This Week – 29/09/2024
Hello, welcome to This Week, the first of this break a week where a debate about swearing has taken centre stage. But how do you deal with it when swearing often happens in the heat of the moment, It goodbye to Daniel Ricciardo we look at how his career which had so much promise fell into struggle and why he has now left the sport and more departures from Red Bull
General News
Singapore’s former transport minister who brought F1 to the country has pleaded guilty to receiving gifts while in office. Subramaniam Iswaran was initially charged with corruption, but prosecutors amended these charges at what was supposed to be the start of his trial on Tuesday.
A corruption case involving a public official is rare in Singapore, a financial hub that prides itself with its squeaky-clean image, and Iswaran’s case has gripped the nation.
Iswaran now faces a fine or up to two years in jail for each charge of receiving gifts or gratifications, compared to a corruption conviction that carries a fine of up to $100,000 or up to seven years in prison. Iswaran is the first political office-holder in Singapore to be tried in court in the past fifty years.
The case comes days after this year’s Grand Prix, he was charged with receiving £234,586 worth of flights, hotel stays, musicals and grand prix tickets. Shortly after the charges were issued in January, Iswaran pleaded not guilty to all the allegations and quit his post in government,
Property tycoon Ong Beng Seng was named in the charges, often as the party offering the alleged bribes. Ong is the race promoter and owns thirty-eight hotels and resorts, but has not been charged, he was due to take the stand as a prosecution witness in Iswaran’s trial.
In March of this year, Iswaran was handed eight additional charges that allege he obtained items such as a Brompton bicycle, a set of golf clubs and whisky from another figure: construction company boss Lum Kok Seng.
The case against Iswaran is one of a series of political scandals that have rocked the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), which has long touted its strong stance against corruption and amoral behaviour.
Red Bull
Max Verstappen says the “silly” punishment levied for his discourse in the Singapore Grand Prix Thursday press conference makes him question his future. The Dutchman was handed community service for describing Baku as “f****” in Thursday’s press conference
In Saturday and Sunday’s top three conferences, he only gave short, sometimes even one-word, answers and holding an impromptu media session outside of the media room at the circuit. He did the same after finishing second in Sunday’s race and, when asked if he may reconsider his future racing in F1 as a result of similar situations, Verstappen responded in the affirmative.
Verstappen said, “For sure. Yeah. I mean, these kinds of things definitely decide my future as well. When you can’t be yourself, you have to deal with these kinds of silly things…I think now, I’m at a stage of my career that I don’t want to be dealing with this all the time. It’s really tiring. Of course, it’s great to have success and win races, but once you have accomplished all that, winning championships and races, then you want to just have a good time as well.
“Everyone is pushing to the limit. Everyone in this battle, even at the back of the grid. But if you have to deal with all these kind of silly things: for me, that is not a way of continuing in the sport, that’s for sure.” He also questioned if the FIA would risk losing a world champion due to the stringency of its rules over swearing in official sessions, Verstappen suggested that they might not take threats so seriously.
Christian Horner believes that the poor weekend at Monza has helped turn around its season, the team had the fourth fastest car, and Verstappen described his car as a “monster” and warned that the championship was now at risk. It says that its data and experiments have unearthed the cause.
According to team principal Horner, it unearthed the root cause of what had been going wrong with the RB20’s handling. he said in Singapore, “We already could see the issues, but I think what Monza really exposed was perhaps some of the root cause, or helped to identify the root cause of the issue. So I’m taking Monza as the low point and we’re starting to build out of that.”
In Singapore, Verstappen bounced back but was still quite far behind championship rival Lando Norris. This for a team who dominated the early races and they are hoping to use the next few weeks to bring an upgrade and close the gap to Norris as the championship goes into the final races.
Mercedes
Mercedes are promising a “substantial” final upgrade when the season resumes for the final six races. The team has had an inconsistent season and CEO and team principal Toto Wolff described last weekend as “painful” after dropping from row two to finish fourth and sixth, a minute behind Lando Norris.
