR (@streydt)
21st January 2024, 8:24
Haha indeed – makes you wonder what model they have used for the CFD simulations..
SteveP
21st January 2024, 9:33
People need to manage their managers subtly.
I suspect that Gunter did what he does, and told the truth you just expressed, the way that Gunter always does. Not subtle.
Jere (@jerejj)
21st January 2024, 6:14
How could he know the ‘true’ gap between Aston Martin & Alpine as a third-party individual to both teams unless I’ve misinterpreted something?
hunocsi (@hunocsi)
21st January 2024, 11:08
@jerejj I think he said Williams’ gap to those two teams, not betweens the two teams themselves – that’s what I’m getting with my limited German knowledge reading the original article, I think the translate program got it wrong.
MichaelN
21st January 2024, 11:58
Agreed, “den wahren Abstand zu den beiden Teams” is better translated as “the true gap to those two teams”.
Chris Horton
21st January 2024, 8:12
Komatsu said ‘Gene’ an awful lot in that statement.
RH
21st January 2024, 11:19
Let’s see how good this Williams car is. Vowles walked into quite a good car full credit to Capito and Demaison unlike Binotto and didn’t even need to develop it for it to still score points late in the year.