Welcome to Saturday’s edition of the RaceFans round-up.
Comment of the day
Max Verstappen’s fourth world championship puts him firmly among F1’s best drivers of all time, says @F1frog:
What a remarkable season, I think he is now in the top five best drivers of all time. The wins in Imola, Canada, Spain and Brazil and even Qatar as well were all really special performances that only a driver as good as Verstappen could have pulled off.
Norris, Leclerc and Russell are all very good but Verstappen clearly has a few tenths over them. I agree this was his best season, and if he goes through 2025 with consistently not the best car, it will make for an even more exciting season.
@F1frog
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Happy birthday to Cliffery, Kutigz and pmelton!
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An Sionnach
1st February 2025, 2:39
I agree with the comment of the day to an extent. Top five already might be a stretch. Even though I think Max should settle for good points more I think his approach does gets results that seem impossible. Is he stretching further than is sensible, or is his extreme level of technical skill something that makes these moves reasonable? Yes, in 2024 he got results in races I’m not sure any other great could have achieved.
If he spends the whole season battling in a deficient car against McLaren and Ferrari, I don’t think he’ll be the focal point as he’ll be scrapping for whatever scraps he can get. This may impact the championship to some extent, but he won’t be in contention for it.
I wonder if the Ferrari team can agree to get behind one of their drivers early on. Whoever’s ahead after three races can be their man? If so, then Lewis or Charles could possibly take it to Lando.
El Pollo Loco
1st February 2025, 2:47
You seem to be discounting Lance from the WDC battle out of hand. Bold take.
An Sionnach
1st February 2025, 3:08
Very funny! Yes, I’m trying to simplify, and I’m assuming the cars won’t be that different to the end of last season. If Jordan/Blah/Aston surprises everyone by finally pulling the finger out and Alonso is rumbled for supplying bad data to Lance à la Mansell to Patrese in 1992, then the world surely belongs to Sir Lancelot!
Brown will not be happy, particularly if he gets to nobble Max and Ferrari, only to find that Lance, without his wings clipped and his muscles fully flexing… is impervious to sticks, stones… and words!
El Pollo Loco
1st February 2025, 3:30
Lance has been a second year driver for so long. This feels like the year when his superior talent finally shows through. Before long, the talk will be all about where Toto can lure Lance away from Point Race Jordan and if Max can fill the big brows of Lance.
PS – it’s likely Alonso was involved in the ‘92 scandal too. He already (literally) had at an FIA license at that time and we know he only deals in evil. No joke, for anyone who hasn’t seen Alonso’s first FIA’s license, they should google it. It looks like they slapped a baby’s photo on a racing license. He’s 4 years old at the time and he already looks angry. It’s beyond hilarious.
El Pollo Loco
1st February 2025, 3:38
Comical beyond belief:
https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/s/UC4XrPOLtf
El Pollo Loco
1st February 2025, 3:58
lololol, correction, he was actually three at the time the photo was taken. I’d love RF to do an article showing all the drivers’ first FIA licenses. Beyond being adorable, it’d just be funny to see how recognizable they are as toddlers or young kids. I understand our man Nige’s soup strainer was fully grown by the time he was 4 and Senna’s first license is just a blurry photo of a baby carriage going for a gap in front of a kid who was first in line.
An Sionnach
1st February 2025, 9:59
Brilliant! I see Alonso was speaking in tongues even at an early age. He’s the child from the Omen. Of course he supplied the misleading data to Patrese. Butter wouldn’t melt in the mouth of “our” Nige, and it wouldn’t fit in past the moustache, ‘neither. The reason why he was overweight is that he spent so much time in the ocean eating millions of plankton! “Golf” was just an excuse to leave all the testing duties to Piquet, Prost and others!
I can see Senna messing with those other children, blaming them for their misfortune and even convincing some of them that it was their own fault. “It’s on Netflix, so it must be true…”
Jere (@jerejj)
1st February 2025, 20:49
El Pollo Loco The text (I read the traslation in the comment section) only makes the matter of issuing a license at such an early age all the funnier, not to mention that particular license expired at the end of 1985, which I initially thought was when it was issued.
Jere (@jerejj)
1st February 2025, 6:37
FOM was lucky nothing got built on the pit building site in the past, as otherwise, they would’ve needed to look for another area within Las Vegas if not even go slightly outside city limits.
Regarding the last ’15 years ago today’ link, I’d forgotten 11 used to be the tyre set amount per driver for a single GP weekend, & as it worked in 2010, all the more reason exists for reducing the number of sets from 13 back to 11 or 12 as an intermediate for all GP weekends.
El Pollo Loco
1st February 2025, 9:11
Why do you want less sets of tires?
An Sionnach
1st February 2025, 10:05
If they reduce the sets along with the current ridiculous reductions in testing down to zero to design the car… F1 will meet its pledge to be Zero a lot sooner than the ambitious 2030. Does anyone stop and ask how possible these things actually are? Only if there’s no F1?
Jere (@jerejj)
1st February 2025, 10:12
El Pollo Loco Fewer sets would end up unused during a given weekend, or at least the chance would be lower.
Teams that regularly fail to reach Q3 or even Q2 under normal circumstances would certainly survive with one or two fewer sets.
anon
1st February 2025, 13:59
@jerejj Pirelli have confirmed that, if the tyres have not been fitted to the rims, then they re-use the tyres in later events. The teams might have that many sets of tyres, but they don’t necessarily have to use all of those sets of tyres.
Jere (@jerejj)
1st February 2025, 20:42
True, but the point is about tyres that are already fitted, i.e., those brought to GP weekends.
I understood at one point that since 2022 with the current-dimensions tyres, unused sets could be re-brought to later events.
Johns
1st February 2025, 11:56
Ok stop already. There is a budget cap. Let each team decide how best to spend their money. These kind of rules are often misguided attempts to put more randomness in the show for better TV ratings. I hate it. Let the best team win.teams should have sufficient tires, fuel, food services(Red Bull) to do their best.
An Sionnach
1st February 2025, 13:19
Perhaps given the Red Bull controversy, they should have a catering cap, too? No more than ten meals for each team on a given weekend and eleven between events. The FAI can have out of season testing too, just in case drivers are training and working on their nutrition while they think the governing body’s all seeing eyes are resting!
Craig
2nd February 2025, 9:34
I’m not sure why people are going so goo-goo over Verstappen’s season. I’m not saying he should be dropped down the ranking as he was probably most consistent overall this year but this was a long way off his best season, the many weaknesses that have been pointed out in him being put on display as he lost his overwhelming car advantage (which gave him the buffer he needed to still take the championship, thanks to every other team chopping and changing who was best at each race after).