Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of the RaceFans round-up.
Comment of the day
Mark Webber’s history with Red Bull adds extra piquancy to Oscar Piastri’s fight against Max Verstappen, says @Fer-no65:
Oscar’s my guy now, just like Mark was back in those days. That 2010 was stressful as a big fan of his, and the disappointment at the end of the year didn’t help. But what a championship that was. Hopefully this year is sort of the same, with different cars having good weekends at different venues.
I also like that it’s Mark’s guy against his old team. Surely Oscar’s getting a lot of advice about how to race them: even if it’s been a long while since MW has been involved with them, some things never change, and RBR and Max are as hungry as ever. I don’t think Oscar is too worried about who he competes with, he sounds completely unfazed by anything. He’d stand a very good chance against any hot head I think.
@Fer-no65
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Fixy, Kaylee911, Tracy Brockman, Tracy and Thomas Krol!
On this day in motorsport
- Born today in 1978: Future Minardi Formula 1 driver Esteban Tuero
- 25 years ago today Mark Webber won the Formula 3000 support race for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
SteveR (@stever)
22nd April 2025, 2:20
I’m curious about Hamilton’s restaurants; what was the price of a burger? Has anyone here eaten at one of his restaurants?
S Arkazam
22nd April 2025, 7:46
And why is it the leading story on a racing website?
Wer
22nd April 2025, 8:18
Well, this is not a racing website really. It was called, and should still be called – F1Fanatic. Most of the times 100% articles on the main page are F1 related, and obviously they talk everything F1 including non-racing-related stuff.
Keith renaming it to “RaceFans” was way too overzealous. And the disonance between the website’s name and actual content annoys me as well.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
22nd April 2025, 8:50
The answer is very simple: cause hamilton is famous in the “pinnacle of motorsport”, so everything related to him makes the news here.
S Arkazam
22nd April 2025, 9:23
Indeed, like people reading ‘Royalty’ when they want an update on what’s playing in the UK :P
S Arkazam
22nd April 2025, 9:26
All that’s missing is a Vatican TikTok channel on how to make white smoke, ….
S Arkazam
22nd April 2025, 9:27
… and a WWE fight between Trump and Powell.
S Arkazam
22nd April 2025, 9:29
… and a WWE fight between Trunnp and Powell.
Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
22nd April 2025, 10:19
Expect to see stories soon about Roscoe putting on weight due to all the leftover burgers he is being fed ;P
Jungle
22nd April 2025, 10:58
He turned his nose up at the Tofu burgers
w0o0dy
22nd April 2025, 13:27
Strong UK influence on this website, that’s why.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
22nd April 2025, 8:45
The only thing that belongs in a burger, is clean quality meat. Trying to find a good burger is pretty darn hard these days. Maybe if you go to a really fancy restaurant that has it’s own butcher or something, that is close by some farms that are pretty ethical about how they care for the animals.
Otherwise it’s probably better to be a vegan, and stay away from ‘manufactured’ foods. I can count on one hand the number of ‘fast food places’ that don’t make me feel ill after I eat at one of them. Fast food these days is crazy horrible, and addictive.
A hard market to crack. Food is one of those things you have to put in, to get out, and making it on the cheap, or widely available, is almost impossible to keep up w. real demand for quality. The most successful people in fast food are selling sickness for the most part, imo.
Dex
22nd April 2025, 11:56
As far as I can see, vegans are the ones who eat the most processed food (like fake meat, dairy etc. products), at least when we discount the home made meals of course. People exploit their diet and offer them these burgers and fake this, fake that, and who knows how it’s made. Meat is full of antibiotics, hormones and whatever is in the plants that they feed animals with, and whatever is in the plants, of course, ends up in these vegan burgers.
It’s not about what we eat, but where it comes from (like you said), but we don’t have much control over it. And since many can’t afford to be too picky, they can’t really afford to pay 30-40% or more extra for supposedly healthy products.
Anyway, like someone said already, why are we talking about this here lol? What’s next, Racefans, burger ratings we can complain about and generate traffic?
Talby (@maichael)
22nd April 2025, 12:04
If we don’t need animal products to thrive, can exploiting and killing them be in any way ethical?
“It is the position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan, diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. These diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes. Plant-based diets are more environmentally sustainable than diets rich in animal products because they use fewer natural resources and are associated with much less environmental damage.”
