This Week – 20/08/2023
Hello again welcome to This Week, the sport will reawaken next weekend following the summer break, but one question remains can Red Bull win every race in 2023? The second half of the season is normally when we see a team pull away but they are undefeated, the big question is can someone close the gap and get themselves into a position next year to challenge for titles?
General News
Lawyers for former driver Felipe Massa have started legal action against F1 and the governing FIA seeking substantial damages resulting from an alleged ‘conspiracy’ that denied him the 2008 championship.
A formal eight-page Letter Before Claim, seen by Reuters, was sent to F1 chief executive Stefano Domenicali, then Ferrari team principal, and FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem on August 15.
Massa lawyers claim the Brazilian had been “the victim of a conspiracy committed by individuals at the highest level of F1 together with the FIA and Formula One Management.”
The case centres on the Crashgate scandal, when Renault now Alpine team principal Flavio Briatore, and its executive director of engineering, Pat Symonds, now F1 chief technical officer conspired with Nelson Piquet to cause a deliberate crash allowing Fernando Alonso to ultimately gain an advantage and win the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.
The letter said “Simply put, Mr Massa is the rightful 2008 Driver’s Champion, and F1 and FIA deliberately ignored the misconduct that cheated him out of that title. Mr Massa is unable to fully quantify his losses at this stage but estimates that they are likely to exceed tens of millions of Euros.”
The reason this has been brought up again was comments made by then F1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone saying he and former FIA president Max Mosley knew in 2008 that then-Renault driver Nelson Piquet’s crash was deliberate but had not acted.
There was no immediate response from the FIA and F1, which is currently on an August shutdown. Ecclestone, 92, told Reuters by telephone from Switzerland he could not remember saying the key quotes attributed to him. Mosley died in 2021 and the then race director Charlie Whiting died on the eve of the 2019 race in Melbourne.
Singapore 2008, still can be described as one of the biggest incidents of cheating in F1’s history, the whole truth about what happened at the first night race may never been fully explained. Alonso is the only key player to escape untarnished, with the BBC summing it up well in 2018 ‘Nothing changed as a result of what happened in Singapore in 2008, and still nobody wants to talk about it.’
Organisers of the United States GP in Austin say they are not changing their approach even if the race is overshadowed by Miami and Las Vegas. As we’ve written before the success of Drive to Survive has seen the sports popularity boom in the US. This season, Las Vegas is aiming to top that with an extravagant event set around its iconic Strip, promoted by F1 itself.
But while COTA chief Bobby Epstein admitted the hype around Miami and Vegas drowning out the US’s longest-standing race can be “frustrating”, he said the event is sticking to its guns as the “people’s race”. The race’s 2023 edition on 22 October will be its tenth since F1 returned Stateside at the then-new COTA venue in 2012. It has been a mainstay of the calendar every year aside from the COVID-disrupted 2020 campaign.
He told reporters “The fans have looked at this and said, in many ways, this is what they’ll call the people’s race. We’ve seen that name a lot. It’s nice to see that and we’ll try and live up to that.”
Epstein believes the market is now big enough to support three US races as they can synergise and raise awareness for each other. he explained, “We saw that last year with the massive crowd that came. That was a combination of additional exposure in the US both from the Miami race, from Netflix and from what we’ve done in the past.”
As we know the Austin motto is ‘keep Austin wired’ and prides itself on providing family-friendly entertainment, having raised eyebrows when it took a pioneering approach in pairing on-track action with off-track concerts.
In 2016, COTA attracted Taylor Swift, while this year Queen and The Killers have the line-up of the October event. At the time that strategy was criticised by traditionalists, but has been part of the blueprint that Liberty has pushed promoters towards providing more entertainment for a wider audience.
“When we first started adding music to it, we made a lot of noise that way in the sense that the purists said: ‘What are you doing, you’re ruining the sport’, when in fact we were just getting more value to the customer.”
I think what COTA might try to do in the next few years is to be like the ‘national Grand Prix’, the home of the sport in America for the fans rather than Miami and Vegas which have these million-pound VIP packages. But Episten admitted that it’s hard to get that message out there, given the glamour of Vegas.
