Welcome to Sunday’s edition of the RaceFans round-up.
Comment of the day
Formula 1 needs a better reason to reintroduce V10s than the one being put forward so far, says Levente:
Alonso says that the sports should not introduce changes for the sake of the show only. For many decades, we were told F1 is the peak of car technology.
So to roll back to an archaic spec, done for the sake of the show raises questions, not just if the series wants to be still the peak of tech, but is it a sport or a show? Because for the last decade we see increasing number of changes to increase the entertainment.
Will FIFA mic up players from next year and mandate them to shout as much as possible so there will be more thrills at nil-nil bore-fests?
I’m not against reintroduction of V10s, but it needs a solid reasoning beyond ‘think about the show’. Levente (@Leventebandi)
'This season is a great season to really focus on our betting because we're going to see so much jeopardy on the track and who knows what's going to happen with the regulation changes next year.'
'It is understood that Lawson’s poor performance in the opening race in Melbourne was too much for Marko, the no-nonsense developer of the team’s junior programme. Horner made an argument to give Lawson another chance, which he got in China, but he again underperformed, finishing 12th.'
'There’s a lot of rumours saying the car is built for Max, but the car is built to be the quickest car possible. You have a driving style, and Max is aggressive and likes a pointy car, because a pointy car is always the fastest car. Definitely, you don’t want an understeering car, because that’s a slower car.'
'According to those who’ve seen Belli’s influence on the upcoming design, the most recent version of the next-generation car is said to look nothing like the original rendering, with comments offered that suggest Belli has taken its appearance to a much more appealing place.'
'While all the close-up footage of Sarti’s Ferrari involved mocked-up Formula Juniors, all the genuine race footage from Monaco and Spa featured Surtees in chassis 010. Team mate Bandini took over the car after Surtees’ departure, and it was used for the last time by Ferrari at the non-points Race of Champions in early 1967 by new recruit Chris Amon. It’s the only 1966-model Ferrari F1 car to have survived the era intact. One of its sister chassis, 011, was used by Pininfarina as the basis for its Sigma F1 concept car, while the other was destroyed in a racing crash.'
Eddie Jordan, who died earlier this month, would have been 77 today
Born on this day in 1948: Eddie Jordan, who entered F1 with his eponymous team in 1991 and saw them win four grands prix before he sold up in 2005. He passed away earlier this month.
Born on this day in 1961: Mike Thackwell, who entered a handful of grands prix in the early eighties, won the Formula 2 title in 1984 but never got the break in grand prix racing many thought he deserved
45 years ago today Nelson Piquet scored his first F1 victory at Long Beach but Clay Regazzoni suffered paralysis after a huge crash in his Ensign
‘Engagement through betting’ has to be one of the sleaziest strategies for growing/keeping a fanbase I’ve ever heard of. But I guess when most of that growth has come from a reality show, you’ll do anything to keep those fickle masses from moving on to the next over-dramatic tripe that catches their eye.
‘Engagement through betting’ has to be one of the sleaziest strategies for growing/keeping a fanbase I’ve ever heard of.
Claiming that betting drives engagement is indeed sleazy.
They might as well go back on the tobacco advertising ban claiming that smoking helped research on lung cancer by providing more data.
And I assume the grid girls will be back soon as well.
Also grid girls serve no value to the sport either. What other sports still have such an archaic concept? Boxing, may e some other combat sports? Even WWE has gone past the era of having female dolly birds parading around for the purposes of tittifying the male audience.
But, for some reason the grid girls seemed to annoy some self-righteous little political busybodies who thrive on trying to make everyone else‘s lives as miserable as their own.
@murasamara300 and yet you seem blind to the fact that you are acting in the very same way that you complain about others in your insistence that those who have raised criticisms of grid girls must be forced to adopt your mentality.
I’m not forcing anyone to adopt anything.
Feel free to disagree. No problem at all, fire away.
I am simply putting forward the argument that grid girls did zero harm to anyone and that F1 ended up poorer for losing them.
I’m not forcing anyone to do anything. The real forcing came from the people who got them off the grids. That would have been someone with a … yup, political agenda. Or, as I like to call them: a busybody.
