Welcome to the Dutch Grand Prix – 2024
Liberty to sell stake in F1 Group to buy Dorna
Liberty Media has announced it is selling a $ 825 million stake in F1 to fund the purchase of MotoGP. In April, Liberty announced a$4.2bn deal to purchase 86% of Dorna which owns the sport with the remainder staying in the hands of Moto GP itself.
Ten million shares at around £75will be sold allowing liberty to raise the revenue required to complete the Dorna deal – although a part of the proceeds will go towards corporate purposes including debt repayment.
Confirming the sale of shares on Thursday, a Liberty Media statement read: “Liberty Media Corporation announced today that it has priced the previously-announced public offering of 10,650,000 shares of its Series C Liberty Formula One Common Stock (“FWONK”) at a public offering price of $77.50 per share. Liberty Media also granted the underwriter of the offering an option to purchase up to an additional 1,597,500 FWONK shares.
“The offering is expected to close on August 22, 2024, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, and is expected to result in approximately $825,375,000 in gross proceeds to Liberty Media, before deducting the underwriter’s discounts and estimated offering expenses payable by Liberty Media.”
The deal has dragged on for months given it was announced at the start of the season. They were the preferred bidder beating the Qatari sovereign wealth fund, and Ultimate Fighting Championship and World Wrestling Entertainment owner TKO to add MotoGP to its pen.
Greg Maffei, Liberty Media President and CEO, said at the time of the deal being announced. “We are thrilled to expand our portfolio of leading live sports and entertainment assets with the acquisition of MotoGP. MotoGP is a global league with a loyal, enthusiastic fan base, captivating racing and a highly cash flow generative financial profile.”
Liberty will be hoping to do a similar thing to what they have done since buying F1 in 2016, where interest in the sport has been at an all-time high, thus increasing value and revenue streams
Verstappen casts doubts on long-term future
Max Verstappen has once again cast doubt on having a long-term future in the sport beyond his late thirties, the twenty-six-year-old is currently contracted to Red Bull until 2028. Verstappen makes his two-hundredth start this weekend, and has previously stated he would not like to race in F1 into his late 30s.
Asked if he would compete in another two-hundredth F1 races, Verstappen said: “No. We are past halfway for sure but it’s been already an incredible ride. It doesn’t feel like 200 races, but we do a lot of races in the year, so you add them quite quickly.”
Verstappen confirmed he will stay at Red Bull for 2025 despite Mercedes’ efforts to sign the Dutchman to replace Lewis Hamilton. He has also expressed his desire to be able to compete at events such as the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race while still in peak physical condition, which could be a reason to not race in F1 for another decade.
He is currently committed to Red Bull for the next four years, when asked if he could stay beyond his current contract he didn’t appear to give a firm answer. He said “I’m not thinking about a new contract at the moment. I want to see how it goes and see the new regulations to see if it’s fun or not. Then even in 2026 and 2027, there’s a lot of time to decide what happens. I keep everything open and am quite easy-going about it.”
Verstappen takes part in sim racing away from the F1 track and is open to “other opportunities” in the future.
If Verstappen were to retire in 2028 it would buck the recent trend, he will be in his early thirties, compared to drivers of his calibre Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso who are/have raced into their forties. But he has in recent years express concerns about the number of races and travel time as the sport has grown to twenty-four races.
Going into the second half of the season, despite leading the championship by seventy-eight points, he has not won a race since Barcelona in June his longest winless run since 2020.
Looking ahead to the second half of the year and his seventy-eight-point lead, Verstappen said, “If you look at the championship, Lando is closest challenger but lately you can see there are a lot of cars winning races. It’s very unknown, very close and attention to detail, getting the car in the right operating window, can really make a difference.”
But he says he isn’t thinking about the championship with Abu Dhabi so far away, his focus has been on improving the car, believing without the penalty at Spa he could have won the last race.
Norris feels he’s “not performed” like a champion
Lando Norris says he has “not performed at the level of a world champion” so far this season – but still believes he can challenge Max Verstappen for the title. The McLaren driver is seventy-eight points, or three wins with fastest laps, behind Verstappen with ten races to go as the season resumes in Zandvoort.
He told BBC News, “I’m still very happy with how the season’s gone, but just one too many mistakes and a few too many points given away. Which is not the level I need to be at if I want to fight for a championship and fight against a driver like Max.”
While the driver’s championship looks more difficult to win, McLaren have a realistic chance of overhauling Red Bull’s 42-point lead in the constructors’ championship, because Sergio Perez has struggled to match Verstappen.
Norris added, “For the team, of course [we can do it]. As a driver, it is still within reach but it is a lot of points and it’s against Max. I want to be optimistic and say there are still chances.”