Having registered only one podium finish in the four races since the summer break, Mercedes appear to have lost out on a realistic chance of salvaging a top-three place in the Constructors’ Championship. But despite that the team are aiming to finish the year on a high.
In his volg technical director James Allison said: “We will be trying to figure out how to mitigate what ailed us this weekend, how to figure out how to make the tyres run better on these overheating circuits.”
“We’ll be also doing quite a lot of work to bring our last upgrade of the season together. We’ve got quite a fairly substantial set of new clothes for the car coming for Austin that we hope will give us a decent weekend there.”
Adding to the difficulties was the humid conditions which saw both George Russell and Lewis Hamilton withdrawn from media duties on medical advice with “borderline heatstroke”.
Allison said while the British pair quickly were quickly able to recover from the excursions of the race after taking on fluids, the frustration about the W15’s lack of pace lingered for longer.
Allison conceded, “I think like the rest of us they’re feeling fed up that the car was not particularly competitive in race trim. It was okay in quali but not in race trim. We suffered again from a thing that has been problematic for us which is on softer rubber at tracks where tyre temperature is at a premium, where it’s very easy to overheat, we lose relative competitiveness and Singapore is at the extreme end of that experience and it was quite a difficult thing for them to manage.”
Wolff has called for a “civilised” approach to the current controversy over swearing, in the wake of the FIA punishing Max Verstappen for the use of a swear word. Last weekend during a press confidence, the Dutchman described his cars as “F****d” and the FIA took a dim view and handed him the equivalent of community service.
Verstappen was incensed by this and thus took the approach of saying as little as possible in the following press conferences, instead choosing to speak to the media outside. Wolff recounted the time that he and Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur were hauled in front of the stewards for using bad language in Las Vegas but noted that greater nuance was perhaps needed.
Wolff said, “I was at the stewards last year after Las Vegas and it was quite an enjoyable experience! Fred and I were there at the same time. He was a bit more worried. I said to them ‘it was the first time since school that I was called to the headmaster, and I promise you it is going to be the last’.”
“Having said that, I think there is an argument that big swearing and being rude on the radio is not something that should happen. If it is so bad it is disrespectful, towards the other side of the line, there are people at home watching it.” Wolff argued that the F-word is common in the English language.
Ferrari
Charles Leclerc has admitted that Ferrari doesn’t have the outright speed to challenge McLaren and Red Bull for the constructors but hopes they can say in the mix through consistency. McLaren took the lead of the constructors in Singapore, but Red Bull’s dip in form has also allowed Ferrari to close in with the top three covered by sixty-four point
But while McLaren looks unlikely to run out of steam off the back of Lando Norris’ dominant Singapore Grand Prix performance, Leclerc is refusing to throw the towel just yet, even if on outright speed Ferrari hasn’t been able to keep up.
Leclerc said after finishing fifth in Singapore, “I think if we keep being consistent and not having too many missed opportunities, we will do the count at the end and hopefully we’ll be enough to get the constructors’ [title]. But on pure pace, I don’t think we are yet at the level to fight for the constructors. I don’t see ourselves too much in the fight, but if they make mistakes then we might end up in the fight like we are now.”
Leclerc is wary of placing too much stock in Ferrari’s stronger performances over the past three races in Monza, Baku and Singapore, all of which haven’t truly tested whether or not Ferrari has solved the high-speed corner bouncing that has plagued it since the summer. But I think as Leclerc mentioned its important to not have the wrong expectations because McLaren has a better car than Ferrari.
His teammate Carlos Sainz also said Ferrari has Red Bull firmly in its sight for second if McLaren turns out to be too far away. The Spaniard added, “McLaren definitely has the upper hand that they are the favourites for winning it. We still have Red Bull in our sights, and obviously McLaren, if they start going south or they start having problems, so we need to keep ourselves in it.”
When asked if beating Red Bull to second place would still be a satisfying outcome for the Maranello squad, he replied: “It would show good resilience by the team after a tough part of the year where we gave up a lot of points and a lot of development curve there.
