Carlos Sainz Sr emerges as FIA president candidate

May 7, 2025 Barry-John

Full story: Sky Sports

Carlos Sainz Sr has emerged as a possible candidate for the next FIA presidency; two-time World Rally champion could run against current president Mohammed Ben Sulayem; F1 teams are not expected to have concerns over a conflict of interest, with Carlos Sainz Jr racing for Williams

Yes … and I am not sure how this would be any more of a conflict of interest concern than effectively allowing Red Bull to have two teams on the grid. Sainz Sr, I am sure, would be a great president.

All is not well at the FIA

April 15, 2025 Barry-John

Full story: BBC and here and here.
Robert Reid recently resigned as deputy president for sport at the FIA. Comments from Reid like “When I took on this role, it was to serve the FIA’s members, not to serve power” are pretty damning to Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the FIA president. Concerns about Sulayem’s style of leadership are well known, and David Richards’ open letter and Natalie Robyn speaking out further highlight these problems. These recent events and the not-so-subtle disdain towards Sulayem from some of the drivers leaves me hoping there will be change atop the FIA come the next election for president.

Williams frustrated with FIA

April 13, 2025 Barry-John

Full story: Crash

The stewards explained that Hulkenberg’s track limits infringement was only brought to their attention after Q2 had started.
“During Q1, Car 27 clearly exceeded track limits in turn 11,” they stated.

Clearly? Yet it took all of that time to report the infringement and delete Nico’s lap time. “Clearly” is doing a lot of work there!

Unearthing Lando’s poor qualifying

April 13, 2025 Barry-John

Full story: Planet F1
Some nice visuals showing the problematic qualifying lap from Lando:

A wheelspin moment in Turn 1 cost him time that he couldn’t recover later in the lap. As a result, the Brit will start from P6 – his worst qualifying result of the season so far. 

Lando needs to overcome the self-doubt that is evident from is post-qualifying comments. Both Lando and Oscar have a great opportunity to knock Max off the number one spot, but the Suzuka race showed that Red Bull (well Max at least) can still pull a trick. For Lando to realistically be in with a shout of the championship he needs to find some belief.

An expensive lawnmower

April 7, 2025 Barry-John

Full story: PlanetF1.com
“An expensive lawnmower” was Max’s humorous take on the close interaction between himself and Lando that saw Lando take to the grass as both drivers were leaving the pit lane and Lando ran out of room.

Aston Martin selling its F1 team

April 1, 2025 Barry-John

Full story: the-race.com

Aston Martin’s proposal to sell its shares in the Formula 1 team that bears its name is, on the surface, quite dramatic.

That was my first reaction to seeing the news too. Aston Martin though really owns only a minority share of team, so the sale amounts to finding a buyer for a 10% share of the team. That is much less dramatic, and Aston Martin will continue to sponsor, at least in the near-term.

What’s the future for F1 engines

March 31, 2025 Barry-John

Full story: The BBC
Interesting piece on discussions about what is next for engines in F1 cars, and whether the sport should see a return to V10 engines. These discussions make no sense to me to be happening now. The new regulations kick in next season, and so this cannot be a proposal to rewrite those regulations. Especially given the time, the effort, and the cost that the teams have invested:

Yes, a V10 might be cheaper than a hybrid. But the manufacturers have already spent an estimated collective $400m on the new engines. They are not about to throw that away.

That is a ton of money, and as pointed out in the next paragraph:

And a new V10 would require developing, to the tune of hundreds of millions more.

Especially if the goal is to push that development through in a hurry.

It turns out that Yuki is going to Red Bull!

March 28, 2025 Barry-John

Full story: The Guardian
Lawson has been replaced by Yuki (somewhat surprisingly this early into the season). It seems though that not all is happy at Red Bull.

Shortly after the announcement that Lawson would be replaced, Verstappen appeared to suggest he was less than impressed with the team’s handling of the situation when he liked a post on Instagram by the former driver Giedo van der Garde, who described Red Bull’s treatment of Lawson as “closer to bullying or a panic move” and that they “gave Liam two races only to crush his spirit”.

Will Yuki be going to Red Bull?

March 25, 2025 Barry-John

Full story: Sky Sports
Christian Horner said post-race that he would not answer questions about replacing Lawson as that would be the focus of the main headlines whatever was his answer. Lawson has been out in Q1 for each of the three initial qualifying rounds so far this season, but surely it’s too early to consider replacing him? My hunch is the car is heavily optimized for Max, and so others struggle. The setup changes Red Bull made after writing off the start of the race in China will hopefully mean they get useful signal about what works for Lawson. The upside of all of this though is a healthy battle in the constructors championship.

A wild start to the season!

March 24, 2025 Barry-John

The opening two races to this season have certainly been entertaining. The rain in Australia caused havoc, especially for the rookie drivers, and Lewis, Charles, and Pierre were all disqualified post-race in China!

McLaren have certainly got off to a decent start. George Russell though is consistently there or thereabouts, and Antonelli has had a great first couple of races. Roll on Japan in two weeks!