Welcome to Saturday’s edition of the RaceFans round-up.
Comment of the day
Jonas isn’t impressed with Alpine’s driver choices over recent seasons:
Seems like Team Enstone continuous to be more opportunistic and ruthless with their drivers than even Helmut Marko is.
Since Renault bought back the team they first had K-mag and Palmer, ditched K-Mag for Hulk to lead the team. When they replaced Jolyon with Sainz that was probably the most justified move. But soon they jumped on the opportunity to get in Danny Ric, shifting all the focus on him, leaving Hulkenberg as a number two before excitedly bringing in a French driver to the French team.
Anyway Ricciardo had seen enough after one year to decide he was better off elsewhere, so there was room for the Alonso comeback. But also he didn’t last too long in the team, triggering the whole Piastri fiasco that ended in them hiring Gasly as sort of a third choice.
Clearly Ocon as the incumbent driver would lead the team now, or would he?
After two years, they ousted Ocon instead to bring in Doohan even a race early. And better yet, now Doohan is under massive threat to loose his seat to Franco before starting his first season.
Amazing!
Jonas
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Mouse_Nightshirt, Taimur, Dylan Lopez, Danny Brennan and Lalit Palaparthy!
On this day in motorsport
- Born today in 1971: Luca Badoer
- 50 years ago today Jean-Pierre Jarier put his Shadow on pole position for the second race in a row, at Interlagos for the Brazilian Grand Prix
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
RandomMallard
25th January 2025, 0:46
On the topic of COTD, I think that there’s a very real possibility that without the tragic events of Spa 2019, we could have seen Anthoine Hubert in that Renault/Alpine after Ricciardo left – either instead of Alonso, or even replacing Ocon at some point. Whether that would have gone well for either Hubert or the team, unfortunately, we’ll never know.
RBAlonso (@rbalonso)
25th January 2025, 8:00
Parallels with Bianchi. Raikkonen would definitely have been out of Ferrari for 2016.
Jere (@jerejj)
25th January 2025, 6:31
Regarding COTD, they didn’t ditch K-Mag, but he simply left the team voluntarily as they were unwilling to give him a multi-year deal, which he preferred over another single-year deal at the time.
Of course, Ricciardo drove for Team Enstone for two seasons, but ‘after one year’ is still a fitting reference since the announcement about his McLaren move occurred before the 2020 season had begun.
Finally, Doohan’s performance level will certainly matter early on, but it mightn’t necessarily matter deep into the season anymore due to the buyout fee & likely incoming Argentine sponsors.
However, all in all, I see where the COTD is coming from looking at Team Enstone’s driver choices from 2016 onwards.
Jeanrien (@jeanrien)
25th January 2025, 11:47
It’s an interesting one with Alpine because to the opposite of RedBull they don’t have the results to claim the best drivers on the grid. Instead they count on the attractiveness of being a manufacturer, and it kind of worked.
For the different splits, one has to wonder if it came from the team or the drivers realising they might never reach the top end of the grid.
The appeal might even decrease a bit now that they won’t even have the manufacturer status. Not sure where they will rank in the pecking order. Clearly behind Aston and Williams, maybe even Audi at the moment.
MichaelN
25th January 2025, 10:17
As for Elkann visiting Washington, it’s important to note the relative size of the US market. It’s important, but very much a minority. If the Americans want to stick their collective heads in the sand, that’s their problem.
It won’t change the global trends. Especially not with China making a huge push to export their BEVs globally. There are certainly problems with those long term (maintenance and repair problems, specifically a lack of parts, are already sidelining many Chinese-made BEVs in that more expensive category which entered the market five-plus years ago). But Elkann is no dummy; he knows about Leapmotor and Stellantis’ broader strategy, too name just one example of Chinese partnerships with global players.
The US seem to think it’s the 1950s where they decide what happens. It’s very much not.
Miane
25th January 2025, 14:16
Isn’t relying on China very much the same as relying on Russia/Putin? Europe would be in a much better position in the long term if they goes for hybrid cars running on synthetic fuel.
MichaelN
25th January 2025, 16:25
I doubt anyone is out to rely on the Chinese as such. Hence the new EU tariffs on Chinese EVs introduced last year. A lot of European manufacturers have just been slow and sluggish, leaving a gap in the market that the Chinese are happy to fill. Which, for a wide variety of reasons, is not a great thing.
Synthetic fuels are great when weight is of prime importance, where BEVs are really bad. But using renewable energy in Europe to make synthetic fuels is a hard sell as said energy is better used to replace non-renewable sources, at least while there is still much work to be done there. And vehicles using synthetic fuels also still have emissions at the point of use, so all the benefits of BEVs in urban transportation still apply, particularly the smaller ones whose weight doesn’t introduce new environmental and safety issues.
anon
26th January 2025, 9:07
Miane, people seem to love the idea of synthetic fuels because it means they can tell themselves “I don’t need to change anything” in their current lifestyle, when the reality is that most of those investing in that technology see it as only being used in a limited number of applications in the real world.
People like to point to Porsche’s synthetic fuel plant in Chile, but Porsche have made it clear that they do not see it as a mass market product – they talk about it as an alternative for a small number of specialist cars (in their case, they’re currently using the small amount of fuel produced by that facility for the Porsche Supercup championship). There are also indications that, even as it operates at it’s current experimental scale, that facility is running into significant production problems (for example, the promises of being able to use direct air capture to source carbon dioxide is yet to be fulfilled, with the facility instead relying on importing carbon dioxide, whilst there are significant concerns in the region that any future expansion would put considerable strain on sources of water for agriculture and sanitation).
The production of synthetic fuels is inherently inefficient and requires significant energy usage, which also makes them an inherently expensive product. When you start looking at the energy demands to start producing synthetic fuels at scale, the amount of energy required is impractically high.
Since you talk about Europe, the Royal Society has produced estimates of what it would require, in terms of both capital expenditure and energy requirements, to produce synthetic fuels at a scale to meet the demands of just the aviation sector in Europe by 2040. Based on a projection of 1.4 million barrels per day, the capital costs of converting existing facilities in Europe to produce synthetic fuels at that scale was estimated to be between €280 – 560 billion.
More problematic, however, was that it would require between 1,400 – 2,100TWh of electrical power per year to power those facilities. Europe currently produces around 3,000TWh of electrical power per year, which means that the equivalent of roughly half to 70% of Europe’s current electrical power generation would need to be diverted to producing synthetic fuels just for the aviation sector.
As noted by MichaelN, in reality, even if synthetic fuels were to ever start being produced at scale, they are not going to be used in conventional road cars due to the costs and the limited volumes that could be produced. At most, they will be used for specific sectors where it is difficult to find an alternative means of powering those vehicles (heavy goods vehicles, aviation and maritime transport are currently under consideration as possible markets).