Dutch GP
Next weekend the season resumes at the Dutch Grand Prix in Zandvoort, with organisers aiming to improve the fan experience at this year’s event by promoting inclusivity and clamping down on the use of flares by spectators.
The sheer scale of the support for local hero Max Verstappen can be intimidating to overseas visitors or fans of other drivers, and Zandvoort is keen to avoid the sort of harassment issues that were reported in Austria last year. However, their has been unruly and intimidating behaviour, by his fans.
Director Imre Van Leeuwen says that special measures will be in force at the event this year, including a designated place for fans to report any issues or bad experiences that they might encounter, which is one of the requirements set by Drive it Out.
He said, “The first year, we only had Dutchies because of COVID. To it started like that. But I would be really disappointed in our fans if, as a Ferrari or Lewis Hamilton fan, you wouldn’t feel safe. That’s totally unacceptable. And we won’t let it happen. We cannot tolerate it, and we will take people’s tickets away.”
In Austria last year several fans especially female fans reported feeling unsafe and abused, including sexual harassment, racism and homophobia from others attending the grand prix.
Verstappen condemned that, saying “Of course it’s not good. These things shouldn’t happen. I read a few shocking things, so that’s clearly not OK. I shouldn’t even need to say this, I think this should be a general understanding that these things shouldn’t happen.”
This behaviour is unacceptable and the sport, and the promotor need to act to stop this behaviour and you need to hope that if people do get thrown out or banned that sends a message.
Several health organisations have filed a complaint against the McLaren Velo branding over its promotion of nicotine pouches. Velo is a brand owned by British American Tobacco has been created to pivot away from cigarettes towards tobacco-free nicotine products, such as Velo’s flavoured nicotine pouches or the Vuse brand’s e-cigarettes.
In April this year, the Dutch government joined a growing list of European countries to ban the sale of all types of nicotine pouches over health concerns, in particular regarding the accessibility of addictive snus pouches and vapes to minors. However, that law has not yet gone through parliament and given royal assent.
a team spokesperson confirmed to Motorsport.com, “All branding carried on McLaren race cars fully complies with regulatory requirements and advertising standards of each country we race in.”
That legal vacuum prompted an official complaint to the Dutch Advertising Code Committee by a group of Dutch health organisations, including the Dutch Heart Foundation and the KWF Dutch Cancer Society.
“It just goes to show again how the tobacco industry is doing everything in its power to keep young people addicted in order to keep this sickening and deadly business going,” said Carla van Gils, director of KWF Dutch Cancer Society, in a press release.
Ferrari
Charles Leclerc has said he is ready to “push” for a long-term future at Ferrari, even though options exist elsewhere on the grid. The Monacan’s contract with the team expires at the end of next season and both sides appear to be in no rush despite speculation that another frustrating season could lead him to leave Ferrari.
Mercedes, Aston Martin and Red Bull have all been viewed as potential options for him as there could be vacancies by 2025. But while saying it was natural to weigh up chances they had elsewhere, but that did not sway his commitment to his current team.
he said “Of course, I think every driver has considered their different options, once they get the [possibility]. But I have a huge love of Ferrari. And my first target and my first dream is to become a world champion with Ferrari, more than anything else. So, if there’s a slight opportunity for it to happen, I will have no doubt about pushing to stay here at least.”
Leclerc says he was ‘not blind’ to how difficult things had been for the team this year, but insisted that is not a reason to believe things cannot improve. We know that Leclerc’s next move in his career could be key, but Ferrari has been his home since 2016 when he joined its Driver Academy.
Leclerc played down any suggestion that the delay in getting contract talks underway was anything to be worried about, as he understood that Ferrari had to concentrate on making itself faster.
Looking ahead to the second half of the season, Although Ferrari has made good progress in getting to the bottom of the inconsistency problems that have hurt it on Sundays, Leclerc feels it is too much to expect it to close the entire gap to Red Bull before the end of the campaign. He says the target is to be best of the rest ahead of Mercedes, Aston Martin and McLaren.
