Hello and this week has been a rather quiet week as the January quiet period starts and it’s a case of now waiting as teams prepare for the new season political battle lines are drawn. The latest row is about sprint races as we know Lewis Hamilton’s over a month-long silence as we wait still for him to speak following the controversy in Abu Dhabi.
Just under two months until Bahrain, we are slowly perhaps moving on, but we are still needing to wait for answers and the impact on the future unknown. But with the hope that saga will lead to change in the sport. Silly season may be over for drivers, but it seems as management, designers and engineers are on the move, as Murray Walker said “Any can happen in Grand Prix racing… and it usually does”
General News
Kimi Raikkonen retired from F1 in Abu Dhabi last month and in an interview with Motorsport.com, he suggested that Dhabi could “very easily” be the last professional outing of his career. We know he has retired from the sport later than most and has a young family and that might be his focus rather than on his own career.
Both his children from posts on his and his wife Minttu’s social channels show both Robin and Rianna have an interest in not just motorsport but action sports. He is a cult figure in sport despite not saying much or doing much online, there could be interest in him for years.
Ellie Norman has left her role as F1 head of marketing after four and a half years, while one of the more hidden figures I think she played a big role in the digital transformation of the sport and she said “I have completed what I set out to do at F1.”
Organisers of the Australian Grand Prix and the FIA are understood to be in discussions with the Australian Federal Government to ensure there are no grey areas for personnel and drivers ahead of April’s race. I think there is growing confidence not just in F1, that we are heading to living with this virus.
Sprint Qualifying / Race
A row and stalemate have broken out between the big teams and Liberty over the sprint race, with Zak Brown suggesting that the plan should be postponed by a year because of unnamed teams wanting to block the move because of Liberty not giving crash insurance effectively.
Liberty instead offered a $500,000 payment per team for the first five events, plus an extra $150,000 for each event above that. This effectively meant an extra $2.65 million for each team for the six races in 2022. But Brown said one unnamed team wanted this lifted by a combined total of $500,000, plus $150,00 per race.
These political battles are nothing new and you need to wonder what kind of compromise will be made. But it is always going to be about who blinks first, there may be a middle ground as I think both sides want the sprint qualifying, but it’s about the cost and who pays for the damage. It is also about the teams not wanting to spend money to carry out repairs which they want to spend on developing the car.
Mercedes
Mercedes will launch the teams 2022 car digitally from Silverstone on Friday 18th February, before carrying a shakedown later in the day. The German manufacturer is expected to be one of the final teams to launch but has already fired up its car.
Red Bull
Honda boss Masashi Yamamoto says the Japanese manufacturer has withdrawn from the sport too early and hopes the brand will one day return. I would have liked to see if they weren’t withdrawing what they would have been capable of when defending the driver’s championship.
Yamamoto admitted he was sad to see Honda go, he said that there was great “satisfaction rather than relief’ to claim the drivers’ championship with Verstappen, meaning Honda ultimately achieved its targets and won’t leave with unfinished business.
On Friday it was announced that they had reached a deal with Mercedes to allow Ben Hodgkinson to join the team earlier than expected. The question mark was given the sensitives of power units how long would that gardening leave need to be, suggestions it could be years. It was always likely a deal was going to be made.
When his move to Red was announced Mercedes F1 CEO and team principal Toto Wolff has said since the announcement of Red Bull Powertrains he had “expected” Red Bull to try to recruit some of their employees.
Ferrari
Ferrari has set their launch date for Thursday 17th February, the team as we know has been focusing on this season to return to the front. They have been talking about there being “zero compromises” since the end of last year and opted not to develop last year’s car majorly as they hoped to significant gains.
McLaren
McLaren has announced they will launch their 2022 car, the MCL36, online and Sky Sports on the evening of Wednesday 11th February. The launch is for all four of its teams in IndyCar, F1, Extreme E and eSports for 2022 at the event. Writing on its website Zak Brown said they return to the front as well as ambitious and determined while being realistic.
Brown has also said believes that teams “have too much power and it needs to be reduced” as he described the controversial Abu Dhabi Grand Prix as a “symptom rather than cause” of issues with rulemaking and governance. Although the American did not name any team directly, he is likely talking about the four manufacturers.
Ferrari has always had this special status, and often self-interest gets in the way of wider changes in the sport. It’s also about the lobbying and discussions over penalties between the stewards, both trying to limit penalties for themselves and get penalties for other teams.
The lobbying by teams during races must stop I think as it is damaging for the sport, and we need more consistency. Charlie Whiting wouldn’t have allowed this, I think it undermines the position of race director as they, along with the stewards, the events last year lobbying paints a bad image of the sport.
Alpine
It was another week of the shakeup at the team, on Monday it was announced that four-time champion Alain Prost has left his advisory role. The Frenchman throughout his life has had an on-off relationship with the parent company Renault, but this was not a contract termination as he was on a twelve-month rolling contract.
