In the round-up: Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko denies any connection between chief technical officer Adrian Newey’s departure from the team and their decline in form.
In brief
Red Bull’s problem ‘not linked to Newey exit’
Following one of Red Bull’s worst performances of the season, in which Max Verstappen finished a lowly sixth, Marko insisted the team’s slump is not linked to Newey’s exit, which was announced in May.
“Of course, there is an opinion among fans that our relapse has something to do with Adrian Newey’s departure,” he told SpeedWeek. “But that is not true because Newey was no longer involved in all the details of the vehicle development in the spring.
“What cannot be denied, of course, is that Newey is Newey, a man with incredible experience, and that has always distinguished him. But our problem lies elsewhere.”
Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari testing for Pirelli
Mercedes and Red Bull began a two-day test for Pirelli at Monza yesterday. George Russell completed 127 laps, logging a best time of 1’20.747, while Liam Lawson did a 1’22.126 in the RB and racked up 104 laps.While the test continues at Monza tomorrow, Ferrari will also run at Fiorano with Oliver Bearman conducting wet weather testing for F1’s official tyre supplier.
New Formula 3 champion lands 2025 Formula 2 seat
Leonardo Fornaroli, who clinched the Formula 3 title with Trident last weekend, will join Invicta for next year’s Formula 2 season. His move means at least one of their two drivers – Kush Maini or McLaren development driver Gabriel Bortoleto – will need to find another drive next year.
Williams reviving special livery for demo run
Williams will use the special livery for sponsor Gulf, which they used at three races last year, in a demonstration run in Sao Paulo, Brazil on September 29th.
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Links
Jordan 'not prepared' to discuss Newey future (BBC)
'Aston Martin have scheduled a news conference for 10 September, where Newey's recruitment is expected to be announced.'
F1 prioritising access for Las Vegas Strip resort employees as track prep begins (Fox)
'According to officials, no repaving work is needed for this year’s grand prix. Crews are set to install track lighting and barriers, which are expected only to restrict lanes.'
Martins' Monza weekend in his words (Formula 2)
'I think with the pace that brought us to (second), we could have got more but I was a bit too hungry to get (first), but I did a few little mistakes that were costing me a few tenths at some point and then a few moments with some drivers put me in a bad position to be close to Bearman to fight for (first).'
'Lewis, listen, delete that Tweet!' - when Hamilton posted secret McLaren data (Motorsport Magazine)
'There was a pause, then one of them said: 'That wasn’t even Jenson’s telemetry anyway. Lewis made a mistake. We’ve now checked it. He tweeted the telemetry from Oliver’s (Turvey, our then test driver) simulator session last week.''
Extended highlights: 2024 Six Hours of COTA (WEC via YouTube)
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Comment of the day
McLaren are needlessly risking Norris’ championship chances, says Iosif:
Let’s be honest here: Red Bull seem to be in a bad spot. If they don’t improve the drivers’ championship is a possibility with Norris. If I was in charge of McLaren, closing to 20 years since my last one, I’d impose team orders. I’d let Oscar have his maiden win in Hungary, sure, but since Lando did his part then in Monza it should be clear: Whoever is ahead at turn 1 stays ahead.
At the very least, they should have swapped second and third. Imagine if he loses the drivers’ championship for a couple of points…
Iosif (@Afonic)
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On this day in motorsport
Nick T.
4th September 2024, 0:20
All I can say to Marko is “oh please.” You want to talk about a difference maker. Even the equivalent of having Alonso, Schumacher, Sennna, Hamilton, Prost and Verstappen rolled into one driver wouldn’t be worth what a man like Newey has brought to every single team he has worked for. And that is guaranteed championship success over and over again.
His departure showed immediately when he stopped setting up the car after they both cut him out of technical meetings and began minimizing his impact on their past success. He also advised them not to evolve his design as they did this year. He didn’t believe it was the right direction and time has shown he was correct. The further away they’ve gotten from his design, the worse the car has gotten.
Nick T.
4th September 2024, 1:43
I didn’t read this until after I posted and it just further supports what I said:
They took his design in a direction he didn’t approve of and the further they got away from his design, the worse the car has gotten.
BasCB (@bascb)
4th September 2024, 9:12
Funny, isn’t it. Instead of understanding that line actually confirms that Newey NOT working on the car is indeed key here, Marko poses as if it shows he’s not. One of the things with Newey is that he is so good at seeing development paths and where to take the car further. Building a car that seemed good, based on a dominant car last year but then development ends up in a dead end – yes, that IS a sign of getting the car wrong in the first place.
anon
4th September 2024, 11:01
@bascb the thing is, Verstappen was also reported as having complained about the low speed corner performance of the RB19 due to the way that the suspension was set up on that car, especially around the Singapore GP (where Red Bull’s performance was particularly poor last year).
