In the round-up: Williams team principal James Vowles said the team’s core problem at the United States Grand Prix was a lack of performance in qualifying.
In brief
Medium ‘like a soft’ for Williams
Williams scored one point in Austin, thanks to Franco Colapinto, but Vowles believes they could have taken more if they’d qualified higher up the grid.
“I think the race pace would have shown you that we’re there or thereabouts in terms of the car working, but we’re not able to get it all right for one lap in a qualifying condition,” he said in a video released by the team. “So nothing really to do with the circuit, and even if it was, it’s our responsibility and duty to make sure we have a car that’s working everywhere and we can set it up well.
“This, very specifically, was down to not extracting performance or grip from that soft tyre. Probably as extreme as, actually for us, the medium was faster than a soft in a qualifying condition. And it shouldn’t be, it should be a large grip step, which is what most other teams have experienced.
“But the base package, the package that allowed us to score a point is still very much there or thereabouts. If we qualified in position I’m sure we would have the opportunity to score more again.”
Formula E teams penalised for cost cap breaches
Two Formula E teams have been fined for exceeding the series’ cost cap, which was set at €13,668,000 (£11.4m) for the previous season. Nissan over-spent by €269,252 (2%) and Jaguar by £73,849 (0.6%). The teams were fined €300,000 and €100,000 respectively and both had their pre-season testing allocation reduced by three hours.US viewing figures remain healthy
ABC’s live broadcast of the United States Grand Prix attracted the joint second-largest average audience since Formula 1 returned to the channel six years ago. ESPN confirmed 1.3 million people watch the race from the Circuit of the Americas.
Five rounds so far this year – Miami, Monaco, Canada, Britain and Italy – have attracted record-breaking US audiences.
Del Pino to F3
Bruno del Pino will graduate from Eurocup 3 to Formula 3 with MP Motorsport next year. He finished third in the junior series this year behind Francisco Javier Sagrera and Christian Ho.
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'It is great for (Argentina) and hopefully it will give your country, once again (...) hopefully sooner rather than later the possibility for South America to host not only Mexico – in Central America – Sao Paulo in Brazil... why not?'
IMS test was open house for Lundgaard with McLaren (IndyCar)
'It’s a very different feeling. The difference is how the car not necessarily handles but stable on the ground, which was nice.'
Chadwick prioritising IndyCar move over Indy Nxt return in 2025 (Racer)
'Really, what the test has shown me is yes, there are things to work on, yes, I wasn’t winning a championship necessarily in Indy Nxt, but I feel like the learning that I had in Indy Nxt is now kind of reached its limit, and really I want to make that step up now.'
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Comment of the day
The Circuit of the Americas could learn a lesson from the improvements made at other circuits, says @Jerejj:
I’m surprised COTA didn’t go for the same compromise solution for this year’s edition as Red Bull Ring & Hungaroring, i.e., have a small gravel portion beside curbing at every problem corner exit (T1, 9, 11, 12, 15, 19, & 20) to make going wide beyond the white line automatically slower compared to staying within track limits.
@Jerejj
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Adam Tate!
On this day in motorsport
- 20 years ago today Juan Pablo Montoya won his final race for Williams, beating his future McLaren team mate Kimi Raikkonen at Interlagos, while Jaguar started their final F1 race
Clay (@clayt)
24th October 2024, 2:56
And (a little more than) 12 years ago today, Juan Pablo Montoya hit a jet dryer while tooling around Daytona, under a full course yellow.
Jere (@jerejj)
24th October 2024, 6:24
An Argentine GP return idea definitely wouldn’t be a short-term thing in any case, given the country’s current economic situation, which Joe Saward referred to in his second-to-most recent Green Notebook blog from October 15:
”There have been some stories kicking around in F1 of late with the idea of there being a Grand Prix in Argentina. I’d love to see that because I have fond memories of visits to Buenos Aires between 1995 to 1998. The problem is that the country is in a dire economic situation. More than half of Argentina’s 46 million people are now living in poverty, according to the country’s statistics agency, with the latest figure being 52.9 percent, compared to 41.7 percent in the second half of last year. Some of this hike has been due to the policies of the new president Javier Milei, who has slashed subsidies for transport, fuel and energy and sacked thousands of civil servants, trying to bring down inflation and reduce government expenditure. The country’s inflation rate this summer was still an impressive 230 percent.
Whatever the details Argentina is no state to pay for a Grand Prix.”
Some sites clearly never bother using the FP1 reference in their titles when the matter is solely about a full-timer getting replaced to fulfill practice running requirements.
Another COTD-nomination for me. At least the third within this month.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
24th October 2024, 8:13
“who has slashed subsidies for transport, fuel and energy and sacked thousands of civil servants”
Add to that health and education. He’s closing hospitals and slashing universities budgets.
I sure hope we don’t see a GP there in the short term.
Jere (@jerejj)
24th October 2024, 12:07
Some equally valid factors that Joe didn’t mention, but indeed a difficult general situation for GP-hosting viability.
Tifoso1989 (@tifoso1989)
24th October 2024, 14:37
He’s effectively selling Argentina to the United States, starting with dollarization and the deliberate devaluation of the Argentine peso by slashing interest rates. Additionally, Argentina’s vast lithium reserves, which have garnered the interest of Elon Musk who amazingly happens to be Milei’s n°1 fan. He also has institutionalized nepotism by appointing his sister as head of his cabinet.
notagrumpyfan
24th October 2024, 7:42
Luckily there are never click-bait headlines on this site. /s
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
24th October 2024, 8:16
Yeah… that’s the name of the game in this field, sadly.
slowmo (@slowmo)
24th October 2024, 15:08
As this season has gone on it has felt more and more like a tyre lottery similar to what we saw throughout the beginning of 2012. The tyres in this ground effect era and particularly now have such a small performance window that if your setup doesn’t suit all compounds sufficiently you’ll drop down 5+ places. I really wish we could get rid of Pirrelli and just bring in a tyre supplier without any requirements other than create a tyre that can be pushed without it overheating and becoming useless after 3 laps following another car. Cars don’t race anymore for fear of putting their tyres into a window where they’ll not lose grip and/or wear faster.