In the round-up: Lewis Hamilton offered to buy a Moto GP team because of Liberty Media’s attempt to take over the series.
In brief
Liberty prompted Hamilton’s Moto GP interest – Maffei
Greg Maffei, president and CEO of Formula 1 commercial rights holder Liberty Media, said their attempt to buy Moto GP led to Lewis Hamilton’s enquiry about purchasing a team.
“When we announced – it’s a great example – we had immediately people call up and say ‘I want to buy a team’, including people like Lewis Hamilton,” he told the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology Conference. “Why? Because they saw what had happened in Formula 1 and they want to follow.”
Liberty Media is awaiting the approval of the European Union, which must ensure the deal does not restrict competition. “We had major distributors call and say ‘we want to be involved’,” said Maffei. “Unfortunately I had to tell them we really can’t talk about it until we get EU approval, but we’d love to talk once we get it.”
Red Bull hires four teenagers
Red Bull has added four new members to its young driver programme, all of them teenagers under the age of 17. They are Christopher Feghali of Lebanon, Rocco Coronel of the Netherlands, Jules Caranta of France and Ernesto Rivera of Mexico.Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko oversaw their selection after a series of runs in Formula 4 and GP3 chassis. “Bringing back Red Bull Driver Search has been an important step for our junior driver programme,” he said. “The invited drivers already highlighted promising young talent, and we remain dedicated to fostering our junior drivers to shape the future of motorsport.”
Verstappen names ideal Le Mans team mates
Max Verstappen named the three drivers he would most like to share a car with at Le Mans in a recent interview with Red Bull Esports racer Jarno Opmeer.
“One I would like to have in the team, I think definitely, is Nyck de Vries. He’s fast and he’s very light and at the moment, when you’re very fast and light around Le Mans, of course, is great.
“I keep joking with Fernando [Alonso] that we want to do it together, so that would be quite cool. So then we’ve got three drivers already. I keep telling as well my dad we have to do it. He doesn’t want to do it, but I would add him in as a fourth.”
Lloyd to race in Singapore
British Formula 4 racer Ella Lloyd will join the F1 Academy grid for its Singapore round next week. The 18-year-old will drive a wildcard entry carrying the branding of the series’ Discover Your Drive programme which promotes motorsport to young girls..
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'The Paris-based company is nearing an agreement where watchmaker TAG Heuer as well as other brands, which could include Moet & Chandon champagne and possibly its hotel chains, become sponsors of F1 with brand logos and products displayed prominently to race viewers, according to people familiar with the matter.'
The drivers Fornaroli emulates with a win-free junior single-seater title (Formula Scout)
'Leonardo Fornaroli became FIA F3 champion without winning a race. Who else has taken an overall title in a contemporary junior single-seater series but never met the chequered flag first?'
Andreas Jenzer reflects on F3 finale and team’s farewell to the championship (F3)
'While his team will no longer be part of the F3 paddock, Jenzer will remain busy in other series as they field young drivers that could well wind up in Formula 3 one day.'
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Notable posts from X (formerly Twitter), TikTok and more:
Listening to Lawrence Stroll welcoming Adrian Newey to @AstonMartinF1 with a deal including a 2.5% shareholding, you can’t help wondering what might have happened to #F1 history had Frank Williams agreed to Newey’s request for a stake in his team in the 1990s.
— Richard Williams (@rwilliams1947) September 11, 2024
Nothing against @Max33Verstappen, but as @HSouthwellFE reminds me if he does lose the #F1 championship it means #FE CEO @JeffFormulaE has to cough up a quarter of a million dollars to charity…https://t.co/TgZ9pSe8yS
— Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine) September 11, 2024
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Comment of the day
F1 missed an opportunity to replace Sky with a more representative and international broadcasting team, says MichaelN:
The English [Sky] broadcast was, for a time, used on F1’s online channels. That’s where it rubbed people the wrong way. Folks the world over had to hear that stuff if they wanted to catch up with F1. And a lot of the criticism came from the fact that they knew this too, but rather than seeing it as responsibility to be a bit more neutral, they instead doubled down on their nationalistic bias as though the rest of the world just needed to hear a bit more of it to be convinced.
F1 then started F1TV, but unfortunately failed to make it a truly diverse group of people, instead resorting to ‘different English people’ instead.
MichaelN
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Mark, Striay, Gex and Frieda!
On this day in motorsport
Nick T.
12th September 2024, 1:48
COTD+1
Less brazen bias and more just focusing 99% on the same 2-3 drivers whether it was their season or their gloried past or no doubt gloried future. F1TV is miles better, but it’s still just a bunch of Brits.
mantresx (@mantresx)
12th September 2024, 4:12
Yeah for that reason I’ve always listened to the spanish commentary in F1TV instead, and they’ve been more or less impartial up until now. However with Colapinto now racing (they’re from Argentina) I’m afraid it could go bad very quickly.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
12th September 2024, 6:48
Boy I’d not put Tornello and company above Sky’s team even with their bias! I switched over in 2011 and never looked back. He was awful at recognising events on the feed,.confusing drivers and generally talking rubbish. And they had a dude from Mexico talking only about Perez and Gutierrez, all the time!. God awful!
mc4ren (@mc4ren)
12th September 2024, 8:16
The radical bias of spanish media towards Alonso & Sainz made me move away from them to Sky. Yes, I can still feel the british “smell” in Sky, but it’s miles more impartial than the Spanish armada. The “self criticism” is non existant, actually instead of broadcasting F1, I think they broadcast “Alonso’s mighty life in an F1 weekend”. I don’t know about other latin broadcasters.
