Time for a gossip round-up
Driver swaps, team principal moves, FIA presidency challengers...
Hello! Welcome to this free edition of Formula Curious. Come in, make yourself comfy.
I’ll start with a seemingly random clarification. There’s a common weedkiller called Roundup; I don’t intend to kill of the gossip. I want to gather it all up (or, just what I care to) and share it with you. And then I want to dissect it and point out how it’s bullshit, or not in some cases.
The McLaren tyre water drama
As is the tradition in Formula 1, if you are doing well, sooner or later someone will accuse you of cheating. In this case, McLaren have found a way to keep their tyres cool, or cooler, throughout a race. This allows better tyre husbandry, creating the circumstances for them to win races 30 seconds ahead of their rivals.
A suggestion as to how McLaren are doing this came from Christian Horner, team principal of Red Bull Racing. He reckoned they are putting water in the tyres. Something that has been banned for many years now. But not only has it been banned, it also is completely nonsensical. Let’s have a wee physics lesson.
The operating temperatures of F1 tyres is around 100 degrees. At this temperature, the water would be boiling within the tyres. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but boiling water is actually pretty hot. Furthermore, without a circulating system that heat in the water isn’t going anywhere, so the water isn't going to be cooling anything. Not only that, but the water would evaporate into gas. Tyre pressures are another tightly regulated area that is also tightly correlated to car performance. Any amount of water within the tyre has the potential to wreak havoc with tyre pressures as it condenses and evaporates, as liquid water takes up less space than it does in a gaseous state, thus affecting the tyre pressure on the process. And then there is the several kilos of unsealed water sloshing around, let alone the extra weight…
In conclusion, either Horner is being an idiot or he’s just stirring up shit. Then again, why choose?
Alpine do a mid-season driver swap
After watching Red Bull Racing do a few of these, Alpine wanted to get in on the action. So, after a few months of the team quietly stalking Jack Doohan while not quite denying that his seat was under threat, Franco Colapinto has been subbed into Doohan’s seat.
In perhaps unrelated drama, but perhaps also relevant, Ryo Hirakawa left the Alpine driver academy after the 2025 Japanese GP and switched to Haas as a junior driver for the next race at Bahrain. Did he see the writing on the wall? Doohan has mentioned earlier this year that there wasn’t just Colapinto waiting in the wings; there were four reserve drivers lurking out there. I guess one less now.
Colapinto is said to have five races to make his mark—so this is an audition—before the team make a decision about that seat for the rest of the season. Three of those races are the upcoming triple header, so I don't think the team is exactly setting him up to succeed either.
So why swap out the drivers? In terms of performance, more experienced heads than mine are saying there isn't much between Doohan and Colapinto. The latter is said to come with a lot of financial backing —but only if he gets a race seat. As Mark Webber says in his autobiography, Aussie Grit, “In the distorted world of F1 price means more than value.”
But I get the impression this isn't just drama for the sake of it. Alpine seem quietly confident they'll have a good car next year, and combined with the Mercedes power unit they might be in with a shout at the front of the field. So at this point, being in a rebuilding phase, they're just rolling through their driver options to start next year off running.
But, this kind of plan needs team stability, and…
Alpine just fired their team principal
In a premature celebration of Annual Team Principal Firing Day, traditionally celebrated at the Belgian Grand Prix, Alpine team principal Oliver Oakes “resigned with immediate effect” this week. I know that isn't the same as firing, but it is very close. Let me have my pithy moment.
At the time of writing, there has been no confirmed reason for this. But Flavio Briatore, who will take over the team principalling duties, did an Instagram post (shown below) saying that Oakes’ departure wasn’t related to a disagreement between them. But this is a team that has gone through seven (7) team principals since 2020. A rushed driver swap decision might be the icing on the cake here, but I doubt it is due to that alone. It’s also been reported that Oakes’ brother was arrested last week.
Jumping back to what Esteban Ocon said about Alpine when he was unceremoniously dropped just before the end of the 2024 season, there was an ongoing refusal within the team to listen to what the drivers were saying. That doesn’t strike me as a healthy team just with that fact alone. There’s also rumours that the team is losing a lot of staff to other teams, for instance, very recently losing five more race team staff to Cadillac F1. There's been an aura of discontent at Alpine for… ever? This is same team whose own CEO publicly called them “amateurs.”
