This Week – 18/08/2024
Hello welcome to This Week, the final full week of the summer break has had a similar theme of assessing where teams are and what they need to do so they can have a strong second half of the season. But as the first leg of the second half gets underway at Zandvoort again next week, has the break allowed a team to seize control of the championship with nine races to go or will that happen following the Autumn break in Austin in October?
In this edition, Mercedes on their upgrades, why Ferrari think despite slipping back recently still believes they’ve made genuine progress, and why Daniel Ricciardo believes his teammate Yuki Tsunoda can succeed…
Mercedes
Mercedes thinks that Lewis Hamilton has benefited more than teammate George Russell from the gains made with the W15. The team struggled at the start of the season because the car had a narrow operating window and proved to be inconsistent, however upgrades have seen it win two of the last four races.
Hamilton has appeared to get more out of the car since the upgrades having struggled early on. s trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin thinks that Hamilton’s form now is so much better because he was especially struggling with the characteristics of the car in its infancy.
In his vlog, Shovlin explained, “I think early on, perhaps Lewis was finding the car more difficult to deal with. One of the areas that we’ve improved with the car is being able to land with a set-up in P1 that is a good foundation to start building on performance, and then fine-tuning it. That helps your weekend enormously.”
“In the early part of the year, we were making relatively small changes, and suddenly the whole car balance left us, and we were really struggling. Yeah, it’s probably fair to say that in the earlier races, Lewis was finding it more difficult to set up than George.” I wonder if Hamilton, spending most of his career and starting his career in a championship contending car and having wins every year until 2022-23, has made it more difficult for him to adjust to not being in a winning car, where Russell had three years at Williams where a podium at Spa in 2021, yes controversial, was a huge result.
Shovlin says both Hamilton and Russell want similar things and are close on set-up, teams like that as it makes the development and extracting the most out of the car. They can also can do experiments and comparisons a lot easier. But he admitted that early races were a particular challenge for everyone because the team felt so close to the front, but was still not finishing in the positions it wanted.
The team says it still needs time to get on top of the tyre temperature issues which are influencing its performances. One of the issues the team has had this season is consistency it has in cooler conditions when the temperatures go up compared to its rivals. It believes this is caused by the car putting more heat into its tyres which on warm days is too much.
The team thinks there isn’t a straightforward solution to the issue, and could take several steps to resolve it. Shovlin said, “I think at tracks like Silverstone, we had a very stable rear end. In Austria and Budapest, we lacked stability. That’s all down to the fact that we seem to be putting more temperature in the tyres than the others.”
“We know we need to work on that area. We’ve got plans to do that, but that’s not the sort of problem you can fix with a single aero update. It will be the result of quite a few developments to try and get on top of it.” There are many different theories about what is causing it one being a lack of downforce, leading to sliding issues.
But he is not convinced by that theory he pointed to Silverstone where the team won and is a high downforce circuit and believes Mercedes has similar levels to McLaren and Red Bull, as they wouldn’t have managed to pull away in that first stint. He pointed out that the teams are converging in terms of drag level and downforce.
Asked if it was more a mechanical problem than aero, Shovlin added: “It’s just to do with how you run the car. You might need mechanical tools to help you change how you run the car. However, you can achieve the same by affecting the aero characteristics through the speed range, and through the corner.”
I think that Mercedes has improved massively this season coupled with the convergence we have seen during the European season has brought them back into play with those two wins last month.
Ferrari
Charles Leclerc says the team this season has made genuine progress with the car, but they have been masked by the bouncing. Ferrari’s floor introduced in Barcelona which changed the aero properties of the floor appears to have made the matter worse, particularly in high-speed corners.
Ferrari reverted to the Imola-spec floor for the British Grand Prix to control the level of bouncing around the plethora of medium-high speed corners, and since had introduced a revised underbody for Hungary and Belgium to iron out those issues further.
Leclerc said that, although the outright numbers produced by the aero upgrades earlier in the year were as expected, the bouncing issues meant that these could not be fully reflected in the team’s performances.
