In the round-up: The FIA has defended its proposed rules for the 2026 Formula 1 seasons over claims they will be too complicated for fans to understand.
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In brief
New F1 rules not too complicated – FIA
After Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack expressed concerns the planned 2026 rules would cause confusion among fans, the FIA’s single seater director Nikolas Tombazis defended the planned changes, including new active aerodynamics modes and an override facility to aid passing.
“In reality the X-mode and the Z-mode are really parts of the normal running of the car,” said Tombazis.
“The elements to assist getting close to the front car, the equivalent of the current DRS, will be handled by the electrical power. I think it’s a smidgen more complicated than what we have now.
“I don’t think it is rocket science, and clearly we will need to explain it adequately to everybody so people understand what they’re saying. But I don’t think it is really that complicated.”
Buemi unimpressed by “artificial” competition
Sebastien Buemi described the competition at this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours as “artificial”. Speaking while the race was going on the Toyota driver admitted he had doubts over how many manufacturers were in contention for victory.“Sometimes I have the feeling it’s a bit artificial,” said Buemi, “but I guess people like that.”
The series’ Balance of Performance system is intended to bring the field closer together on performance. Several Safety Car periods also reduced the separation of cars across the field, and contributed to the top nine finishers completing the same number of laps.
“For us drivers, having those slow zones and Safety Cars putting us back all the time, it’s a bit difficult, but that’s the way the race is now and we need to to make the most out of it,” Buemi added.
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Links
Motor racing links of interest:
The joys, challenges, and priorities of F1 fatherhood: ‘A fantastic life’ (The New York Times)
Magnussen: 'It’s something that I feel divided about. Laura doesn’t understand that millions of people are watching this and she didn’t consent to that. Also I feel like it’s a lot of people. Laura has been recognised, and I feel like she didn’t ask for that. I don’t feel too good about it.'
F3 racer Kacper Sztuka leaves Red Bull Junior Team (Formula Scout)
'Kacper Sztuka has announced that he is no longer a Red Bull junior, less than seven months after he picked up the support of the Formula 1 team.'
'Almost half of the season has gone by, and it has seen eight different drivers win the first eight races. That’s something that’s never happened before. It shows just how competitive and challenging this year is, and how crucial the next three rounds will be for all our title hopefuls.'
Melbourne’s biggest arts festival closes this weekend. Its future is in doubt (The Age)
'The Victorian government shells out significantly more for the Formula 1 Grand Prix, its financial support in 2023 was worth $100m. Fox points out that more people have attended Rising over the past two weeks than the Grand Prix and AFL Grand Final combined.'
Italian F4 round 8: Vallelunga (Italian F4 via YouTube)
Italian F4 round 9: Vallelunga (Italian F4 via YouTube)
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Social media
Notable posts from X (formerly Twitter), TikTok and more:
Just before dawn 69 years ago today on June 16, 1955 our ship sailed past the Statue of Liberty into the New York Harbor and we began our life in America. It was an 11-day trip on the Italian ocean liner Conte Biancamano. Here's a picture of the ship and the receipt for the 5… pic.twitter.com/48d9xwfQX5
— Mario Andretti (@MarioAndretti) June 16, 2024
#LeMans24 – we are live from Race Control, at the Circuit des 24 heures. Le Mans is not only tough for drivers. Thanks to all the officials working tirelessly to ensure safe and fair racing. #FIA #WEC pic.twitter.com/CrZHFSHH81
— FIA (@fia) June 16, 2024
|@RedBullRacing exemplifying that deeply unattractive "we're the only motorsport there is" attitude which is so typically F1 yet all the more unrealistic given @Max33Verstappen's enthusiasm for Le Mans:https://t.co/5ai1j1TNnr#F1
— Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine) June 16, 2024
The 24 hours of Le Mans 2024: Fourth place.
I enjoyed it. I was proud. I was grateful to be there. I worked my ass off for months and did everything I can imagine to be ready.