But why? What could be the real reason? Were the grid girls too happy? Smiling too much? Earning too much? Did they cause a worldwide umbrella shortage? Were they too “good-looking” (whatever that is)?
Were they looking too (…gasp…) feminine?
Well, whatever it was, we can’t have that! Boooo! Down with that sort of thing! Wave placards!
Am I wrong?
(I love being wrong.)
I can still complain if I want to.
It is a free world after all (I think…). :)
—————————————
If any ex grid girl happens to see this post it would be interesting to hear your take on it.
For example, were you OK with losing your job? Would you have wanted to continue or was the writing on the wall regardless?
—————————————-
@baasbas Nice baiting there, but I’m not taking it. ;-)
The models who had been “grid girls” were mighty unhappy with the move. So, the only people it seemed to make happy were those who appointed themselves to speak on behalf of them despite clearly having zero idea how they felt.
I clearly remember making a comment predicting F1 would start to incorporate betting into its business model before too long. Must have been on a article about DTS or so, can’t remember.
I had no idea it was coming that soon already, but I’m clearly not surprised one bit either.
Sleazy indeed though.
Sports pushing sports betting is the equivalent of 50s doctors pushing cigarettes as a cough remedy. In the words of a wise man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h9wStdPkQY
What? You didn’t like Laramie Juniors (now with extra tar) when you were a kid? My other ‘50s favorite was lithium advertising itself as “a soothing calmative for hysterical homemakers.” I’m guessing even back then women didn’t appreciate that description, but I’m sure the 60yo doctors and ad men at the time who were born in the 1890s thought referring to them as “hysterical homemakers” and not “dizzy broads” was pretty modern stuff.
They’ll be looking back at 2025 and thinking how advanced it is, whilst by then enjoying the effects of choosing beef tallow over vegetable oils and banning vaccinations.
I’m not against reintroducing V10s either & the part about needing solid reasoning beyond the show aspect couldn’t be more valid.
The V10 in question with synthetic fuel wouldn’t necessarily have to be the same 3.0L model used in the distant past, but it could also be a different V10 type.
I’m still in the view that if Max were to leave Red Bull Racing without seeing out his current contract situation, he’d do so after the 2026 season at the earliest to get a full idea of the team’s prospects within the upcoming technical regulation cycle.
Sports betting is a blight on society that preys on human weakness and ruins many lives.
So am I surprised FOM wants a piece of it? No, not really. They are not exactly known for their moral values. Let alone have they ever said no to anything that brings them money regardless of morality.
If FOM think it will make money and keep people interested, they will do anything. They’re an American company after all. For the majority of these, the bottom line is ALL that matters.
FOM is British, but even then this is hardly new behaviour that just started since Liberty bought it. This stuff is ingrained in F1 since Bernie at least.
FOM is an American-owned business with a headquarters building in the UK.
It’s as British as ARM Holdings (created in a village on the edge of Cambridge)
Not surprised – but it’s wholly typical of a sport that would still embrace (to an extent it even still takes their money) tobacco money if the tobacco companies themselves hadn’t committed to stop under enormous international pressure.
So to roll back to an archaic spec, done for the sake of the show raises questions, not just if the series wants to be still the peak of tech, but is it a sport or a show
Motorsport is archaic. F1 is archaic. The cars aren’t the ‘peak of technology’ either, they really are a highly developed and refined version of old technology in some ways. The FIA has spent the last 50 years outlawing every significant development for the most part. TC, ABS, Stability management, CVT etc… etc… So the argument V10s are archaic as if that’s the antithesis of F1 is a non-starter.
F1 has always been a wrestling match between sport and show. And this idea it has to be more ‘than the show’, why? What explicit reason is worth more than ‘the show’ and to make people ‘happy’ and feel like they are watching some other dimension. There seems to be some value placed on this idea F1 must move with the times, but what are the ‘times’. What are we measuring here, what must F1 be in line with. it’s so out-of-date in terms of what it is. It’s 20 teams traversing the globe in the most exclusive sport on the planet.
Absolutely, this idea that F1 is some technological marvel is just marketing. Even many small city cars have more advanced systems on board than F1 cars, from the gearbox, suspension and a variety brake systems. Less performance, sure, but more advanced.
