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The FIA\u2019s Formula 1 World Championship comes to the United States for the first of three races this week, heading to Miami for the sixth of 24 scheduled contests. This is the longest season F1 in memory, one that will test all ten teams, their drivers and reserves, the ability of the cars to withstand both the travel and the competition and the crews that service the race cars. Everyone that travels with this circus should be ready for holidays once the final round in Abu Dhabi rolls around the second week of December.<\/p>\n
Ah, but here it is, the first weekend of May and everyone is still thinking about this year and what to do about Red Bull Racing and its three-time consecutive champion Max Verstappen. He\u2019s won four out of five contests; Carlos Sainz brought victory for Ferrari in Australia, when Verstappen failed to complete the distance. It was a nice change from the usual.<\/p>\n
Behind the scenes, there\u2019s plenty going on, particularly with both Red Bull and Ferrari. Next year, seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton will be dressed in Ferrari red, leaving the Mercedes-AMG squad where he\u2019s gained the largest share of his successes. There\u2019s a boatload of drivers lining up outside team principal Toto Wolff\u2019s office wondering if they can take over that ride. This week, to celebrate a partnership with WhatsApp, Hamilton did burnouts in the center of New York City.<\/p>\n Formula 1 is rumor city; no matter whether anybody believes these rumors, they start quickly, spread even more rapidly and take over conversations, making competition kind of a second tier part of the F1 circus.<\/p>\n And as teams land in Miami, Red Bull is dealing with internal strife, as the team\u2019s chief technology officer, Adrian Newey, is leaving the team at the close of this season, it was announced the first day of May. Managing director Christian Horner is the eye of this storm, as rumors – that word again – swirl concerning his behavior around a female employee of the team.<\/p>\n If any readers think this is unusual, trust me it\u2019s not. Not unusual in F1, in INDYCAR, NASCAR and, truly, most motorsports entities. There\u2019s always something going on behind closed doors. Horner was cleared by the team following an internal investigation, but the employee complainant is appealing that verdict. It makes for a sticky atmosphere at a team that seems poised to take a fourth straight title with Verstappen.<\/p>\n Newey\u2019s not happy being around this kind of tension and his contract, which is supposed to continue through the 2025 season is currently being reworded to allow his departure. If you think the driver market is expensive, how about the guy who\u2019s designed all of those winning cars?<\/p>\n Newey gained fame working in IMSA\u2019s early GTP class, where he designed the March sports car back in 1983 and 1984; his INDYCAR project, the March 85C was both a championship and Indianapolis 500 winner. Newey\u2019s understanding of race engineering, aerodynamics are legendary. The 65-year-old Newey has been in Formula One since 1988, where he worked with March\/Leyton House, then on to Williams (when they weren\u2019t running at the rear), McLaren during the start of its Mercedes years and his current team, joining Red Bull in 2006.<\/p>\n The Red Bull team stated that Newey was leaving after 19 years and that he \u201csteps back from design work and will continue to attend specific races to support the team trackside to the end of the 2024 season. Adrian will focus on final development and delivery of Red Bull\u2019s first hypercar, his highly anticipated RB17 set to be unveiled at Goodwood in May,\u201d the team said, stating the architect of seven F1 drivers\u2019 and six constructors\u2019 titles (118 wins and 101 poles) would depart the first quarter of next year.<\/p>\n In the meantime, Michael Andretti has purchased property in the UK for his proposed F1 team, this despite a negative response from the 10 teams currently competing in the series. Andretti got an okay from the FIA, but the piranhas are being a bit more cagey about letting him into their club. With three US-based races, it would be a win-win situation for Formula One Management, but hard to say whether he\u2019ll be allowed to play in their sandbox.<\/p>\n Speaking of sand, there will be a Sprint race at Miami this weekend, only the second of the year and first for the South Florida race. This means qualifying for the sprint on Friday, and qualifying for the primary race on Saturday. It will be interesting to see which teams rise to this added challenge on a purpose-built and temporary track like the one in downtown Miami. \u201cWe\u2019re ready for Miami and the first US race of the year,\u201d noted Toto Wolff. \u201cIt is a challenging circuit and, with the second Sprint of 2024, will provide another interesting test for the team.\u201d<\/p>\n Looking to the balance of the field, one team that\u2019s moving forward is McLaren, whose driver Lando Norris owns a pair of podium results thus far in the young season. While not quite on par with Ferrari coming into this event, where the Scuderia has a special bodywork scheme to show off, McLaren appears to be on the upward track. Individually, Fernando Alonso has dedicated himself to the Aston Martin team, even once he hangs up his helmet, and has shown he\u2019s capable of gaining points for the squad and being the kind of leader any team might want. Surely he\u2019d like to take on the Indianapolis 500 a third time, but it\u2019s not a \u201cnow\u201d thing for the Spanish driver.<\/p>\n Every team in the F1 paddock has upgrades at every contest, and it\u2019s no different this weekend, where Alpine\u2019s major upgrades to its floor is also the team\u2019s hope for better results. Results thus far favor Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes, with Aston Martin\u2019s two drivers landing in the top 10: Verstappen and Perez lead the points chase for Red Bull, followed by Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz for Ferrari, McLaren Mercedes drivers Norris and Oscar Piastri, George Russell of Mercedes-AMG, Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton and Lance Stroll of Aston Martin.<\/p>\n The schedule this weekend includes an initial practice and Sprint qualifying on Friday, the Sprint and race qualifying on Saturday with the primary event set for 1PM EDT, shown on ABC, ESPN+ and in Spanish on ESPN Deportes.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Formula 1 kicks off its US leg this weekend with plenty of drama behind the scenes.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":95889,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3470,5029,3713],"tags":[10343,6179,9530,3647,8791,10165,9336,10344],"class_list":["post-95887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-racing","category-road-racing","tag-adrian-newey","tag-fernando-alonso","tag-fia-formula-one-world-championship","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-mercedes-amg-petronas-f1-team","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-scuderia-ferrari"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/F1-logo-min.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-oWz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95887"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95927,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95887\/revisions\/95927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Hamilton-min-199x300.jpg\")
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