People in the more technically minded sectors of the fan base were commenting that the RB19 seemed to be much more stiffly spring than it’s rivals last year, and there were also questions whether the geometry of the front suspension in particular was set up for increased anti-dive performance at the expense of reduced driver feedback. Remember the comments from Verstappen that the RB19 was “bouncing like a kangaroo” during the Mexican and Brazilian GPs, for example, or that the car was “all over the shop” during the 2023 Hungarian GP?
Similarly, during the 2022 season, Verstappen was also critical of the handling balance of the RB18 and the way that the suspension was set up on that car as well, with some of the complaints he made then sounding rather similar to now.
People don’t seem to doubt Newey’s involvement with either the RB18 or RB19, but there were indications that those cars had some of the problems with the overall handling balance that are also present on the RB20. The relative dominance of the RB18 and RB19 in other areas, particularly in being able to maximising their peak downforce before porpoising became an issue, and the fact that there were other issues that were more of a priority, such as bringing the RB18 under the weight limit, meant those issues were not really addressed.
Now that those advantages in other areas are being nullified, the problems of the RB18 and RB19 in terms of handling balance are probably becoming more obvious when they can’t offset them elsewhere.
MichaelN
4th September 2024, 11:12
Exactly, people are too quick to discount the fact that Mercedes messed up their initial 2022 car, carried a lot of that forward into 2023 on the back of a strong end of 2022 (with a race win on genuine pace), and made big changes for 2024, resulting in multiple race wins. Similarly, Ferrari started 2022 with a very competitive car, with Red Bull reported to be slightly overweight in the first few races, but was then negatively affected by the Mercedes-requested Technical Directive on the floors, which also set them back for 2023 as that was still very much a project based on the same ideas that Binotto, since ousted, had laid out. They also made big changes for 2024, which also resulted in multiple race wins. And of course there’s McLaren, who also didn’t perform that great in 2022, but unlike the other two, introduced most of its big changes in 2023 already, and now in 2024 they arguably have had the best car since the big Miami upgrade.
The 2023 season was very much an anomaly based on the problems that two leading teams had in 2022.
Nick T.
4th September 2024, 11:32
Yeah. And those cars won more than any other car in history… And the car which loses more DNA race-by-race, becomes less competitive race-by-race. So, the best one can argue is that a part of his design was not well adapted for last talented engineers to take over and evolve. And we know Newey likes working at extremes. A fighter jet must be inherently unstable for maximum acrobatic maneuverability. Seems like his design works similarly. Mess up a part of the concept or miss how the whole works and suddenly it’s no longer a world stomper. That’s only a reflection on the other engineers.
Scalextric (@scalextric)
4th September 2024, 20:29
Newey’s non-involvement this year also implies he can move to (Aston) with minimal gardening leave. Thanks, Helmut.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
4th September 2024, 10:03
Pirelli screwed RBR and Liberty blamed it on Newey leaving. Ask yourself why Hamilton won Silverston, LeClerc won his home race, Ferrari won Monza (lack of tire graining), why RBR who was so dominant don’t have a prayer anymore, and the championship is this close.
Its all garbage tires being used to slow the competition down so even the slowest have a chance. This is called the race to the bottom, where mediocrity, not meritocracy reigns. And mediocrity’s appeal, is the worst in everyone. The problem is anything different hurt’s Liberty’s bottom line, which is to appeal to as many people as possible, and mediocrity is most often the appeal cynical parasites tend towards.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
4th September 2024, 10:42
This is an interesting conspiracy theory: hamilton winning his home race after almost 3 years he didn’t win a race, leclerc suddenly breaking the monaco curse (red flag at start, no pit stops) and winning the home race, ferrari winning their home race as well after 5 years, and indeed, red bull being so bad atm and mclaren so good allows for a potential fight till the end, or at least much longer than it’d have been otherwise.
Nick T.
4th September 2024, 11:34
pcx is a perfectly nice guy, but his entire view of what’s happening in F1 revolves almost solely around conspiracy theories.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
7th September 2024, 19:42
profit motive. and those behaviors the profit seekers look to entice. platos cave is the model, a many millenium old way of governing the masses, and it works, because ignorance is strength.
MichaelN
4th September 2024, 11:06
Pirelli hasn’t changed the tyres this year.
Hamilton won in England because McLaren failed to read the weather, and Norris’ “any slicks!” was not corrected by the team, who should have known better.
Leclerc won in Monaco because he is a qualifying genius, has done well at Monaco for years, and despite being slower in the race, never had to stop thanks to the lap 1 red flag. Plus he was racing Piastri, who is known to have a weakness on tyre management.
Ferrari won at Monza because McLaren can’t figure out how to manage a 1-2, had their drivers fight, put the one withknown worse tyre management in the lead, and ended up failing to counter a one-stop race.
