Welcome to Saturday’s edition of the RaceFans round-up.
Comment of the day
Do you find knowing the conversations drivers have with their race engineers takes away some of the mystique of motorsport?
On the one hand, I really like these articles for the detailed look behind the curtain and fascinating peek into the complexities of modern race car technology.
On the other hand, I wish that the radio comms wouldn’t be published, so I could tell myself that the driver is actually the one driving the car. Reading this left me thinking “just put the engineer in the car already. He’s doing all the driving anyway”.
Bob C
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On this day in motorsport
- Born today in 1994: Daniil Kvyat, who raced for Red Bull in Formula 1 and scored a best finish of second in the 2015 Hungarian Grand Prix before losing his seat to Max Verstappen the following year
- 55 years ago today Chris Amon won the non-championship BRDC International Trophy at Silverstone over two heats
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Jere (@jerejj)
26th April 2025, 6:35
I see the point in the COTD, but ultimately I’ve never minded about radio comms getting published at all & I don’t think they necessarily give such a misleading idea.
Reuters: Perhaps a somewhat biased view, given he grew up in Madrid, but that’s certainly a possibility, so we’ll see.
Talksport: I wonder how that one helmet got stolen in the first place.
What a close call in IndyCar & totally avoiding a collision or even marginal contact was purely down to luck.
isthatglock21
28th April 2025, 21:07
Not just a possibility. The Sainz family are heavily tied to far right Spanish poltical parties & nationalist movements, big reason as to why he’s never liked Barcelona with it being a Catalan region with a independence movement. His bias extends far more than just growing up in Madrid
El Pollo Loco
1st May 2025, 10:10
That’s icky to learn about. Makes me not a Carlos fan suddenly.
black (@black)
26th April 2025, 7:43
I really don’t understand Liberty on this Madrid street circuit. The other recent street circuits, not matter if they’re bad or not, at least try to ‘capture’ some of the glitz of each location:
– Singapore, Baku, Las Vegas are held close to each city’s landmarks.
– Jeddah – not that it has many landmarks – is next to Red Sea and they made it kinda unique as being super fast and dangerous.
– Miami, after they were declined to host the race downtown, they held it around the city’s big stadium, so there is this gimmick.
But the Madrid one… is just a random place where they organize fairs on the outskirts of the city. Like is that why they were so eager to leave Barcelona, so that we can experience the spectacle of having a very bad street circuit where they organize fairs…?
At the very least they could have moved the Spanish GP to Jarama circuit, still in Madrid, just 20km to the north and it looks more than decent.
As for what – the Madrid born – Sainz very ‘objectively’ said, let’s take a trip down to memory lane and see the ‘objective’ first impressions about fan favourite Yas Marina:
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
26th April 2025, 8:01
For me, one of the most egregious examples of a driver lavishing undue praise on an obviously terrible track was Ralf Schumacher offering “my compliments to the designer” after first practice on the butchered Hockenheimring in 2002.
S
26th April 2025, 8:57
I’ll take ‘butchered’ Hockenheim over the old one every day of the week.
The long circuit was basically all the things that Yas Marina is currently criticised as being – long straights interspersed by tiny chicanes. And the natural ‘scenery’ was just endless forest – hardly more interesting than the concrete walls which line most new F1 circuits today.
MichaelN
26th April 2025, 9:08
And yet the track produced quite a few good races. There are some good back and forth corners, and while there are certainly issues with some parts, it was a decent attempt to keep pace with the cars of the early 2000s.
F1 in Figures (@f1infigures)
26th April 2025, 14:15
The new Hockenheimring is not a bad track.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
26th April 2025, 18:06
But we lost an impressive speed track for that, I hated the change.
An Sionnach
26th April 2025, 10:06
Interesting comment. They may as well place a replica Eiffel Tower across the track for some eye candy. Perhaps a leaning tower of Pisa on one side, with Big Ben on the other?!?
mr_score (@mr_score)
27th April 2025, 1:42
Hmmm, think that’s the Las Vegas track you’re talking about… :D
J765
26th April 2025, 10:35
In order to understand the reasons behind the circuit, you have to understand Spanish politics.
To start with, Barcelona (though the circuit is actually in Montmeló, 20 km north of Barcelona) has never been considered truly a Spanish city by Spaniards, no matter what they say, despite all their efforts to “Spanify” it. Also, Barcelona is the only city that, so far, resists the ongoing “recentralization” in Spain, a process that has been underway for quite some time, aiming to minimize regional power at the expense of the rest of the state (“Emptied Spain”).