I don’t think Sky wants to really be the universal broadcasting voice, just look at their commentators, all of them are british (sorry Karun) apart from the casual ‘guests’. Anyway, they tend to focus more on the race itself rather than in their national heroes, as most channels do.
bip
12th September 2024, 10:28
And the irony of F1TV is that it’s not available in the UK!
notagrumpyfan
12th September 2024, 10:46
That’s already a step forward from being all English ;)
Exediron (@exediron)
12th September 2024, 6:26
In response to the COTD, F1TV is indeed a bunch of Brits, and that may be poor optics and ultimately not inclusive, but they do make a solid effort to remain impartial (particularly Palmer, who IMO is the strong point of the lineup). The all-British lineup certainly does nothing to dispel the implicit idea that F1 ‘is a British sport’, however.
David (@nvherman)
12th September 2024, 8:35
@exediron because it is. Also, this site started life as “f1fanatic.co.uk”, and no amount of tinkering around the edges with domain names is going to change that.
There may only be three teams currently racing under the British flag (McLaren, Williams and Aston Martin), but several of those who don’t are still based in the UK, largely in the “F1 triangle” (Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire): Mercedes-AMG, Red Bull Racing, Alpine and Haas.
So that’s 70% of the current F1 teams.
SteveP
13th September 2024, 8:21
I thought the RBR jnr setup (VCARB) was moving (has moved?) into premises very close to RBR, and of course the building rental by Andretti is solidly in the “F1 triangle” but Alpine are split France/UK *
Easier to count the non-UK perhaps? I don’t think Ferrari are likely to move.
*I was on a training course alongside Renault techs a number of years back, Brits, but they needed to start their “indoctrination” with a period in the French base. Learn French or fail, was the ethos, apparently.
faulty (@faulty)
12th September 2024, 21:39
Sam Collins might be one ‘Brit from the bunch’, but he’s about the best pundit in motorsports.
Announcers, though, they’re pretty rare.
SteveP
13th September 2024, 8:23
Along with Craig Scarborough, I think it’s a case of being more interested in the technical details than any considerations of nationality or personality.
GeeMac (@geemac)
12th September 2024, 6:46
Interesting to note that the Red Bull Young Driver Programme has now got another “son of” in its ranks. Rocco Coronel is the son of tin top legend Tom Coronel.
On the lingering conversation around Fornoroli winning F3 without winning a race: The last time I can remember a top line motorsport championship being won by someone who hadn’t won a race was when Emilio Alzamora won the 1999 125cc motorcycle world championship.
Jere (@jerejj)
12th September 2024, 6:49
Ironically, just before seeing your post, I thought he might be related, but I came to a quick conclusion that sharing a family name must be a mere coincidence, but I guess I was wrong.
GeeMac (@geemac)
12th September 2024, 9:25
@jerejj I know, I had to look it up as well as I also didn’t want to just assume they were related. :)
An Sionnach
12th September 2024, 9:41
I don’t care what people look like and have nothing against the British. Other than one incident of F1TV desperately using their screen in vain against the ruling of the stewards against one of their subjects, they’ve been fine. Let’s not have a British purge, either. I come from a country of Brit bashers. That gets tiresome very quickly, too.
Dex
12th September 2024, 12:25
I don’t mind Brits as such, and I much prefer listening to their various accents than Danica Patrick for example (she hurts my ears both with the way she talks and what she says, which is kind of nothing). As a matter of fact, most non-Brits they bring as guests I don’t like listening to for different reasons. Rosberg is so… Rosberg (I imagine he looks in the mirror for hours each day), Danica 100% generic American pundit and repeats empty phrases, Valsecchi is much, much poorer version of Brundle (in so many ways) with different accent etc.
All I mind is such a strong, passive aggressive bias on Sky (Brundle and Karun are great exceptions), constant gaslighting (hate the word, but it applies) and the way some of them sound when talking about Hamilton and Norris, as opposed to their tone when it’s Verstappen. When Max does something stupid definitely doesn’t feel the same as when Lewis does something equally stupid or selfish, not when you watch Sky. And as a neutral (my nation was never represented in F1 in any way, nor I would even enjoy that), I feel upset when there is no one there to give counter arguments (except Brundle sometimes, but that’s far from balancing things out).
Hamilton (Mercedes) domination years were unbearable when it comes to Sky, I almost felt like listening to some sort of soft core adult content.
SteveP
13th September 2024, 8:27
Much more encompassing. You didn’t actually need to mention anyone’s name at all.
Coventry Climax
12th September 2024, 10:19
I generally turn all sound off, since a couple of years already. Visual coverage is largely the same in any country, with F1 deciding what you get to see, so I just pick a station that does not constantly interrupt the coverage with endless and repetitive commercials about beer or other narrowmindedly and traditionally ‘manly’ stuff.
Used to watch with headphones on, as in the past, some broadcasters used to capture the sound, the atmosphere and the bustle quite well, and headphones gave me that truly submerged feel. But that was before everything became the same and F1 fully took over and decides what is to be broadcasted.
With the now endless blabber of selfinflated reporters, the lack of sound from the engines and the modern coverage that hardly lets on-track sound through, I can do very well without any sound at all and forego on the mistakes the reporters make.
Ridiculously enough, they announce it on screen now from time to time, when you can hear a bit more of what’s coming off the track, noisewise, for a minute or so.
Sometimes my wife watches along with me, and she turns the sound on, to be amazed at my comments constantly being ahead of what the reporters say, or that I say things the reporters completely miss or have to correct a little later on.
So basically, with the quality of coverage and reporters these days, no sound at all suits me just fine.
Edvaldo
12th September 2024, 13:48
For the record, who led the 1-2 at Monza 2004 was Barrichello.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
12th September 2024, 19:49
I think it’s that race that had wet track at start and barrichello had the right tyre choice with intermediates, gaining 5-7 sec per lap, I remember something about it.
AlexS
12th September 2024, 19:03
That F2004 is a beauty.