In the round-up: Liberty Media chairman John Malone says it will hard to find a replacement for outgoing CEO Greg Maffei (pictured).
In brief
Replacing Maffei ‘won’t be easy’
Liberty Media chairman, John Malone, says the group will not easily find a replacement for outgoing CEO Greg Maffei, who announced he will be stepping down last week.
“It ain’t gonna be easy, but we will find a CEO for the holding company who will continue to support Stefano [Domenicali] and the management team,” Malone told CNBC.
“Greg has assembled a great group of people at headquarters who will do the burden. At 83 years old, I’m unlikely to be a highly active CEO. My role is entirely transitional to support the team, seek to change the board of directors of Liberty Media in order to better focus on the racing businesses.”
JOTA confirms 2025 WEC line-up
Jota has announced its drivers for the 2025 World Endurance Championship as its switches from Porsche to Cadillac and adds an extra car.The team will run two cars, the number 12 and the number 38, in the series. Jenson Button, Sebastien Bourdais and Will Stevens will be joined by Earl Bamber, Alex Lynn and Norman Nato.
The driver combinations will be confirmed at a later date.
Penske acquires Long Beach GP
Penske Entertainment, the owner company of IndyCar and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, has announced it has purchased the promoters of the Grand Prix of Long Beach, one of the longest running and renowned events on the IndyCar calendar.
The race, which will hold its 50th anniversary event in 2025, had its largest post-merger race attendance last year.
“This is a major race weekend, not just on our calendar but across the motorsport landscape,” said Penske Entertainment CEO Mark Miles. “We’re committed to preserving the core attributes that make it best in class while also working on some exciting and bold initiatives to make its future even bigger and brighter.”
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Tom Stallard: ''Carlos is a brilliant driver to work with. Carlos once said to me, when we asked him what his ideal job in Formula 1 was, he said race engineer before he considered whether driver was an option! He loves the engineering and the technical side of Formula 1. It makes sense because his dad, Carlos Senior, is the same in rally. So I think they are getting someone who will really want to engage with their technical department, who will want to join engineering meetings and help them to be pushing in the right direction.''
Goethe on provisional pole for Macau GP after topping red flag-filled Q1 (Formula Scout)
'MP Motorsport’s Oliver Goethe is provisionally on pole for the Macau Grand Prix qualification race after topping Q1.'
F1 Uncovered: The Secrets of F1 Fuel (Mercedes via YouTube)
Mercedes explore the step by step process of how fuel goes from the fuel tank to the combustion chamber in the power unit.
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On this day in 1980 Formula 2 team Toleman (pictured occupying the front row before a packed crowd at Vallelunga) announced they would enter Formula 1 the following year.
They later became Benetton, then Renault, then Lotus, then Renault again and now race as Alpine.
#F1 #F2
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Comment of the day
With the news that the Monaco Grand Prix will remain on the F1 calendar until 2031, StefMeister defends the event from those who would rather see it as a time trial rather than a race…
I see that argument come up and I always disagree with it because while it is true that qualifying is the most exciting and spectacular part of the Monaco GP weekend I still love watching the race there because I love the extra challenge that comes from racing 78 laps around the place. Where you have to keep concentration up because the margin for error is smaller than elsewhere and where a small mistake can end your day.
If Monaco was a time trial, think about how many memorable and exciting moments from the past we’d have lost. Senna/Mansell in ’92, The drama at the end of ’82, Senna’s drive in ’84, Senna crashing under pressure in ’88, The drama & great drives in the ’96/’97 races, Hamilton’s great drive in the 2008, Ricciardo losing the 2016 race late on and then doing a great job to hold on with car issues in 2018 among many more.
For me, Monaco is magic because of the challenge and because it’s so very different to anything else they race on as well as the history and prestige behind it.
Winning the Monaco time trial just wouldn’t be a special to me as winning the Monaco GP because they won’t have survived 78 laps.
StefMeister
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Loki, Tom Watson, Deej92 and Forzarogo!
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
15th November 2024, 0:33
COTD is spot on.
