Welcome to Sunday’s edition of the RaceFans round-up.
Comment of the day
Formula E has introduced a new ‘pit boost’ feature which requires drivers to make a mandatory pit stop during either of the two races during a double-header, in order to receive a 600kW boost for half a minute. But LyndaMarks wasn’t impressed with its debut this weekend:
I really don’t like the new pit boost thing they used in Formula E. It completely messed up the flow of the race and made things harder to follow.
The revised Jeddah layout also managed to made a horrid track even worse.
LyndaMarks
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Johns
16th February 2025, 2:32
For formulae, why dont they just pull a winner out of hat. For a better show they can hire vanna white. How contrived, i hope this is not a prelude to what ben is going to do to f1
S Arkazam
16th February 2025, 7:28
F1 could try something similar though spice up the confusion; make it mandatory for each driver to pick 50% of GPs where they will race backwards.
The excitement with the pundits when teams take the covers off the cars before the start.
Jere (@jerejj)
16th February 2025, 6:16
I agree that the chance increases, but whether the chance itself is ‘high’ depends on the team’s competitive level relative to their direct rivals.
The new Alpine driving suit looks great, but I’m still not fully used to Gasly’s haircut in case it remains his new standard.
S Arkazam
16th February 2025, 7:30
I would’ve gone for horizontal stripes to match the haircuts.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
16th February 2025, 10:58
Yes. I am not sure it suits him that short. Just doesn’t look right. But it saves weight! I am available for style consultations…LOL.
black (@black)
16th February 2025, 8:26
Wow, Alpine are really going big in weight-saving.. last year they removed all paint from the car, this year all excess hair from the drivers.. God knows what they’ll come up with in 2026
Craig
16th February 2025, 11:01
I’m in 2 minds about whether the Jeddah layout Formula E used was better then Diriyah’s, but I can’t say either were particularly great. Still, both races were entertaining.
lynn-m
16th February 2025, 14:20
I think the Diriyah layout was better primarily because of the first sector of that track with what’s become known as the ‘bobsleigh’ section which has a pretty nice flow to it and the elevation, camber & bumps through that section also created a great little challenge for those cars as they always tended to move around a bit through it.
And it was always fun watching the cars through that section of circuit because of those elements.
The rest of the circuit was more straightforward but not awful and it tended to create good racing with a few good overtaking opportunities for those cars.
For the layout they used in Jeddah is was essentially a hairpin and then 2 long straights that had 4 tight micky mouse chicanes added into them. The racing was fine but it just didn’t create any interesting challenge or feature any section that was especially fun to watch the cars driving through.
MichaelN
16th February 2025, 15:01
Good to see F3 making that move to a new fuel. The article doesn’t give much details, but it’s still interesting to see they’ve had to do quite a bit of work on the engine mapping to get the new fuel to deliver similar performance and reliability.