In the round-up: FIA president Mohamed Ben Sulayem says he had legal grounds to block the approval of the new Las Vegas Strip Circuit last year as it was not completed in time.
In brief
Blocking Vegas approval would have been “legal” – Ben Sulayem
Ben Sulayem discussed the certification of the new track in Las Vegas before allegations emerged claiming he attempted to interfere in the approval process.
“The president of the FIA is the one who signs the homologation for the new track, or for all the tracks,” he told GP Racing. “I supported it. I could have said no, [because it wasn’t ready in time for inspection].
“But as soon as my team said it was safe… because I’m a driver, I care about the wellbeing of the drivers and the people around them, our staff and the marshals. I did it. It was a big thing.
“If I had said no, it would have been disastrous [for F1]. But it would have been legal. But I’m careful because I love the sport. At the end of the day, we’re in the same boat. We may have different missions. But we’re in the same boat. We cannot let the sport sink.”
Mercedes target high-speed improvement in Melbourne
Mercedes were compromised by poor cornering performance at high speeds at the last race in Jeddah. Albert Park, scene of this weekend’s race, also features several high-speed corners, and Wolff said the team will focus on its key weakness.“We have looked competitive in low and medium-speed corners but high-speed has been a weakness so far,” he said. “We have been working hard to understand why our performance hasn’t reflected our expectations. Improving that is a major focus.
“We hope to make some initial progress for Melbourne, and that work will guide our development in the weeks ahead.”
Original Lotus F1 car up for auction
The sale will take place in Monaco where one of the team’s two drivers, Graham Hill, went on to win five times. Here he is with team mate Cliff Allison, wife Bette, team principal Colin Chapman and others. The car is expected to sell for up to £330,000.
Zhou documentary to debut next month
A documentary charting Zhou Guanyu’s rise to become China’s first Formula 1 racing driver will open in his home country on April 19th. “The First One” will arrive in cinames the same day practice begins for China’s first grand prix since 2019.
Aramco attacks global transition from fossil fuels
Formula 1 and Aston Martin sponsor Aramco is pushing hard against global efforts to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. CEO Amin Nasser attacked efforts to transition to cleaner energy sources saying the world should “abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas.”
F1 has set itself a target of reducing its carbon emissions to net zero by 2030.
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Links
Motor racing links of interest:
Aramco eye Aston Martin takeover, target Verstappen and Newey (Formu1a Uno)
'Red Bull’s heavyweights are in their sights. These include the triple world champion Max Verstappen and engineering genius Adrian Newey. The fact these two are seen as feasible targets shows how much has changed in recent months.'
Johnny Herbert: 'They're very close to pushing (Max Verstappen) out (of) the team, I've heard they are getting quite close with the deal with Mercedes.'
Rumours the company's Austrian headquarters has been visited by a representative from Red Bull Thailand, said to be backing Christian Horner, who was cleared following an internal investigation into alleged inappropriate behaviour, a decision which is now subject to an appeal.
Courtney calls for better AGP Supercars system (V8 Sleuth)
'I understand the way that the whole dynamic of the Grand Prix is changing with F2 and F3 and all that sort of stuff, but it is a championship round for us and our races are going to be short and time certain.'
Behind the scenes with Max: 'Success in sport does not define my whole life' (Verstappen)
'For me, nothing really changed to be honest. I always demand the best from myself to make the most out of every race weekend as I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror and say I gave it all. I’m not necessarily afraid of failure and in general I can let go of things.'
Test patterns: McLaren flexes at Barber (IndyCar)
'It appears Malukas will have quite the hot rod to drive after his return. Ilott was second in the afternoon session and overall and fourth in the morning, just two-tenths of a second behind morning leader Scott Dixon of Chip Ganassi Racing.'
'I got hit from behind!' Sao Paulo EPrix Team Radio (Formula E via YouTube)
'In 2009, after his cousin Alexander Mosley, son of (former FIA president) Max Mosley, was found dead aged 39 from a heroin overdose, Ivo spoke of the difficulty of living with the family name. 'You are born with a kind of inheritance that makes people react to your name first before they react to you as a person,' he said.'
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Social media
Notable posts from X (formerly Twitter), TikTok and more:
Special helmet for Daniel Ricciardo this weekend which will be auctioned to raise money for Save the Children.