But it wasn’t enough this year. That hurts and will hurt for the coming weeks. But eventually it will…— Laurens Vanthoor (@VanthoorLaurens) June 16, 2024
Yes yes – it’s because of the safety car rules but my point is the run to the finish will be awesome https://t.co/J41x4RTyUX
— Karun Chandhok (@karunchandhok) June 16, 2024
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- Find more official F1 accounts to follow in the F1 Twitter Directory
Comment of the day
Ferrari won Le Mans? @GeeMac saw it coming two weeks ago:
Congratulations to Ferrari on their second consecutive win at the Le Mans 24 Hours!
@GeeMac
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Beninlux, Jonathanproc and Vikenbauer!
On this day in motorsport
- 40 years ago today reigning champion Nelson Piquet, having failed to score in the first six races, won from pole position at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve
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Jim from US (@jimfromus)
17th June 2024, 1:09
Projection by the teams. Mercedes technical team still haven’t figured out the current rules.
Doh
17th June 2024, 3:50
It won’t fix F1. F1 has never been the Pinnacle of racing or sports with motors. The enthusiasts can only stay so long knowing they have better alternatives F1 only offers hype and politics new rules will mean a new No1 dominant team. If the new fans start to get bored liberty may sell in a hurry and someone will have to pick up he pieces
Mayrton
17th June 2024, 11:49
The thought of Liberty selling F1 fills me with joy right now but realistically they will overcharge and the buyer will want to see this offset and potentially therefore act even more not in the interest of the sport…
Nick T.
17th June 2024, 15:12
You’re right. Most sellers don’t try to maximize how much they sell an asset for. Only those dastardly Americans! How come they can’t treat business like running a charity, Europeans like Bernie did?!
Mayrton
18th June 2024, 12:14
The acceptance you display is the core of the problem.
Nick T.
19th June 2024, 13:59
You’re confusing acceptance with me simply pointing out reality since you’re constantly on a kick about Liberty being evil due to being American.
Tristan
17th June 2024, 1:12
I think it’s complex in the sense that if you ask what X and Z mode or MoM is on a car there’s no simple answer. X and Z mode don’t even really have a reason to be called that, unless I’m missing something, it’s just something edgy for high and low drag aero mode. Even MoM doesn’t make much intuitive sense when explained, okay it’s a manual override for what exactly? They could have at least called it overdrive, but that would be too simple.
At least drag reduction system was simple, you don’t need really more than those 3 words to explain what it is.
James Coulee
17th June 2024, 8:44
One has more expression on the Z axis (vertical, higher downforce), the other on the X axis (longitudinal, lower drag).
pez2k (@pez2k)
17th June 2024, 9:32
That makes sense when explained like that, but it really isn’t very intuitive. Surely just calling them ‘cornering mode’ and ‘speed mode’ is much more accessible for newer or less technical viewers, and I think ‘speed mode’ sounds 90% as cool as ‘X mode’ anyway. Add in ‘boost mode’ or ‘overtaking mode’ for the KERS / DRS equivalent and you have a complete set of easy-to-grasp terms.
Alternatively, if they can get the level of silliness in the jargon back up to the highs of ‘F-duct’, then that would also be fun!
Tristan
17th June 2024, 10:32
That does make sense, I don’t think I would have ever intuited it though.
SteveP
17th June 2024, 17:26
I thought it was optimisation for longitudinal movement (X) and optimisation for lateral movement (Z) – hence the references to the X axis and the Z axis in the Cartesian coordinate system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_coordinate_system.
Y-axis being vertical where most drivers wouldn’t want to see a great movement, unless they were going for an air pilot’s licence. :)
EffWunFan (@cairnsfella)
17th June 2024, 1:53
So I said to my wife…
and she said, “I wish you’d told me that before”. “Now it is so clear I am unsure why I didn’t realize it in the first place”.