F1 rules are made to achieve certain laptimes while incorporating elements that appeal to manufacturers and help the show. Nothing wrong with that, nobody needs F1 cars with active suspensions, automated gearboxes, full on ground effect, movable aero, traction control and ABS. For what? A 1.15 laptime at Spa?
Feels odd to see F1 courting betting when it’s going the way of cigarettes, ever tighter advertising rules.
F1 must be a awkward thing to bet on as well given the existence of post race penalties. Sometimes the result can be changes hours later, even days or weeks later on occasion.
F1 must be a awkward thing to bet on as well given the existence of post race penalties. Sometimes the result can be changes hours later, even days or weeks later on occasion.
With the history of F1 – lead shot added at refuel stops 1984, crashgate 2008, & fastest lap point grab by the B team 2024 – spring to mind as examples of a continuing series.
None of that seems to fit the normal requirement of an honest competition that you could place a bet on. If you were foolish enough to risk your hard-earned.
That was rather the point.
The nearest I’ve ever come to betting is donating to charity via a raffle and, sometimes, ending up with something that exceeds the value of my ticket(s).
Ah, now if you are going down that track, the bank has my money, and they gamble with it – a fact I lectured my bank manager* on when he started talking about needing to be careful with the bank’s money.
So, yes, a bit of gambling, but not really voluntarily.
Betting should be illegal (everywhere). F1 greedy owners, since you want to profit of (and/or create) someone’s addiction, I honestly wish you to face addiction problems in your own families; no matter which kind as long as its as equally nasty as gambling addiction is. This is reaching the bottom. I wanna puke…
Given the size of the commercial rights revenue, it’s a bit a surprise F1 still has such a low bar for its partners, from betting sites to crypto scams.
While the occasional bet can be fun, especially when its part of a social experience to watch together (like the FIFA World Cup final), that’s obviously not the way these companies make the bulk of their money. They hire proverbial armies of psychologists to best tweak the experience to exploit vulnerable people so they get addicted. And all this without a care for the consequences this has to these individuals. These are sleazy companies indeed.
For a prime example of a betting “stakeholder CEO”, you can look up Denise Coates (owner of Bet365) on Wikipedia. I’m not linking but it’s easy to find.
Moved the company from Stoke to Gibraltar in 2015. Apparently because of Gibraltar’s “favourable regulations”. I wonder what “regulations” that might be.
Took £422 million out of Bet365 in 2020 alone – that’s in ONE year – and is “worth” nine and a half billion pounds (with a “b”). But that’s all well and great because “one rule for thee, all ye poor working peons who just got your taxes hiked”.
With more betting coming into F1 (whether we like it or not), maybe this successful role model of a CEO can build a second helipad at her £90 million mansion and take out a few more hundred million pounds out of Bet365 every year … on the backs of the families of gambling addicts with zero hope.
I much preferred the grid girls. They were a positive influence.
I know they won’t but i’d really love to see Indycar go back to the CART days and allow multiple chassis suppliers again as well as allowing teams to develop there own bits & pieces if they want.
I just find spec chassis series where you just have a grid of identical cars with no interest in terms of development through the season to be quite uninteresting to follow and since Indycar went down the spec direction it’s just always felt like a shadow of its former self and much less of a top tier series as it once did.
Back when Indycar was a more open formula there was so much more buzz around it and it was far more of a genuine alternative to F1 while now essentially just feels more like a faster version of F2 and thats a shame given how incredible & how crazy popular the series used to be.
With a spec chassis if the car looks bad then they all look bad, With chassis competition just because one looks bad doesn’t mean the whole grid looks bad. I mean CART having multiple chassis gave us the Reynard’s which I think are some of the best looking race cars that ever graced Indycar style racing (I also thought the Reynard F3000 cars looked way better than the Lola’s….. Reynard always made good looking cars in the categories they competed in imo).
Back when Indycar was a more open formula there was so much more buzz around it and it was far more of a genuine alternative to F1
What you say is so non-sensical my eyes hurt reading it!!!
You could equally say: back in the 1950s when there were much fewer sponsorship stickers on the cars and the cars were much less safe.
IndyCar had more buzz in the 1990s because the racing was super exciting and the cars looked awesome (and pretty identical too, mind that!) and were bloody fast, and the tracks were super cool too. It had nothing, zero, null to do with the open formula.