Leclerc explained to Motorsport.com, “From Spain onwards, I think this was more the turning point where we brought something on the car, which the numbers, as I’ve always said, were there. However, it induced quite a lot of bouncing that we’ve been struggling with. And on my side, specifically, I went very aggressive in the last four races with set-up, especially, trying to find solutions for that.”
Bouncing prevents the drivers from giving it everything and getting too close in the dirty air which costs performance. Perhaps this explains why the team has slipped behind McLaren and sometimes Mercedes as drivers need confidence in the car and it looks like it has become a bigger issue this year.
Later in the week Leclerc said that team principal Fred Vasseur had changed the culture of the team, over the last eighteen months he has implanted a “no bulls***” approach after his predecessor Mattia Binotto failed to secure the championship in 2022. Vasseur had said that key to bringing success back to Ferrari was eradicating complacency.
A good example is the relative failure of the floor upgrade implemented on the car since the Spanish Grand Prix, which Ferrari hasn’t been able to maximise due to bouncing appearing as a side effect.
Leclerc added, “It took us three or four races, but everyone acknowledged what were the weaknesses of what we had brought on the car, and maybe in the past, it wasn’t as easy as now. So I think we are in a better place in the team.”
“We’ve done big, big progress in the last seven to eight months before Barcelona – Barcelona has been a one-off. We have been honest with ourselves and understood where we did wrong. And I’m confident that we’ll come back on the good slope.” He is well aware of the pressure from the Italian media and public for Ferrari to deliver.
But he admitted that creates more pressure and mess than at other teams, Leclerc says despite this when they take the noise away and learn from it. I have wondered in recent years whether Ferrari has developed more patience given what Ross Brawn described as almost described as sack when things go wrong and that doesn’t help move the team.
Vasseur has also taken on the role of acting technical director following Enrico Cardile’s decision to join Aston Martin, Leclerc says he fully trusts him to manage the situation in the best possible way.
McLaren
CEO Zak Brown believes that all departments in the team are “world championship material,” following years of investment. Brown took control of the team in 2018 and this year his transformation from some of the worst results in its history to fighting for wins and potentially the championship this year.
This despite a pandemic and financial issues because they slipped from the front in 2012 to back markers in 2016, under his leadership massive investments were the first since the MTC opened in 1998, and structural changes in personnel and management have seen the team return to the front for the first time in a decade.
Brown told Motorsport.com “It’s all coming together. We’ve got our great investment from our shareholders and our sponsors. We’ve got great drivers, we’ve got a great technical team, and the entire leadership team, the technical team need the resources, the fan base, the corporate partner base to be able to do what they’re doing.”
His team principal Andrea Stella believes they are ‘championship material,’ Brown agrees with it backed up by their on-track position and second in the constructors. Both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have been consistent podium finishes, Norris’s long overdue win after several near misses including Sochi in 2021, has seen him take the next step in his career.
asked what had changed in his driver, Brown said: “I think the aspiration to win has only gotten greater. He’s always been a great driver, the only thing that’s taken so long is us giving him a car to be capable of winning in. Now he’s running at the front on a regular basis, so I think expectations are clearly higher.”
McLaren has begun to naturally change into disappointed when they aren’t winning, but brown says being on the podium is a awesome result to be celebrated which they aren’t taking it for granted.
But they have in recent races face questions about their strategy and operational calls, this was highlighted by the self created team orders row in Budapest which overshadowed the teams first one-two since 2021.
Attributing the missteps to the squad’s newfound position at the front of the pack, Brown explained: “I think some of the mistakes that we’ve made this year have been from the youthfulness of a team that’s not run at the front as regularly as we are now. Silverstone we didn’t optimise, Hungary we got there at the end, but not without some excitement. So I think it’s just going to take a little bit more time.”
That I think is part of the growing back into front runners again, you make mistakes even Mercedes as they slipped back and recently started to come forwards again they have made mistakes and as Brown cited Toto Wolff who said once, “sometimes you don’t learn this stuff until you’re in the heat of the battle and so now that we’re in the heat of the battle, we’re learning some stuff as we go along but that’s okay.”
Alpine
Pierre Gasly says he understands and supports the teams decision to revamp its car concept despite their disappointing season. Before the reshuffle at the team in July and August, the team chose not to devlop the ideas of last years car to try and create a greater scope for development. That hasn’t worked with the team slipping from sixth to eighth in the constructors.
