In the round-up: Mercedes’ upgrades for the Miami Grand Prix could make a difference in tight grid, says James Allison
In brief
Allison eyes qualifying boost in Miami
Mercedes technical director James Allison says he is hopeful that the team’s upgrades for this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix could help improve their positions in the two qualifying sessions.
“We head from China, one of the most famously front-limited circuits, to Miami, a track that is more in the rear-limited end of the spectrum,” Allison explained. “Our challenge will be to make sure we don’t try and replay China at a Miami that is a very, very different beast and wants different things from the car than China will.
“We face the enjoyment of another sprint weekend with this second go of having two bites of the cherry and we definitely learnt during last weekend that if you’re going to be ambitious, be ambitious in the sprint race and then tune it down for the main race rather than the opposite way around.
“Hopefully we’ll land a car in a better place, that the upgrades that we’re going to bring to Miami serve us well in a grid that – in qualifying at least – is really close. Around the part of the battle we’re fighting, a few hundredths can make a difference sometimes and a couple of tenths would make all the difference in the world. So looking forward to seeing how that all plays out.”
Abel takes Barber Indy Nxt win
Jacob Abel claimed his first win in the Indy Nxt series after leading every lap of the race at Barber Motorsports Park from pole position.In his third year in the series, Abel was quickest in every single session and held off Nolan Siegel in the later laps before a Caution period triggered by Jamie Chadwick spinning out effectively ended the race.
After two rounds, Abel and Siegal are joint first at the top of the championship on 95 points with one win and one second place finish apiece.
Sharp leads McLaren junior Ugochukwu in GB3
Louis Sharp continues to lead the GB3 championship standings after the second round of the series at Silverstone.
The reigning British F4 champion finished fourth and fifth in the two races held at the circuit, won by Tymek Kucharczyk and Will Macintyre, respectively. McLaren junior Ugo Ugochukwu remains in second place in the standings, nine points behind Sharp’s 122.
Fairclough out front as British F4 begins
Deagen Fairclough has the early points lead in the British F4 championship after a rain-interrupted opening round at Donington Park saw him win the first race of the season.
Mika Abrahams won the second race of the weekend after Alex Berg was hit by a five second time penalty for exceeding track limits, which dropped him to third. The third and final race of the weekend was cancelled due to after earlier rain caused a schedulling delay.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Links
Motor racing links of interest:
'You may never have heard of the short, deep-voiced, short-sighted racer they called ‘the Kansas City Flash’, but right from the start I should mention that double world champion Jim Clark hero-worshipped Missourian Masten Gregory long before his own stella career took off.'
Former champion opens up on working with Adrian Newey amid Red Bull exit rumors (Newsweek)
Jacques Villeneuve: ''I didn't know at the time when I joined in '96. I realized afterwards. He was amazing because I guess he can visualize the car, he can see it, he can see the airflow. And he relates to it but he also relates to the driver. He knows it's not a computer driving. He knows it's not a robot. So even if on the data, the numbers say this is how quick it could be, maybe a driver cannot drive it. It doesn't feel natural.''
Jos drops out from leading position in Rally de Wallonie (Verstappen.com)
'Unfortunately, disaster struck in the fourth of nine remaining stages. With two flat tyres, the 52-year-old Dutch driver was forced to retire and had to give up his leading position. He was 39.6 seconds ahead of the rest at that moment.'
WRC Promoter had Netflix talks for F1-style docuseries (DirtFish)
'WRC Promoter revealed to DirtFish at Croatia Rally that it has in fact already discussed the possibility of producing such a series. Simon Larkin, WRC Promoter’s event director, said they’d gone ''very deep down a path'', but that no agreement has yet been reached, and that financial obstacles from both sides remain a hurdle –particularly as viewing figures for Drive to Survive are beginning to dip for the show’s sixth season.'
Behind the scenes at our Bahrain filming day (Williams via YouTube)
'See how we got the shots of our 2024 car in Bahrain, with Alex Albon, Logan Sargeant and James Vowles.'
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:
C² get a chance to help design our #MiamiGP livery 👀 pic.twitter.com/1hJTHgPSdF
— Scuderia Ferrari HP (@ScuderiaFerrari) April 28, 2024
Weekend without racing so here’s some memories from my 1/16th home race – 謝謝中國 🇨🇳 pic.twitter.com/PU4468JLhl
— Oscar Piastri (@OscarPiastri) April 28, 2024
A bizarre moment in today's IndyCar race at Barber Motorsport Park when a mannequin installed underneath a bridge as a trackside feature fell onto the track and surprisingly did not trigger a caution period despite being hit by a car.#IndyCar pic.twitter.com/P1R97e6meD
— RaceFans (@racefansdotnet) April 28, 2024
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
- Find more official F1 accounts to follow in the F1 Twitter Directory
Comment of the day
This weekend’s Caption Competition winner is Red Andy!:
“I’m not going to hit you, but I am going to Kick Sauber…”
Red Andy
Thanks to everyone who came up with caption ideas this week and a special mention to pH, notagrumpyfan, stjs16 and Fred Fedurch who all came up with particularly good captions.
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Alvino!
Adrian Vakilly
29th April 2024, 1:34
About our to the photographer who took that cover photo. Beautiful.
Nick T.