On a related note, whilst I know it’s already been around a week or two, it still niggles me that it feels like the concept for the current generation cars was only recently released, and here we have the next one. Time really does go more and more quickly as one ages.
schooner (@schooner)
17th June 2024, 3:14
When an engineer says “… I don’t think it is really that complicated.”, you’d better hold on to your hat. On the other hand, a flap being either open or closed doesn’t leave much room for confusion.
SteveP
17th June 2024, 21:42
My normal phrase at work is “networks are pretty simple, nothing difficult to understand”
People wince every time… Why?
Jon
17th June 2024, 6:32
The very fact that we talking about means it is over complicated.
I so want go back to 1990s F1. Loud engine and stop and go peddle.
Guess it’s progress.
As for le mans being artificial. There is 1 team who engine as less power and they not allowed to change it and another team not allowed to join. Neither issues would have happened in the past f1
MacLeod (@macleod)
17th June 2024, 8:05
@Jon It seems you didn’t visit a F1 race for a while current cars make lots of noise (ear damaging even) but i think you mean the high rev engines which made a screaming sound but aren’t louder. (Db)
The Rules aren’t difficult for fans (not even for a old guy like me) rather more difficult for engineers.
anon
17th June 2024, 13:01
And yet the cars most often held up as icons of that era are the ones from the early 1990s, such as the Williams FW14B, that are famous for their technology and complexity.
D
17th June 2024, 6:36
I think we were lucky that it was only Le Mans this weekend.
Next year it’s Le Mans, Canadian GP and Indy race at Gateway all on the same weekend.
Jere (@jerejj)
17th June 2024, 7:36
At least the Canadian GP & Le Mans 24H race never have direct timing clash because of time difference.
D
17th June 2024, 8:50
For us fans it will be ok.
Shame for the drivers.
Dixon, Palou, Grosjean, Simpson and Siegel were all here for Le Mans.
Siegel even won in LMP2.
Next year, unfortunately, they won’t be able to do Le Mans.
Mayrton
17th June 2024, 7:10
It seems Motorsport has fallen and become the victim of commercialisation and relentless money grabbing parties. Down the road, it will eventually become a brief TikTok event at best. I mean, you can’t seriously ask for people’s attention longer than a few seconds anyway, so might as well artificially level the field and make it completely random and not on merit, who wins.
Euro Brun (@eurobrun)
17th June 2024, 8:08
About 30 years too late with that comment!
Mayrton
17th June 2024, 11:53
You thinks so? 30 years already? I understand the process has been going on for already a while but 30 years might be stretching it?
anon
17th June 2024, 20:19
Mayrton, are you trying to engage in some sort of weird joke here, or do you really know that little about the past?
Just look at Bernie Ecclestone’s involvement in commercial operations of the sport since the early 1970s and what he was up to in those earlier years, let alone by 1990s (if we’re going roughly 30 years back). Do you think that Bernie was a benevolent philanthropist operating with charitable intentions? Why do you think that Colin Chapman described motorsport as a seething mess of backstabbing, politicking and financial wheeler dealing that happened to be broken up by a race every few weeks in the 1970s and early 1980s?
Mayrton
18th June 2024, 12:20
There is a difference with Liberty. I agree both are/were in it for the revenue. Nothing wrong with some commercialism. You could however look at a different structure in which a more non profit approach is taken when it comes to a sports event (but that is for another debate). But Liberty makes things artificial and has disregard for motorsport fans because the non fan base is bigger. They have taken F1 deep into the circus zone and impact the integrity of those races every few weeks inbetween the backstabbing, politicking and financial wheeler dealing.
Damon (@damon)
17th June 2024, 21:36
He’d be too late with this comment if what he said was no longer true! But it still is. Comment is on time.
Damon (@damon)
17th June 2024, 21:37
” I mean, you can’t seriously ask for people’s attention longer than a few seconds anyway,”
– Nonsense. People play video games for 16 hours in one sitting. Or they binge watch an entire season of a TV series in one sitting as well etc.
