F1 2024 - 24 Rounds of Street Circuit Thrillers

[Ben]

Calendar TRANSFERS:
- China returns for the first time since 2019, after they finally get over themselves.
- Emilia Romagna remains on the calendar after losing the 2023 round to floods.

Grand Prix	Circuit	Date
Bahrain	Sakhir	March 2
Saudi Arabia	Jeddah	March 9
Australia	Melbourne	March 24
Japan	Suzuka	April 7
China	Shanghai	April 21
Miami	Miami Gardens	May 5
Emilia Romagna	Imola	May 19
Monaco	Monaco	May 26
Spain	Barcelona-Catalunya	June 4
Canada	Montreal	June 18
Austria	Spielberg	June 30
Great Britain	Silverstone	July 7
Hungary	Hungaroring	July 21
Belgium	Spa-Francorchamps	July 28
Netherlands	Zandvoort	August 25
Italy	Monza	September 1
Azerbaijan	Baku	September 15
Singapore	Marina Bay	September 22
United States	Austin	October 20
Mexico City	Mexico City	October 27
São Paulo	Interlagos	November 3
Las Vegas	Las Vegas	November 23
Qatar	Lusail	December 1
Abu Dhabi	Yas Marina	December 8

Sprint rounds:
- China, Miami, Austria, United States, São Paulo and Qatar. Sprint qualifying will take place on Friday afternoons after free practice, with the Sprint race being the first track action on Saturday morning (Grand Prix qualifying reverts to its traditional Saturday afternoon slot).

Team TRANSFERS:
No new teams of course, closed shop and all. But we have a couple of exciting re-namings!
- Sauber ended their partnership with Alfa Romeo and renamed to Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber in what for a very short time was the worst team name ever, until...
- Red Bull announced the AlphaTauri name is no more and the sister team will now be known as the Visa Cash App RB F1 Team.

Driver TRANSFERS:
- Not a sausage. Worse than football.

Constructor	Car	Engine	Drivers
Alpine	A524	Renault	(10) Pierre Gasly (31) Esteban Ocon
Aston Martin	AMR24	Mercedes	(14) Fernando Alonso (18) Lance Stroll
Ferrari	SF-24	Ferrari	(16) Charles Leclerc (55) Carlos Sainz Jr.
Haas	VF-24	Ferrari	(20) Kevin Magnussen (27) Nico Hülkenberg
Sauber	C44	Ferrari	(24) Guanyu Zhou (77) Valtteri Bottas
McLaren	MCL38	Mercedes	(4) Lando Norris (81) Oscar Piastri
Mercedes	W15	Mercedes	(44) Lewis Hamilton (63) George Russell
RB	TBA	Honda RBPT	(3) Daniel Ricciardo (22) Yuki Tsunoda
Red Bull	RB20	Honda RBPT	(1) Max Verstappen (11) Sergio Perez
Williams	FW46	Mercedes	(2) Logan Sargeant (23) Alexander Albon

Technical rule changes:
- Teams are now allowed to install a "scoop" (whatever that is) to the car to aid driver cooling after everyone cooked in Qatar last year.
- The intended tyre blanket ban which was due to be trialled in 2024 has been abandoned after teams argued the tyres are too shit.
- 2026 will see major technical rule changes but teams are prohibited from doing any wind tunnel and CFD works for that during 2024.
- The Pirelli C0 (hardest tyre in the range) has been dropped after being introduced in 2023 but used a grand total of zero times.

Sporting rule changes:
- Right of review request reduced from 14 to 4 days.
- As noted in the calendar section above, the sprint weekend format has been adjusted after widespread criticism.
- DRS will now be available one lap after a race start, safety car restart and red flag restart.
- PU allocation increased from three to four per season for 2024 and 2025.

Testing:
- One pre-season test has been arranged: Bahrain on 21-23 February.

[Jimmy Floyd]

What are we actually calling the Stake F1 Kick Sauber outfit? Stake, Kick or Sauber?

I understand Vcarb for the other lot, which is shit but at least sayable.

[Ben]

Sauber for me. Stake is the title sponsor (like Aramco for Aston) and the constructor name is Kick Sauber.

Similarly for the other lot, Visa Cash App is just the title sponsor and the team name is RB (short for Racing Bulls apparently), in the same vein as RB Leipzig.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Stake F1 Kick Sauber every single time.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Oh I'll be going with Sauber and Minardi, but I need to know what David Croft (similarly I refuse to call him Crofty) will be mandated to say when they are dicing into turn five.

[SincereTheRebel]

Sainz to outscore Leclerc
Hamilton to win a race
Lando fails to win a race
Verstappen to win it all

[Ben]

Oh I'll be going with Sauber and Minardi, but I need to know what David Croft (similarly I refuse to call him Crofty) will be mandated to say when they are dicing into turn five.

He doesn't call Aston Martin "Aramco" or Red Bull "Oracle" so following those rules it should be Sauber (or Kick Sauber at a push) and RB.

[Ben]

Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber -> F1 Team Kick Sauber

Turns out Stake is shady money. That didn't last long.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

They're an Australian betting company whose HQ is in Curacao, of course it's shady.

