Welcome to Friday’s edition of the RaceFans round-up.
Comment of the day
The new guidelines published by the FIA detailing how drivers will be punished for “misconduct” drew a lot of criticism:
The biggest issue is not with having a system in place to punish drivers for misbehaviour (although indeed that mechanism has already shown its weak spots and inconsistencies) but that the arbiters of this have been shown to abuse it to punish criticism (including well founded and important cases) of the FIA itself and criteria seem to be far to arbitrary to be deemed a solid mechanism.
@Bascb
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Ling!
On this day in motorsport
- 100 years ago today Owen Maddock was born. He designed the Cooper T51 which became the first rear-engined car to win the F1 world championship, in 1959
- Born today in 1983: Scott Speed
- On this day last year Red Bull announced its second team had changed names again. Its new name was later confirmed as RB, though it has become Racing Bulls for 2025.
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Mog
24th January 2025, 9:19
Could not agree more with the cotd
El Pollo Loco
24th January 2025, 10:31
+1
Seems like the vast majority of media and fans also agree with this. Only an extremely tiny yet vocal minority want to defend this guy whose power base is, tellingly, delegates from developing countries with poor human rights records, little motorsport and poor ratings for corruption (namely kleptocracy).
asz
24th January 2025, 10:10
This aspect feels like a contrived issue.
Drivers probably have excellent direct access to FIA officials if they have any grievances or constructive criticism.
In case it is something that truly needs to be said out loud, well, they have world media at their fingertips.
Such a system of fines makes it just a bit costlier. Like, what, 1/100th or 1/1000th of their annual earnings (possibly, but not necessarily) sacrificed on the altar of free speech. Shouldn’t gag them if they have something important to communicate to society.
On the other hand, those same fines might help a bunch of (in many respects still immature) multimillionaire 20-somethings learn some verbal discipline when taking part in events. A puerile urge to act cool by using expletives is not really a cause to rally round.
Of course, any particular fan may not mind the language but a global organization still has some right to dictate participants how they behave towards a global audience.
Conduct itself tends to be a rather hazy issue, too, but it might be useful to impose some limits, nevertheless.
El Pollo Loco
24th January 2025, 10:25
Is this satire? Because we saw how well that worked last year…
MBS won’t even agree to tell us or the drivers where the money from these fines are going to.
Tell me, what recurring problem are these fines addressing? It’s telling that these new powers to crack down on dissent or objection have arisen in response to a problem that doesn’t exist.
asz
24th January 2025, 11:58
My point is that, effectively, it does not crack down on such reactions when they are important and well-founded. (“In case it is something that truly needs to be said out loud, well, they have world media at their fingertips.“)
What are you referring to? And was it eventually solved by “dissent or objection” which is now sadly being cracked down on?
All this hullabaloo is created by making out that MBS is an actual dictator while F1 drivers are some oppressed third-world people.
El Pollo Loco
24th January 2025, 10:41
Yeah, this all sounds like the trademark of a functional, transparent regime where driver issues will be taken seriously…
Johns
24th January 2025, 14:39
Really not interested in seeing electric cars go around a race track. I can do that at K1 speed or another go carttrack. I dont want to see computers run software
MichaelN
24th January 2025, 22:01
Great stories coming out of Maranello. Hopefully Ferrari has made that small step forward to challenge from the first round. It’s no use to win a handful of random races in the summer. The season might be long, but that just means someone who gets it right at the start can defend a lead – which is always easier than trying to overhaul a deficit.
The F1 sub-Reddit has usually done quite well to keep the list of approved sources up to date. Banning links to Twitter is a good move, considering how locked down it has become. Direct links still work (somewhat), but an account is necessary to restore basic functionality that used to exist. It’s a much poorer product than it was, and it was never that useful to begin with given the way people had to phrase things on there.