Leclerc has also praised team principal Fred Vassuer for creating a “bubble” around the team to block negative external forces aiding the team’s recovery. While Ferrari has failed to fight Red Bull this season, Vasseur has appeared to turn around the team’s form and build a platform to perhaps challenge Red Bull next year.
He said “I think we created quite a bubble without being too much influenced by what’s happening outside, which is a really good thing. I think Fred was really on board and understood straight away that the media could influence a little bit the team in some type of ways in the past, and this was one of the focuses at the beginning of the year.”
I remember writing when Vassuer was first rumoured to get the role and when Mattia Binotto resigned, the biggest challenge for the team was changing decades of culture within the team. I think that he is doing that. We know Ferrari is the most pressured team in the sport, but they are on the right path to challenge in the long term, Leclerc says its “2020, I felt like it was a bit more difficult to find this path again. But straightaway this year, I felt like we were on it.”
Leclerc says suggestions of simmering tension between himself and teammate Carlos Sainz have been “blown out of proportion.” The pair don’t always see eye to eye and there have been a number of times when radio messages have highlighted disagreements about their approach.
In Australia qualifying, Leclerc was unhappy that he did not get the tow that he had been expecting to get from Sainz in qualifying. In the GP at the Red Bull Ring, Sainz came on the radio early in the race to ask Ferrari to move Leclerc aside, but his request was denied.
Leclerc has dismissed it as being nothing more than a misunderstanding and there is no internal trouble. He said, “am quite active on social media, so I see what’s been said all around. It’s blown out of proportion, I think, with Carlos. We have a great relationship.”
“Outside the car, we know how to work together, and we get on really well together because we share lots of interests. At the same time, there’s a lot of competitiveness in between us two. But we are in Formula One, and I love the sport because there’s competitiveness. I think it’s great to have that.”
Leclerc also made a really good point, we can read too much into ‘heat of the moment’ comments, but also as we know “being a Ferrari driver and being under the spotlight, probably more often than others. But that’s fine.”
McLaren
Lando Norris says that despite the improvements made to this year McLaren still doesn’t suit his driving style, despite the car’s improved form since a recent package of upgrades. In Austria the team made a big step forwards with their upgrades and Norris subsequently finished second in Silverstone and Budapest.
Despite that Norris still insist that the way the car has to be driven still doesn’t gel with his personal style, and that the same applies to team-mate Oscar Piastri.
when asked what he needed for the car to suit him said Norris, “It’s not just my liking, it’s also Oscar’s because we have pretty similar comments. Same as last year, even when Daniel [Ricciardo] was driving, we had a lot of similar comments, every day, every weekend.”
Norris continued as he has done for the last eighteen months say the car is difficult to drive, saying he is not able to drive the car in the way he wants. But for the first time gave a bit of description saying “I want to be able to carry minimum speed and to ‘U’ a corner. And the last thing I can do in the world now is ‘U’ a corner. I have to ‘V’ the corner more than ever, and I’ve never been the biggest fan of doing that. And I don’t like it that much.”
Put more basically he said, “The car only likes to go in a straight line,” but it is good under breaking as well. Norris noted that slow-speed corners are not a strength of the car while acknowledging that other teams have similar issues.
Asked about how the issue can be addressed, he said: “I guess it’s aerodynamics, we still have a focus of it. But at the same time, it’s a handling characteristic, which I would say is not all to do with aerodynamics. Even though aerodynamics is the easiest to just add load to, and it’s an easy way of just bringing absolute performance.”
Oscar Piastri says at the start of the season fighting for podiums was a “distant dream” before McLaren’s step forwards last month. The team looked set for a low-key season after admitting it missed its development targets for its 2023 car and started off the season on the back foot.
But McLaren’s summertime B-spec, which was rolled out across the final races before the break, turned the tide for the team and also allowed Norris and Piastri to grab headlines. Looking back on the first half of the season, Piastri admitted that his Spa result “was a pretty distant dream” at the start of the year.
