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I love talking to racing drivers because they are super animated with their hands, always turning invisible steering wheels and whatnot. I also love the sounds they make. I once talked to Le Mans legend Tom Kristensen, and the noises he made of turbo spooling up and the rear tires spinning because the track was wet was simply comedy gold. As you can imagine, Formula 1 drivers aren't far off.
As much as I wanted to attend the Las Vegas Grand Prix in person, I'm watching at home. It's only a four-hour drive from me, but I've been spoiled. I grew up going to racetracks with a pit pass because my dad was a prominent race-car builder. Later, I did volunteer stints with the CART Safety Team and even had my own pickup truck loaded with kitty litter, brooms, and backpack blowers. I drove out onto tracks while cars were circulating under yellow, cleaned up after Nigel Mansell hit the wall in Phoenix, and picked up chunks of car after Jacques Villeneuve speared through the middle of Hiro Matsushita's car at the same track.
By now, the entire field of Formula 1 cars should've completed the first track session of the inaugural F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix. Instead, some drivers got eight minutes of running time, some got nothing, and in the case of Ferrari and Alpine, they have essentially written off two race cars. Why? A poorly secured manhole cover came loose during Thursday night's FP1 session, sidelining Carlos Sainz and Esteban Ocon. This brought out a red flag, which quickly escalated into an outright cancellation of FP1. Not ideal.
Team with nothing to play for jazzes up its paint job (mildly) for Vegas
Max Verstappen is the 2023 Formula 1 world champion. After a long season of crushing domination, with just one blip at the Singapore GP after a record-breaking ten consecutive wins, Verstappen joins an exclusive club of three-time F1 champions after placing second in the Qatar GP sprint race. Oh yeah, and McLaren rookie Oscar Piastri took his first F1 race win in the same sprint.
If Formula 1 is boring, the discussion about improving it is anything but. We asked this week how you would fix F1, and the answers ranged from “it’s not broken” to “get rid of everything.” Admittedly, I didn’t expect such an overwhelming response from readers; clearly, we have ideas about what’s going on with F1 and how to address it.
Max Verstappen has secured his 50th race win at the 2023 United States Grand Prix. In a Grand Prix dominated by pit stop and tire strategy, Verstappen held on to the win after a late charge from Lewis Hamilton who got within 1.8 seconds of Verstappen on the last lap.
An unseen battle raged while drivers hammered around the Lusail International Circuit during the 2023 Qatar Grand Prix. It was a perfect storm: Pirelli and the FIA strictly enforced a 19-lap tire life which threw tire conservation out of the window; Lusail is one the most physical, high-speed courses on the Formula 1 calendar; and air temperatures remained above 95 degrees Fahrenheit with over 70% humidity all night.