But Gasly continues to believe that the decision taken at the time was justified. Gasly told Motorsport.com, “I think it’s performance-related. Last year the team felt that it got to the end of the development with their car concept.”
“As we missed our targets, they’re like, ‘do we want to go for another year where we know we’ll probably be stuck to where we are?’ And they said, we want more than that, so, we’ll try something else. Which to me, I think was the right choice. We’re not in F1 to be satisfied with the sixth place in the constructors’.”
I think also as well as the team missing its targets they have lost out because the midfield as we have been saying all year has got tighter. They are I think beginning to realise they went in the wrong direction which has been more costly thanks to what I’ve mentioned above and they are changing direction for 2025.
Alpine’s hopes have been dashed and, for the time being, even Haas’ seventh place seems illusory. However, Gasly is counting on the work done at Enstone and on the margin for improvement to do better in the months to come and, above all, to have a more solid base when it comes to 2025.
The team also announced a “quite big” upgrade during the second half of the year to form the basis of the car for next year. Off track despite the turbulence with its personnel they have been heavily investing in the infrastructure at their base at Enstone and at Spa before the summer break they appeared to make progress.
Technical director David Sanchez said “This is a first step in the pipeline. We have another one, which should be quite big, and that should be the basis for next year. We will do more on this year’s car, definitely.” He says this upgrade will be introduced in two stages, though no date has been given this is likely to be before the autumn break following Singapore.
Sanchez also says that the team was out of the problem solving phase, Alpine had early on this season with a overweight car, was now over allowing them to chase performance. Having only arrived at Alpine in May, Sanchez has not had much time to make sweeping changes to the organisation. However, he thinks that the ball is now rolling on developments that should leave it in good stead for the looming rule change from 2026.
he adds “From an infrastructure point of view, the team was already well advanced with its plans. But we looked together about whether we needed to prioritize a few items more than others. I think where we are now, the plan we have, if I look at ’26 and beyond, we should be in a good position. Now it’s more to get everything in the right direction with this car, the next one, and build more confidence in the team.”
Williams
Alex Albon is adamant that Williams is continuing to make progress even if it appears they are going backwards. The team has slipped back from the early upturn in results at the 2023 when James Vowles was appointed as team principal, but Albon and the team have always been clear it would take time to build the team.
Albon says you cannot read too much into Williams’ results this season as the team is laying the foundations to help it get back to the front. he told Motorsport.com, “We are obviously not where we want to be. Truthfully, I feel like that’s testament to the other teams too. That midfield group has made such a huge step.”
“We’ve made a good step but relative to the others, maybe we are holding back a little bit. I think the Haas has been the standout in the group. But at the same time, it’s not like I’m here with my head in my hands not understanding where it is.” As he says there have been a lot of big changes not just to the car but the structure and culture of the team, which has shown a few cracks.
But the British-Thai drivers message about building the team, which we know as attracted Carlos Sainz over Sauber/Audi, is the two want the team over the coming years into a championship challengers. But Vowles has made it clear that he doesn’t expect much on track progress until 2026, however, Albon says he has enjoyed working with Vowles and appreciates his honesty.
He said: “If I am being totally honest, I don’t see us being in position to fight for wins and titles for a while, but to do steps where we start nipping in and getting podiums and whatnot. I believe that 2026 would be difficult, but winning in ’27 would be much more realistic. We’ve got great investment, and we’re recruiting very aggressively.
RB
Daniel Ricciardo believes that his teammate Yuki Tsunoda has the ability to succeed if he can prove the way he executes opportunities when they come his way. The Japanese driver has emerged as the teams leader this season despite Ricciardo being more experienced drivers even being considered as a replacement for Sergio Perez.
Regardless, he has matured over the past two seasons and has subsequently delivered strong results for the Alpha Tauri/RB squad despite 2023’s struggles with uncompetitive machinery. Ricciardo now believes that Tsunoda is being looked upon much more favourably, noting his growing maturity and consistency over their year as team-mates.
