Category: Formula 1

Around 2000 guests, ranging from drivers from all categories to family and friends – including F1 team boss Christian Horner, comedian Rowan Atkinson plus a host of fans who had been lucky to secure tickets – joined the ceremony at Westminster Abbey to pay tribute to Moss who died in April 2020.

His Majesty the King was represented by his Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, with Prince Michael of Kent also in attendance.

The son of Moss’s former Mercedes team-mate Juan Manuel Fangio also flew over from Argentina to ensure his family was represented.

The ceremony had been the first chance that there had been to host an event to celebrate Moss’s life after he passed away during the lockdown restrictions prompted by the Covid pandemic.

Moss’s long-time friend Jackie Stewart delivered a moving tribute, bringing with him the original autograph that he got as a kid when he attended a race meeting near the Scottish Borders to meet his then-hero.

Stewart explained that Moss’s behaviour of always writing his name in full for autographs was a trait that he respected – and something he adopted himself throughout his career as well.

He also revealed a story about how, shortly after winning the 1973 world championship, he had been stopped by a policeman for speeding in Hyde Park.

After winding down his window, Stewart could not believe it when the policeman said to him: ‘Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?’

Other readings at the service came from former Autosport editor Simon Taylor, the Duke of Richmond and sportscar legend Derek Bell.

Moss’s son Stirling Elliot Moss also read an extract from a personal letter he had from his father.

“Be reminded that everything worth achieving comes at a cost,” the letter said. 

“If you are lucky, you might never get the bill. But don’t bank on it. Before you start, be sure you are willing to pay the price. I was, and I did, and I have no regrets.”

As Westminster Abbey’s bells rang at the end of the service, guests were treated to a display of some of Moss’s most famous cars.

This included the iconic Mille Miglia-winning Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR, which ran with the famous number ‘722’.

Moss won 16 grands prix during his F1 career but somehow never managed to win the title. He finished runner-up four times between 1955 and 1961, and was third overall on a further three occasions.

His F1 career was cut short by an accident at Goodwood in 1962 that left him in a coma for a month. Although he managed to make a full recovery, he felt his driving skills never returned to the level that they were before the crash so decided against a comeback.

Ferrari’s SF-24 will receive the first of three planned upgrade packages next week, when F1 heads to Italian soil for the first time in 2024.

It has deployed its second and last filming session on its own Fiorano test track to give its comprehensive upgrades package a first run-in and reduce the calibration work needed at Imola.

While filming days are limited to 200km and conducted on special Pirelli tyres, it gives the Scuderia some useful data to compare the new upgrades to their virtual counterparts and correlate the work that has been done in the wind tunnel by the Enrico Cardile-led technical team.

The filming day will also be used to gather rights-free footage with the SF-24 driven by Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz incorporating the blue HP logos in its updated livery.

The American tech giant joined the team from last weekend’s Miami Grand Prix as a title sponsor, adding its well-known blue logos to the engine cover and both the front and rear wings.

It is also expected its third driver Oliver Bearman will get some mileage to help him prepare his first FP1 session of the season in Imola, where he will step into the Haas VF-24.

Team boss Fred Vasseur played down talk that Ferrari’s first major upgrades to the SF-24 will be a huge step as has been touted.

But the Frenchman added that given the tight battle the team is in with the recently upgraded McLarens, even a modest step could make the difference with the Woking-based squad.

“We don’t have to expect that it will be a game-changer, but it’s so tight that this can bring performance,” Vasseur said.

Our competitors brought parts this [Miami] weekend, and it was not a game-changer. But it’s also that when in qualifying you have four or five cars in one-tenth, if you bring one-tenth, it’s a game-changer for the weekend.

“But a large part of the result, it’s also coming from what we are doing with the drivers, the set-up of the car during the weekend, the management of the tyres.

“We don’t have to think only about upgrades and development, it’s also the job that we are doing on track.”

When asked if it was a coincidence that Ferrari’s first upgrade is landing for its first home race of the season, Vasseur replied: “The fact that Imola is close to the factory is helping us bring something, because we can release the parts a bit later.