Video: @danielricciardo #F1 #AustralianGP pic.twitter.com/A29wekj0H6
— RaceFans (@racefansdotnet) March 19, 2024
Great to see @LewisHamilton appear in this terrific series of children's books which also include @AyrtonSenna, Ada Lovelace, Mahatma Gandhi, Alan Turing, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jnr, David Attenborough and dozens more names young minds should know.#F1 pic.twitter.com/LW5CLs8NFB
— Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine) March 19, 2024
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- Find more official F1 accounts to follow in the F1 Twitter Directory
Comment of the day
Has IndyCar got its timing wrong with this weekend’s non-championship event?
If they were going to do something like this it should have been an end of season event rather than something done after the first race of the season. Would even have made more sense been a pre-season event. Just doesn’t really make any sense been in the spot it is.
Special one off events at the end of the season that handed out big cash prizes or something used to be reasonably common and this would have made more sense in that spot rather than in this weird spot after the first round of the championship.
PeterG
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Girts, West Pearson, Adub Smallblock and Harsh Barsaiyan!
On this day in motorsport
- 30 years ago today Michael Andretti made a triumphant return to IndyCar after his tough season in Formula 1, giving Ganassi and Reynard their first victories in the season-opener at Surfers Paradise in Australia
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Nathan McGregor (@macca0026)
20th March 2024, 0:51
Supercars should go to Albert Park a week after the GP and make it there own event with a proper 500km race.
Tristan
20th March 2024, 1:06
Eh, couldn’t care less, might as well drop them from the weekend. Australian American-muscle “Supercars” are a joke, fallen so far from their ATCC win on Sunday, sell on Monday roots. Might as well bring NASCAR over, at least there’d be able to build some interest from an intercontinental rivalry and Americans could come to Bathurst and Aussies could go do Daytona or whatever. Either that or just do proper GT2/3.
Jere (@jerejj)
20th March 2024, 6:15
@macca0026 Impossible because the dismantling process would get delayed, which is the same for all street or full temporary circuits, but a week before would be perfectly doable.
Euro Brun (@eurobrun)
20th March 2024, 8:12
Why impossible? Money talks. What’s a week?
Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
20th March 2024, 22:50
@eurobrun In this case, a week is the ability to get clearance to run the event at all.
Brell-9W
20th March 2024, 1:06
Blocking Las Vegas track approval would have been legal – good for the sport too! ;-)
MacLeod (@macleod)
20th March 2024, 8:02
So he could block it but the money said yes!
Jay
20th March 2024, 2:04
Indycar races that are after their season concludes won’t succeed because American football dominates from September-February. It’s the reason the Indycar schedule concludes when it does, September 15th. I doubt it will succeed anyway.
Tristan
20th March 2024, 2:40
Given Aramco are running the renewable fuel development for F1, if they put fund a team you’d think they’d be able to provide it some insight into how to make the most of it. I don’t think there’s any rule stopping that kind of external knowledge being used. Could be some smart money there.
Jere (@jerejj)
20th March 2024, 6:13
Yeah right.
Hopefully, the documentary about Zhou will become available with English subtitles at some point, as that documentary seems interesting.
So, an actual Aramco F1 team? I’m skeptical.
I wonder where Johnny Herbert has heard a Mercedes deal would be close? I’m simply highly doubtful he’d leave Red Bull Racing for any other team at their current performance level, regardless of certain team members.
Red Andy (@red-andy)
20th March 2024, 6:45
Herbert also seems to assume that in a straight choice between Verstappen and Horner, you’d choose Verstappen, which I think is doubtful. As much as I credit Verstappen’s driving for Red Bull’s current run of dominance (much more than some others do), Horner is responsible for creating the environment where it can happen, and has every chance of doing so again even if the star driver does leave.
anon
20th March 2024, 7:44
@red-andy I suspect that the possibility of Max moving to Mercedes is being talked up for the purpose of putting pressure on Red Bull by creating the impression that they must choose between him or Horner.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
20th March 2024, 14:58
I agree, team principal is more important than driver if that means making a dominant car, since in recent times the equation is like 85% car and 15% driver.
BasCB (@bascb)
20th March 2024, 7:14
I’d think it could easily still be the Aramco AM team – the Aston Martin brand and car company is probably worth less than the F1 entry at the moment @jerejj!