S
18th June 2024, 23:56
But those things are interesting. 2 hours of F1 usually isn’t.
Pinak Ghosh (@pinakghosh)
17th June 2024, 7:16
Fédération Intelligence de l’Artificielle
Jere (@jerejj)
17th June 2024, 7:35
Good one
Mayrton
17th June 2024, 11:54
Hahhaha
SjaakFoo (@sjaakfoo)
17th June 2024, 7:28
Sometimes Keith tries to shoehorn in opinions in the weirdest retweets. Red Bull are active in many sports, including motorsports. Sponsor many athletes, including drivers. But because the F1 team’s Twitter admin posts about it not being a race weekend for them because it’s literally their job to post about F1, it proves some grand point about F1 as a whole?
You didn’t get ‘em.
D
17th June 2024, 8:39
It really is irrelevant thing.
But it does show how F1 people miss some common sense.
Admin could’ve written “No F1 this weekend, but we will be back with triple header”.
Btw, Red Bull tweets about Bridgerton and football are related to F1?
SjaakFoo (@sjaakfoo)
17th June 2024, 9:32
Often F1 journalism feels like Lady Whistledown wrote it, so yes, relevant.
Repeat after me: Social. Media. Accounts. Are. For. Marketing. Only. And. Only. For. Marketing.
An Sionnach
17th June 2024, 15:44
It doesn’t show anything other than that it isn’t a race weekend for the F1 team. After all, there may be a difference between the team participating in an F1 race… and watching another one! Poor and unfair commentary from Keith.
Jere (@jerejj)
17th June 2024, 7:34
I agree with Tombazis. I already don’t struggle to comprehend active aero, X & Z-mode, etc., & I doubt I’ll struggle in 2026 either.
I found the New York Times article a good read, although the thing about being recognized is an inevitable consequence of voluntarily bringing family to events where countless cameras & people are always present.
COTD’s prediction couldn’t have aged more perfectly.
Well called, especially since another victory wasn’t even a foregone conclusion under normal circumstances like many given race victories in F1, which makes predicting correctly easy in my years.
notagrumpyfan
17th June 2024, 8:06
I was surprised how many ‘racefans’ in the recent BoP poll also like the artificial closing of the field.
MichaelN
17th June 2024, 10:19
It’s not artificial though, it’s part of the rules of the series. Of the formula. That’s why it’s so cheap, so competitive on race day, and why do many big names want to join.
It’s also a difference in approach rather than kind. The ACO and IMSA wanted to slow down the top class and bring costs under control, from around 100 million to 20 million. That’s why they imposed performance caps and instituted a BoP scheme. Otherwise, and especially on the engine side, the rules are fairy relaxed, thus we see a wide variety of engines in use.
In F1 they’ve gone about it in a different way. They opted for a cost cap, for a heavily prescribed chassis, for a ban on engine development, for strict limits on testing (whether with CFD, dyno, or at the circuit), and the ever popular tool of ‘technical directives’ to make adjustments mid-season. The result is a field that, in qualifying, is much tighter than the Hypercars. It’s that really because Haas and Williams are now also at Red Bull and Ferrari’s level? I doubt it.
notagrumpyfan
17th June 2024, 11:36
It would be cheap and competitive as well if golf extended the handicap system to the professional tournament formula :p
MichaelN
17th June 2024, 11:53
Sure, but golf supposedly (I haven’t the faintest idea about golf) doesn’t lack participants in its current format. It has a good balance. Other sports have their own balance.
Motorsport needs to ensure it has sufficient participants, and it needs to make rules to facilitate that. That means it needs cost and performance restrictions, in one form or another.
A ‘no rules free for all’ series doesn’t exist for very good reasons.
S
17th June 2024, 14:20
Golf is cheap, is competitive at every level, and pretty much anyone who has the skill can go pro without requiring sponsorship or wealthy family backing.