“But no, it was nothing to do with Italy. Then again, we don’t have to expect that it will be a game-changer, but it’s so tight that this can bring performance.”

The Silverstone-based squad brought a new lower-drag rear wing to Miami in the hope that a better straightline speed would help it in the fight against its rivals.

However, despite running it in practice, Aston Martin went back to its more usual configuration – which inevitably made things harder for its drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll when it came to racing.

Speaking about why the team had abandoned a design that had been specifically created for the track, team principal Mike Krack explained that the choice was prompted by the lower downforce level triggering more sliding from the tyres.

And, on a weekend when keeping tyre temperatures under control was absolutely critical, both drivers preferred having a car set-up that was better for tyres even if it compromised top speed.

Krack said: “It was more a decision that you make based on tyre behaviour. If you have a lot of sliding, you really weigh up downforce against top speed.

“This is a permanent discussion in the office about whether to go up, or to go down. The drivers have their opinions because they have to try and pass – so we made that choice.

“If we started again, maybe the choice would be different. But the wing choice in the end was not the decisive factor.”

Aston Martin’s Miami upgrades in detail

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin AMR24

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

The centrepiece for Aston Martin’s Miami upgrades was its rear wing, with the team making a shift back towards a more traditional endplate and tip section design. This meant the parts formed one surface, rather than creating a disassociation.

This design is more akin to what was intended when the 2022 regulations were originally framed and before teams started to pursue the semi-detached variants.

These alternative ideas have become commonplace up and down the grid and combat the inefficiencies posed at the endplate and flap juncture.

To take further advantage of the changes made with the rear wing, Aston Martin also had a new beam wing configuration, with just a single element employed and the outer sections backed off to help reduce load and drag.

Also listed amongst the changes in the car presentation document was a change in specification for the front wing, with the flap design altered to balance the car front-to-rear to match the aforementioned lower downforce rear wing and beam wing options.

There were also a couple of extra cooling solutions at Aston Martin’s disposal, both of which were based on whether the team needed a little more cooling than was originally expected. The first of these was a driver cooling scoop that could be fitted to the top of the chassis. 

Secondly, the team also had a larger capacity rear cooling outlet at its disposal in order to help with higher ambient temperatures, which would help with flow through the bodywork, rejecting the heat at the rear of the car.

Additional reporting by Charles Bradley

Ocon registered the first point-scoring finish of the year for the French squad after finishing 10th in last Sunday’s race.

The result marked the end of a point-less run that stretched to the 2023 Las Vegas GP for Alpine, which has struggled this year as a result of an overweight car that has failed to be competitive.

Miami was the first grand prix where the team finally met the minimum weight limit thanks to the introduction of an upgrade package that Alpine said was worth around two-tenths per lap.

Ocon was positive about the step forward considering where Alpine started the season, but conceded a 10th place was nothing to write home about.

“We don’t want to be jumping around and celebrating too hard,” the Frenchman insisted.

“Obviously, it’s only a top 10. But considering where we were a couple of races ago in Bahrain, 19th and 20th, I think we can take the positive out of this race.

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

“The baby steps that we are doing at the moment and that obviously feels good because the team kept motivated trying to understand what is going on with our pace, and it hasn’t been the smoothest weekend, I would say.

“But it’s two races that we’ve come close to the points: 11th in Shanghai, 10th today – we are inside the points, and definitely feels good to come out of this weekend with some reward.”

Ocon and team-mate Pierre Gasly had enjoyed their strongest qualifying performance of the year in Miami, lining up 13th and 12th on the grid respectively.

The Frenchman feels Alpine is still stronger in qualifying trim, and reckons Haas’ Nico Hulkenberg could have threatened his position, the German recovering from 14th to 11th after making his second stop under safety-car conditions.

“I think we are still better in qualifying than we are in the race,” Ocon said. “I think today if you leave 10 more laps probably Nico would have been very close and fighting with us again.

“I had to fight my way through in that race. It was insane how many moves I had to do and the fact that we’re struggling with the straightline speed as well didn’t help too much.