Piastri said “I think before the season maybe we thought that that could be possible in the right circumstances, with maybe a few cars not finishing, Of course, once we got the season underway, it was a pretty distant dream that we’d be able to compete for the top three. And to now be here consistently for the last three weekends is pretty remarkable.”
“It’s been amazing for me of course. It’s always a nice motivation when you know you can do a good job, the car is there to finish in the top three.” Thinking back to the start of the year, it looked as if Piastri made a mistake in choosing McLaren over Alpine but it has played out not as bad as I feared early on this season when they had problems in Bahrain and Saudi.
But the down-to-Earth rookie isn’t getting carried by his first F1 success and says his breakthrough Spa weekend doesn’t change the fact he has a long way to go to extract the most performance out of both the car and himself. I think Spa showed what we all expected from Piastri given he has won F3 and F2 championships, maybe the poor start to the season as well took the pressure off him to deliver.
But he is pleased with how his debut season has gone, although his priority remains cutting out mistakes
Team principal Andrea Stella had similar message, saying that the upgrades should now allow Piastri to show his talent. He scored his first podium in the sprint at Spa, though that doesn’t officially count in the record books. His Spa result was the latest in a string of strong finishes after a fourth place in Silverstone, where he lost a certain podium due to being undercut during the pitstops, and a fifth place in Budapest.
According to team principal Stella, Piastri’s recent run of standout performances are completely in line with what the team had already seen across his debut season, as the 22-year-old now simply has the equipment to turn his form into tangible results. Saying, “I think where he is at the moment is part of the gradient that we saw right from the start at testing and the first races.”
“I’m not sure [Piastri’s progression] has actually accelerated. I think he just took benefit from the car being more competitive, therefore there are more opportunities to show what he is capable of.”
Alpine
Pierre Gasly has described his season as his ‘unluckiest’ he has experienced in the sport as the team has failed to live up to expectations. The Frenchman joined the team at the start of the season, when the team hoped it could improve on fourth in the constructors which it achieved last year.
However, Alpine has endured a turbulent campaign beset by incidents and internal politics. Gasly has had two incidents with his teammate Esteban Ocon where they have slipped to the bottom half of the table. Behind the scenes, there has also been turmoil, as former CEO Laurent Rossi launched a scathing attack on the squad at the Miami Grand Prix.
He was then subsequently moved aside prior to the team also parting ways with team principal Otmar Szafnauer and sporting director Alan Permane over differences of opinion about its recovery potential. While internal politics has defined the season, Gasly also believes bad luck has played a role.
He said, “I think it’s been quite tricky for many different reasons. I think, overall, we’ve been probably the most unlucky I’ve been in Formula 1 compared to all other seasons. There were a couple of missed opportunities, which had like a sort of snowball effect and a pretty big impact on the final results.”
“So obviously, it doesn’t reflect, the full potential of the package. But, on the other side, we haven’t been as competitive as what we had targeted at the start of the year.” I think that is right but there are other factors at play, Gasly himself says Aston Martin jump to the top four and McLaren’s midseason bounce back have also played a role.
Gasly has said that there is not just one thing that has left the team struggling to deliver the results, as the A523 has several issues that needed to be worked on.
Aston Martin
Fernando Alonso says that his decision to join Aston Martin was arguably the “best” of his career, but insists he has “no regrets” over any of his previous team changes. Last summer the two-time champion opted to leave Alpine for the struggling Aston Martin.
However, Aston Martin’s remarkable jump forward, which enabled him to claim six podiums in the first eight races of 2023. Alonso, who is the oldest driver on the grid at 42, has driven for five different teams (counting Renault and Alpine as the same entity), and has in the past been criticised for making poor decisions over where to take his considerable talents.
He told Sky Sports, “I would not change anything. I don’t regret anything. No one has a crystal ball to know what is the performance of the teams [will be] in the following year.”