Miane
22nd April 2025, 17:19
Protein meat is different to vegetarian protein. If you try to grow a healthy amount of muscle mass it’s really hard in a vegan diet. If you’re in a vegan diet you really need to know what’re you doing and plan your diet, it’s not as simple as to stop eating meat. To be a vegetarian is a lot easier and healthy for most people and you don’t need to kill animals, just make sure from where you’re buying.
AlanD
22nd April 2025, 19:38
Miane: “If you try to grow a healthy amount of muscle mass it’s really hard in a vegan diet”
Next time you go to the zoo, have a look at an adult male silverback gorilla. They are incredibly strong animals, far more muscle mass than humans, and I’m pretty sure they are all vegans. Whilst a lot of people claim that animal protein is superior, numerous studies over the last twenty years have shown that in properly controlled conditions, both plant and animal protein are equally effective at building muscle mass.
AlexS
22nd April 2025, 21:36
But you kill a lot of plants.
osnola
23rd April 2025, 13:30
@alanD
AlanD
23rd April 2025, 19:53
Osnola, good point, gorillas can be opportunist omnivores, though that applies to gorillas in the wild. The gorillas in zoos are just as muscular on a vegetarian diet. I know the male over at Bristol Zoo eats two buckets of vegatables per day. The lack of pork pies in his diet does not inhibit his muscular development.
hunocsi (@hunocsi)
22nd April 2025, 8:57
Keith has!
MichaelN
22nd April 2025, 16:19
Yeah, that’s probably the hook. It’s all good fun.
Unfortunate for the folks working there. Restaurants can be tricky businesses to run, and the last couple of years probably haven’t been easy. Just the other day I saw something about how the number of people going out, having dinner, doing some shopping in town still hasn’t recovered to pre-2020 levels. Just one example, of course, but once people learn to skip eating out with friends or family it can be hard to get them back in.
Sonny Crockett (@sonnycrockett)
22nd April 2025, 9:21
Yeah, I’ve eaten at the Camden branch a few times.
Nothing special about the food whatsoever and quite expensive for what it is.
I’m not surprised it’s gone under.
Jungle
22nd April 2025, 11:03
Did you wash it down with the non alcoholic tequila?
Mooa42
22nd April 2025, 2:28
RE CotD, I remember watching every one of Mark’s starts with nervous anticipation, will Mark go forwards or backwards at the start, quite often it was backwards. I have no such fears with Oscar, but I’m sure Lando fans will feel a similar nervous anticipation when Lando is starting on pole.
I can’t remember another driver in my time that shows the calmness and precision that Oscar shows, I’d love to see drivers heart rate data. I imagine at Jedda Max was maybe 140 then up to 180 at turn 1 and Oscar’s went from 75 to 77 :)
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
22nd April 2025, 6:09
Agh Mark’s Pirelli days were horrible in that sense. It was so frustrating. Kept.him.awsy from winning a couple of races in later years. Silverstone 2013 comes to mind…
MarkWebber (@markwebber)
22nd April 2025, 16:46
2013 was particularly bad because he was racing without KERS more often than not and it was a big deficit at the start. If I remember correctly, it was due to packaging problems caused by Webber’s height. The car was good enough to win both championships easily, so they never bothered to fix it.
El Pollo Loco
22nd April 2025, 6:16
He had awful starts in the Jaguar and Williams too. With those two cars, the equipment definitely played a role, but he clearly did too. By the time he got to RBR, it had clearly gotten to the point it was a psychological thing. There’s no way he has such consistently awful starts otherwise. The question was usually whether he’d lose just one or two places or 5-10. It was extremely frustrating to watch.
Ferdi
22nd April 2025, 7:11
He was just overall not very talented. Hugely flattered by that RedBull that brought even the likes of Vettel to multiple world titles. Those RedBull years, followed by the 8 Mercedes years were imho the dark ages of F1 in which monkeys might as well have competed and we would have seen the same results. I hope this massive engine focus 2026 onwards won’t produce a similar era again.
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
22nd April 2025, 12:27
Anyone but your favourites were hugely flattered by the car right?
colin
22nd April 2025, 13:55
He’s not wrong. Neither Hamilton nor Vettel have compared well against weaker team mates and especially when placed in other machinery…
Doh
22nd April 2025, 14:36
Dark ages where out of 13 seasons we had 8 championship battles and 5 of them went to the last race for a showdown (almost 6)
By F1 standards thats great. Especially when you consider the increase in race prior to then, which reduces the chances of said battle.