Note the common thread here is McLaren messing up and failing to maximize their car’s potential.
MadMax (@madmax)
4th September 2024, 17:56
HAM won Silverstone also cause VER slipped in qualy and damaged his floor, and forgot about tire mgmt in his first stint. And the championship is also close because VER unnecessarily crashed into NOR in Austria and into HAM in Hungary.
Mayrton
5th September 2024, 8:02
There is an amount of UK glorification at play here though, as we have seen for decades and is hardly anything new. Newey is quite a prominent designer indeed, but the years he didn’t succeed and didn’t present the best car largely outnumbers the years he did present the best, so let’s not get carried away just because it helps the ‘let’s talk RedBull down because we don’t like Verstappen’ – how dare he challenge Lewis the great’ narrative. It is getting rather old. Also I think most people do not understand how a technical team within F1 works. Newey is not the operational guy tweaking the set ups of the car on a week by week basis. But yes you are right when it comes down to it, I’d rather have him on the team than not have him.
SteveP
5th September 2024, 8:41
There’s a reason that UK* supplies most of the high-flying, super talented F1 techs.
Essentially, if you follow the fortunes of businesses in the aircraft development sector post-war the techs were in a declining (in UK) job market and the opportunity to shift to high-tech motorsport based around the old airbases was an obvious move. It then moves into a fairly tight loop of education/training/recruitment/high pay generating interest at the bottom of the education cycle and round the loop again.
In other countries the same level of techs tended to move to other work. Basically, if the UK government had assisted the other tech options there probably wouldn’t have been the same available high-tech workforce and motorsport GB would probably have died before it really got going.
Plus, Brits are weird. Inventive weird. If the big tech guys knew what caused that, they’d reproduce it where they are, but it’s probably just the weather or something.
*Not actually countrywide, it’s sort of east and south-east – oh, look those old airbases…
MichaelN
5th September 2024, 10:40
There are many English folks in F1 mainly because most F1 teams are in England, as its mostly been an English sport since the start of the F1 world championship (GP racing was more diverse pre-war). There are also a lot of Italians at Ferrari and Sauber, as teams tend to find most of their personnel locally. Same in other sports; you will find a lot of French manufacturers and designers in sportscars, Americans in stock car, and plenty of Japanese and Germans in GT, for example.
The failure of the English mass-market automotive industry might have also, ironically, helped in this sense, as the culture and atmosphere among the remaining small-time manufacturers is a good fit for motorsport endeavors.
As an aside, there are quite a few leadership roles held by people not from England at the England-based F1 teams, like Sanchez (France) at Alpine, Bell (Northern Ireland) and Furbatto (Italy) at Aston Martin, Prodromou (Cyprus) at McLaren, Waché (France) at Red Bull, and so on. But certainly the bulk of their workforce is local.
Nick T.
4th September 2024, 0:33
A suggestion on the COTD (as a format): I think it’d be good if you used selections from a comment as the COTD too. I don’t think anyone would object since you need to keep the COTD fairly compact . It’d also widen your selection pool.
As for the COTD itself, the part I agree with is that it was ridiculous not to swap 2nd and 3rd and that they’re in a tough spot. As for why I don’t agree with the rest and they haven’t taken that approach, well that has been discussed ad nauseam in about five recent articles. They include very good reasons why not to take that approach and why it is possible they might not even be able to take approach as well as why McLaren, but especially Oscar is both likely and justifiably resistant to such a path.
Mooa42
4th September 2024, 0:59
RE CoTD
If Lando loses the WDC by a couple of points then he didn’t deserve it anyway. I know people don’t want to see Max walk away with another championship, but lets be realistic, if Lando can’t get the bulk of the points himself, does he really deserve a drivers championship?
Nick T.
4th September 2024, 1:40
Exactly.
“Imagine if” could be said just about anything. Winning the WDC would Lando utterly dominating the rest of the season with metronomic consistency. Something he hasn’t shown himself remotely capable of. I can’t remember Lewis or Alonso blowing as many races across their entire career combined as Lando has blown this season alone.
Nick T.
4th September 2024, 1:40
would require*
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
4th September 2024, 5:47
Couldn’t agree more
MichaelN
4th September 2024, 11:18
But a few and the bulk are not the same thing.
Alonso would have had three more titles if not for something like 10 points spread over three seasons. That’s the kind of nudge that team-orders could provide, and they’re totally fair game. Had he won in 2010, only the most resentful Red Bull fan would claim that he didn’t earn the title because he got a couple more points in Germany thanks to Massa gifting him the win.
Drivers can also ‘gain’ those points in other ways, of course, like with Piastri finishing ahead of Verstappen. That’s something Massa infamously constantly failed to do with Vettel. If I remember correctly, the only time he outscored Vettel in 2012 was in Brazil, where Vettel’s first lap incident sent him to the back of the field.