[Jimmy Floyd]

That's very embarrassing. Festooned in the logos just last night.

[Waffdon]

How have they managed to keep Kick if they’re binning off stake? The former is funded by the latter

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Because Stake is a gambling company.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Mark Hughes has just pointed out that all the liveries launched so far have been predominantly black (paint costs weight). This might be the first genuinely unwatchable season.

[Disco]

Bare carbon fibre is the new grey.

[Gray Fox]

Mark Hughes has just pointed out that all the liveries launched so far have been predominantly black (paint costs weight). This might be the first genuinely unwatchable season.

Speculation that the Williams is dark blue in a lot of places to make it less obvious when they eventually just carbon those bits.

This whole weight situation has gotten a bit silly.

[Ben]

800kg and the only way they can think of to save weight is less paint. How about we don't have cruise ships with 150kg batteries.

[Shindig]

How about just more engine?

[Jimmy Floyd]

We need Trump or someone to take over. V10 in the back and let's go racing. Fuck the automotive industry and fuck the planet.

[Disco]

I'm always amazed at how little pushback they get on the ecological argument. If they really gave a shit then taking a single race off the calendar would have a far greater impact than pissing about with fuels. You could run the entire field 24 hours a day at every weekend of the season and it would still be less impactful than travelling to a single race.

[Gray Fox]

The sport preaching sustainability having several jets do a fly over before the start of every race is always great value.

Now which shade of carbon, with slight hints of colour car are we backing this season? After Red Bull obviously.

[Jimmy Floyd]

I think my allegiance has drifted to McLaren. We support our local team, etc.

[niko_cee]

Horner out and Newey to jump ship to Ferrari.



I've made that up, of course.

[Clunge]

Hamilton ITK? .

[Gray Fox]

Wouldn't be the first time he was.

That said if Red Bull get Guenther in to replace him, I'm going to have to support them.

[Disco]

I think Newey has already confirmed his little bum chum deal with Horner/Red Bull is no longer a thing and he's staying put no matter what happens. Steiner would be a crazy choice given how awful Haas were under him.

[Shindig]

The way Newey talks about it in his book, he'll never leave Red Bull to go to another team. It's his project and he doesn't want to get overruled like he did at Williams.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Newey to my flat to help me wash the balcony decking is more likely than Newey to Ferrari.

[John Arne]

[Ben]

Obviously it looks great but please don't be a shitbox.

[Gray Fox]

So we've a red car, a blue car and likely a blueish yellow car coming to join them, surrounded by 7 carbon cars with coloured accents.

[Adramelch]

I'm not gonna lie, feels a bit like an overreaction. Is it a step towards the wrong direction? Sure. But the cars for the most part still feel distinct to me visually.

[Waffdon]

I’m colour blind and still agree with Adra.

Merc in black over silver just looks better

[Jimmy Floyd]

Engineers, the world's dullest people, take every opportunity to remove the fun and romance from the sport so I don't trust them even slightly. Mandate paint now.

[Pepe]

I am an engineer and would gladly take pink cars, purple cars, polka dot cars, you name it.

[Ben]

Horner tried to pay off the woman he sexually assaulted to tune of £650k and she turned it down, pressing forward with the charges. Grab the popcorn.

[Gray Fox]

Those sound like the actions of an innocent man to me.

[Disco]

My favourite part is the lawyer they hired to look into it went on holiday instead of filing a report with the Thais, top stuff that man.

[SincereTheRebel]

Horner tried to pay off the woman he sexually assaulted to tune of £650k and she turned it down, pressing forward with the charges. Grab the popcorn.

Spendy Spice.

[Disco]

By the looks of it the Austrian end of the company want him gone but the Thailand side don't, hence the investigator taking a rather hasty holiday instead of filing his presumably damning report. Makes you wonder how long he can realistically stay given this is all they will be asked about for the rest of time. Oh well serves him right for being a complete cunt I suppose, and his current wife, fuck her too.

[Ben]

Looks like it was Jos Verstappen that snitched on Horner.

[Jimmy Floyd]

I thought it was odd that all this came out of the Dutch media. Why, as Jos Verstappen, would you want to destabilise the team that is winning your son several easy world titles?

[Luke Emia]

I thought it was odd that all this came out of the Dutch media. Why, as Jos Verstappen, would you want to destabilise the team that is winning your son several easy world titles?

I had read somewhere they had a falling out last season. Which is madness because for all his faults he’s basically ensured that everything about that team has been set up to benefit Max from the second he walked through the door.

[Shindig]

Considering what Jos has been charged with over the years, snitching's pretty on brand. He's a petty cunt.

[Disco]

Perhaps he had been planning to punch the woman Horner was horning over.

[niko_cee]

He obviously has massive inadequacy issues so I'm not sure of the logic behind training his son to be everything that he wasn't/isn't, won't that just make things worse?

[Gray Fox]

This reads like the higher ups putting pressure on to get Horner gone.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/68333346

[Disco]

Daytonaaaaaaaa. On a Monday for some reason.

https://aceztrims.pages.dev/nasca/

[Shindig]

Denny Hamlin's car cam is on youtube.

[Pepe]

Look at all those colorful cars.

[Disco]

The colours make the racing better.