Re: 2024 Season Grand Prix Megathread

It's official, Newey is leaving Red Bull to focus on the RB17 hypercar!

What a shake up in the paddock so far, and silly season hasn't even fully began yet.

https://www.redbullracing.com/int-en/adrian-newey-to-leave-red-bull-in-2025

@EA_VendceraAnd no gardening leave. He'll be able to join any team on the grid in early 2025 and get his hands on their 2026 car straight away.

Red Bull so charitable.

@mariohomohWould be awesome if he announces he's off to Andretti! 🤣

A bit more down to Earth now, there's got be some clause in his contract allowing him to leave this way... RB (or any other team) wouldn't never allow it so easily.

@dancrodrigues by all accounts I've seen so far, there was a 1 year non-compete clause (gardening leave) on his contract, but he managed to extricate that out in their termination.

One can only wonder what sort of leverage he had 🙃

It is quite common to have morality clauses as trigger for early terminations. One possibility would be they choosing to negotiate the gardening leave out instead of Newey formalizing his termination on a morality basis.

Looks like RB have a one off livery as well. not a fan of it

Possibly controversial but they really need to change up the qualifying format. We've not had an interesting session all year and only the last lap in each session matters (providing it's dry).

Some ideas I quickly had:

• Limit them to one set of tyres per session so they don't pit.
• I don't fully understand the ERS but make it so they don't need a charge lap and can just do hot lap after hot lap.
• Potentially change up the format even more and have two 20 minute sessions with 10 cars on track in each (1 per team to stop team mates giving the aero boost). Could have a top 5 shootout after this if they really wanted to.

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@ScarDuck14 wrote:
@AlastairhufcIm thinking they should get 2 single hot laps and draw numbers to decide the what order they go out in. Regardless of changing track conditions due to weather. The top teams will hate it, so will their drivers. But the increased jeopardy will mix up the starting grid 🤘🏻

It’s the only way to get different qualifying outcomes whilst keeping it fair.

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Hot laps wouldn't be of interest to the less hard core fans. You need cars constantly crossing the finish line to interest them.

Also think how dull it'd be seeing 90 second of action then waiting another 2-3 minutes while that car leaves the track and the next one gets their out lap in.

Awfully quiet for race weekend 😔🤷🏻‍♂️

Im waiting for the race to kick off 😂

@Alastairhufc the quali can get depressing at times, but honestly I've come to blame it more and more on the TV broadcast. Noticed it recently while watching onboards in other categories and even on simracing.

I'd love to see more onboards with live commentary from pundits.

Those tracking shots from barriers are doing a disservice to F1, honestly. I'm referring to those shots close to the track, just behind the fence, where the camera operator tracks the car with the camera. They undersell the speeds and the work those drivers are putting out to handle those cars on the limit.

Wide shots for race action, onboards for push laps. Fewer tracking shots from the barriers. Those are my top items in my broadcast wishlist 🙏

Oh, let's throw that horrendous onboard graphics out of the window too!

Regarding your suggestions, I'm a little biased towards the current format. Besides the broadcast being suboptimal as I said, this is the format that gave us that spectacular Monaco quali - one of my all time F1 sessions!

What I love about it:

• Having cars on quali trim. Low fuel, no care for tyre saving. Seeing these machines operating at the highest single lap performance output they can. That also helps with the racing as cars with an unbalanced quali pace vs race pace performance relationship would often have interesting strategies and battles on Sunday
• Traffic. Spicy.
• Having all cars able to go out under optimal track conditions. I'm not too keen to see Max wasting his go on a relatively green track. I want to see top drivers wrangling every drop of performance out of their cars in the fastest state the track can get

ERS would not allow for 2 consecutive push laps as regs make it so that the maximum and minimum state of charge of the ES can never be greater than 4MJ.

Tyres also have such a narrow operational window two push consecutive push laps would probably be unfeasible depending on the compound. And putting them on a harder compound of having the drivers hold back on their banker lap would detract from my points above (100% effort laps).

Miami is a dull track though. My gut feeling is that anything would look lame on it. I'll definitely agree with you that this quali was dour.

This Board: Man, The Miami GP is so lame and fake...

Lando Norris: I think I'll have a go and get my maiden victory in Miami this weekend.

This Board: Man, The Miami GP is the GOAT.

@Cpayne32 Indeed it was, but sometimes you get a little lucky and sometimes you get a little unlucky, and I doubt it will dampen the spirits of those who have been waiting for a Norris win.