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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 has been automatically generated and lightly revised.]
[0:00] Coming up, we are one week away from F1 being back on track,
[0:03] and so much has changed in these last four or five weeks. There are new, new engine regulations, there's silly season shenanigans, and there are a ton of upgrades inbound. I'm "Blind" Bryce Castillo, and this is Blind Corners.
[0:31] The biggest news out of this forced hiatus is that it gave the FIA and all the teams a chance to refine the engine formula. So the teams, the engine manufacturers, the FIA, and Formula One media all got together and have released a new refinement of the rules that will take place at this upcoming race in Miami. So the major problems being addressed by these refinements are around the battery power. It's a bigger part of the formula this year, but we've seen on track where cars are slowing down near the ends of straights and where the energy deployment has led to some sporting and, honestly, safety concerns. You know, a lot of viewers don't see the racing right now as, like, driving these fastest cars ever to the limit. And we had Oliver Bearman's crash in Japan, which really highlighted the speed difference problem. So here's how Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA single-seat director, described the changes in an FIA video. Quote, Regarding what we see at the track, these changes are not revolutionary. They're not going to fundamentally change the picture that you see. Qualifying will be more flat-out for the drivers.
[1:37] He continued talking about the two major priorities. The position of the drivers was quite uniform. They were all pushing for some changes in qualifying in order to, let's say, enjoy more of the driving, to push more. but also they were pushing us to address certain safety concerns that they had. So they were quite united, and their input in this was very important. So these are the broad strokes of these new regulations. In qualifying session, the cars are going to be able to recharge less per lap. So it's going to go from 8 megajoules a lap to 7. And yes, that means that there's less energy to use across a lap, but it also means that drivers are just going to spend less time slowing down during a lap to top off that recharge.
[2:19] And this is like a big crux of this idea of like driving the cars to the limit. To a certain perspective, like driving these cars to the limit means there aren't any limits in the design of the car. You know, a lot of times driving it to the limit means driving it to the mechanical limit, the limit of tire grip. A similar change in both qualifying and in races is that the cars will now be allowed to recharge faster.
[2:41] So instead of 250 kilowatts, they'll now be able to recharge 350 kilowatts under braking. Again, this means a shorter proportion of the track that is spent slowing down to recharge. If you can recharge faster, you don't need to recharge as long. Another change that's just going to be for the races is that the battery boost deployment, that's also going to be capped at plus 150 kilowatts from whatever the power output is when you hit the button. And I think that can go higher as the baseline energy deployment goes up as well. And so while this is a cap on the extra speed that you can give yourself with boost, by capping the amount of boost deployment, hopefully that will keep some of the speed deltas in line. Remember, Ollie Bearman's crash was because another car was on track, driving really, really slow, recharging their battery. So this would be a cap on the, like, Mario Kart-ness of it all, but it should also avoid sudden power surges and, like, the reports that there were accidental overtakes, that the drivers weren't trying to overtake, but the engine misread their inputs and said, okay, here's the energy, go and make this overtake. Another, like, half change on batteries is that in...
[3:49] Key acceleration zones, described as from corner exits to the braking point and including in overtaking zones, the battery power will stay the same, 350 kilowatts. But other parts of the lap will have reduced battery power down to 250 kilowatts. So this is like turning the wick down on a lot of the electrical power. But conversely, it should also mean that the electrical power will last longer throughout the length of the lap. So those are most of the performance changes that are going to make the car slower.
[4:16] There will also be a new system that the FIA will be testing starting in Miami to detect low power starts. So here's how it works. If the system detects that a car has abnormally low acceleration shortly after clutch release, this is right at the start of the race, the car will be allowed to use some of its battery power. Right now, they can't use any battery power below like 50 kilometers per hour. So this would give some amount of battery power at race starts if there's an issue. Cars that are going slow on the grid or stopped on the grid is not a new problem, is a long safety concern in Formula One.
[4:52] But this feels like a college try at trying to avoid it right they have this electrical power we know electrical power can kind of deploy rather quickly it doesn't need to spin up like an engine does and it seems like a sensible way to try to avoid or lessen the risk of any sort of collision or contact at the start of a race and if any of the teams are listening it was described as to ensure a minimum level of acceleration and to mitigate start related risks without introducing any sporting advantage. Maybe no one really knows how this should work or how much power they should give. Like we might see some of this in practice, but this is something that's kind of going to be rolled out at some point this season. There are also a few changes to what the teams can do in wet conditions. They can use higher temperatures in the tire blankets. There's less ERS deployment during wet conditions. And all the rear wing lights have a different pattern, I guess, in the wet. So that's the FIA's prescription for Formula One. Nobody wants to see these cars go slower. There's only so much they can do in season. And honestly, they were pretty lucky with having those two races canceled.