Nick T.
4th September 2024, 11:35
Except none of those points were blown by him. Literally, just a change to how the rules work today wins him the 2010 title alone.
MichaelN
5th September 2024, 10:45
You can always pick one or two moments, I suppose, but Alonso also lost enough points on his own in each of those years, too. Had he kept it on the road in Japan 2007, he wouldn’t have won that race, but he would have taken the title. I don’t recall if he was in a good enough position in Belgium 2010 when he spun out, but that was a bunch of points lost as well. His crash in FP3 at Monaco that year certainly didn’t help, either.
But anyway, those years were generally so messy that you can make credible ‘what if’ scenarios for a whole bunch of people and end up with them winning the title. Good times.
David BR (@david-br)
4th September 2024, 14:15
That’s true. But I’d like to see the championship fight actually become a reality, rather than a mathematical possibility as it still is. Ideally a few races of McLaren total dominance (if Piastri wins them all, fine) to drastically reduce the points gap, then a Red Bull recovery for them to even out and compete on equal terms in the last races. Perfect. Obviously won’t happen…
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
4th September 2024, 14:58
If he loses by a couple of points, the picture of Piquet crashing is a fitting illustration. Like Massa and his increasingly wealthy lawyers, he’d have had about ten races to put things right!
EffWunFan (@cairnsfella)
4th September 2024, 1:53
Am I having a senior moment, or is this not quite right?
Nick T.
4th September 2024, 2:04
Not quite right.
GeeMac (@geemac)
4th September 2024, 6:52
Pretty sure he was driving in another category last weekend…
John Beak (@johnbeak)
4th September 2024, 8:33
It’s Leonardo Fornaroli who got the F2 seat with Invicta for next year.
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
4th September 2024, 3:01
The advantage of having Adrian isn’t just his design expertise, it’s his ability to offer adjustment to wring every last millisecond out of a car.
Seems to me that RBR haven’t got a bad car, they’re just struggling to maximise its performance each weekend.
I recall a few years ago when Adrian was “less involved” RBR had similar problems until they brought him back to participate on race weekends and they turned their performance around.
So it may not be your truth Mr Marko, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the truth.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
4th September 2024, 10:46
Yes, I remember this as well, I think it was in an important season too, 2021, as in when fighting for both titles.
Tommy C (@tommy-c)
4th September 2024, 8:37
I’d argue that if Norris loses the championship by a couple of points, it was all of his own doing by making terrible starts and poor strategy calls (Silverstone anyone?). Piastri is on fire at the moment. McLaren won’t want to push him away. I’d be keeping him happy if I were McLaren. It’s not like a Fernando/Philipe 2010 or 2012 situation. Piastri is too good for that.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
4th September 2024, 10:48
Silverstone is not to blame on norris, there was a massive difference between the messages he and piastri got told by their engineers, and norris’ one made it a lot harder to make the right choice, but generally a single bad start could make that points difference and norris starts badly every race.
Maybe not monza, where he kept the lead after turn 1 and I think it was piastri in the wrong to try such a move on his team mate at that point, causing the team to lose out on the 1-2 positions as well.
Nick T.
4th September 2024, 23:35
Not sure how Piastri is on fire. I am rooting for him because I like him more than Lando, but Norris has been faster at almost every single quali and race. They were pretty much even at Monza with Piastri’s amazing pass being the differentiator in the end.
SteveP
4th September 2024, 8:39
Forget Pearl Harbour – this day shall live in infamy.
Edvaldo
4th September 2024, 12:24
Same thing happened at Williams in 1997.
David BR (@david-br)
4th September 2024, 18:33
No truth to claim Red Bull’s 2024 slump is due to Newey’s exit – Marko.
Maybe, though it can hardly have helped them arrest the slump and we’ll see how they recover. If they recover.
2025+ though? That’s another question entirely.
PeteB (@peteb)
4th September 2024, 19:07
Sure Marko because you don’t plan developments in advance do you…? You just come up with an idea, click your fingers and it’s already on the car!
You’ve got issues with the car – Newey would say “oh that’s because of x – we’ll develop a new part to fix it.” Now you don’t know what to do. Nothing wrong with admitting it.
Nick T.
4th September 2024, 23:25
In other news, a brake failure was behind the AM safety car crash.
SteveP
5th September 2024, 8:20
Someone mistakenly removed the asymmetric brake system from the safety car, thinking the regs applied to it too?
Tunde
7th September 2024, 8:49
Lol… Classic!
Ce (@another)
5th September 2024, 18:25
Persiflage Helmut, persiflage. Everyone’s aware of the lag in improvements being brought to cars as a season progresses, having been having been developed in a continuum long before being applied to the car. emergency band-aids almost never work. so if that process was interrupted in the spring, it’s no surprise the effects of Newey’s departure are being felt now.