Welcome to Thursday’s edition of the RaceFans round-up.
Comment of the day
Is Rob Smedley correct in his criticism of Formula 1 race engineers?
He says the drivers are ego maniacs, but he’s criticising the engineers, not the drivers, for being too unassertive when communicating with the drivers. Often, you can almost hear the question mark when engineers transmit “orders” they know the driver is not going to like. That or they’ll overcomplicate things by prefacing the order with a bunch of reasons that sound too much like they’re trying to make excuses which is predictably going to make the drivers push back. Keep things short and clear and don’t indulge drivers’ request for “why” or simply say “that’s what’s best for the team” rather than trying to negotiate or appeal to their team spirit.
Smedley should also remind engineers to pay attention to what’s happening in front of their faces. Often, it is clear they should come in for tyres or extend, but their simulations showed something else and they seem incapable of adjusting in real time. The best example is when we see a different tyre is five-plus seconds a lap faster and they don’t make the call despite the fact their competitors will need to come in too and they’ll end up losing so much more time trying to make whatever lap target they’re going for. Often this happens when they’re trying to eke out intermediates to make it to the dry or worse trying to skip going to intermediates before slicks.
El Pollo Loco
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Dave and Daniel Martinez!
On this day in motorsport
- Born on this day in 1952: Piercarlo Ghinzani, who entered 111 races in the eighties but failed to qualify or pre-qualify for 32 of them. He achieved a best of fifth for Osella in the 1984 Detroit Grand Prix
- 70 years ago today Juan Manuel Fangio won one of the hottest F1 races ever, single-handedly bringing his Mercedes home first at Buenos Aires. Other drivers, including his team mate Stirling Moss, had to stop due to the heat
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El Pollo Loco
16th January 2025, 0:47
Couldn’t disagree more with the COTD.
I have a lot more faith in Alpine getting a cool livery w/FB there. After all, whatever you think of the guy, he came from the fashion industry and the title winning R25 and R26 cars had one of the most gorgeous liveries in F1 history. They don’t call him Flivery Briatore for nothing. The Benettons had a few great liveries too.
I know some are disgruntled about him not keeping his SF seat and not getting the RBR driver, but I’m super excited for Sainz at Williams. I think great things are going to end up coming from that pairing.
Sumedh
16th January 2025, 4:44
You remember that fruit salad custard livery from 2008 and 2009, don’t you? That was also Flavio.
SteveP
16th January 2025, 7:25
Briatore will have had zero input to either livery set – other than, maybe, squiggling his initials on a document to tell all the non-execs that it was approved.
Still, if he collects the praise for one example of no effort, why not put up with the criticism of the other examples of no effort?
anon
16th January 2025, 20:50
SteveP, and that assumes that the designs came from within the Renault team, which is not always the case – at least some of the liveries that Renault used in 2006 were designed by external parties.
I would agree that El Pollo Loco is perhaps giving Briatore a bit too much credit there, and whilst he claims that “They don’t call him Flivery Briatore for nothing”, that doesn’t actually seem to be a nickname that anybody else uses.
Johns
17th January 2025, 3:09
My favorite F1 T shirt was the colors of benneton from pheonix gp. Until it was confiscated by a dear friend
El Pollo Loco
16th January 2025, 11:01
The 2009 version was pretty cool actually because, instead of the blue wing like in 2008, it was yellow and that looked so much cleaner. With the blue, it looked like a casino carpet. Considering what they had to work with, the unattractive ING logo and colors, they did a decent job considering the fact.
At Benetton too, which he managed on behalf of the brand’s owner, they had so many awesome liveries. While obviously he wasn’t designing them, you can be sure he was being given a bunch of art mockup versions to choose from and he seemed to choose a lot of classics.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
16th January 2025, 17:55
Benetton had some pretty cool multi-coloured liveries back in the day. I always quite liked them. Probably not much to do with Flavio but all the same. A lot of today’s cars are quite dull in comparison. Especially when the teams wish to save weight by not adding paint to their cars!
Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
17th January 2025, 22:30
I think that was also 2007, after losing a major sponsor and not being able to replace it like-for-like. This resulted in a livery that resembled an abstract fried breakfast.
Picasso 1.9D FTW (@picasso-19d-ftw)
16th January 2025, 8:33
😂 I only disagree with part of the COTD, EPL, which is the implication that various tactical/strategic decisions are down to the engineer. As you know, in reality tyre choices in particular will depend on the advice from the strategist, and other decisions may come from the principal. The engineer is just a mouthpiece then, and even if it’s plain to us that e.g. there’s a big delta with new tyres, the engineer isn’t really the one to make the call. No doubt you’re correct that other decisions are in their hands, though, and could be made faster (what to do about mechanical issues, issues on track etc etc).
Jere (@jerejj)
16th January 2025, 6:38
Indeed zero room for Algarve, let alone chance against quite a few more lucrative non-European options, which means that the overall European round amount will decrease in the long-term if anything, & consequently, the scope for even bi-annual rotation is limited, not that Algarve has even been on the table as an annual location at any point since the temporary events in the early-2020s, especially as it’s location is relatively isolated & thus difficult to access.
The car on those paper images is definitely an old one, so nothing sort of a giveaway for the A525 livery.
I wouldn’t mind if pink became the predominant color as a regular thing rather than only for early & late-season rounds.
MichaelN
16th January 2025, 9:32
Drones in the Indycar broadcast sounds good. That clip of a high-speed drone following the Red Bull around parts of Silverstone was great. That probably won’t be possible in live racing, but it showed what’s possible.
Come to think of it, wasn’t there a lot more filming from helicopters in F1 a couple of years ago? Seems to mostly be static camera’s now, but maybe that’s just perception.
El Pollo Loco
16th January 2025, 11:08
Probably less of it since drivers began whining about aero interference from the helicopters. They should be able to use drones a lot considering you can use fiber optic connected ones which you can ensure won’t somehow fall out of the air. That, or I’m sure they could make them so light and encased in something soft enough that in the unlikely event a pro operator had a system failure that dropped it on the circuit, it wouldn’t present a danger to drivers. That or only allow them above slow and medium speed corners.
Whatever the case, I think F1 fans and media really need to make a collective effort to push F1 to improve how they shoot the races. Not only do they fail to show the cars’ speed and amazing change of direction or ever capture how wildly fast they slow down, they make the cars look like they’re just crawling around. They seem to love the worst of all shots: the straight away zoom.
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
16th January 2025, 13:16
Yes, it was the braking that got my attention in those Red Bull videos. The brutal changes of velocity. Maybe it would be best if the drones hang around slow corners to capture that.
Once they find a way to plonk a big Aramco, Qatar or AWS logo in aerial drone shots, maybe Liberties will embrace them more.
Jere (@jerejj)
16th January 2025, 18:43
To me, helicopter footage has seemed just as frequent in the recent past as always before nor do I recall anyone ever complaining about helicopters affecting aero, which they couldn’t in any case as their altitudes are always too high for any influence.
El Pollo Loco
17th January 2025, 7:09
There have been more than handful of cases ranging from Sainz to Stroll. The teams were actually able to use data to prove the helicopter
did have an effect. As usual with F1, it’s doubtful the level of impact merited any changes.