I’ve always loved Monaco over the very many years I’ve watched F1 because it’s just so unpredictable.
Sure you can have some where it seems quite processional just like most other venues also do at times, but at Monaco, it’s just so easy for the lead car to make a mistake right up to the finish line where it all comes undone in an instant.
Anyone who didn’t see the race where a very angry Ricciardo was chasing down Hamilton after RBR screwed his pit stop missed an epic battle. Others where it was thrown away thru driver error have been too numerous to mention.
So glad they’ve kept it.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
15th November 2024, 2:21
What pressure to senna in monaco 1988? He was miles ahead!
StefMeister (@stefmeister)
15th November 2024, 15:39
@esploratore1 It wasn’t pressure in terms of him having a car right behind him in his mirrors as a distraction and more a self created pressure from seeing that Prost had moved past Berger for 2nd and was closing the gap.
The team were telling him to slow his pace as he had a big enough gap to be able to cruise to victory yet him seeing the gap come down made him continue to push which led to him making a mistake.
anon
15th November 2024, 21:28
@stefmeister at the time that Prost passed Berger, Senna was 49 seconds ahead of Prost.
Whilst Prost initially caught Senna by six seconds between laps 54 and 57 – a sign of how much slower Berger was – Senna then increased his pace over the next four laps to start increasing his lead again. At that point, Prost decided that, since Senna was that far ahead, there was no point in trying to push that hard and he eased off his own pace to save the car.
It was Prost’s decision to slow down that resulted in the team then radioing Senna to tell him to ease his pace and save the car. Senna then cited the distraction from being ordered to slow down and the fact that it threw him out of the rhythm that he’d set up for himself as the reason for his crash on lap 67.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
15th November 2024, 2:23
That’s definitely off when it comes to COTD as far as I see, but I’m otherwise also one of those who like having monaco on the calendar and for more than qualifying, there’s already so many races where it’s easy to overtake, need the other side of the coin too, and some track variety is good, monaco is the slowest track in the calendar, I also liked the old hockenheim and monza for the opposite reason.
SPArtacus
15th November 2024, 2:54
I like Monaco, but I’d love if they could at least figure out a way to create one turn where passing is halfway doable. It’s so bad that Ricciardo was able to keep the lead despite losing 30% of his engine power and no brake harvesting, which would normally mean your brakes would burn afree about two laps of hard braking. So, it’s basically literally not a race anymore after T1 because drivers know that as long as they exit the tunnel on the inside without somehow massively screwing up, they cannot be passed anywhere else no matter how slow they go.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
15th November 2024, 14:22
I agree with this. I have no objection to Monaco staying on the calendar, in fact I welcome it. But it would be good if they could adapt the circuit just a little so that there was another, proper passing opportunity. There has been talk in the past few years of an extension or change to the circuits route. I don’t know if this would help.
frood19 (@frood19)
15th November 2024, 7:23
I think Monaco exacerbates one of the intrinsic problems with F1 right now, which is that drivers don’t drive anywhere near the car’s limit in races, with a few exceptions. Maybe this was always the case, but I’d like to see the error threshold a bit lower ie it should be possible to pressure someone into a mistake. Somehow at Monaco that never seems to happen in recent years.
MichaelN
15th November 2024, 9:01
It wasn’t always the case. In the early 2000s the fastest laps in the race were often competitive with, and in some cases even faster than, qualifying times.
SPArtacus
15th November 2024, 14:05
Yup, they were still really pushing around Monaco past the mid-2000s at Monaco. Now, they pace themselves on their egg shell tires. If there was any race to introduce special one-off tire compounds for, it would be Monaco. Remember how exciting the Montoya vs Raikkonen fast race lap duel was? It was spectacular. Or, I think in the same season, Schumacher crushing in fast lap after lap after running longer than anyone else after starting way down the order and emerging right on the back of the leaders? Alonso and Hamilton pushing each other lap after lap to push themselves in the best position before their stops? That’d be literally impossible now. Not to mention the cars are now ponderous and boring to watch vs the agile but visibly nervous cars of the past.
anon
15th November 2024, 22:15
MichaelN, that’s not what actually happened though – in the 2000 Monaco GP, pole in qualifying was a 1m19.475s lap, whilst the fastest lap in race trim was a 1m21.571s lap time. In 2001, the pole time was 1m17.430s, whilst the best lap in the race was a 1m19.424s lap time. In 2002, the pole time was a 1m16.676s lap, whilst the best lap in the race was a 1m18.023s lap time.