I wonder if again this is Norris being hard on himself but also realistic, I remember in 2022 when Charles Leclerc was fighting Verstappen he still while admitting to things not going their way there was still a long way to go.
Antonelli set to get FP1 outing at Monza
Andrea Kimi Antonelli is set to be handed his first FP1 outing with Mercedes at the Italian Grand Prix to ramp up preparations for his potential promotion to its line-up from 2025. The Italian will turn eighteen on Sunday and is the favourite to replace Lewis Hamilton when he joins Ferrari.
Antonelli has completed a number of private tests in W13 and W14 F1 cars this year. According to Motorsport.com Italy, Mercedes is set to give Antonelli his first public F1 outing at Monza, one of the mandatory FP1 outings for a rookie driver, where the team is also expected to finalise its arrangement to promote its junior driver into its 2025 driver line-up alongside George Russell.
Antonelli has already been fulfilling simulator driver duties at Mercedes alongside his private testing programme, while his FP1 outing will be his first public F1 appearance on track for Mercedes. The team are limited on the number of opportunities to run young drivers given there are several street circuits, night races, and sprint weekends during the second half of the year, with Zandvoort, Monza and Mexico City the only real opportunity.
Speaking during the break Antonelli said, “Some degree of worry I think is always there, the prospect of not being able to perform I think frightens everyone. My approach is to see it as a great opportunity to learn, grow and also enjoy the moment.”
“I’m not afraid of being judged, I know Mercedes has a clear opinion about my potential, already this season in F2 the championship didn’t kick off in the best way but there were no negative thoughts. I am quite calm, if the opportunity presented itself to me I would take it with eagerness and try to make the most of it.”
‘Triple whammy’ Behind Russell’s Spa disqualification
Mercedes full investigation into George Russell’s disqualification for being underweight which cost him victory at the Belgian Grand Prix, was caused by a triple whammy of worst-case scenarios.
Russell was disqualified following his victory at Spa-Francorchamps last month after his Mercedes W15 was found to be 1.5kg under the minimum weight limit in post-race scrutineering. The teams had no answers to why this happened as Lewis Hamilton’s car had been nearly identical after qualifying, one possible theory had been the decision to run an unexpected one-stop race meaning his rubber was a lot more worn than Hamilton, who had pulled off a two-stopper so ended the race with fresher sets.
Speaking at the time, Pirelli’s head of F1 and car racing Mario Isola had explained that a single tyre could lose a pretty big chunk of mass over its lifetime. “Usually…it should be around one kilogramme,” he said about the weight loss during a stint, with Russell only needing to lose 375kg per tyre to make up the missing 1.5 kilogramme.
Post-race analysis by Mercedes of what caused the problem has confirmed that Russell’s tyres were indeed lighter than Hamilton’s, but that did not actually offer the full explanation for the missing weight. It’s now understood that ‘three worst case’ scenarios where behind the weight lost.
These were higher than anticipated plank wear – with Eau Rouge, in particular, punishing the floors as cars compress at the bottom of the dip, as mentioned above the tyres running a very long stint and Russell losing weight loss through perspiration in the race, potentially triggered by the hot weather that day, also contributed to the circumstances – as car weight includes the drivers as well.
The issue of Russell’s own weight was something that Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin had hinted at in the days after the Spa race.
News in Brief
Bono commits future to Mercedes
Lewis Hamilton’s race engineer Pete Bonnington, known as Bono, has committed his future to Mercedes after securing a promotion to Head of Race Engineering. Bonnington has worked with Hamilton since the seven-time world champion joined the team in 2013, the duo winning six world titles together.
There have been months of speculation about whether he would follow Hamilton to Ferrari in 2025, but he will continue as Hamilton’s race engineer until the end of the season. He will then continue to race engineer one driver next year, though it remains unclear whether that will be George Russell or Hamilton’s replacement.
Bottas has ‘bigger chances’ to stay at Sauber/Audi
Valtteri Bottas believes he now has “bigger chances” to retain his seat at Sauber for next season under the team’s new management. Last week the team appointed Mattia Binotto as chief operating and chief technical officer, replacing outgoing CEO Andreas Seidl and chief representative Oliver Hoffman. Bottas revealed he has held early discussions with Binotto and hopes his arrival will boost his chances of holding onto his drive to partner the incoming Nico Hulkenberg.
Summer Break Talking Points
Round fifteen sees the season resume with nine races to go, several storylines will be continuing as well as new ones emerge as well as questions which will be answered over the coming weeks as we go through the next month before the autumn break following Singapore.