The open formula didn’t even add much conversation, if any at all!! Outside of comparing top speeds at super ovals between different engines, there was nothing to discuss.
If a given chassis was fast – it was fast all season, if some chassis was a bit slower – it was a bit slower all season. In general, – unlike in F1 – all chassis were always competitive and closely matched.
The manufacturers didn’t bring a new aero update every race like they do in F1 in 2025. The cars looked the same and drove the same for the entire season. There were no internet sites to report new tech updates like there is in 2025, and there were no new tech developements to update on anyway.
In Europe, we would all tune in to Eurosport 10 min before the the start of the race – as the coverage didn’t include more than a 15-30min of build-up (if that!), so the actual race was all we ever watched. As oppose to Formula 1, there was never any news on IndyCar other than reporting on the races and crashes. And there was no tech talk during the races either.
You tech fetishists really exaggerate with that tech obsession of yours.
Not only should grid girls should be back, but F1 management deserves to go on trial for, what I am sure is a clear violation of some human right or the like, such as firing/not hiring an entire group of people based on their gender.
All women who have worked as grid girls in the 3 seasong prior to the ban should get full back pay, with interest!
3% for the brunettes
5% for the blondes
6,9% for the redheads
Ah, a lovely new chapter in the continuous search for more revenue. Just leave it up to the Americans, eventually they destroy the beauty in everything in life. The world biggest toddlers.
JoshAtTwo
30th March 2025, 3:14
‘Engagement through betting’ has to be one of the sleaziest strategies for growing/keeping a fanbase I’ve ever heard of. But I guess when most of that growth has come from a reality show, you’ll do anything to keep those fickle masses from moving on to the next over-dramatic tripe that catches their eye.
El Pollo Loco
30th March 2025, 5:42
+1
What’s next? F1 drivers on OnlyFans or “driver tested and approved” escort services? What a gross, low class association for F1 to pursue.
Shimks (@shimks)
30th March 2025, 6:06
I agree. Valtteri’s calendars are enough for me.
S Arkazam
30th March 2025, 9:02
Claiming that betting drives engagement is indeed sleazy.
They might as well go back on the tobacco advertising ban claiming that smoking helped research on lung cancer by providing more data.
And I assume the grid girls will be back soon as well.
MurasamaRA300 (@murasamara300)
30th March 2025, 10:23
Definitely hope grid girls will be back. Would be great.
They never did any harm to anyone whatsoever.
As for betting… nah… pass.
rprp
30th March 2025, 14:36
Also grid girls serve no value to the sport either. What other sports still have such an archaic concept? Boxing, may e some other combat sports? Even WWE has gone past the era of having female dolly birds parading around for the purposes of tittifying the male audience.
Imre (@f1mre)
30th March 2025, 17:38
Cheerleaders?
MurasamaRA300 (@murasamara300)
30th March 2025, 18:16
So exactly what harm did they do?
Zero.
But, for some reason the grid girls seemed to annoy some self-righteous little political busybodies who thrive on trying to make everyone else‘s lives as miserable as their own.
Truth.
anon
30th March 2025, 19:15
@murasamara300 and yet you seem blind to the fact that you are acting in the very same way that you complain about others in your insistence that those who have raised criticisms of grid girls must be forced to adopt your mentality.
baasbas
30th March 2025, 19:23
@murasamara300
Interesting take.
What actual harm did these busybodies do to you then?
MurasamaRA300 (@murasamara300)
30th March 2025, 21:11
I’m not forcing anyone to adopt anything.
Feel free to disagree. No problem at all, fire away.
I am simply putting forward the argument that grid girls did zero harm to anyone and that F1 ended up poorer for losing them.
I’m not forcing anyone to do anything. The real forcing came from the people who got them off the grids. That would have been someone with a … yup, political agenda. Or, as I like to call them: a busybody.
But why? What could be the real reason? Were the grid girls too happy? Smiling too much? Earning too much? Did they cause a worldwide umbrella shortage? Were they too “good-looking” (whatever that is)?
Were they looking too (…gasp…) feminine?
Well, whatever it was, we can’t have that! Boooo! Down with that sort of thing! Wave placards!
Am I wrong?
