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Fast cars, lightning reflexes, and the unknown future-- this is Blind Corners. News and chatting about the latest topics around the Formula 1 World Championship. Hosted by Bryce Castillo. Putting the 'theory' in critical racing theory since 2023.
[This transcript is generated]
[0:00] Coming up, frustration at Silverstone, a slow spa on the horizon,
[0:04] and long live the new FIA president for life. I'm Blind Bryce Castillo, and this is Blind Corners.
[0:12] First up, it was the British Grand Prix about two weekends ago now. Charles Leclerc took his first Formula One victory in about two years. It was a pretty good win. It was not like the ending anybody wanted. There was a bit of a fight between Leclerc and Antonelli, but then Kimi had one of his tire shields break on his car, and then he had to pit twice for them to actually take it off the car, and so he ended up not making any points. But probably the biggest story of the GP was Max Verstappen spinning out about four laps to go in the race, and then the race going under full safety car, and all of the TV announcers reminding us that the stewards are going to work very hard not to have any of the races end under a safety car. And then the race ended under a safety car.
[1:01] So why was there no restart? This is not a joke. The stewards talked with the teams after 2021 and said it came to an understanding that everybody wants these races to end in racing conditions. The FIA put out a statement calling it software error. Apparently the safety car in this lap message that came on lap 51 went out in error, which is why the next lap there was another message saying that the safety car was being deployed. What happened was that when the cars that unlapped themselves, because that happened on the penultimate lap, you have to have the safety car do another lap after you have cars unlapped themselves. And so that meant that there was no way in the rules that the safety car would have gone in. You know, in hindsight, obviously the right car.
[1:52] I'm going to say, obviously, the right call would have been to like red flag the race and try to preserve a couple of racing laps. So I've got a question. Should they prescribe this in the rules? Like if a race is, let's say, a certain percentage away from the checkered flag, I don't know, three, four, six laps maybe. And if there's an incident that requires the cars to slow down, like a safety car or a virtual safety car, just immediately send it to a red flag. And already I'm going to do your work for you. I can already see like the bad parts of this idea, one of which is a crash gate like scandal where a team could use one of its drivers to affect the outcome of the race for another driver to get a benefit from a red from a red flag. The other potential downside is that I don't think that red flags account for cars to unlap themselves. And I don't think that in a red flag restart, maybe I'm wrong. I don't think that there's any opportunity for cars that are lapped to unlap themselves. And then on something that we're going to talk about a little later, I don't know how a red flag situation would affect refueling. Ultimately, I think that a rule like that would be good, but would have like a marginal advantage to cars that are lapped. And on some of the shorter tracks, that could be a lot of cars, but you could potentially get an advantage on tires or fuel if the rules don't take that into account. I don't know. That's my thoughts. Let me know what you think.
[3:18] Speaking of max spinning out at the gp uh his season's not getting any easier he's been talking a lot about the rb-22 as being undriveable and it seems like we have a little bit of an explanation for why it's not that the car itself is slow in fact if anything the fia think it's the fastest engine on the grid but the car is inconsistent so the current active era regulations mean that there's a straight line mode where the the rear wing is open and the corner mode where the rear wing is closed. And there's a concern that when the rear wing closes.
[3:49] Takes a random amount of time for the wing to kind of bite with the airflow. One article that I saw said that if there's even two milliseconds, two thousandths of a second of a delay on that biting of the rear wing, then as a driver, you may not have the downforce you need when you expect it. And then the rear tires may get loose and you end up spinning or crashing. Max has got a great track record for making these Red Bull cars work. I mean, we've seen plenty of his teammates who have had troubles with the cars, and it's not like those are bad drivers. It just sounds like this new rear wing is too dynamic for Max to kind of rely on, which leads us to like the silly season question, right? Will Max stay at Red Bull? And if not, where would he go if he goes anywhere? Mercedes have openly had a hair in their bonnet to try to get Max Versteppen whenever. I mean, why they got Kimi Antonelli because they believed he would be the next Max Verstappen. But I could totally see Mercedes pushing George out of a window to try to get Max. Even though George is like number two in the standings right now, I could see them say, even next year, getting rid of George despite being in a good spot. And then there was a story last week about Max's team talking with Zach Brown from McLaren. We talked about it.