If you remember, Alonso cried on the Valencia podium under the Spanish anthem, yet he didn’t do that in Barcelona, because in his mind, that was the first GP he won in Spain. Ironically, Valencia is another region that was annexed to Spain at the same time, but it succumbed a long time ago and is now politically dominated by the central powers, so they consider it a truly Spanish city.
Corruption in Spain is rampant and still dominated by the same group that has been in power for almost a century.
No wonder it’s the only European country where fascism “died in bed,” and the fascist leader personally appointed his successor, who, while commanding the military, even wrote some important segments of the Constitution. With this move, they not only attempted to recentralize power (as they have been trying to do with the MWC and other big events), but also secured a juicy set of contracts to grease some palms. They learned from the Valencia fiasco — doing exactly the same thing — so this time they will probably repeat the process but hide things a bit better.
As for Liberty Media, I really don’t know why they chose Madrid, so I can only speculate.
The Formula E chairman is the son-in-law and political associate of a former right-wing Spanish prime minister. Liberty Group owns Formula E, and while Liberty Group and Liberty Media are separate entities, they are both chaired by the same person.
It’s hard to believe that the Spanish right-wing main political party, through Agag, hasn’t somehow influenced the choice of Madrid as a new F1 venue. On the other hand, after extensive manipulation, the governments of Barcelona and Catalonia have fallen into the hands of the central powers, so it’s unlikely for Circuit de Montmeló to hold anything after 2026, as the governing parties will have no intention of negotiating for it.
black (@black)
26th April 2025, 11:49
Interesting read I must say!
But my main question, is not why Madrid – different cities in a country often antagonize existing GPs held at a different city in the same country, so the Madrid vs Barcelona makes sense.
My main question is why there in Madrid, in a random exhibition place that seems quite uninspiring…
They already have a proper circuit in Madrid, Jarama, just 20km north.
They could have planned a street circuit IN Madrid or in some area that resembles Madrid more (probably hard to do given it must be hard to have all the locals and organizers agree on closing public streets etc).
They could even stage it in IFEMA but make it a more proper circuit, more challenging – even Miami despite some of its terrible sections, has some proper turns and sections that have some decent flow and it has 3 decent overtaking spots… in the Madring they throw constant slow turns to break the flow after every interesting corner, and the only overtaking spot in turn 5 would definitely cause an issue when the GP is held.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
26th April 2025, 12:00
@black I think the reason why the Madrid track is there is just plain old logistics. It’s probably easier, cheaper, to have it placed there. It’s an empty lot in a sense, and it’s very close to the airport.
As for Jarama, the track itself is in a tricky situation, similar to those in Laguna Seca or other tracks where urban developments appeared after the track: namely the neighbours complain about noise. They almost closed it for good not long ago. So putting a F1 race there would be extra difficult: not just the work needed to make it happen, or the fact that it’d not be a true MADRID event in the marketing sense, but because there’s a judicial process ongoing on activities of the track already.
black (@black)
26th April 2025, 18:17
@fer-no65 I see.. well it’s a shame because Jarama would be a decent circuit from the looks of it.
And it’s an extra shame because Spain has quite a few decent (ok not exceptional) purpose-built tracks that could host the Spanish GP instead of Barcelona… Valencia, Jerez, Aragon.
As for the ‘Madrid’ experience, unless they did a ‘Las Vegas’ and had cars run by the Spanish palace or Plaza Mayor, I doubt the industrial suburb they chose, would scream MADRID as they want to… it’ll probably have more in common with the dreadful Valencia Street Circuit.
Coventry Climax
26th April 2025, 17:33
So that makes building this anomaly OK?
In order to understand how to build a circuit, you have to understand motorracing.
Your quote is like: “In order to understand why he became a dentist, you have to understand politics”. Like that makes it OK that his patients all have rotten teeth.
I’m not interested in dentists or Spanish politics, I’m interested in good racing. Which requires good circuits.
Pretty sad that needs explanation.
some racing fan
29th April 2025, 19:06
It would have been impossible to host a Miami GP downtown (again, at least in CART/IMSA terms) with the current concrete road surface there. They would have had to change it considerably.
Keith Campbell (@keithedin)
26th April 2025, 8:53
Re-CotD – Not publishing the radio comms doesn’t solve the problem you point out though, it just obscures it from the viewer. You can make the argument that the cars are too complicated and too much input is required from the engineers to drive them, but if these things are part of F1, then I personally prefer them to be available so that people who want to look into those details can.
Adrian Hancox (@ahxshades)
26th April 2025, 9:35
Such a ridiculous statement – the fact that this is a team sport is obviously lost here. The engineer in the car wouldn’t have all the data and telemetry feeds that the pits deal with to help the driver (teamwork) so it is supercilious nonsense.