The big news over the break was Red Bull sticking with Sergio Perez, who has been struggling massively to be quick and consistent in the RB20 since May. Since then, he has dropped down to seventh in the championship standings, scoring less than half of the number of points of team-mate and championship leader Max Verstappen.
Things are also crumbling off track, Adrian Newey’s departure in May lead to questions about sporting director Jonathan Wheatley. He will leave Red Bull at the end of the current season to become the Audi team principal. He takes up a jib share with former Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto, who has taken the reins of the team on 1 August as it prepares to morph from Sauber into the Audi works team in 2026.
All this started by a potential misconduct by Christian Horner in February, an appeal by the female employee against him being cleared back in March was dismissed during the summer break. But the civil war for control has quietened down, but remains unresolved, even if Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko has pledged to see out his current contract until 2026, taking the sting out of a break clause in Verstappen’s contract.
This opened the door to McLaren challenging Red Bull, but will that challenge continue as both drivers have consistently been at the front as they seek their first constructors since 1998. Since Austria last year every upgrade as seen them make another step forward but this season they have been let down by errors costing them wins, but it has still been the highest-scoring outfit over the past eight races, and if that trend continues it could catch Red Bull by Singapore or Austin.
Quiet summer, no this is F1, the silly season kickstarted in February by Lewis Hamilton had a key piece slot into place Carlos Sainz joining Williams in the coming days and weeks expect a flurry of announcements about the remaining seats. Alpine is understood to be leaning towards reserve driver Jack Doohan to replace Haas-bound Esteban Ocon as Pierre Gasly’s teammate, Sauber choosing between Guanyu Zhou or Valtteri Bottas to partner Nico Hulkenberg.
Mercedes is still yet to decide who replaces Hamilton, it’s expected to be Andrea Kimi Antonelli too, but theoretically wait until the end of the campaign to do so.
Also Perez’s and Daniel Ricciardo’s futures hang in the balance they need to have a strong second half to stay in the sport, given reserve driver Liam Lawson is a free agent if Red Bull doesn’t give him a seat. Four drivers fighting for two seats with Isack Hadjar in the mix as he leads F2 going into next weekend when it returns from its summer break.
Season so far
Four weeks after Spa F1 returns following the summer break with ten races to go between now and Abu Dhabi. After dominating the flyway races the European season has proved more competitive with Max Verstappen being under more pressure as the field has closed up with McLaren and Mercedes putting increasing pressure on Red Bull.
Regardless of results, there will undoubtedly be emotional scenes at Mercedes as Hamilton enters the final stages of his historic stint with the team ahead of his move to Ferrari. As Mercedes look still to confirm who will replace him, after the seven-time champion announced his move to Ferrari in February.
Early on with Verstappen dominating the opening races the question appeared after four wins in five races could he be on for another record-breaking year, obviously we know now the answer is no. The only race he didn’t win was because of a retirement, with Carlos Sainz winning less than two weeks after having his appendix removed to lead home a Ferrari one-two from Charles Leclerc, in Melbourne.
Ferrari looked to be the challengers, then came Shanghai McLaren ditching the first upgrades and Lando Norris emerging as his closest challenger with second in the race. Two weeks later Norris went one better with his maiden win in Miami, since then he has fought for victory in nearly every race.
Normal service resumed in Imola, before Leclerc took his first win at his home race in Monaco before Ferrari slipped back allowing Mercedes back into the mix. Mercedes was back too, George Russell winning in Austria and a record-breaking ninth with at Silverstone for Lewis Hamilton with Russell wining at Spa, before being disqualified for his car having slipped marginally under the minimum legal weight gifting victory to Hamilton. In between Oscar Piastri also took his maiden Grand Prix win in Budapest, the sixth driver to do so.
As for the drivers’ championship, that dominant start still sees Verstappen lead by seventy-eight points from Norris with Leclerc twenty-two further behind, but it looks to bigger gap baring a miracle to challenge for the title. the standings as they are, it is going to take something historic for Norris to chase down the Dutchman from here, with Mercedes’ emergence as a contender for race victories only serving to stiffen his task.
Verstappen was fortunate that his collision with Norris in Austria – that he was adjudged to have caused – ultimately saw him gain ten points on the Brit. With Norris also having been guilty of failing to capitalise on several weekends where he appeared to have the fastest car, Verstappen’s lead could have easily been significantly smaller at this stage.
McLaren meanwhile have more than halved the lead of Red Bull from the first five races over the last five to forty-two points, largely thanks to Sergio Perez not scoring as many points with both Norris and Piastri consistently combined to outscore Verstappen, and many were surprised by Red Bull’s announcement at the start of the summer break that they would be keeping Perez for at least the remainder of the season.