But who is this Briatore guy? He was previously team principal of Benetton in the early 90s, and was accused of various types of cheating, such as using the then banned launch control and traction control. He drifted away to an engine supplier for a few years and re-emerged as team principal of Renault F1 during the mid-2000s. His name might sound familiar because he was found guilty of orchestrating Crashgate, when Nelson Piquet Jr deliberately crashed his car to help Fernando Alonso win. For that Briatore was initially banned from Formula 1 for life, but that was later overturned by a French court.
In response to a question that some people may not like his return to Formula 1, given the aforementioned controversies, he simply said, “Fuck off.”
Briatore has a very pro-Hollywood take on F1, so I can’t wait to see what kind of drama he stirs up. (I'm getting bored of the Red Bull drama.)
It isn’t gossip, but they drove/raced in Lego cars at Miami
Back at the F1 75 launch Fred Vasseur said that “Formula 1 is fantastic and magic.” That was enough of an invitation for me to desire more whimsy in F1, and at the Miami GP weekend we got it. Lego made 10 almost to scale two-seater F1 cars out of Lego, and the drivers drove and raced and crashed these cars around the track for the drivers’ parade.
Below is a snippet from what Lewis Hamilton recorded on his phone, via Instagram. It’s basically the drivers laughing and cackling at each other for a couple of minutes. A shorter video from the F1 youtube channel is here and a longer video showing the entire chaotic driver parade is here.
Carlos Sainz for FIA President?
By which I mean Papa Sainz, not Carlos Sainz Jr who is presently racing for Williams F1. The current FIA president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem, has angered F1 fans so much that even the FIA logo appearing momentarily at the F1 75 launch elicited booing from the crowd. The next election for the FIA President in this December, but fans don’t get a vote here; it’s the various national motorsport and auto tourism organisations around the world that get that.
So far, the response has been largely positive—he is a well known and well regarded figure in motorsport, having twice won the World Rally Championship in 1990 and 1992, and is still competing having won the Dakar Rally four times, including just last year. He’s adament he can distance himself from his son in order to avoid a conflict of interest.
I’ve heard some people complaining about another conflict because Sainz Jr is a director of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association (GPDA). But that is basically a union for the F1 drivers and they don’t (usually) talk directly to the FIA president. It’s only when the FIA president starts treating them like kids with swearing fines, etc…
Is this a stalking horse candidate or a sign of actual intent? The journalist he spoke with about this, Rebecca Clancy at motorsport.com, said he does seem serious in this. No one else has, as yet, put their name forward, but the official window for nominations hasn’t started yet. (By ‘stalking horse candidate’ I mean someone put forward to test the political waters, although usually without any serious intent of running.)
I also like to think that in about 20 years or so Carlos Sainz Jr could also go for FIA president, but that’s a long way off yet.
Susie Wolff for FIA President?
There’s also been talk of Susie Wolff, current managing director of F1 Academy, puting herself forward for the presidency. This suggestion has also been enthusiastically received by many, including Damon Hill (1996 F1 world champion) who said “she would be perfect.” But Wolff herself has said she’s currently occupied with her role at F1 Academy. Fair enough. It would be awesome if she ran in the future, though.
But, even given half a whisper of Wolff putting her name forward also started a clamour from the ‘Conflict of Interest’ crowd. The ground was prepared for this argument with the abandoned investigation by the FIA into Susie Wolff in December 2023. Allegedly, the FIA had received a complaint from one of the F1 teams about a conflict of interest between Susie Wolff and her husband Toto Wolff. After a very quick joint statement from the other nine teams that they had done no such thing, the investigation was dropped after only a few days. But some damage was done given how this argument seems to stick to her, whereas it didn’t before.
It’s not farfetched to think of it as a warning shot from Ben Sulayem against a future presidency challenge from Wolff. Given the recent consolidations of power Ben Sulayem has been going through at the FIA, it’s yet another reason his presence is starting to leave a bad taste.
That’s it for this edition of Formula Curious! Until next time, take care of yourselves!