The only races where the qualifying times and the race times were close were in 2003 and 2004, but that is because, in 2003 and 2004, F1 was using the one-lap qualifying system that also required drivers to qualify with the fuel load that they would be starting the race with. It therefore means that, in 2003 and 2004, it’s not that the drivers were actually that quick in race trim – instead, qualifying became part of the first stint of the race and the qualifying times were artificially slowed down due to the drivers having 25-30 laps worth of fuel in the cars.
The 2005 season was complicated by the “one tyre for the race” rule, whilst qualifying had the complicated “aggregate qualifying times”, where the qualifying time was the sum of a lap on low fuel and a lap on their starting race fuel. However, on low fuel, the best time was a 1m13.644s lap time, whilst the best time in the race was a 1m15.842s lap time.
Since you specify early 2000s, I will therefore cut things off at the middle of that decade in 2005. However, the claim that “the fastest laps in the race were often competitive with, and in some cases even faster than, qualifying times” was generally wrong – the qualifying times were generally 1.5-2.0s faster than the best times in the race, and the only times they looked close were in the years when the cars qualified with race fuel onboard, which made the cars artificially slower in qualifying.
SPArtacus
17th November 2024, 12:34
Fastest quali and race laps shouldn’t be that close, especially in an era where the was no ban on changing engine modes. So, they were pushing. The fact that the lap times don’t match doesn’t change that. It also doesn’t factor in all the other reasons why during the race itself, especially in Monaco, it’d be a miracle to get anywhere near a pole lap.
Jere (@jerejj)
15th November 2024, 5:50
I fully see where COTD is coming from & while winning wouldn’t necessarily feel the same or close two or multi-car battles occur anymore, merely making an error & hitting the armco, even a la Senna, would still be possible itself.
UNeedAFinn2Win (@uneedafinn2win)
15th November 2024, 7:04
Mark Miles is 71. He has NO idea how to
#PatoWHO?
this bit I believe, he took on the role in 2012 and froze everything in place. The “current” chassis and engine format are a sad, sad joke by now.
SPArtacus
15th November 2024, 14:12
His age isn’t the problem. His lack of vision is. Newey doesn’t seem to be drooling on himself and drawing little boxes with circles when designing cars now. I’d avoid making assumptions about anyone based on age in the future, unless they’re visibly showing mental decline.
S
15th November 2024, 7:36
CotD – firstly, there wouldn’t be anything lost from history because history can’t be changed; and secondly, the drivers aren’t driving anywhere near the limit of themselves or their cars anymore – nor even by themselves given how much management is done by the team over the radio.
There is such a ridiculously tiny chance of driver or mechanical error during a Monaco GP now that there really is no benefit in keeping the event in that format. Almost all unpredictability has been engineered out.
Timetrials are preferred for good reason.
Jonathan Parkin
16th November 2024, 14:07
Maybe then it’s the sporting regulations that need to be changed not the race itself.
The main reason drivers don’t push their cars is because of their engine and gearbox have to last a certain number of events, whereas it used to be just one, in addition the tyres were so much better and there was refuelling too
Although to be fair, some of the track has been neutered a bit. It used to have adverse cambers, less kerbs, a bumpier road surface etc
Deerhunter
15th November 2024, 9:12
Bringing up past glories completely misses the point on why F1 should leave Monaco behind, to be honest.
The fact is, F1 cars have grown considerably wider, longer, and heavier while Monaco remains as narrow as it ever was. It’s really a matter of logistics.