Ferdi
26th April 2025, 10:36
COTD makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as well. But with Liberty media, I guess it was inevitable that the essence of the sport would get lost.
MichaelN
26th April 2025, 11:51
That’s just a user interface issue. Right now, teams create a car that is best operated by the driver while he is constantly receiving detailed instructions. This works, but if the FIA were to change the rules, as they tried in the past, the teams would need to simplify the car such that a driver can make the changes himself. Not unlike the F1 games, which also allows players to make on the fly adjustments.
None of this is really the best way to operate a race car, just whatever is allowed at the moment.
S
26th April 2025, 12:06
The point is that what the teams are doing now is very aggressively encroaching on the driver’s responsibilities.
While it may be a team thing, it is strictly engineering – not at all sporting, in any sense of the word.
Remember that radio and data telemetry are still relatively new additions to motorsport, having been adopted by F1 teams quite a long way into F1’s championship history.
While the teams are giving drivers this much information/instruction (whether they want it or not) – there will always be the perception that the drivers aren’t really driving by themselves. They are most certainly not driving alone and unaided, as per the wording in F1’s regs.
AlanD
26th April 2025, 17:23
Adrian, it is ridiculous only if you take it literally. Try to understand the sentiment he is expressing. If we are going down the route where there is a whole bank of people telling the drivers what switches to set and when to brake, why not just allow remote control of all these settings from the pit wall, which is the equivalent of “putting the engineer in the car”.
I am of the opinion that drivers should be coached as much as possible during the practice sessions, but drive the car themselves during the race. Unfortunately, these days the practice sessions are too short and meaningless, and seem to be mainly about optimising the wing and tyre settings rather than about the driver learning the track.
There is a very valid argument that cars these days are too complicated for the driver to know all the switch settings. That is true, but to me, an important part of engineering is that you not only have to strive for things which are faster, stronger, more efficient, but also that they have to be usable and drivable. If radios could not be used during the race, e.g. due to a massive tech failure at the transmitter, the cars which are the best desifned to be the most drivable, and the drivers with the best technical understanding of their cars would be at a significant advantage. To me, that would be a good thing.
CarWars (@maxv)
26th April 2025, 18:06
The only flaw in the argument is that the driver still has to do it. The engineer doesn’t have the skill to be the driver. In similar logic, some drivers get coached, but they don’t go any faster, they simply don’t have the skill to execute the instructions.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
27th April 2025, 19:08
After listening to ‘engineers’ in F1 for a while, its pretty clear they have a game plan before the race, with a few possible routes to choose from.
I don’t get the sense that any of them are really very technically talented in anyways, because it seems they are meant to just repeat what the team wants them to say. So if anything, they are mostly public relations engineers. Trying to cheer up the drivers, maybe set prompts, and remind them to stay on script.
If the teams were like 10 men deep, including the drivers, then the guys on the pit wall would most likely have to be figuring it out and dealing to the driver, but today’s F1 its more like conglomerates behind the facade of a pit wall, and everyone pretty much does what they are told. It’s a giant maze, where people think they see complexity, but there are very few choices, maybe even just one giant long path.
Ferdi
26th April 2025, 10:37
Sainz might be right, but he is most likely to be completely wrong.
AlanD
26th April 2025, 17:06
Five years on and those indycar aeroshields still look ugly. Back when halos were first talked about, I thought the aeroshield concept would give drivers more protection against Massa-style accidents (by which I mean the debris in the helmet accident, not acidentally thinking you are WDC), but the Indy aeroshield looks like something from a Scalextric circa 1975. I wonder if they’ve ever considered filling the eyelets of the halo with aeroshields?
CarWars (@maxv)
26th April 2025, 18:08
I kinda like the aeroshield more than the halo. Gotten used to both but the arroshield makes most total sense against debris and tires coming off.
SteveR (@stever)
26th April 2025, 20:55
Sigh. Another dam* street circuit…..
James
28th April 2025, 16:05
I think COTD is a very pessimistic view. Yes, the driver receives data on their deficits, and suggestions on where to improve, but the driver has to process, interpret and deliver on that data in real-time, at high speed, time and time again. Imagine having to make micro-corrections to your working style, in 45 degree heat and at 5G, while a pack of the worlds best drivers sit on your tail, willing you to make the tiniest mistake. Drivers are different, and I’m sure the engineers would be the first to admit it. The drivers would likely also admit they’d be hopeless at race engineering (except Carlos of course).