29th April 2024, 4:13
Does anyone care or listen anymore when Mercedes chiefs’ list xyz will solve their problems or boost their pace in the upcoming race? Seems they should no longer talk about it and let the car do the talking whether good or bad. It leaves them much less open to more criticism and ridicule.
Jere (@jerejj)
29th April 2024, 6:06
I don’t
Mayrton
29th April 2024, 7:03
No, I don’t and I also wonder why it is given constant attention vs other teams.
Moshambles (@moshambles)
29th April 2024, 10:33
Obviously because of their record, resources and the fact they have a 7 time world champion driving for them. It’s still of note, that they’re languishing compared to recent history. It won’t be forever
slowmo (@slowmo)
29th April 2024, 12:40
What makes you think it will not be forever? At what point do you think Williams realised their time at the very top was over after 1997? Same for McLaren, at what point do you think they admitted their competitive time as being the top team was over?
Before Mercedes can even begin to start competing at the top again they have to admit their problems a lot more substantial than just having gone the wrong direction. It’s become all too apparent that they have poor understanding of the current regulations compared to the last set of regulations and as such they’re never going to progress until they admit this and figure out where their failings are in the current car.
It’s looking more and more like Mercedes need a big overhaul to their technical department given the fact they’ve actually gone backwards over the last 2 years rather than progressing.
Nick T.
29th April 2024, 21:50
That’s the worst part. The constant attention it’s given when we know it’s an endemic problem.
notagrumpyfan
29th April 2024, 7:42
Typically in social media clicks and comments drive revenue.
It doesn’t matter what people think, as long as they ‘click and comment’; even if it’s just to say that they ‘don’t care’ ;)
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
29th April 2024, 12:10
It is getting pretty tiresome. I guess someone keeps asking them about it but I don’t know why they’re bothering to do so.
What Mercedes need to do is get the next few (say 5 minimum) races done and then have a look at where they are/have actually learned anything that has made a difference.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
29th April 2024, 13:29
Mercedes are always just about to employ the upgrade which will be the key to all of their problems/issues. But things hardly change really. I don’t think they will by much this season now.
MadMax (@madmax)
29th April 2024, 19:43
Its always only the same detractors, complaining and posting under each Merc and Ham article. Obviously they care a lot…
Nick T.
29th April 2024, 21:54
Go check the Mercedes articles. I haven’t posted a lot under them nor in the manner indicated.
Jere (@jerejj)
29th April 2024, 6:05
Maybe WRC shouldn’t get into a DTS-style docuseries in the end.
Perhaps this would be for the best.
I’m surprised Williams took this long to upload a video about the pre-testing filming day from a little over two months ago.
I like Piastri’s 1/16th reference, which I’d seen him make already pre-event, referring to his great-grandfather or something like that, iirc.
The mannequin dropping on the track edge was indeed bizarre & definitely something that should’ve led to an immediate caution period rather than no caution at all, so like one user below the tweet pointed out, but worded a bit differently by me, perhaps IndyCar’s race director has taken some notes from Niels Wittich about playing with safety by leaving things up to chance with stuff on the firing line, racing line, or beside it.
Retired (@jeff1s)
29th April 2024, 8:55
Last week F1 kept driving while 10 people was trying to move the stricken car of Bottas at a dangerous spot, yesterday a plastic mannequin fell near the racetrack and that put the life of no one in danger, that’s the difference.
MacLeod (@macleod)
29th April 2024, 7:52
Rendering of movies cost a lot of time longer if your computers are old….
Jere (@jerejj)
29th April 2024, 8:34
Good point
Alan Dove
29th April 2024, 8:28
Regarding WRC documentary story
Drive to Survive was lightning in a bottle, and its success is almost impossible to replicate. When race series start to talk about needing their own ‘DTS’ it’s usually a sign they don’t really understand the reason why DTS was successful in the first place. The combination of enormous prior latent interest, the fact the top competitors weren’t in Season 1 forcing a particular direction style, as well as nailing perfect timing on Netflix to reach the additional ‘new’ audience produced a potent marketing weapon. F1 was already enormously popular prior to DTS. It didn’t fix F1’s marketing problem. it didn’t take a niché motorsport into the mainstream, it just helped accelerate it to a new level of dominance.
However the market is now saturated and somewhat exhausted (DTS viewing figures reflect this to) and I don’t see the latent interest in behind-the-scenes WRC stuff.. Like BTCC, which is in a bit of a lull, it relies upon a strong car-culture within the general public to extend into that market. WRC used to mean something because it was about who could build the best cars (with selling them in mind), and BTCC was similar. Once you become overly reductive and try to see hem as just entertainment, you’re in tricky waters.
Without the backing of a strong car-culture, then wrc becomes something that you might see in passing on X or Instargram, and think , yeah that’s cool but it doesn’t seem to engage beyond that. Very difficult. WRC is now a very transient experience and that papers over a lot of the cracks. A few shots of cars going fast with the usual comment “these are the best drivers in the world” obviously anywhere near enough.
WRC almost needs a total revolution in how driving is marketed to young people and derive meaning from that, but that’s no longer as easy as it once was.
notagrumpyfan
29th April 2024, 8:42
Very good comment, Alan.
Thank you.
Adrian Hancox (@ahxshades)
29th April 2024, 12:32
Also on this day – 30 years ago Rubens Barrichello had a huge accident on the first day of the ill fated San Marino Grand Prix at Imola.