[6:03] No one's really lucky about anything that happened that made those two races get canceled, but that's what it is. But, you know, the speed delta that was in the Bearman crash in Japan really highlighted the need for change. I mean, if Ollie wasn't able to take to the grass and then take to the gravel and then still get shunted up against the fence, the wall, it could have been even worse. You know, if he made contact with the car and his car got airborne, then there's nothing slowing you down. That 50G crash could have been way worse. And it's not just how fast Ollie was going. The problem is the speed differential. The other car was going really slow. It's like reductionist, but think about it like this. A fast car hitting another fast car is not as dangerous as a fast car hitting a slow or stopped car. And since they can't just rework all of the engines in the middle of the season, the FIA has decided that they will make both cars slower in those hypotheticals. And we've already seen FIA officials come out and start to talk about the next set of regulations, which is prudent. It's coming up in the next few years. Now is the time for them to do it. But the whole scenario here is going to empower a lot of armchair experts, I think.
[7:10] But new, new engine regulations are not the only thing that's happened in these past few weeks. Here's a big spring break news roundup for you. First, the biggest piece of news that happened. Gianpiero Lambiase will be leaving Red Bull for McLaren in 2028. Lambiase, or GP, is the engineer who's usually on Max's radio. You've heard him a lot. He knows he's going to be moving to McLaren when his Red Bull contract ends in 2028. Right now, he is Max's race engineer and he's Red Bull's head of racing. I think Red Bull has been trying to give him more responsibility over the past few years. But when he moves to McLaren, he will become their chief racing officer. And one of the wrinkles about this was like right before the rumor was confirmed, it was Jackie Martens on the Paddock Access podcast who had mentioned that there was a proviso in whatever this deal would be where GP would be in line to become the team principal of McLaren at some point in that he could potentially get, you know, a payday if he doesn't get that promotion. And I don't think anything about the official announcements denies that this could happen. I mean, Andrea Stella was out there saying like, oh, no, I love being the team principal and no, no, no, no, no. But they didn't deny it. They didn't talk about it. They didn't deny it.
[8:25] Also, it just seems a little strange to announce this move so far ahead of time, you know, a year and a half or two years early. But GP's gotten a lot of responsibility at Red Bull lately. So it could just be it takes a long time to unspool all of that. Plus, I don't think there's a world where they take GP off of the pit wall and out of Max's radio, and he's a good get for McLaren, but they won't realize him until 2028. And that could be the last year or the second to last year of the current regulation. So then you're already facing a new hurdle, a new adjustment. But then that could be based on the regulations now. So maybe there's more continuity there than we think. And then there's like the Max element of this. Like, is McLaren doing this to try to get a foothold in with Max?
[9:12] Is it just, you know, GP is a great racing engineer and any of their drivers would be great to have him? Is this an attempt to try to curry some favor to get Max when his Red Bull contract expires in, what is it, 2028, right? Because that would also be near the end of Lando and Oscar's long-term driver contract with McLaren. Max Verstappen gave a quote to the Telegraph Dutch saying, in Dutch, "Lambiassi told me what kind of offer he received. I said, you would be stupid not to do that. We have already achieved everything together. And then he gets such a great offer, also with his family in mind and the security that this gives him. He asked me for a sort of permission, and I said he absolutely had to do it. He really wanted to hear that from my own mouth." I mean, Max has spent a lot of the last few years kind of threatening to leave Formula One.
[10:00] And that quote makes it sound like he's kind of resolved. That's kind of a resolved quote, right? And you know, if I was Max and I was making a statement about my race engineer, I would also... Probably say something like really supportive and really not make it about myself especially if people know that they want you to make it about yourself they want to know what about you what are you going to do now max there's another change for the miami grand prix which is going to start may 1st miami will be the first new race with these new rule changes um but because it's sprint weekend the teams only would get one free practice session to actually test uh all of the stuff. And so like one 60 minute slot is not quite enough. So the FIA is going to make it a 90 minute slot. So we're going to get a 90 minute free practice on Friday in Miami, but there's still going to be a sprint race. And then the next race in Canada two weeks later is also a sprint weekend. So there's only going to be one practice session there. So we'll have to see. I mean, if things go quote unquote badly here, I could see them doing another extended session for practice in Canada. A few of the teams have done some amount of on-track running since the last race, but that would have been tire testing for Pirelli or like filming days, which have like strict, you know, amounts of distance that you're allowed to cover. Those teams being Mercedes, McLaren, Red Bull, Ferrari and Alpine, supposedly. An update on Audi. Last time, we talked about the sudden departure of team principal Jonathan Wheatley.
[11:30] He was only at the team for a year. He was supposed to be a real, you know, a real base at the Audi F1 project. But with his departure, Audi have announced that Alan McNish will join Audi as their racing director. Mattia Binotto will still stay as the team principal and CEO. So McNish was the team principal at Audi's Formula E team, and he's been involved in the wider Audi organization. But this is not a team principal replacement. He would be under Binotto.