(I love being wrong.)
I can still complain if I want to.
It is a free world after all (I think…). :)
—————————————
If any ex grid girl happens to see this post it would be interesting to hear your take on it.
For example, were you OK with losing your job? Would you have wanted to continue or was the writing on the wall regardless?
—————————————-
@baasbas Nice baiting there, but I’m not taking it. ;-)
El Pollo Loco
31st March 2025, 4:23
The models who had been “grid girls” were mighty unhappy with the move. So, the only people it seemed to make happy were those who appointed themselves to speak on behalf of them despite clearly having zero idea how they felt.
Sonny Crockett (@sonnycrockett)
30th March 2025, 10:17
Well said!
What next? Engagement through vaping?!
El Pollo Loco
31st March 2025, 4:24
Well, McLaren’s long had a vape brand on their car.
rsp123 (@rsp123)
30th March 2025, 12:03
+1 Gambling, akin to Heroin.
Coventry Climax
30th March 2025, 14:38
I clearly remember making a comment predicting F1 would start to incorporate betting into its business model before too long. Must have been on a article about DTS or so, can’t remember.
I had no idea it was coming that soon already, but I’m clearly not surprised one bit either.
Sleazy indeed though.
Mirko007
30th March 2025, 16:10
Aussie GT3 has an Onlyfans car and driver… haven’t checked the details except that she needs a new co-driver
faulty (@faulty)
31st March 2025, 3:59
An onlyfans car falls on the icky side for me.
Thanks, but I’ll pass.
Ferdi
31st March 2025, 11:38
+1
Maciek (@maciek)
30th March 2025, 3:24
Sports pushing sports betting is the equivalent of 50s doctors pushing cigarettes as a cough remedy. In the words of a wise man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h9wStdPkQY
El Pollo Loco
30th March 2025, 5:50
What? You didn’t like Laramie Juniors (now with extra tar) when you were a kid? My other ‘50s favorite was lithium advertising itself as “a soothing calmative for hysterical homemakers.” I’m guessing even back then women didn’t appreciate that description, but I’m sure the 60yo doctors and ad men at the time who were born in the 1890s thought referring to them as “hysterical homemakers” and not “dizzy broads” was pretty modern stuff.
MurasamaRA300 (@murasamara300)
30th March 2025, 10:13
And in another 60 years, people will look back on these times… and have a field day.
Sonny Crockett (@sonnycrockett)
30th March 2025, 10:19
Not the way the US is going.
They’ll be looking back at 2025 and thinking how advanced it is, whilst by then enjoying the effects of choosing beef tallow over vegetable oils and banning vaccinations.
El Pollo Loco
31st March 2025, 4:25
Measles vaccinations are incredibly deadly… when you don’t take them.
pastaman
30th March 2025, 4:47
Beware any time a for-profit company uses the work “engagement”
Jere (@jerejj)
30th March 2025, 6:51
I’m not against reintroducing V10s either & the part about needing solid reasoning beyond the show aspect couldn’t be more valid.
The V10 in question with synthetic fuel wouldn’t necessarily have to be the same 3.0L model used in the distant past, but it could also be a different V10 type.
I’m still in the view that if Max were to leave Red Bull Racing without seeing out his current contract situation, he’d do so after the 2026 season at the earliest to get a full idea of the team’s prospects within the upcoming technical regulation cycle.
Ideals (@ideals)
30th March 2025, 7:00
Sports betting is a blight on society that preys on human weakness and ruins many lives.
So am I surprised FOM wants a piece of it? No, not really. They are not exactly known for their moral values. Let alone have they ever said no to anything that brings them money regardless of morality.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
30th March 2025, 10:52
If FOM think it will make money and keep people interested, they will do anything. They’re an American company after all. For the majority of these, the bottom line is ALL that matters.
Ideals (@ideals)
30th March 2025, 11:38
FOM is British, but even then this is hardly new behaviour that just started since Liberty bought it. This stuff is ingrained in F1 since Bernie at least.
SteveP
30th March 2025, 13:59
FOM is an American-owned business with a headquarters building in the UK.