Of course driving in Monaco is challenging. I’d find it hard too if I have to drive something the size of a freaking Rolls-Royce in those narrow streets.
Roger Ayles (@roger-ayles)
15th November 2024, 15:45
Current cars are longer/heavier but they aren’t wider than the cars of the 70s/80s/most the 90s. In fact prior to 1993 I think the maximum car width was 2.1m & they also had wider rear tires.
Was actually also more on track overtaking at Monaco back then despite the wider cars. Interestingly the amount of overtaking seen at Monaco actually decreased after cars were made narrower (down to 1.8m) in 1998.
Keith Campbell (@keithedin)
15th November 2024, 12:02
Sorry to say, but the reason I disagree with CoTD is because in the Monaco race, drivers are not pushing to the limit and margins for error are not smaller than elsewhere. The truth is, drivers generally are lapping so far off the pace that the challenge is likely much less than other circuits, and margins for error are greater because drivers are giving themselves that margin. We can see that because despite the confines of the track, we very rarely see any significant errors take place in a standard dry Monaco race (other than the occasional desperate lunge on a rival). There is simply no reason to push other than for a couple of laps in a pit window.
The fact that we can see for example Ricciardo with his ERS issue or Alonso voluntarily drive 3-4 seconds off the pace and no one could even attempt an overtake shows that these cars simply can’t race effectively around such a tight circuit without any straights which would allow the following car to gain enough momentum to get part way alongside in a braking zone.
We can happily reminisce about exciting moments from the past, where racing was still difficult, but occasionally possible around the streets, but the cars have changed too much at this point to allow that. The only interest likely to occur on race day in Monaco is if it rains, and we shouldn’t have to rely on that to have a remotely exciting race because statistically it’s only going to happen every few years.
So, even though I know it’s a losing battle and this is something that will never happen, I maintain that I’d like to see some kind of time trial race in Monaco. At least then we could see the drivers pushing to the limit, which would generate the kind of margins for error and risk of mistakes that CoTD is referring to.
SPArtacus
15th November 2024, 14:21
+1
I also cited that Ricciardo drive as an example of what a joke it is to pretend they’re pushing lap in and lap out. And, if someone is going to point out that after their stops, it’s always been common to slow down. The difference is that the days of a car running significantly longer than a competitor and pushing in fast lap after fast lap to jump a competitor no longer exists because the tires can’t handle it.
A hard to time weather system coming in is the only thing that can lead to an interesting race Monaco these days and we rarely get that.
If they can’t find a way to create one legitimate overtaking section or give them special tires that actually allow pushing 10/10 for a dozen+ laps, we might as well have three qualis and three short races.
Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
17th November 2024, 18:54
@keithedin Unfortunately, the drivers are only pushing at 90% in dry qualifying at the moment, according to Sainz, because of the current tyres.
Thus, time trial wouldn’t result in seeing the cars push at 100% either, unless the regulations were changed first (at minimum, to have non-blancmange tyres).
Dale
15th November 2024, 13:02
Cheers Greg, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Hopefully Claudio will follow you imminently.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
15th November 2024, 17:14
Bernie or bust !
Lucky
17th November 2024, 19:00
I agree! Bring Bernie back!
Get rid of Domenicalli… along with liberty…
floodo1 (@floodo1)
15th November 2024, 13:35
83yrs old and still working. That’s sad
Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
17th November 2024, 18:55
@floodo1 Not for people who enjoy their work.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
15th November 2024, 20:02
Won’t be easy to find another ceo because no one wants to do it!
Jmdan
16th November 2024, 1:31
“CEO Greg Maffei, who announced he will be stepping down last week.” Back to the future, huh? :-)
F180 (@f180)
16th November 2024, 20:34
The only requirement and qualification needed is to screw sports and fans for the maximum possible profit.
SPArtacus
17th November 2024, 12:36
And that differs from any other sport or business how?
F180 (@f180)
17th November 2024, 21:59
In three ways. The ability to block competing series, how quick they destroy the spirit of the sport and how they take away consumer and worker’s rights. Liberty has the Midas touch.