“So not the perfect lead up to the race from Saturday onwards, but nevertheless, we come up with some reward.”

Its first point of the year means Alpine is now eighth in the standings ahead of Sauber and Williams, who are yet to score.

As the official submission to the FIA about its developments revealed, almost no aerodynamic surface had been left untouched with the full package of changes that had been fitted to Lando Norris’s car.

While the Woking-based squad had teased beforehand about the revisions being part of efforts to address a weakness in low speed, the true motive of these latest developments was obvious: pure downforce.

In F1, though, not all downforce is the same – and the key to real success is in delivering it in an efficient a manner as possible.

Depending on which way you look at it, efficiency is about too much drag, or too little downforce, for a set wing level.

It is quite easy to bring a barn door rear wing that produces a ton of ‘dirty’ downforce to help you be quick around the corners, but that is no good as soon as a car starts stretching its legs on the straights.

What is critical to understand about McLaren’s Miami upgrades is that it brought a double whammy of gains: more clean downforce to be quicker around the corners, which opened the door to letting it run less wing (so more speed on the straights). It was very much a case of having its cake and eating it.

As McLaren team boss Andrea Stella explained, the focus of its effort was in bringing efficient downforce that did not add drag – which then allowed it to trim things off elsewhere.

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

So after a recent history of it being slightly on the backfoot on the straights, it did not go unnoticed that it was more competitive against its rivals now.

“We had good top speed here,” explained Stella. “One of the reasons is that we on purpose decided to go for a relatively light rear wing.

“We could do that because we added downforce through the package, and this means that we needed to be less demanding from a rear wing point of view, which is never too efficient.

“When you upgrade a car with floors and sidepods, it’s always more efficient than putting downforce on with a rear wing.”

The overall benefits of the package were also complemented by it going a slightly different way to what would be expected on set up.

So rather than capitalising on the advantage it has over rivals in high-speed corners, it shifted its focus to be better optimised for the slower sections.

As Stella explained: “We consciously decided to set up the car to maximise low-speed performance.

“The decent performance we had in low-speed is not necessarily because of the characteristic of the package, it’s also because of some conscious decisions as to how we set up the cars to make sure that we were as strong as possible in low-speed.

“If you look at qualifying, we lost quite a lot of time in the high-speed section, but this was kind of a deliberate set-up choice.”

Miami was just the start, and there is more to come too. Stella suggests that upgrades in in the pipeline will help further address the problems it has faced in low speed.

Asked about how much the upgrades had solved its weakness in this area, Stella said: “Not to the entirety that we would have wished. There’s some more specific work and upgrades that we need to deliver to address low speed in particular.”

Even before the well-timed safety car helped Norris on his way to victory, the potential of the new McLaren upgrade was pretty clear to see.

It hadn’t been shown – with that scrappy lap in SQ3 and a Turn 1 exit in the sprint – but when he got clear air in the race, Norris was flying.

As the Briton explained after the race: “I said already on Friday, it felt good. I was confident on Friday and today that kind of feeling came back to me a lot. It was good. A lot of Sundays recently have been strong. Just today we managed to step it up and turn it into something even more.”

Key now though will be in finding out in Imola as to whether the upgrades are a sign that McLaren is now a genuine threat to Red Bull, or if it was simply good fortune in Miami that helped Norris come out on top.

For as runner-up Max Verstappen said when asked about whether he thought he could have won without the safety car: “I mean, it’s always if, if, if, right? If my mum had balls, she would be my dad.

“It’s how it goes to racing. Sometimes it works out for you, sometimes it doesn’t.”

McLaren’s job now is to turn the sometimes into more times.

Additional reporting by Filip Cleeren and Ronald Vording.

Just days after Mario Andretti appeared on Capitol Hill, Republican Jim Jordan has written to F1’s owners demanding explanations for the decision-making process that has blocked Andretti’s hopes.

American television and radio network NBC published a letter it had obtained from Jordan outlining a request for documents and information relating to F1’s call on denying Andretti a spot on the grid.