If you’d have to choose between getting Verstappen and Newey OR Horner, I’d pick the deal with Newey and Verstappen, at least as much because of Newey as Verstappen, since Newey can get the design team a great focus that would probably carry through for years (afterall, it’ll take a few years to build up, and then one or two to reap rewards, but would Verstappen stay for 5-6 years?).
Horner has certainly been as much a part of building the team as Marko, Mateschitz himself and indeed Newey. But he seems to have let the success get to his head which would get in the way of the excellent team building and management he did to get this team together and keep it going after the early success with Vettel to come back for this new spell of domination
Red Andy (@red-andy)
20th March 2024, 6:40
Rather than arbitrarily blocking the homologation of the Las Vegas circuit, MBS and his team could reform the homologation rules into a more sensible form; for example, ending the power to homologate a track mere hours before free practice begins, or requiring a circuit to host at least one non-F1 event before it receives Grade 1 status.
BasCB (@bascb)
20th March 2024, 7:16
Yeah, I found this a really strange take.
Surely, IF there were safety issues, not only might he “legally” stop it, the FIA should have processes in place that MAKE SURE such a race would not go ahead. But that certainly should not be at the discretion of the FIA president to decide but should be a thorough approach that is clear and built to make sure there are time reserves and processes in place to minimize the risks from the get go.
anon
20th March 2024, 8:16
@bascb I agree that Sulayem’s comments do not paint him in a particularly good light, particularly given that, if you look more closely at the FIA’s own regulations for the circuit licencing and homologation process, there is nothing in the regulations that states that the President of the FIA must sign the circuit licence form.
If you look at those regulations, they state that the process of inspecting and licencing a circuit has been delegated to the Circuits Commission. It is that body which is responsible for the appointment of an inspector to ensure that the circuit meets the FIA’s requirements and, from the way that document is phrased, it is the inspector who signs the licence for the circuit on behalf of the FIA.
If there were then to be a dispute, it would then go up to the head of the Circuits Commission, which appears to be Jorge Abed, for resolution. There’s nothing in the FIA’s own regulations that indicates Sulayem should have any direct involvement – if anything, by indicating he was intervening in the processes of the Circuits Commission, he’s actually providing more support for the claims of improper behaviour.
Coventry Climax
20th March 2024, 11:59
I have no idea how all this is organised within the FiA, and I’m trying to be neutral where the person of MBS is concerned.
So you say it’s in the regulations that the process of inspecting and licencing a circuit has been delegated to the Circuits Commission, who appoint an inspector to do the actual checking and sign off the paperwork.
Apart from it being rather silly to have a group of persons being appointed to appoint a single person to do all the work, you say that if there’s a dispute, they escalate to the head of Circuits Commissions – Jorge Abed, never heard of before.
How is further escalation handled? Could it be that that is how it ended up at MBS’desk, instead of it being his own decision to interfere?
Either way, it would appear (yes, that’s speculation) there was a degree of ‘mess’ around the homologation even before MBS stepped in. The drain cover debacle most certainly is related, to what extent we’ll never know.
I’m getting the impression that the official circuit approval (=homologation) should never have actually happened, because deadlines were crossed.
Who was the single stake holder in the case of Vegas again? Who would they put pressure on, when 100% of that stake is, well, at stake?
With these levels of money going round, you can almost be certain that shady things happen, and I don’t expect us to ever get to see the full picture. Finding a scapegoat usually seems to work to pacify the mob though. And/or just create yet another, deflecting, scandal.
Plenty of mess to choose from, these days.
Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
20th March 2024, 22:54
It gets better. Nothing in the regulations say the FIA president can fill that form. It has to be the inspection committee. By making that statement, Ben Sulayem just contradicted his own Ethics Committee. Staying silent would have been much more advisable.
What the FIA president can do, and by regulation should have done, is reinforced the requirement that after a failed inspection, scheduling a re-test be done through the procedure in the regulations. This did not happen and it needed to do so.
someone or something
20th March 2024, 9:47
That’s precisely what happens when the homologation falls through. No homologation, no race.
BasCB (@bascb)
20th March 2024, 10:39
Yeah, but Ben Suleyman suggests the question of WHETHER the homologation gets signed off ends up on his desk in case it falling through is on the table, which is rather strange.
someone or something
20th March 2024, 13:45
Doesn’t sound too bewildering to me, rather reminiscent of the way it’s handled in parliamentary republics with a largely ceremonial role for the president. Meaning that the president’s powers are limited, but most important decisions ultimately have to be signed off by him/her. In practice, the president virtually always agrees with the involved institution and puts his/her signature under their decision, putting it into effect. In rare cases, though, the president can refuse to sign when they suspect that the decision is unconstitutional, e.g. because the involved institutions were guided by the same interest.