[5:07] It might be more leverage than anything. And I don't see how there's any room at Ferrari with what is a relatively good upswing for them at the moment. And then anybody else lower on the grid doesn't have a project that would fit for Max. It would be very funny to see Max Verstappen wearing a Mercedes team kit, though. It would be very funny to see them have to try to work orange somehow into the
[5:29] dark Mercedes color scheme. One more thing on Max's crash. The FIA set its sight on those rotating rear wings, the Macarena wings or the rotisserie wings. They're concerned. I mean, Max has spun out and crashed two races in a row now. And we're pretty sure it's because of the rear wing. The active aero that we've got in the regulations right now is pretty dramatic. The wings rotate, on the Ferrari, they rotate like 225 degrees or something. And all of those pieces have to move, have to be done moving in 400 milliseconds, which is something that Mercedes was getting dinged on earlier this season, and I haven't heard anything about that. I should look into that. But this means that the FIA has got their eyes on these rotating rear wings, and that there's a chance that they end up outlawed, Maybe for this year, if they call it a big enough safety concern, or for next year when they can be a little more specific about rotating the wing.
[6:21] Units all the way, what have you. And my understanding is that because we don't have a ruling from the FIA that the Macarena wings will be legal for spa. And the scuttlebutt that I've seen says that if the Red Bull wing gets considered illegal, and potentially if Ferrari's doesn't, that Red Bull would politic to make the whole rotating rear wing concept illegal. Which is not like a moral position. It's simply a competitive position. They don't want Ferrari to have what everyone seems to think is a pretty net positive part for the car, the rotating rear wing. And then McLaren, who are going to try to test their rear wing at the British GP, is going to try to run it again here in Spa. But I think for these three teams and the other eight teams, there's going to be a lot of tension on what happens with this FIA ruling because if it's deemed illegal then for these three teams all that development time has been academic it has been mooted and if you're working on a rear wing or thinking of working on a rear wing now all of that is going to be put on pause I've made it clear that I love these rear wings so that must mean that the FIA is going to outlaw them pretty soon, but then I'm wrong all the time so maybe that means that it will be made explicitly legal.
[7:33] Turning our attention off the track, we've got some new ideas for what the future of F1 and the FIA might look like. And we've got some ideas. FIA President Mohammed Ben Slaim has been talking up a new potential plan for an independent V8 engine supplier, someone like Cosworth, who would provide an off-the-shelf, cost-effective engine that any team could buy. The idea was posited as the idea is that the customer teams are kind of under the thumb of the either the works teams or the manufacturers of the engines. In fact, I think the scenario was described as no more vote our way or we give you a bad engine, which I don't know of that happening. I don't know when that's happened recently. I don't know when that's ever happened recently for sure. First off, this guy's just fucking talking. He's just trying to like win political points for the next thing that we're going to talk about. I take everything that this dude says with a whole mountain of salt. But there's some critical pushback on this. You know, the idea of a independent customer engine could put the grid into a haves and haves not situation. Because if the FIA were to introduce an independent engine supplier, then the other engine suppliers would surely push for that to not be the best engine. I mean, think about it. If the cheapest engine was also the best and it was mandated by the sporting body to be the best, then you would destroy all the engine makers. It also kind of runs head-on into the other idea that was talked about, that.
[9:02] A cheaper V8 engine might make it more attractive for teams to make their own V8 engine. There was some real generic talk from McLaren about, we always think about making an engine and we always run the numbers and they never fucking work out. I think we generally see teams voting in their best interest. Sometimes that does mean voting in line with an engine works team or an engine manufacturer. But I don't see any signs that any of the teams feel like they are specifically under the thumb of anybody to vote in one way or the other. I mean, there ends up being integration between the engine makers and the customer teams.