[11:57] And last in the roundup, Turkey has been renewed for the 2027 season of Formula One. Turkey will now bring 2027 back up to 24 races. And with at least two race cancellations in for this season, I kind of wonder how F1 will try to avoid... Canceled races being on the calendar these grand prix are so expensive to put on so expensive to sell tickets to they need so much run up that you can't just like have a track waiting in the wings all year long maybe this is like a feature of the 24 race calendar 24 races is a lot it's it's a lot and not all of them they're not all batting a thousand but it feels smarter especially in this year to keep an overbooked calendar and just kind of shrug your shoulders when you got to cancel one of them on a similar story india's minister for sport last week announced quote there will be an F1 race in india in 2027 which F1 quickly denied uh from race fans an F1 spokesperson described the possibility of a race in 2027 as quote highly unlikely a race fan also notes that moto gp recently tried to hold Grand Prixs here at the Buddh International Circuit, but they only held one race in 2023.
[13:13] And they've announced that they would go back and that they would renew it, but they haven't gone back. Also from race fans, they say that a key factor in F1 leaving the circuit was because F1 is taxed as entertainment and not sport in India. And South Korea has said that they're going to make a bid for a new street circuit in Incheon. The plan would require a $540 million USD of private investment, with a total budget of $705 million USD. There was an economic feasibility study. I believe they said it would be 300,000 to 400,000 attendees over a weekend, which is pretty similar to how it is here in Austin.
[13:50] But there's some skepticism in the South Korean government about the economic
[13:54] feasibility report that was generated. And that is your roundup. Oh my goodness, let's talk about Miami!
[14:00] All eyes will descend on Miami Gardens next week as all 11 F1 teams hit the track with new engine and battery configurations. All the teams will have had five interrupted weeks off to work on upgrades, work on their aerodynamic packages, but that's also a lot of time to not get real-world data. I mean, we talked about like filming days and a Pirelli test, but that is not always one-to-one data. And there's a chance that one of these teams has gone in the wrong direction for the last five weeks. It may not be Mercedes, but we could have another zero side pod if one of these cars comes out looking completely different and in the wrong way. Like McLaren have said they will bring, quote, an entirely new MCL40 to Miami, and they expect nearly all of the other teams to have total new packages for their cars. Which, again, makes sense. Having all this downtime or lead time to manufacture parts, manufacture spares, I think if someone doesn't come to Miami with a major upgrade, that would be a very bad sign of how they spent their time. Sounds like something Williams would do.
[15:01] I want to see the Macarena wing again. I want it in a competitive session. Please and thank you, Ferrari. I want it. I want it. I want it. My gut says that it's just too slow to finish the flipping action. But there could be entire like aerodynamic challenges that we don't know. I mean, you're shifting the entire profile of the rear of the car in a pretty significant way. On a similar note, I wonder if there's going to be a performance hit from Mercedes. Before the break, there was all this talk of Mercedes's front wing was illegal.
[15:35] Per the letter of the law that their front wing was taking too long to like unset into corner mode or that to try to be a little more aerodynamically stable, most of the wing would reset and then after the time was permitted other parts of it would also fully unfold which to me seems pretty cut and dry I mean you record it and you see how long it takes and if it takes too long you tell them to fucking change it I don't know I think the area of the most growth for the team is going to be in the mid-pack and the backpack. All of them are fighting for scraps of points. And if they were able to make the most of this time, one of these teams could really, I mean, fucking Haas is P4 right now. Aston Martin, who are way behind, I mean, they're fighting with brand new Team Cadillac still, but they have their awesome new facilities. They've got the new wind tunnel. This is the time for the Aston Martin to turn it around. They need to turn it around.
[16:28] Similarly, Williams needs to turn it around. There's been a lot of doubling down that Miami is going to be the start of the new Williams. This is going to be the start of the new Williams. But they've had this overweight problem, I mean, for years. That's been the thing that they've leaned on. we're overweight we'll be faster when we're not overweight but the car's been overweight for a long time james and if this doesn't do it for williams this means that the long trek that they're on to turn this team around is just going to be even longer i mean you can't win if all you're doing is playing catch-up and finally my question please let me know what you think like will red bull make it back to the top four they're only two points away from there 16 to 18 points with haas and they are on even points with alpine and on top of that mercedes has spent a good amount of the break, talking up the Red Bull engine, saying, secretly, the Red Bull engine is the fastest engine. Oh, you know, if you look at the metrics of the Red Bull engine, it's the fastest engine, because they don't want anyone, especially not Red Bull, to get an engine upgrade, in which we don't even have time to get in the whole ADUO engine upgrade thing.
[17:28] But this is going to be a key point for Red Bull, and presumably for Max.
[17:32] So that's coming up for Miami next week. I'm excited. I'm excited to see cars back on track. I'm excited to see what this formula looks like with refinements i'm i'm into the yo-yoing a little bit it's i'm i'm not in the like it's artificial camp just yet i want i want to see this work and i talked about this previously like i think that there's a good idea here and a good evolution of like the hybrid formula and also it needs some refined.
[18:02] And we are finally caught up. That is going to do it here for Blind Corners. Thank you so much for listening today. We will be back after the Miami Grand Prix, ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix on May 22nd. If you want to support this, go to patreon.com / lfgx. Four Little Letters supports this, supports marbles, the Two Tusks podcast, all sorts of great stuff. Check it out one more time, patreon.com / lfgx. Thank you so much for listening. I've been "Blind" Bryce Castillo. This has been Blind Corners--NYEOW