Ricciardo told Motorsport.com, “I think now he’s definitely getting probably the credit that he deserves. Probably a lot of people still think about his first year where he made a lot of mistakes, and it felt like his adjustment into Formula 1, it just felt like maybe he couldn’t really adjust and it was all a bit too much.”
He says that Tsunoda was consistently beating Pierre Gasly in the second half of 2021 and 2022, Ricciardo believes his teammate has a better showing than the Frenchman because he has grown and become more aware of his attitude,
Discussing Tsunoda’s prospects of delivering in the event that he ends up in a position with front-running machinery, Ricciardo felt that it was difficult to show that in advance – but reckoned that Tsunoda just needed to make the most of his ability. He compared it to Lando Norris who could of beat him to victory at Monza in 2021 but had to wait until Miami this year to take his maiden win
Haas
Kevin Magnussen says he has no regret about his “wild” and “exciting” return to F1 as he nears the end of his time with Haas. The Dane was dropped by the team at the end of the 2020 season and made the switch to sportscar racing with Chip Ganassi, only for fate to give him an F1 reprieve.
Magnussen was brought in after the team dropped Nikita Mazepin following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with the highlight being pole for the sprint in Sao Paulo in 2022. But his performances have started to drop off this season. Asked by Motorsport.com, whether he regretted returning to F1, 0Magnussen replied: “No, no, no, honestly, I don’t. I don’t regret it.”
“It’s been fun and it’s fun trying something so unexpected. It was a wild journey, because I really closed that chapter, completely, mentally closed it, had a kid and completely started that next phase of my life with my wife and my family. Then – boom – back again, and that… this whole experience has been really exciting for me and my family.”
Whilst Magnussen impressed alongside Mick Schumacher in his first year back, the return of Nico Hulkenberg overshadowed his results last term and that form has continued into the current campaign. But he says he wasn’t surprised by anything knowing there would be bumps along the way following the ‘honeymoon period’.
Porsche
Porsches Motorsport boss Thomas Laudenbach says that their attempted entry into the sport is now “a closed chapter.” Laudenbach’s assertion that Porsche has no plans for a comeback more than 30 years on from its last engagement as an engine supplier with Footwork in 1991, this is the manufacturer’s first comments about an F1 entry since the full unveiling of the 2026 regulations in June.
In 2022, a preposed partnership with Red Bull collapsed over the control of the powertrain division. However the German manufacturer still described the sport as “an attractive environment” in the statement announcing that it was no longer pursuing the Red Bull option, but now Laudenbach has now stated that it is “not a topic for us”.
He explained to Motorsport.com, ““It is off the table: right now F1 is not a task for us and we are not spending any energy on that. We are only focused on what we do right now, and if you look at it, we have many different activities: we are well-occupied and extremely happy with what we do.” I think this change in regulations is not attracting as many as the sport expected though we have retained the current four with Audi and Ford joining but there does remain questions about Cadillac given the rejection of Andretti, as well as potentially losing Renault.
It was always expected that failure to resolve the power and control element of Red Bull because Porsche wanted an equal partnership while Red Bull but they didn’t want to diminish its “values and virtues”.
The Week Ahead
Next week we should start getting answers to what the teams have been saying over the break, but the big question halfway through this season has the gap continued to close or can one team, most likely Red Bull steal a march in the championship? The first race after the summer could set the tone for the rest of the season.
The spin will continue through the week and weekend, though we may not get the full picture until Monza, but I feel its not as key as we have a bit of a break between Singapore and Austin. Who will challenge for this title and will it still remain close like we saw during the second part of the first half of the season? I think it will given we are in a different era with various factors like budget caps etc.
The big question kind of holding the final seats up is Mercedes, as we know Andrea Kimi Antonelli is the favourite could they be waiting for his home race at Monza to announce him? I don’t see now it going any other way given Carlos Sainz was announced for Williams at the start of the break and Sergio Perez is likely I think to stay with Red Bull.
Max Verstappen has a busy week leading into his home race, he will be speaking a lot in the coming days it will be interesting how he reflects and what he thinks he needs to do to retain his title as he is under a lot more pressure. His teammate Sergio Perez I don’t think is fully secure given his difficult season, the team has stuck with him for now but if their isn’t a step up in the second half despite having a contract for 2025, how safe is his seat?