In the letter, which has been sent to Liberty CEO Greg Maffei and F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali, Jordan says he wants answers to ensure that no illegal anti-competitive behaviour took place.

“The Committee on the Judiciary is responsible for examining the sufficiency of federal competition laws to protect against monopolies and other unfair restraints on trade,” he wrote.

“Sports leagues, like Formula 1, operate in a notable area of antitrust law in which some degree of collusion is necessary for the creation of the product.

“However, when a sports league deviates from its rules and practices in a manner that reduces competition and depresses consumer interest in the product, the collusion may amount to anti-competitive conduct.”

Jordan outlined that he did not accept some of the explanations that F1 made for rejecting Andretti’s bid when it announced in January that it had decided against allowing it onto the grand prix grid.

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

He wrote: “The excuses put forward for denying Andretti Cadillac’s entry appear to be pretextual, arbitrary, and unrelated to Andretti Cadillac’s suitability to compete in Formula 1.

“For example, Formula 1 alleged that a new team could only add value to Formula 1 by ‘competing for podiums and race wins.’

“However, the FIA had already analysed—and approved of—the technical capabilities of Andretti Cadilac to compete among current teams, and most current teams in Formula 1 do not meet Formula 1’s standard of regularly competing for ‘podiums and race wins’

“Formula 1 also faulted Andretti Cadillac for attempting to use an existing engine manufacturer because it could ‘be damaging to the prestige and standing of’ Formula 1. At the same time, however, Formula 1 stated that if Andretti Cadillac used a new engine manufactured by General Motors in the team’s first year, a new engine would create a challenge for the new team.

“Formula 1 cannot have it both ways. The truth, as FIA President Muhamed Ben Sulayem explained, is that the rejection of Andretti Cadillac is ‘all about money.'”

The Committee also felt that arguments that had been put forward about an 11th team damaging the interests of current teams perhaps hinted at anti-competitive behaviour.

The letter added: “Weak teams want to be protected from competition to the detriment of consumers and an additional team would compete for prize money and sponsorships.

“If Formula 1 must hinder competition and harm consumers to protect failing competitors, then the entire Formula 1 model may be broken and the entity cannot hide behind the necessity of a sports league to pursue anti-competitive conduct.

“Delaying Andretti Cadillac’s entry into Formula 1 for even one year will harm American consumers to benefit failing Formula 1 teams.”

In a bid to help the Committee’s investigation into the matter, Jordan has demanded documents and a staff-level briefing from F1 over what happened.

He has asked for all documents and communications referring or relating to the process for evaluating the new team entries and Andretti, plus anything related to F1’s decision to reject its entry on January 31.

Furthermore, he has requested all documents and communications between F1 and the ten current teams relating to new team entries, and any communications related to the new team entry or anti-dilution fees in the Concorde Agreement.

He has asked for a briefing as soon as possible and no later than May 21.

Last week, several Congress members wrote to F1 asking for answers over the Andretti decision and whether or not F1’s actions had put “unreasonable restraints on market competition” that might contravene US laws.

Speaking during a press conference outside the US Capitol last week, Mario Andretti said: “We’ve done everything that’s been asked of us. I represented the US proudly in my F1 career. My proudest moments were standing on top of the podium with the American national anthem playing.”

F1 declined to comment on the matter when approached by Autosport.

ABC’s broadcast of Lando Norris’s maiden F1 victory attracted an average audience of 3.1 million viewers, which beats the previous record of 2.6 million that watched the inaugural Miami event in 2022.

It also marks a 48% uptick in viewership compared to last year, when the audience had dropped to 2.1 million for Miami’s second event.

Although the late afternoon timing of the Miami event pitches it late for a European and Asian television audience, it has clearly proved beneficial for capturing eyeballs in the USA, as its races are the three most viewed in the country’s history.

The Saturday sprint race, which was broadcast on ESPN, attracted 946,000 viewers, which was the largest US audience for a sprint since the format was introduced in 2021. Official qualifying on Saturday drew an audience of 625,000.

The uplift in US interest in the Miami race is good news for F1’s broadcast partner as the start of the season had delivered some mixed figures.