[9:36] Not full integration, but there are usually partnerships there. Ben Slam also floated the idea of bringing back refueling, which is also a divisive topic. Aside from refueling being historically unsafe, and I will direct you to any number of YouTube compilation videos, and my understanding is that this also kind of eats into some of the strategy and tactics of racing. You are less able to extend a stint. You are more prescribed to whatever your fuel gauge says.
[10:04] I don't know, maybe batteries like open flames. I'm not an engineer. And while we're on the FIA, there is a broader story that has been cooking for the past few weeks. The FIA recently voted to remove term limits for its president's role, which means that Ben Slyam.
[10:18] Is now on a path to presidency for life. Yes, I'm not joking. The changes also introduced stricter requirements for presidential candidates. They will need to have, quote, sufficient experience, whatever that means. And the deadline to submit has now doubled. It's now 100 days before an election. Some critics, including former FIA Vice President Robert Reed, say that this is going to concentrate power. This is going to remove the mechanisms to remove leadership from the FIA. We've already seen that there are legal challenges to the FIA's election process from the last election cycle. I'm sure I will be repeating myself, but I don't like this dude. He has been consolidating his power ever since he took office. And the BBC even reported that Ben Slyam's next move will be to remove age limits for FIA presidents with his goal to become president for life. Not me speaking out of turn.
[11:05] That's the goal, says the Beeb. This fucking guy. This fucking guy. Finally, the calendar. Up until last week, the Bahrain government had been increasing its push to get back onto the F1 calendar. The idea would have been to put Bahrain back on the calendar at October 4th. That would have been the week before the Singapore GP.
[11:23] And it would have made a bit of a tough triple header between Azerbaijan and then Bahrain and then Singapore. And that's like the only option. Everything else would have made even longer runs. In fact, if they put it right before the Vegas GP, that would make an impossible septuple header from Austin, Mexico, Brazil, and then Bahrain and then to Vegas and then to Qatar and then to Abu Dhabi. This is all academic, though. The renewed military strikes in the region are, I think, going to make Bahrain super unlikely. And I think it puts huge question marks still over Qatar and Abu Dhabi. This isn't really in the F1 sphere that we talk about here on the show, but the region is not cooled down and it doesn't seem like it will for a minute.
[12:05] Finally, one more extra stage for you. Felipe Massa's legal claim over the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix crashgate scandal has been fast-tracked straight to the UK Supreme Court. The court agreed to hear it because it considers the case a matter of, quote, general public importance. Massa claims that had the crashgate scandal been properly investigated at the time, he would have been the 2008 F1 world champion. He alleges a deliberate cover-up by senior F1 figures, including Bernie Eccleston and the FIA, and he is seeking damages for lost salaries, sponsorship income, and the championship title that he thinks he was owed. If the Supreme Court does side with Massa, it could mean that potentially former FIA or FOM officials could get sued. Plus, it would really expose the sport's reputation. Even though it happened 16 years ago, it would really affect the reputation of the sport for sure. And it would really open a really, really big can of worms if the legal system is able to.
[13:03] Rule on sporting event results, especially when the rules of that sport say that once they put it in the book, they don't change it. Crashgate was a little bit before me. I don't immediately have a stance one way or the other, though I don't like seeing Flavio Briatore being on the paddock. But I don't want to live in the world where we have to figure out how big of an asterisk we have to put next to 2008. I don't want to see that. And that's all the news that matters. If anything else happened, it didn't matter. and that's the only reason why. The Belgian Grand Prix is this weekend and this is the start of a doubleheader. We will be back next week ahead of that Hungarian Grand Prix and the summer break. If you like this, consider sending us a tip on Patreon. Patreon.com slash LFGX four little letters. Lots of exciting fun, including marbles. LFG Marbles is back Thursday evenings, 8 p.m. Eastern Time. Marbles.win is the website or go follow twitch.tv slash Brycas B-R-Y-C-A-S And that's going to do it for us today. I've been Blind Bryce Castillo and this has been Blind Corners. NYEOW