It’s as British as ARM Holdings (created in a village on the edge of Cambridge)
BasCB (@bascb)
31st March 2025, 7:53
Not surprised – but it’s wholly typical of a sport that would still embrace (to an extent it even still takes their money) tobacco money if the tobacco companies themselves hadn’t committed to stop under enormous international pressure.
Alan Dove
30th March 2025, 9:00
Regarding COTD
Motorsport is archaic. F1 is archaic. The cars aren’t the ‘peak of technology’ either, they really are a highly developed and refined version of old technology in some ways. The FIA has spent the last 50 years outlawing every significant development for the most part. TC, ABS, Stability management, CVT etc… etc… So the argument V10s are archaic as if that’s the antithesis of F1 is a non-starter.
F1 has always been a wrestling match between sport and show. And this idea it has to be more ‘than the show’, why? What explicit reason is worth more than ‘the show’ and to make people ‘happy’ and feel like they are watching some other dimension. There seems to be some value placed on this idea F1 must move with the times, but what are the ‘times’. What are we measuring here, what must F1 be in line with. it’s so out-of-date in terms of what it is. It’s 20 teams traversing the globe in the most exclusive sport on the planet.
MichaelN
30th March 2025, 9:48
Absolutely, this idea that F1 is some technological marvel is just marketing. Even many small city cars have more advanced systems on board than F1 cars, from the gearbox, suspension and a variety brake systems. Less performance, sure, but more advanced.
F1 rules are made to achieve certain laptimes while incorporating elements that appeal to manufacturers and help the show. Nothing wrong with that, nobody needs F1 cars with active suspensions, automated gearboxes, full on ground effect, movable aero, traction control and ABS. For what? A 1.15 laptime at Spa?
floodo1 (@floodo1)
30th March 2025, 10:45
Is promoting gambling the sleeziest thing F1 has done?
Coventry Climax
30th March 2025, 13:52
If it wasn’t, but came -say- second, would that make it OK?
It’s OK if I dump my car’s used oil into the woods, river or sewage, because there’s other people doing it too?
I don’t need any morality, because there’s others that lack it too?
Is that line of thinking the reason we see so many knifings these days?
BLS (@brightlampshade)
30th March 2025, 11:50
Feels odd to see F1 courting betting when it’s going the way of cigarettes, ever tighter advertising rules.
F1 must be a awkward thing to bet on as well given the existence of post race penalties. Sometimes the result can be changes hours later, even days or weeks later on occasion.
SteveP
30th March 2025, 13:40
With the history of F1 – lead shot added at refuel stops 1984, crashgate 2008, & fastest lap point grab by the B team 2024 – spring to mind as examples of a continuing series.
None of that seems to fit the normal requirement of an honest competition that you could place a bet on. If you were foolish enough to risk your hard-earned.
Coventry Climax
30th March 2025, 13:55
Which betting is by nature, and they apparently seek to promote.
SteveP
30th March 2025, 15:39
That was rather the point.
The nearest I’ve ever come to betting is donating to charity via a raffle and, sometimes, ending up with something that exceeds the value of my ticket(s).
Coventry Climax
30th March 2025, 18:12
You sure you don’t own shares of some kind? Either voluntary of shoved down your throat by means of some obligatory government pension scheme?
SteveP
30th March 2025, 18:48
Ah, now if you are going down that track, the bank has my money, and they gamble with it – a fact I lectured my bank manager* on when he started talking about needing to be careful with the bank’s money.
So, yes, a bit of gambling, but not really voluntarily.
* I’ve always been quiet, shy and retiring :)
Dex
30th March 2025, 13:46
Betting should be illegal (everywhere). F1 greedy owners, since you want to profit of (and/or create) someone’s addiction, I honestly wish you to face addiction problems in your own families; no matter which kind as long as its as equally nasty as gambling addiction is. This is reaching the bottom. I wanna puke…
MichaelN
30th March 2025, 14:05
Given the size of the commercial rights revenue, it’s a bit a surprise F1 still has such a low bar for its partners, from betting sites to crypto scams.
While the occasional bet can be fun, especially when its part of a social experience to watch together (like the FIFA World Cup final), that’s obviously not the way these companies make the bulk of their money. They hire proverbial armies of psychologists to best tweak the experience to exploit vulnerable people so they get addicted. And all this without a care for the consequences this has to these individuals. These are sleazy companies indeed.
