Formula 1 2024 Season

How can 2024 be worse than 2023? Red Bull could win every race, and that's looking like a possibility (God, I hope I'm wrong).

NY Nick said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

We can hope that people are sandbagging. The fact that he has run 2X the laps of everyone except for George is a little concerning too. The car looked incredibly stable whenever they showed it. I am as scared for the field as I was hopeful 2 years ago when Merc came out with the zero side pod. I figured a new disruptive design by very talented people was a sure winner. The RB looks as radical as that Merc, but this one looks to work. 

I guess we will see in a couple weeks. 

He ran 2x as many laps as everyone else because he and Russell were the only drivers that didn't share a car.

I expect this gap to diminish a bit.  However, I still expect red bull to win most races this year.

I was listening to a f1 podcast about Newey's 2024 design taking a crack at the zeropod just to troll Mercedes , I know that is not entirely true, but it made me chuckle. As much as I dislike Nascar (and the Stages), it was a total crapshoot who would win Daytona 500, while it would be appealing to watch someone win other then Max. Essentially to do so you have to throw in gimmicks, for the diehards its probably not worthwhile and best to watch records being broken.

Drive To Survive is out today! I'm watching it now

McLaren said everyone seems to have found some pace over the winter - too bad it seemed Red Bull found more!

I don't know if this is accurate, but someone posted it on r/F1. Supposedly it's the RB1 vs the RB20 at the same scale:

I often wonder how much faster or more efficient the cars could be if the designers had free reign on dimensions and weight.  

Obviously we probably would reach and exceed the limits of Human capabilities which would have to be somehow considered but how big would the most optimal size car be?  How much different would it's Aero look?  What would it weigh?  What different tradeoffs would the designers make with similar overall performance goals (limited fuel, long race distances?

If anyone is aware of that mental exercise or a race category that is that I would love to see it.  I know from a vehicle performance and unlimited aero some European hillclimb and Pikes peak type cars approach this kind of no limit engineering exercise.  The 919 evo was close to what I'm wondering about but still held a lot of vestigial rule based decisions within it.  

In reply to nocones :

If we look at Can-Am, the solution was all the horsepower and all the fuel load and forget the handling. The 917-30 had a longer wheelbase than the 917-10 and carried over 115 gallons of fuel, Donohue made some comments in his book about how it was a bit of an oil tanker IIRC. Can-Am races were longer than modern F1 races, 6 hours or so.

Note that the wheelbase of a current F1 car is set in the rulebook, it's not up to the teams. There's a maximum width and a maximum height but no overall length requirements other than the wheelbase.

Adrian newey designed 2 redbull cars that were max performance.  AFAIK, they were never built.  They had covered wheels and a central covered cockpit.

The below is the latest road type car from newey and redbull.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.motortrend.com/news/2025-2026-red-bull-rb17-f1-hypercar-future-cars/amp/

Open wheels and open cockpit make no sense from a performance standpoint. But it's what F1 has decided they want, so they're required. 

So what's going on with Horners investigation?  All I see are cllickbait-ey headlines.

BBC says he was cleared.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/68411597

I suspect he's just too valuable to Red Bull to lose, and pretty much the only people who could fire him would be  the owners of the Red Bull megacorp. Horner is the CEO of Red Bull Racing. So they conducted a closed door investigation and found what they wanted to find.

Keith Tanner said:

BBC says he was cleared.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/68411597

I suspect he's just too valuable to Red Bull to lose, and pretty much the only people who could fire him would be  the owners of the Red Bull megacorp. Horner is the CEO of Red Bull Racing. So they conducted a closed door investigation and found what they wanted to find.

Eh, maybe. These things have a way of getting out, and if it turned out they didn't do a thorough job and there was something to it, they'd face a PR E36 M3storm. I don't know that Horner is THAT important.

In reply to Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) :

Yea, I saw that Ford was getting really antsy about this- so if this was done wrong, they would likely bail.  So I'll give RBR the benefit of the doubt and move on. Still hate Horner, though. 

From reading his book, I am under the impression Newey would bail on RB if they axed Horner, at least without good cause.  

If it was a reasonable dismissal, good to hear and we can move on.

FP1 finished.  Danny Ric making a claim for RB 2025.  BUT, it's the first FP of the year...  

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

Keith Tanner said:

BBC says he was cleared.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/68411597

I suspect he's just too valuable to Red Bull to lose, and pretty much the only people who could fire him would be  the owners of the Red Bull megacorp. Horner is the CEO of Red Bull Racing. So they conducted a closed door investigation and found what they wanted to find.

Eh, maybe. These things have a way of getting out, and if it turned out they didn't do a thorough job and there was something to it, they'd face a PR E36 M3storm. I don't know that Horner is THAT important.

I suspect the result was settlement + NDA. 

Well, Toto and Zak aren't satisfied with the statement that's been issued:

"Well I just read the statement, which was pretty basic, I would say,” Wolff said on Thursday. 

"My personal opinion is we can’t really look behind the curtain. At the end of the day, there is a lady in an organisation that has spoken to HR and said there was an issue, and it was investigated and yesterday, the sport has received the message that it’s all fine, we’ve looked at it.

“I believe with the aspiration as a global sport, on such critical topics, it needs more transparency, and I wonder what the sport’s position is. We’re competitors, we’re a team and we can have our own personal opinions or not.

In reply to nocones :

Wasn't the Deltawing that concept? I often wonder what would have happened if Indycar chose that chassis.  

I'm pretty sure that Toto would have loved to see Horner's head on a pike. 

Get your popcorn ready. Jenna Fryer just tweeted this:

A Google drive containing all the “Christian Horner evidence” has just been emailed from an anonymous account to hundreds of journalists

"Competitor criticizes competitor when potential weakness doesn't work out like they thought"

I mean what do you expect them to say? 

Mercedes 1-2 in FP2.  Everybody thinks they turned their engines up.  Verstappen down in 6th, has had problems with the car all session. We'll see what's real tomorrow.

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

Well, Toto and Zak aren't satisfied with the statement that's been issued:

But, but, but the "investigation" it was was "independent" and "transparent"