Professional motor racing, on the other hand… No matter how good you are, you still need massive financial backing – and even then, you’ll most likely not get an opportunity to reach the ‘top’ level/s. Not because it’s super competitive, but because it isn’t.
BoP allows not just vastly different machines and teams of varying resources to be competitive with each other, but also the drivers themselves to make a larger impact on overall performance.
You shouldn’t be that surprised that a system that makes racing (at least appear) more competitive on the track is popular and widely accepted.
There’s nothing about car racing that is natural – everything is artificial.
notagrumpyfan
18th June 2024, 7:41
I don’t want drivers to have a “larger impact”. To me motorsports should be much more about engineering ingenuity. I want teams back in the driver’s seat and may the fastest package, that doesn’t break down, win the race.
The universities should train the best engineers and the junior series should train the best drivers. Both could be cheaper though to really find the best.
S
18th June 2024, 11:44
So you don’t want motorsports – you want an engineering competition. They are not and can not be the same thing.
Lucky there is BoP, then. Without it, most motorsports series either go spec or ultra-prescriptive instead…
If that’s what you want, but without BoP – you’ll really need to look at amateur and enthusiast level racing series.
The ‘professionals’ always chase the big money, and that comes from series that compromise themselves technically to be the most popular.
MichaelN
17th June 2024, 8:17
More sour grapes from Toyota, who ran a pretty messy event with one of the best cars. Thankfully De Vries who came 2nd for Toyotawas more honest in his assessment, taking blame for their spins, failures in qualifying, and numerous small issues during the race. As Häkkinen said so many years ago now, if you want to be a good winner you have to be a good loser too.
Pete
17th June 2024, 10:55
“I don’t think it is rocket science, and clearly we will need to explain it adequately to everybody so people understand what they’re saying.”
Urgh… They will as well. They’ll have Brundle explain it 5 times a session. “For those who are joining us for the first time today, X mode means….”
Coventry Climax
17th June 2024, 10:56
I doubt this Tombazis guy is fit for his job, when he’s apparently confused about the very non-complicated, yet fundamental difference between complicated /em>and confused. e.g.:
It’s not complicated to explain to an audience that race control changes the rules whenever and however they see fit, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t confused by it.
Philip (@philipgb)
17th June 2024, 12:06
The thing with complexity I’ve learned from the work place is that people who already understand a domain don’t understand the problem with layering another process on top of what they already understand. It’s just one more thing to think about, it’s not that hard right? Try starting from scratch and actually look at all the complexity someone new has to get their head around though
I’ve been watching F1 for over 30 years and I understand most of the ins and outs of the sport. Adding another regulation on top isn’t hard for me to digest. But actually taking the time to explain anything to someone new is a nightmare. I don’t think I’ll be able to get my kids into it like I did in the 90’s. I completely understand why people that aren’t absolute nerds find the sport dull. So no, X-mode and Z-mode (hang on did I miss a Y-mode somewhere?) isn’t rocket science, but how much foundational knowledge do you need to have to understand them in context?
MichaelN
17th June 2024, 15:14
The names are a bit goofy, but if they called it corner (wing down) and boost (MGU with extra power) modes it’d be quite simple. But calling the corner-mode normal and then layering two sets of straightline modes on top is not ideal.
SteveP
17th June 2024, 18:00
Cartesian Coordinate system references – so Y would be vertical, and you don’t win races when you start doing that to any great degree
Justin (@vivagilles27)
18th June 2024, 0:01
I get the whole idea behind road relevance being a condition for most (if not all) of the engine manufactures to have an interest in being in F1, but I keep having this sinking feeling that the inevitable future we are headed for is an all-electric series. The goal of the new regulations is to achieve 50/50 combustion to electric power (currently 80/20). If Formula E continues its trajectory it could some day match F1 in performance along with the ability to run a full grand prix distance. It is at least encouraging to hear the concerns of some of the team principals that they do not want to see performance drop to closely to IndyCar, F2 and Super Formula.