The season-opener in Bahrain had earned 1.12 million viewers, which was down from the 1.31 million that tuned in in 2023.

The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix then posted a 40% drop in viewership year on year, with it having 920,000 viewers compared to the 1.523 million who watched the 2023 race.

Andrea Stella, Team Principal, McLaren F1 Team, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, 2nd position, Lando Norris, McLaren F1 Team, 1st position, Charles Leclerc, Scuderia Ferrari, 3rd position, on the podium

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

However, some of this drop was put down to the race being broadcast on a Saturday and shown on ESPN2.

The Chinese Grand Prix, which had aired at 3am Eastern Time, drew just 626,000 viewers – although this was well up from the 268,000 who watched the previous Shanghai race in 2019.

With F1 making big efforts to increase the audience in Miami, a sell-out crowd of 270,000 last weekend showed a strong appetite for grand prix racing.

Daniel Ricciardo suggested over the weekend that the Miami GP felt like it was being surrounded by the kind of hype that is normally associated with the Super Bowl.

“It feels like, and I’m not trying to say it’s the Super Bowl, but Super Bowl week,” he said.

“It’s like a whole week of things. I feel our weeks have built out now, not to the extent of a Super Bowl week but it’s getting there with events and people are interested.

“It’s from a Wednesday onwards, and it’s not just the Sunday that they’re excited for the race. We had a really good crowd, a lot of young people I feel, and a lot of new audience coming in. So, it’s good to grow the sport for sure.”

Over the Miami Grand Prix weekend, it emerged several key Red Bull staff members, including long-time sporting manager Jonathan Wheatley, have been the subject of interest from Red Bull’s competitors.

McLaren F1 CEO Zak Brown said his outfit had seen “an increase in CVs coming our way from the team”, suspecting that legendary designer Adrian Newey won’t be the last domino to fall in the wake of Red Bull’s “destabilising” rift between the Austrian and Thai side of the business.

Team boss Horner said he was not concerned by the rumours about some of his most senior team members, pointing out that his Red Bull Powertrains division poached over 200 people from Mercedes’ HPP engine programme.

“I don’t have any concern of the strength in depth. Of course, there is always going to be movement between teams,” Horner said.

“I don’t know how many people we or RB have employed from McLaren this year. Mercedes, we have taken 220 people out of HPP into Red Bull Powertrains.

“So, when we are talking about losing people, I would be a bit more worried about the 220 than maybe one or two CVs.”

Toto Wolff, Team Principal and CEO, Mercedes-AMG F1 Team

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Team boss Horner said it was “inevitable” that Brown and his Mercedes counterpart Toto Wolff would stir things up through the media.

“I think it is inevitable. The two candidates involved, they talk a lot, “Horner said.

“But I am not going to get sucked into a tit-for-tat. I would be more focused on Toto’s own issues that he has.”

Red Bull insisted some of its CVs making it to other teams is part of the usual contract renewal cycle, with Wheatley understood to be out of contract soon and having long held an interest in becoming a team principal if such an opportunity were to open up somewhere.

Autosport understands the team has recently extended the contracts of many other senior employees, including head of aerodynamics Enrico Balbo and head of performance engineering Ben Waterhouse.

Earlier this year, it also tied down technical director Pierre Wache to another long-term deal.

Additional reporting by Ronald Vording

Every episode will feature an insightful twenty-minute interview with a prominent figure from inside and around the sport, focusing on themes beyond the everyday news cycle.

Joining James in the studio for analysis and discussion will be a rotating cast of key figures from Autosport and Motorsport’s global editorial team plus guests from the broader F1 media world.

Thoughtful, accessible and insightful, the James Allen on F1 podcast takes the helmet off the sport. It is for any fans looking for a glimpse behind the scenes at the human beings who
make the fascinating world of F1.

Episode One looks at Ayrton Senna and his influence on how F1 tells its story today. The F1 world has a month of events lined up to celebrate the Brazilian three-time world champion, who died 30 years ago.