The team also feels that they have got on top of their bouncing issues which senior performance engineer Jock Clear believes is simply part of the challenges presented by the current ground-effect regulations.
Since introducing a floor upgrade in Barcelona the team has struggled with bouncing through high speed corners, leading it to go back to an older spec from Silverstone onwards with revisions in Budapest. In Baku, Leclerc took pole while last weekend Sainz’s crashed in Q3 in Singapore derailing his weekend.
Clear explained that the team needed to investigate the “anomaly” between the wind tunnel and the circuit before it moved to a new development course. Clear explained, “You’re never fully confident – but I think it’s a good picture of how the ebb and flow of everybody’s development goes.”
“But you’re probably asking the same questions to [other teams] – have you lost your way? And certainly after Spain, we didn’t feel we’d lost our way, but there was some anomaly between what was happening in the tunnel and what we were seeing on track, and we had to get on top of that.”
“That’s just the process; when you see an anomaly, you have to get on top of it, try and understand it. I think what you’ve seen since is that we’ve understood it, we got back on track, we just have to be eyes wide open for what the next anomaly will be, because there will be another one. After all, that is the process at the moment.”
As Clear pointed out as we know some developments work and some don’t, and that the regulations around wind tunnel limit its use. Also, you can’t use a wind tunnel to simulate what happens over the kerbs.
McLaren
McLaren has announced they have signed Red Bull’s head of race strategy Will Courtenay has decided to leave the team after fourteen years. Courtenay is the third member of Red Bull senior management to leave the team in the past five months, and is the latest development in an ongoing restructure at McLaren.
Courtenay will be tasked with the aim of “helping grow the team’s sporting operations”, however, a Red Bull source told BBC News that “Will continues to be part of the team, seeing out his contract until mid-2026.”
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said: “Will’s experience, professionalism and passion for motorsport make him the ideal candidate to lead our sporting function. We are now entering a key phase in our journey as a team, and we are confident that he will be a great addition to our strong leadership team as we strive to continue challenging for wins and championships.
Their will need to be a period of negotiation between Courtenay, Red Bull and McLaren to reach a compromise over when he will join the team. McLaren has been restructuring its technical department following a poor start to the 2023 season, they signed Rob Marshall from Red Bull in May 2023.
The team has also admitted they face a dilemma in whether to introduce a floor update after its dominant victory in Singapore. Lando Norris took a dominant victory last weekend where he was unchallenged and won the race ahead of Max Verstappen.
As we know from Norris’s win in Miami, the team has been on an upwards trajectory but has been cautious about further updates. But it has been working on a development step for its car back at its factory, but wants to be sure that it works before committing to racing it.
Asked about the dilemma the team now faced on whether to go for upgrades now or not, Stella said: “In fairness, that was one of my thoughts after the race. We do have some stuff in the pipeline, and obviously, when you have this kind of performance on track, you always may approach things from a cautious point of view in terms of development.
“But at the same time, we need to trust the process. We need to trust the way we’ve been working so far. I’ve said already that we have taken our time to make sure that once we deliver trackside, we have done the due diligence. So, I don’t think this will change our plans.”
Stella thinks that, despite McLaren’s advantage, it will not take much for its rivals to leap ahead if they bring upgrades that work. He pointed to Red Bull slipping back and not being competitive as well as Ferrari not performing at their best but have seemed to be fast.
Stella also says that Norris’s successful start from pole last weekend in Singapore has dispelled his first lap curse, though he says there are no clear issues from its analysis. Norris lost the lead in three races and the sprint in Shanghai, though he converted it in Singapore before taking victory.
He explained, “I don’t disagree that at face value starts and overall approach to the first corner of first lap might have looked like an opportunity for Lando. But, having done a little bit of analysis as a group including Lando, we have gone through the season every single start and every single first lap.
