The DRS Zone

Tag: formula-1

  • Red Bulls Checo Conundrum

    Unless you’ve lived in a hole the last few months speculation has been rife that Red Bull intend to replace Sergio Perez with either Liam Lawson or Yuki Tsunoda.

    The Background

    I first wanted to briefly touch upon the decision by RB earlier on in the season to renew Perez’s contract. Perez had, had a tough run of races and it was a surprise to many when RB announced at The Canadian Grand Prix the contract extension that would take him through to at least the end of the 2025 season and into the 2026 season. I can only assume the reasoning behind this was the hope it might give him a bit of a morale boost and give him a platform to go and kick on from. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case, not only did he have a weekend to forget in Canada, but the remainder of the season was shocking as well.

    You could argue until you’re blue in the face that his struggles have come due to the performance of the car or if he has even been given an equal car. However, you do have to assume that upgrades went to Max first based on his position in the championship but that doesn’t mean Perez didn’t get them, at the end of the day the goal for RB is to win the constructors championship. Despite popular belief, it is not in RB’s best interest for one of their drivers struggle, they’ve now gone from 1st to 3rd in the standings which whilst it will mean an increase in wind tunnel time and development hours, it does mean they will have less prize money to use on the car.

    The Options

    The replacement options being considered come in the form of Yuki Tsunoda or Liam Lawson. For me I don’t think either of them are of the level that RB need to get back to the top of the championship. You look at Ferrari and McLaren, both of their drivers are generally closely matched and consistently scoring good points.

    Tsunoda has had some flashes of brilliance but for me he lacks the consistency, and he also seems quite hot headed. He also doesn’t strike me as being the most constructive driver when it comes to feedback for the engineers on car set up and development.

    Lawson seems like the chosen one, personally I don’t think he’s shown enough in his time in F1 to really be the man to go up against Verstappen. He stepped in for a few races last season for the injured Daniel Ricciardo and then this season he replaced him completely after Singapore. For me he hasn’t really set the world alight. He does however seem to have a strong character about him which he will need going up against Verstappen. He does come across as a bit arrogant and he certainly doesn’t seem to mind ruffling some feathers, if he gets the move to RB and starts ruffling Max’s feathers that won’t sit well, and he won’t last long.

    The Problem

    Red Bull have themselves a problem and I am not talking about who they pick as a replacement. I am talking about Perez himself. At the time of writing Sergio Perez has a contract to race next season, he is not just going to give that up. Obviously, I don’t know the ins and outs of his contract, but unless RB have some get out clauses within it, it could be hard for them to get out of it. I read a rumour that it could cost Reb Bull up to $80m to cancel his contract, if that is true not only is it a huge sum of money but it might also suggest that there are in fact no performance based “get out” clauses in his contract. Not only that, but Perez also comes with significant sponsorship backing. RB are obviously not short of a penny, but they need to make careful decisions because the drop in prize money, the loss of the sponsorship from him and any monetary payments they must make to terminate the contract could all be factors for next seasons budget.

    Final Thoughts

    Ultimately, I think RB will still replace Sergio Perez. They could go for something they have not done since they joined Formula 1 and give both drivers a go next season. For those who may not know, when RB joined F1 in 2005 they had David Coulthard as their main driver and the second seat they were due to swap between Christian Klien and Vitantonio Liuzzi. That season Klien ended up doing more races that Liuzzi, but it is something they could consider doing again.

    I think they will go with Lawson, he seems to be the chosen one at the moment after Verstappen and they seem to have a lot of faith in him. However, that could also be said of Kvyat, Gasly and Albon all of which seemed to be in the good graces at the time of moving to the main team but in the end they didn’t have the best of times in the other Red Bull and ultimately left for other teams.

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  • Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

    The 2024 Season Comes to a Close

    The final race of the season is complete and whilst it wasn’t a classic, it will be remembered for being the race where McLaren secured their first Constructors Championship since 1998. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were not even born in 1998, and it was the year I started watching the sport. Knowing the cars were carrying more downforce than the Ferrari’s, I was slightly worried they would be mugged down the back straight. Thankfully that didn’t happen, largely in part because of the contact between Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri which gave Norris a good gap that he was able to maintain and extend.

    First Corner Shenanigans

    “Move of a world champion that one”

    Oscar Piastri

    If you’ve got your tin foil hat on, you may buy into the conspiracy theory that the contact between Vestappen and Piastri was and intentional attempt to thwart McLaren from winning the Constructors Championship. The reasoning behind this is due to the “bad blood” between Zak Brown and Christian Horner. I do not buy in to this however it is another example of a typical Verstappen “I am coming through, if you don’t get out the way we will make contact” lunge up the inside. After the race he confirmed that it was his mistake and that he had tried to get out of it but could not. I find this is an odd thing to say considering during the race he thought the penalty was ridiculous. It didn’t really help Piastri who lost more time than Verstappens 10 second penalty and then caused a collision of his own. Still, he managed to fight his way back into the points.