“For many lovers of the sport, myself included, he remains the greatest driver of all time,” says Allen, who knew Senna and spoke to him on the day he died at Imola in 1994. “His story
and passionate, intense character are perfectly captured in the documentary Senna. This movie fascinates me because it crossed F1 over to mainstream entertainment audiences in a
way that wasn’t happening at all for F1 back in 2010. This wasn’t a film about cars and race results, it was about a human being.

“Without the Senna movie would Drive to Survive have been the crossover hit into mainstream audiences that it proved to be? And would F1 have the fanbase it has today? I really don’t think so.”

The London Times recently rated Senna as being Number 4 in the list of Best Sports Movies of all time.

For our main feature interview in Episode 1 of the podcast, the writer and producer of Senna, Manish Pandey, gives us his take on why F1 is such compelling drama. Brazilian journalist Julianne Cerasoli joins new Autosport Editor-in-Chief Rebecca Clancy in
the studio.

Cerasoli opines that “Senna is an example of self-improvement, of pushing the boundaries. He wasn’t a perfect man; he was a very human man and I think that’s part of the
reason why we are still talking about him today.

“He had his flaws but he was doing his best and it brought out the more human
side of the sport. I think he was the ultimate storyteller of F1, because he could do an amazing pole lap and then say afterwards he was talking to God.”

James Allen on F1 is an Autosport podcast, produced fortnightly. Episode 1 is out today. Get in touch with the podcast with comments and questions on jamesallenonf1@motorsport.com

The Aston Martin driver thrust the issue of penalties into the spotlight at the Miami Grand Prix when he suggested some drivers got away unpunished in incidents because they were “not Spanish.”

It came off the back of him earning penalties in the Australian Grand Prix and China sprint race for driving that he thought was within the boundaries of what is allowed, while he was annoyed that Lewis Hamilton got away with an aggressive first corner in the Miami sprint.

“I guess they won’t decide anything, because he’s not Spanish,” said Alonso immediately after the Saturday race when asked what the FIA would decide on Hamilton.

“But I think he ruined the race for a few people, especially Norris, who had a very fast car and he was out in that incident.”

Alonso was spotted deep in conversation with Ben Sulayem in Miami after making his remarks, and has said he is encouraged by the feedback he has got about things improving in the future.

“I spoke with him and he’s always on board on every opinion that the drivers have,” said Alonso, when asked by Autosport how useful his chat with Ben Sulayem was.

Mohammed Ben Sulayem, President, FIA

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

“He knows that we are the ones driving the cars and that we can have some suggestions on things.

“There are a couple of points that we need to address as a sport. But he has always listened to us. Let’s see if we make F1 a better sport and a little bit more consistent.”

Autosport understands that the FIA is close to finalising the introduction of a clearer set of driver guidelines for F1 and other categories that will bring extra clarity to what is expected from them in how they behave.

Discussions have already taken place with interested parties, including the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association (GPDA), to help pull together a document that will cover all aspects of racing – including overtaking, defending and track limits.

The plan is for the new guidelines to be in place for the start of 2025 when they will be enshrined in the International Sporting Code. They will be applied to all levels of racing to ensure greater consistency across all categories.

At the moment, the guidelines that F1 drivers are operating under primarily focus on who has the right to a corner, and must be left racing room, amid the fight for positions on the entry to a corner. They came into force at the start of 2022.

Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack, whose team had been unsuccessful in trying to seek a review of Alonso’s China sprint penalty, said that greater consistency would be welcomed by everyone in F1.

He said it was especially important for this season with stewards now handing out tougher 10-second penalties for driving offences as part of a new set of guidelines they were operating to.

“There’s two elements there – one is obviously we want consistent judgements,” said Krack.

“But on the other hand, we have also introduced new guidelines for this season – and sometimes maybe we fall foul also a bit to be stuck in the way we have been driving before.

“Sometimes you think they should be more consistent. But depending on which end [of the penalty] you are, obviously, you [have] a different interpretation of consistency.

“But I think everybody wants consistency. Everybody should look over the guidelines, including ourselves, and then we take a fresh start.”

Additional reporting by Filip Cleeren and Charles Bradley