“And in fairness, we haven’t found that even in cases in which Lando started in pole position and he was not P1 at the end of first lap, he had kind of given up very much in terms of performance…. There were some opportunities in terms of execution of the start, but we recognise that that was also on the team side.”
Zandvoort was his example of where the team got it wrong as both cars had cold tyres meaning both drivers started on cold tyres. Stella says that the team has hastened its efforts to improve its starts regardless and that a successful getaway in Singapore will lend Norris familiarity should he manage any further pole positions this year.
RB
After weeks of speculation, Red Bull announced they will replace Daniel Ricciardo with Liam Lawson. The experienced driver was dropped after the management of the team was unconvinced of his performance and wanted to assess him before deciding their lineup for both teams.
Lawson replaced Ricciardo for five races last year after he broke his wrist in a crash at Zandvoort with him scoring his first points in Singapore. It had been rumoured that the New Zealander has been promised a seat for 2025, but they haven’t confirmed who will partner Yuki Tsunoda next year.
RB team principal Laurent Mekies said: “Daniel has brought a lot of experience and talent to the team with a fantastic attitude, which has helped everyone to develop and foster a tight team spirit. He has been a true gentleman both on and off the track and never without that smile. He will be missed, but will always hold a special place within the Red Bull family.”
Ricciardo said in a statement on Instagram: “I’ve loved this sport my whole life. It’s wild and wonderful and has been a journey. To the teams and individuals that have played their part, thank you. To the fans who love the sport sometimes more than me, haha, thank you. It’ll always have its highs and lows but it’s been fun and truth be told I wouldn’t change it.”
Ricciardo’s jovial character and sense of humour have made him one of F1’s most popular characters throughout his 13-year career. But since his decision to leave Red Bull in 2018, his career has declined with stints at Renault (now Alpine) and McLaren, His performances remained strong.
But his failure to match Lando Norris saw him dropped a year early in favour of Oscar Piastri with him returning to Red Bull as reserve driver as a possible replacement for Sergio Perez. But Ricciardo has been outperformed by Tsunoda, and his performances have ruled him out of contention for a return to Red Bull.
Lawson meanwhile has been given six races to earn a seat, which reportedly if not offered within Red Bull would give him an option to look elsewhere. It can be assumed Lawson will be kept on as a race driver for 2025, and he now has an opportunity to put himself in the frame for promotion to the senior team in the future.
Haas
A United States judge has dismissed the trademark infringement case made by Haas Automation against its former team principal Guenther Steiner. In May, the Haas F1 team’s parent company Haas Automation sued Steiner for alleged trademark infringements in his Surviving to Drive autobiography, claiming that Steiner used Haas branding and trademarks in his book without permission or consent from the company.
After not getting a satisfactory response from Steiner they took the Italian and publisher Ten Speed to court, claiming that the photography used in the book, including the front cover, which Haas Automation alleged breached federally registered trademarks for its CNC machine tools business and motorsport activities.
Steiner’s defence argued that the use of Haas logos fell under fair use and was protected by the First Amendment. The California judge ruled the use of Haas logos was artistically relevant to the book and was not explicitly misleading, two criteria on which a copyright infringement is judged according to the so-called Rogers test.
the court documents stated, “The Book recounts Steiner’s experiences as team principal of the Haas F1 Team during the 2022 season. Using photos that include the Haas marks is an artistic choice to provide additional context about the 2022 season with the Haas F1 Team.”
The photography used in the book, including the front cover, which Haas Automation alleged breached federally registered trademarks for its CNC machine tools business and motorsport activities.
Steiner’s defence argued that the use of Haas logos fell under fair use and was protected by the First Amendment. The California judge ruled the use of Haas logos was artistically relevant to the book and was not explicitly misleading, two criteria on which a copyright infringement is judged according to the so-called Rogers test.
The court documents stated, “The Book recounts Steiner’s experiences as team principal of the Haas F1 Team during the 2022 season. Using photos that include the Haas marks is an artistic choice to provide additional context about the 2022 season with the Haas F1 Team.”