If anything it’s now. There’s been no championship battle since 2021. Only now this season it’s looking like there might be. Sure last season was competitive but so was 2019. So if last season was considered a title battle then so should 2019. Which would increase the count of 8 to 9btitle battles over 13 seasons. In hindsight that may have been a golden era of championship battles. Especially considering how many races there are now (26 GPs worth)
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
22nd April 2025, 18:46
@colin. He has form and im sick of bores digging out Lewis for whatever he did or didnt do. His rookie season told us all we needed to know about his talent and winning a WDC let alone 7 is unbelievably difficult. Is he the greatest? Not at 40 but you can reduce most drivers if you try hard enough. This guy tries harder than most on Lewis. You know the rest
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
22nd April 2025, 8:53
I remember a race I had taped on vhs, should still be here nowadays, probably malaysia 2004, or somewhere around there, where he qualified 2nd with the jaguar, behind schumacher, then had a horrible start, a contact with a driver and got a puncture, so was a horrible race and he retired early too, but otherwise it was a great qualifying effort for that car, and he did that on relatively low fuel, back then you could as it was the refuelling era.
Armchair Expert (@armchairexpert)
22nd April 2025, 6:00
Hamilton can’t stop losing. Don’t be surprised if he’s calling it quits at the end of the year.
Jere (@jerejj)
22nd April 2025, 6:43
RaceFans tweet: Ironically & another funny thing is that Andrea Stella managed to handshake him just before the little conversation, or he rather briefly interrupted it.
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
22nd April 2025, 12:29
Looked like Zak Brown to me but i cant see the point of the tweet, without sound its meaningless. He could’ve been saying lots of cream. lots of sugar to Ben
Mark Z.
22nd April 2025, 8:02
Another nugget I found interesting from Brundle’s column:
If Brundle is correct, that suggests that the FIA acted on Russell’s feedback to last year’s version of the guidelines:
Last year, The Race reported that the guidelines then read:
I may be going out on a limb here, but if the FIA have actually gone and simply deleted the third condition, it would seem to imply that a driver overtaking on the inside does not even need to be fully alongside at the apex to own the corner at exit — they only need to have their front axle up to the other driver’s mirror at the apex to have the right to run the other driver off the road.
This might explain the stewards’ language in their ruling:
The observation that “alongside Car 1 at the apex” is there, but almost as an aside; it seems that the controlling determination is that the front axle was alongside the mirror at the apex, and so even if the stewards deemed Verstappen were ahead slightly at the apex, as Red Bull argue, he still would not have been entitled to any room. (Ironic, considering it was Horner who, after Norris and Verstappen’s battle at Mexico City, complained that the driving standard guidelines were making it too easy to overtake on the outside.)
This creates a confusing inconsistency: When a driver is overtaking on the outside, they can earn the right to room by being ahead at the apex and through to the exit. But when a driver is defending on the outside, there is a significantly higher bar to clear, in that they must be so far ahead that the driver on the inside does not have their front axle up to their mirror. (In Jeddah, Piastri had pulled ahead of Verstappen before reaching the braking zone — so who was overtaking whom?)
Of course, this is all based on a best guess of what the driving standards actually say. The Race actually reported the opposite of Brundle — that the tweaks this year did not influence this incident, that the guidelines still hold that Piastri needed to leave room, and that the stewards would have looked differently on the incident had they felt Verstappen could have make the corner and/or forced a collision.
It seems high time for the FIA to publish the driving guidelines so that fans can actually understand what the rules are. Is there any other sport in the world where match-defining rulings are adjudicated under a secret rulebook that the governing body refuses to publish?
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
22nd April 2025, 18:48
even RBR have moved on on this one…
MichaelN
22nd April 2025, 22:11
It’s astounding that amateurs in GT can handle racing side by side, but the premier championship in the world, open wheeled no less, is all “just run them off lol”. No wonder the drivers can barely do any passing without DRS.
El Pollo Loco
24th April 2025, 1:28
Amateurs at even the lowest levels actually. It does help that they have fenders. However, the real absurdity is that race directors and stewards in amateur racing handle these incidents better than F1 itself. Meanwhile, F1/the FIA think a rule change is required after every second incident.