McLaren is looking on course given Perez’s drop in form to claim the first constructors’ crown since 1998. Ferrari are third twenty-one points behind McLaren, however, the dip in form means that they are more likely looking over their shoulder at the threat of being displaced by Mercedes.
Dutch Talking Points
Round fifteen brings F1 to Zandvoort for the first double header before the autumn break. Since the Grand Prix returned in 2021, the three races held have been won by Max Verstappen and another win this weekend would see him equal Jim Clark for the most wins.
However, recent history suggests he won’t, no driver has won a new or returning race four times in a row. Verstappen perhaps or faces the biggest test yet given the way McLaren and Mercedes have closed in recently. His victory last year saw him equal Sebastian Vettel’s record of nine consecutive F1 wins with his third at Zandvoort. Despite heavy downpours and a red flag caused by a crash in Turn One
Zandvoort is synonymous with sand dunes, as the track weaves around them at the beachside resort. It is also known for its banked corners, with Turn 1 having a gradient of 35%. It’s a high-adrenaline circuit with fast straights, technical corners and room for overtaking, so it usually delivers a dramatic race.
The circuit is very similar to Suzuka, described as a rollercoaster ride compared with other circuits on the calendar because of its fast, undulating nature. Overtaking can be slightly more difficult because of its tight twisty nature, as well as sand being blown onto track.
Zandvoort has been a popular circuit with drivers, as it’s an old circuit meaning the risk versus reward is higher because of the fast sweeping corners. But it’s also a circuit where you need a bit of straight-line speed for the final sector and main straight, making it a circuit of conflicting demands. The circuit is also is one where drivers need to be careful, as it has retained much of the grass and gravel which means mistakes can be more costly.
McLaren “cash in” on aero development
McLaren is set to “cash in” on aerodynamic testing over the first part of the season, after bringing relatively few upgrades in the opening fourteen races.
The aerodynamic testing regulations (ATR) in contemporary F1 restrict how much wind tunnel time and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) resources can be used, with each team receiving limits. These are allocated depending on their constructors’ championship position in 2023 for the first half of the year and then changed to fit the 2024 placings after 30 June.
In Miami, the team brought a major upgrade which has lead to them challenging for victory at nearly every race this season, there have been suggestions that because of the ATR the team has been holding back on its developments to get more wind tunnel time in the second half of the season.
As the upgrades planned for the second half of the year were largely conceived in the first half of the year, this gives McLaren more time not only to finalise its 2024 upgrade schedule but also to spend on its 2025 car.
Aside from the higher-downforce rear wings that the team developed for Imola and Monaco, and the lower-downforce wings for Silverstone and Spa, the only longer-term upgrade detailed after Miami was a new front wing.
team principal Andrea Stella said, “Effectively, Red Bull have taken trackside more developments so far, in terms of physical parts delivered, when you look at the submission, than what we have done.”
“But definitely, I can talk for McLaren. We seem to be now in condition to cash in some of this development that we have accrued in the ground. I would expect that for the second part of the season, we will have at multiple times some new parts.”
McLaren has 256 wind tunnel runs to use in each of the two-month aerodynamic testing periods (ATP), 64 hours of wind tunnel airspeed above 15m/s, 320 hours of wind tunnel occupancy time, and 1600 new geometries to use in CFD simulations.
This was a reduction compared to the first half of the year, when McLaren had more of each to use owing to finishing fourth in last year’s championship.
Stella says that the team has not been prolific with its upgrade plan in the opening part of the season, noting that it was a ‘surprise’ that the team had been able to retain its competitiveness.
The Weekend Ahead
This weekend sees the season resume following the summer break, the big question has the break allowed Red Bull to return to dominance or will we see it continue to be very close on track. It is not only Red Bull could it even be McLaren stealing the march, we have four races before the next break following Singapore.
I think this changes the dynamic given you need to find momentum twice in this second half of the season. Max Verstappen has had much more challenge this season but this is a circuit where he has won three times at since its return in 2021, but as we saw in the second quarter of the season it was very competitive.
McLaren is the most consistent challengers to Red Bull but you need to wonder if what we saw in Budapest has dented trust in the team, with Sergio Perez underperforming Lando Norris who I think is the one they need to back because of the season he has had. They could pull out a few surprises along the way, Mercedes are not far behind as things looked before the break and that could open the door for a few surprises.
Ferrari, I think has been the biggest losers from the upturn from McLaren and Mercedes, they haven’t looked able to keep with them in recent races and have been outdeveloped by their rivals in recent races. But unlike before their strategy hasn’t appeared to let them down it’s mainly been because they haven’t kept up in the development battle.