Here are three recent items that caught my eye and haven't been touched on in thread.
ANDRETTI SAYS IT HAS APPLIED FOR 2024 F1 ENTRY
6 hours ago By Scott Mitchell
Michael Andretti is attempting to enter a new Formula 1 team in 2024, according to his Andretti Autosport outfit and father Mario Andretti.
Last year Andretti held discussions with Sauber’s owner about buying the Swiss organisation that is currently racing in F1 under the Alfa Romeo banner.
That deal fell through because of what Andretti called control issues. Other sources indicated Andretti was not willing to pay the fee that Sauber’s owner ultimately demanded, in addition to retaining a minority stake in the team.
Andretti’s interest in F1 has been long-standing and has escalated due to various factors including F1 significantly changing its landscape so teams can compete on a more cost-effective basis, plus the championship’s rapid expansion in the United States.
There will be two races in the US this year, with Miami joining the calendar and Austin’s Circuit of the Americas signing a new deal to 2026 this week, plus
a third race in Las Vegas looks increasingly likely. Though the Sauber talks yielded nothing, Andretti’s alleged interest has not cooled.
F1 1978 world champion Mario Andretti tweeted on Friday that his son has Michael has “applied to the FIA to field a new F1 team starting in 2024”.
“His entry, Andretti Global, has the resources and checks every box,” Mario claimed on his official Twitter account.
“He is awaiting the FIA’s determination.”
Andretti Autosport has since confirmed to The Race that paperwork has been filed.
There are 10 teams on the F1 grid and space in the sporting regulations for 13 entrants.
But whether F1’s stakeholders, including the FIA, want to use those vacant spots is another matter entirely and any apparent interest from Andretti is likely to be viewed sceptically.
The last new team to join was Haas, another American organisation, which entered in 2016. Since then, F1 has enjoyed a rare period of entry list stability.
Even though various teams have changed their identity and even ownership, the same core entities remain.
With efforts made to redistribute F1’s commercial rights more fairly among the teams and introduce a cost cap to peg back the biggest spenders, all 10 teams are confident of creating a stable and prosperous business model.
It is highly unlikely that any of F1’s stakeholders will want to jeopardise that by bringing in new teams unless they meet a very high threshold.
This is linked to a clause in new Concorde Agreement signed by all 10 existing teams in 2020, which introduced a $200m anti-dilution fund that would need to be paid by any new entrant and would be shared evenly among current competitors.
It was done to ward off any potential entrants without the means to compete properly, and give the current teams some compensation for having to share more of F1’s revenues.
Though it has been made clear that the fee could be waived for the right entrant, the bar for that is understood to be incredibly high.
Even an organisation like Andretti, with the heritage of the family name and its success in IndyCar along with other racing categories, is not guaranteed to meet it. Especially as Andretti could not conclude a deal with Sauber, which may be seen as a red flag to how credible an Andretti bid would be.
It is also understood that the Andretti-led narrative around the negotiations did not go down well with Sauber and senior figures in F1 because it made the deal out to be further along than it was.
With or without that huge start-up fee, a new F1 entry would still be a large and costly undertaking for Andretti.
And it is not known how any such team would be structured – Haas, for example, has a complicated arrangement with bases in the US, UK and Italy.
Additional reporting by Jack Benyon
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F1 RULES LATEST: SAFETY CAR RESTART TWEAKED, Q2 TYRE RULE AXED
8 hours ago By Scott Mitchell
An expedited safety car restart process and the elimination of the long-established starting tyre rule are among the changes revealed in newly-published versions of Formula 1’s sporting regulations.
Under the rewritten rules governing safety car restarts, the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap after the message ‘lapped cars may now overtake’ is sent by race control.
Previously this only happened once the last lapped car had passed the leader. In races where multiple cars need to unlap themselves, this could sometimes take long enough that the entire process lasted an extra lap longer.
It comes after the controversial 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in which a desire to hasten the end of a late safety car period prompted race director Michael Masi to overrule the process outlined in the regulations and fast-track the process in a bid to get one lap of green flag racing in. Masi’s decisions did not relate to this specific part of the safety car process, though.
So there will likely be further changes to the regulations as this revision has already been confirmed, whereas FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem said on Thursday that unlapping procedures will be reassessed and presented to the next F1 Commission before the start of the 2022 season.
This is just one of several changes outlined the new sporting regulations published on Friday.
F1 has had a rule since 2014 that required the 10 drivers who make it through to the final part of qualifying to start on the tyre they used to set their fastest time in Q2.
But the top teams have tended to have such a pace advantage that they have been able to progress through Q2 on medium compounds, giving them the optimal starting tyre anyway – while those in the lower part of the top 10 would suffer because they do need softs to get to Q3.
Despite the rule being missing from several iterations of the 2022 sporting regulations, it was still considered by the FIA to be ‘unchanged’ as recently as last December.
That indicated it was possible the rule could be added back into the regulations by the time the 2022 season started.
However, several teams did not want the rule in place and both F1 and the FIA had admitted there is an argument for the rule being dropped.
And it remains ‘struck off’ in the latest edition of the sporting regulations, which are set to be the rules in place for the start of the season – so it can be taken as read that it is officially abandoned.
Other amendments include the prescription for two Friday practice sessions to be conducted by rookie drivers during the season, and a change to end-of-season and 2023 pre-season testing plans.