In the present case, this consideration sounds plausible. The FIA and all its institutions may be nominally independent from Liberty Media and the Formula One Group, but there has been constant pressure on the FIA to conform to Liberty Media’s wishes.
In this context, it sounds to me like Ben Sulayem did his job by reminding the decision-makers that it is within his rights to refuse to sign the homologation if he is convinced that the procedure wasn’t carried out properly, and that safety may be compromised as a result.
Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
20th March 2024, 22:57
someone or something, the FIA is not a parliamentary republic (it’s a collection of voluntary associations organised by elected committees) and the president’s role is not ceremonial, but administrative. Decisions like whether a track is approved aren’t supposed to cross the president’s desk at all because that duty is delegated. Even at F1 level.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
20th March 2024, 20:01
@red-andy Something very much like this was approved by the World Motor Sport Council at the end of last month:
FIA plans special rules for street circuits to prevent inspection delays
SteveP
20th March 2024, 10:12
Wouldn’t the sensible thing for Aramco be to heavily fund development of a process to use sunlight in bucketloads to generate a renewable fuel (like hydrogen from water) and actively encourage the phasing out of oil for energy?
Calling the phasing out (before it totally runs out) of the resource a “fantasy” shows a lack of vision for the future of his company.
The real fantasy is any expectation that oil will continue to be available ad infinitum.
Coventry Climax
20th March 2024, 12:18
I get your point and agree with you.
However, it might prove to not be a fantasy at all, that oill will continue to be available ad infinitum.
Looking at the graphs of -say- Our World in Data, concerning the whereabouts of global energy used, the first thing that strikes me is how miniscule the part for non-fossile actually is, meaning it’s not realistic to expect the world to actually transistion within the next couple of years. Whether that’s a necessity is another matter.
Global greenhouse gas production is still rising anually.
My guess is there’s still oil underground by the time this planet is more or less extinct.
I don’t have any kids and I’m likely gone within the next 20 years or so. It amazes me that I frequently seem to care more than people that do have kids and a longer expected future.
someone or something
20th March 2024, 13:54
No offense, but I sense a major fallacy here:
The fact that the share of renewables is minuscule on a global level, and that petrol consumption is still rising, does not mean that you can deduce that the Earth’s reserves must still be virtually bottomless. In fact, the opposite is probably true. The resources are finite, and the rate at which they are being depleted, while renewable sources of energy are stagnating, only means that catastrophic consequences are becoming more likely with every passing year in which this trend isn’t reversed.
Coventry Climax
20th March 2024, 18:32
And I said exactly nothing to that effect – which you call ‘major fallacy’.
What I am saying is, that continuing to use fossil on the scale we’re currently doing, and transitioning at the speed we’re currently doing, PROBABLY makes our planet uninhabitable sooner than that the last drop of oil is pumped up and burnt. And that, is quite similar to what you’re saying.
Read me again?
Coventry Climax
20th March 2024, 12:40
From the official F1 site:
Jump up and down or sideways, this is just corporate speak saying Aramco bought advertisement space on a platform they think is efficient, which F1 obviously readily underlines.
Rather naïve of F1 to believe this company, with their core business selling oil, is actually going to help them reduce using fossil fuels.
You’d sooner see a tiger go vegetarian.
Far more realistic is to expect having such partners delay whenever and wherever they can when affecting their business model is concerned.
Combine that with the massive amount of money Saudi’s spend on sportswashing (yet another form of advertising), and Aramco eyeing an Aston Martin takeover – if any of it is true- makes perfect sense.
Don’t expect F1 to get any greener soon though, unless it’s for the color of their cars.
isthatglock21
20th March 2024, 19:57
Lol it’s clear as day Liberty want MBS out of the FIA. The bloke is fending off new accusations week after week. I must say they need to do better cause both the Alonson & las vegas track ones are almost as weak as him saying women weren’t built for F1 in 2002…I could find you high profile people much worse in 2015 lol. As for Aramco comments, he’s not wrong. The same targets we’ve set for Electric Vehciels are equally silly for 2030 etc given all the EV issues. We’re generally being naive & getting on a moral high horse with arbitrary targets for net zero.