The day after the four-time champion launched an attack on defacto team principal Laurent Rossi for his decision to leave his position. Saying that 2021 was very “disruptive” and he was being cut out of the decisions.
Over the last ten days I’ve suspected there was more to this story and normally we hear about someone becoming disgruntled by the way things has been run. But coming from a four-time champion in his fifth decade around the sport is this a bad PR exercise for the team?
Its been reported that Austrian water treatment company BWT is set to become a main sponsor of Alpine, suggesting that its traditional pink colours will be part of the team’s livery this year. As of Monday, there has been no confirmation of this, but the Austrian water treatment company has already disappeared from the Aston Martin website, although its departure has not been officially confirmed by the team.
An Aston Martin spokesperson told Motorsport.com: “We don’t usually discuss the details of ongoing commercial discussions and contracts. Our full 2022 partner portfolio will be presented at our car launch event next month.”
Fernando Alonso this year becomes the ‘grandad’ oldest driver on the grid, but he is seeing that as an advantage. Since his return was announced in 2020 he has always spoken about being fired up and seeing it as an advantage. He has also said despite
Aston Martin
Dan Fallows will start his role as technical director in April, which has to been seen as good news for the team after the departure of Otmar Szafnauer. He is joining from Red Bull where he was chief aerodynamics engineer, but it was said that it could be “a couple of years,” before he joined the team.
We know the team are likely to make progress this year, if they get it right they historically have always been good at punching above the resources but as they look to expand they face possibly a big question about can they keep getting these value for money which ‘Team Silverstone’ is known for.
Alfa Romeo
Fred Vasseur says he is confident that previously working with Valtteri Bottas in junior categories will help strengthen their understanding and trust at Alfa Romeo. Vasseur will reunite with Bottas for 2022 after leaving Mercedes. Vasseur previously worked with Bottas at his ART Grand Prix in both Formula 3 and GP3.
Since Bottas was announced as a driver Vasseur has spoken about helping the Finn to emerge out of the shadows of Lewis Hamilton, and you need to wonder if the longer-term contract which he never had at Mercedes will lift pressure and allow him to perform better.
Vasseur also admitted the team underestimated the downside of the early abandoning of development on its 2021 car. The Italian manufacturer was one of the first to stop developing last years car, that is always the challenge the year before such a major regulation change.
I think they maybe didn’t expect their main rivals Williams to make the progress and leapfrog them to ninth in the constructors. As he admitted the team failed to capitalise on races in Budapest and Spa.
Williams
Nicolas Latifi says that being flexible and able to adapt will be key to making progress this year when the new regulations are introduced. When we get into testing in Barcelona we know that the cars will be radically different between then and qualifying in Bahrain.
The teams need to react quickly to any changes on track, as well as drivers as the technical changes mean this is effectively a new formula given the number of changes to the rules. He said, “I think as a driver adaptation is one of the most important skills and qualities you have to have.”
That is something we all will need to wait to see when we return to Barcelona following the first five races properly. But we will see a bit of it in Sakhir, but it won’t be as dramatic as maybe we all wanted from the regulations.
Williams has parted company with engineering director Adam Carter as the management reshuffle continues under Jost Capito. Carter has been with the team for six years in different roles and became engineering director last year. I think maybe CEO Jost Capito wants to bring in people from VW to build Williams using people he knows, which is not unusual.
Haas
Nikita Mazepin says he needs to improve the way he interacts with Haas as he and the team look to make a step forwards this season. The Russian had a difficult debut season often being overshadowed by Mick Schumacher as well as frustrating moments, as they both struggled with an uncompetitive car.
It felt like last season he was struggling and was constantly overshadowed by teammate Mick Schumacher, maybe he was struggling with communication with the team. Mazepin isn’t really a fan favourite, last year I felt they were gambling on this season and going for two rookies would pay off this year.
He said, “It is your motivation because we’re human beings, and we obviously lack motivation at times like everybody else.”
The Week Ahead
The coming week I expect will be the same we are at the point in the year where focus is very much on getting ready for the year ahead. We are still waiting for some of the teams to confirm the plans for launching, I think then that for us as content creators and reporters all waiting to plan things around when teams launch.
There are still some questions, as we said last week, about Lewis Hamilton we have not heard from him still. I think like we saw last year he might be taking time, but when that interview happens its likely, regardless of what he says is likely to dominate the days agenda. We are heading nearer to testing and I think we all want to know what he is thinking.
I think the Abu Dhabi Inquiry will pause the debate for now until we get nearer to the report being released. We never know, but I think we are all asking two questions what are the futures of Hamilton and Masi as well as what lessons can be learned?
The other thing is the dispute about the sprint qualifying, you need to ask how much of this is the teams posturing before a sensible compromise is agreed this could come to ahead at the next Commission meeting. But we saw last year it took to the race weekend to get an agreement, and if that is the case, we won’t see it in Bahrain.