There will only be a one-day test after Abu Dhabi, in which teams must run two cars: one driven by a 2022 race driver, for tyre testing, and one for a rookie with no more than two career grand prix starts.
For now, the plan appears to be for pre-season testing to return to just one three-day test in 2023.
That was the duration of pre-season testing last year, but F1 has returned to a pair of three-day tests in 2022 to give teams more time to prepare with cars built to brand-new technical regulations.
Another testing-related tweak is that the rules governing the testing of previous cars has been amended so that 2021 cars can be used in private test sessions this season.
In the past, cars had to be at least two years old, but this is unnecessary for 2022 because last year’s designs are rendered obsolete thanks to the new rules.
Next year, though, the rule will return to stipulating cars that are two years old – so even in 2023, the ‘newest’ car that can be tested outside of official sessions will still be a 2021 design.
It means current generation cars will only count as ‘previous cars’ in 2024, when 2022 designs will be eligible.
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ALPINE APPOINTS SZAFNAUER AND NAMES NEW ENGINE CHIEF
Feb 17 2022
Former Aston Martin Formula 1 team principal Otmar Szafnauer has joined Alpine in the same role, while the team’s Viry-based engine manufacturer counterpart will be overseen by former Peugeot motorsport boss Bruno Famin.
Szafnauer’s departure from Aston Martin was announced last month after widespread speculation about the possibility of him leaving to join Alpine – with Aston Martin soon confirming BMW motorsport boss Mike Krack as his replacement.
An Alpine move for Szafnauer was rumoured last season, with the Romanian-born American unconvincingly denying it as “media speculation”. But when executive director Marcin Budkowski’s departure from the team was announced, it was widely expected that Szafnauer would make the move to replace him.
A reshuffled technical line-up for the team
was announced in early February, with Matt Harman becoming technical director and Pat Fry taking the role of chief technical officer, and with Szafnauer’s appointment the widespread reorganisation of the team – initiated by Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi – has taken another step.
Alpine will unveil its 2021 car on Monday, February 12. It
has a new title sponsor in BWT, which previously served as the title sponsor of Szafnauer’s last team in its previous guise as Racing Point.
Szafnauer is a logical choice for Alpine given his experience of F1, which stretches back to joining the BAR team in 1998. He went on to become team vice president in 2002, staying in that role through its transformation into Honda.
He then moved to Force India as chief operating officer, working alongside team principal/owner Vijay Mallya and deputy team principal Bob Fearnley.
When a consortium led by Lawrence Stroll bought the team after it went into administration in 2018, Szafnauer was made team principal. He had played a key role in holding the team together amid its increasing financial troubles prior to this point, and was also integral in the first two-and-a-half years of its expansion under Stroll’s leadership.
When Martin Whitmarsh joined as group CEO of Aston Martin Performance Technologies, there were suggestions this might mean Szafnauer was on the way out. However, the team always intended to continue to have a day-to-day team principal.
But what Whitmarsh’s arrival did make clear was that Szafnauer’s relationship with Stroll was perhaps not destined to last indefinitely given he had denied Aston Martin was searching for someone to fill a group CEO role not because he didn’t want to admit it in public but because he was not aware this was happening.
Szafnauer was held in high regard at the Silverstone-based team having played an integral part in its punching-above-its-weight successes during the 2010s – culminating in finishing fourth in the constructors’ championship in 2016 and ‘17.
With Alpine keen to sharpen up its working practices, processes and team culture, Szafnauer has a proven track record of working with a team that has excelled on this front.
Alongside the announcement of Szafnauer, Famin has been named as the new executive director of the Viry department in charge of the power units that remained badged as Renault last year even as the team became Alpine.
However, the newest announcement refers to the department as “Alpine Racing in Viry-Chatillon” and the power unit as “Alpine’s Formula 1 engine”.
Long-serving Viry chief Remi Taffin
left the department in July of last year.
Famin joins after having served as the FIA’s director of operations, but before that he had a lengthy tenure with Peugeot – which included him being the technical director on its Le Mans-winning LMP1 project before serving as its motorsport boss in a period that covered three Dakar Rally wins.
“With Otmar and Bruno joining the team, we move to a new level for 2022,” said CEO Rossi.
“Otmar will bring his unique experience in motorsports and his uncompromising desire to win, while Bruno’s proven track record in building technologies that make a difference in competition and their subsequent transference to road cars is critical for our project as a sports team and as a brand.”
A change of role has also been announced for Davide Brivio, who will now become Alpine’s Director of Racing Expansion Project.
Brivio arrived as a marquee signing from Suzuki’s title-winning MotoGP operation last year, but reportedly struggled to make an immediate impact on Alpine, and has been repeatedly linked with a return to the familiar confines of the MotoGP paddock.
But while his former Suzuki team is currently on the hunt for a new team principal and Brivio seemed an obvious match, he will instead continue in the four-wheeled world of motorsport.
His new role will put him in charge of “fostering team spirit in all racing categories” and also “identifying, developing and bringing to life projects around new opportunities for Alpine within the world of motorsport”.
“Over the past year I have seen Davide’s talent to identify the best in people, and to make them perform as well as they can,” Rossi said. “I am delighted to utilize this unique skill across all existing Alpine assets and new ones we are just starting to explore.”