    Leclerc Inspired Drive Not Enough for Ferrari

    Starting at the back of the grid Leclerc had a phenomenal race finishing in 3rd, he managed to avoid the contact at turn 1 and really stepped up to help put his team put McLaren under pressure. I will say however that the Ferrari is clearly much quicker than most of the cars out there so we shouldn’t be surprised that he managed to get on the podium, it’s not the first time we have seen this happen from a driver out of position, Verstappen and Hamilton have done it many times. I can be quite critical of the Ferrari drivers at time, they always have a mistake in them, but neither of them did make any mistakes, unfortunately for them it wasn’t enough.

    A Weekend of Goodbyes and Potential Goodbyes

    It’s not unusual for people to move around in F1, but we seem to have had more after this weekend than in previous seasons. Several goodbyes and not all of them went out on a good note. Colapinto ended his 9-race run with Williams retiring with an engine issue. Bottas ended his disastrous spell at Kick Sauber by putting Perez out of the race and then slamming into Magnussen, who left Haas finishing a lap down in 16th but claiming the fastest lap. Zhou Guanyu didn’t fare much better in 13th. Checo Perez retired after contact with Bottas, at the time of writing remains contracted to Red Bull for next season, but there are strong rumours this was his last race for RB. On a more positive note, Hulkenberg finished 8th in his last drive for Haas and Hamilton drove a great race to finish 4th in his last race for Mercedes.

    A Farewell to Hamilton

    I just wanted to quickly mention Hamilton. Obviously, this weekend was his last race for Mercedes, its forged one of the most memorable partnerships in F1 history with multiple Drivers and Constructors championships. Watching from the outside it feels like the right time and it seems like Hamilton needs a new challenge. Whilst it is a big deal all of the coverage, events and media attention it received this past weekend is ridiculous. After the race he was given a spot alongside the top 3 on the grid, he was supposed to have his own post-race interview that was cancelled. Anyone would think he was retiring from the sport, he’s only leaving Mercedes. A lot of the TV coverage as well particularly after the race was focused on this and I kind of felt it took away from discussing McLarens achievement. If they are like this with him moving to another team, I can’t imagine what they will be like when he actually retires.

    Results

    1stLando Norris11thAlex Albon
    2ndCarlos Sainz12thYuki Tsunoda
    3rfCharles Leclerc13thZhou Guanyu
    4thLewis Hamilton14thLance Stroll
    5thGeorge Russell15thJack Doohan
    6thMax Verstappen16thKevin Magnussen
    7thPierre GaslyDNFLiam Lawson
    8thNico HulkenbergDNFValtteri Bottas
    9thFernando AlonsoDNFFranco Colapinto
    10thOscar PiastriDNFSergio Perez

    What Is Next?

    With the season now finished, attention turns to the post season test, then all eyes will be on 2025 which starts in roughly 90 days. I will post my thoughts on any rumours or gossip circulating in that time. But I also intend to write some team-by-team reviews on how I feel they performed during this season. I will release these during the off season. Hopefully next season the blog can grow and improve.

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  • Handbags at Dusk

    Max vs George

    If this was WWE Teddy Long would be booking a tag team match. In one corner we have Verstappen and Christian Horner, the other Russell and Toto Wolff. If you were not aware after the last race Max spoke to the media about some shenanigans that went down after qualifying and accused Russell of doing his best to get him a grid penalty.

    George has responded this weekend by stating that Max was in the steward’s room swearing and arguing with them about the penalty, he has also suggested that Max has threatened to “put him on his head in a wall”. Obviously, this can’t just stay between the drivers as Horner and Wolff have gotten involved with the latter calling Horner a “little Terrier”.

    Max has hit back calling George a liar, which itself is a significant accusation. I do think to myself, why would the president of the GPDA lie about such things in a very public forum. However, I would like to think that Max would have a bit more about him than to swear at the stewards and make threats to George, at the very least you would assume there was an RB representative on hand to make sure these things didn’t get out of hand.

    Russell has further stoked the fire by suggesting that Max is also a bully within the team and earlier on in the season other teams such as McLaren, Mercedes and Aston Martin were inundated with RB engineer’s CV’s. He didn’t stop there, however. Referring to Max’s 2021 title win. George suggested if it happened the other way around then Michael Massi the race director at the time would have “feared for his life” from the Verstappens.

    I obviously have no contacts in the sport so I must take what you hear from the media with a pinch of salt, we know they are not always correct in their reporting and any information they get will be second or third hand information. What I do think however is that Max is clearly a tougher person than George, we all know the tough bringing up he had regarding his dad, and we all know the stories about how his dad has acted in the past. So, for me it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Max may have been sterner in his approach to the situation. It’s not the first time we have seen fireworks between drivers, Schumacher marching to the McLaren garage at Spa in 1998 springs to mind. However, threatening to harm another driver on track, if true, is another level.

    For me, instead of joining in the tit for tat. The team principles should be looking to nip this in the bud and not fanning the flames just because they also don’t like each other. Maybe it’s all a show to generate some talking points and get more people to tune in. I do think however that this needs to be dealt with harshly. If it’s true and I were to threaten someone I worked with, I’d be sacked or suspended immediately. They should be thrown into a room to discuss it like adults and get over it.

    Other drivers then chime in on the situation with Lando saying that Max only talks the truth, which would suggest he thinks George is lying. I am unsure who to believe to be honest, they are very different people and if there was a physical altercation I would put my money on Max to come out on top. It will be interested to see what happens in the race if they are close together that’s for sure. Let me know what you think in the comments section.

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