Alonso became F1’s youngest world champion when he won the first of two back-to-back titles with Renault in 2005, but has failed to add to that tally. His one-year first stint with McLaren in 2007 led to him falling out with the team over the immediate competitiveness of his rookie team-mate Lewis Hamilton led to major fallings out.
While after that, at Ferrari from 2010-2014, he was narrowly beaten to the title on multiple occasions by Sebastian Vettel.
He explained: “When I left Renault, which was the first decision, I joined McLaren, and that season, we fought for the world championships. So, in terms of how competitive we were, it was a good thing and a good move. Then I joined Ferrari, I don’t think any of the drivers will reject an offer from Ferrari and join that team. And we fought for three championships of the five years that I was there.”
His return to McLaren in 2015 following their ill-fated tie-up with Honda before deciding to leave the sport to try other things. Most recently came Alonso’s decision to depart Alpine for Aston Martin, as the French outfit’s recently sacked team principal Otmar Szafnauer stalled over giving the Spaniard a multi-year contract extension.
Williams
Alex Albon says that the team would have “bitten your arm off” for seventh place in the standings before the start of the 2023 season. At the start of the season Williams looked set for another difficult year, however while there has been hints of progress the rebuilding process is going to be a longer term process.
But just like its predecessor, the 2023 car’s low-drag characteristics also provided the team with some opportunities to score big on low-downforce circuits. But halfway through the season he has already scored nearly triple the points he managed last year. He said “Honestly, I have to say it’s been a really good year for us so far. I don’t want to say too much but it feels like the way that we started in Bahrain and where we are right now, we’ve made great progress.”
“Maybe not as much as the McLarens, but on our side, we are heading in the right direction. We are seventh right now in the constructors’ championship, tied. If you had told me or anyone from the team that at the start of the year, we would have bitten your arm off, so it is going well.”
Williams is still, like several midfield downwards teams in this rebuilding phase but they are coming from further back following years of under investment and finical difficulties. They need time to recover even to the midfield regularly, it’s nearly thirty years since they last won the drivers and constructors.
Williams produced a sizeable upgrade for June’s Canadian Grand Prix, featuring a new floor and side pod design. That has allowed the team to be slightly more competitive on tracks that don’t typically suit its car, with Albon taking an unlikely eleventh at the twisty Hungaroring, albeit benefitting from a bold undercut strategy.
Haas
Nico Hulkenberg believes being the driver with the most starts without ever standing on a podium “actually speaks for me” in terms of his racing skills. From his 190 race starts over thirteen years with his best result being fourth in a race despite starting on pole in Sao Paulo in 2010.
He achieved that result three times for what was then called Force India and Sauber between 2012 and 2016, but had several other podium near misses. These include his crash with Lewis Hamilton after leading much of the 2012 race also in Sao Paulo and the slow second pitstop that meant he missed out on a likely third in Monaco 2016.
asked if he ever felt frustrated at his lack of F1 silverware even when considering he has never driven for a top-line team in the championship, Hulkenberg replied: “That’s stating a fact there. Obviously, when you start thinking about it that’s a little bit frustrating.”
“Because every racing driver back then and even now wants to win, ideally. But at the same time, I’ve never had the car. I’ve had good cars and also had opportunities to deliver the podium, but then for various reasons it never really happened. Never clicked and happened.”
I think Hulkenberg can be proud of his longevity in the sport despite not having a podium in the sport, not many drivers could do that he is a decent driver and in October/November time will hit his two-hundredth start. His teammate we know was lucky on debut his only podium in Melbourne 2014 thanks to Daniel Ricciardo being disqualified for a breach of Article 5.1.4 of the Technical Regulations and Lewis Hamilton’s retirement.
Hulkenberg added, “I’m not bitter or frustrated about it. I’m in a good place and going to hit I think 200 Grands Prix later in the season – somewhere around Mexico [in October]. Not having the podium, I think if I would be so bad I would’ve not managed to stick around [for] 200 grands prix – so, there must be some good in there too somewhere.”
Hulkenberg was once tipped to join Ferrari, that never materialised and he has since spent his long F1 career racing mainly for midfield squads.