Coventry Climax
30th March 2025, 18:20
Well, at least it’s pretty clear now what it means for a next team coming into F1 in terms of bringing added value to the
sportshow.MurasamaRA300 (@murasamara300)
1st April 2025, 9:34
For a prime example of a betting “stakeholder CEO”, you can look up Denise Coates (owner of Bet365) on Wikipedia. I’m not linking but it’s easy to find.
Moved the company from Stoke to Gibraltar in 2015. Apparently because of Gibraltar’s “favourable regulations”. I wonder what “regulations” that might be.
Took £422 million out of Bet365 in 2020 alone – that’s in ONE year – and is “worth” nine and a half billion pounds (with a “b”). But that’s all well and great because “one rule for thee, all ye poor working peons who just got your taxes hiked”.
With more betting coming into F1 (whether we like it or not), maybe this successful role model of a CEO can build a second helipad at her £90 million mansion and take out a few more hundred million pounds out of Bet365 every year … on the backs of the families of gambling addicts with zero hope.
I much preferred the grid girls. They were a positive influence.
Roger Ayles (@roger-ayles)
30th March 2025, 14:38
I know they won’t but i’d really love to see Indycar go back to the CART days and allow multiple chassis suppliers again as well as allowing teams to develop there own bits & pieces if they want.
I just find spec chassis series where you just have a grid of identical cars with no interest in terms of development through the season to be quite uninteresting to follow and since Indycar went down the spec direction it’s just always felt like a shadow of its former self and much less of a top tier series as it once did.
Back when Indycar was a more open formula there was so much more buzz around it and it was far more of a genuine alternative to F1 while now essentially just feels more like a faster version of F2 and thats a shame given how incredible & how crazy popular the series used to be.
With a spec chassis if the car looks bad then they all look bad, With chassis competition just because one looks bad doesn’t mean the whole grid looks bad. I mean CART having multiple chassis gave us the Reynard’s which I think are some of the best looking race cars that ever graced Indycar style racing (I also thought the Reynard F3000 cars looked way better than the Lola’s….. Reynard always made good looking cars in the categories they competed in imo).
Wer
31st March 2025, 17:35
What you say is so non-sensical my eyes hurt reading it!!!
You could equally say: back in the 1950s when there were much fewer sponsorship stickers on the cars and the cars were much less safe.
IndyCar had more buzz in the 1990s because the racing was super exciting and the cars looked awesome (and pretty identical too, mind that!) and were bloody fast, and the tracks were super cool too. It had nothing, zero, null to do with the open formula.
The open formula didn’t even add much conversation, if any at all!! Outside of comparing top speeds at super ovals between different engines, there was nothing to discuss.
If a given chassis was fast – it was fast all season, if some chassis was a bit slower – it was a bit slower all season. In general, – unlike in F1 – all chassis were always competitive and closely matched.
The manufacturers didn’t bring a new aero update every race like they do in F1 in 2025. The cars looked the same and drove the same for the entire season. There were no internet sites to report new tech updates like there is in 2025, and there were no new tech developements to update on anyway.
In Europe, we would all tune in to Eurosport 10 min before the the start of the race – as the coverage didn’t include more than a 15-30min of build-up (if that!), so the actual race was all we ever watched. As oppose to Formula 1, there was never any news on IndyCar other than reporting on the races and crashes. And there was no tech talk during the races either.
You tech fetishists really exaggerate with that tech obsession of yours.
Jon
30th March 2025, 15:25
V10s are archaic.
Meanwhile.
Gambling is the way of the future.
Cranberry
31st March 2025, 11:44
Not only should grid girls should be back, but F1 management deserves to go on trial for, what I am sure is a clear violation of some human right or the like, such as firing/not hiring an entire group of people based on their gender.
All women who have worked as grid girls in the 3 seasong prior to the ban should get full back pay, with interest!
3% for the brunettes
5% for the blondes
6,9% for the redheads
Done.
MurasamaRA300 (@murasamara300)
1st April 2025, 9:48
Hear, hear!
Ferdi
31st March 2025, 11:48
Ah, a lovely new chapter in the continuous search for more revenue. Just leave it up to the Americans, eventually they destroy the beauty in everything in life. The world biggest toddlers.