Photo by Kym Illman/Getty Images
Answering F1 questions on Max Verstappen, the upcoming regulation changes, and more
Ahead of this weekend’s Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix, we thought it would be a good time to open up the old F1 mailbag.
Boy, did the readers deliver.
Thanks to the growing “F1 Threads” community over a dozen questions were sent over, more if you count subparts. The response was so great that we were forced to split this piece up into two installments, rather than drop a wall of text on you on par with an F1 version of “War and Peace.” So here is the first installment, with the second to come later this week.
Also, if you have been waiting to join Threads, let this be a not-so-subtle advertisement. The growing F1 community on Threads — “F1 Threads” as we have come to be known — is a perfect spot to chat about all things Formula 1. After each question you’ll see a link to the profile page of the user who submitted that question, so if you’re already on Threads, make sure to g ive them a follow.
Having said that, let’s dive in. Remember, if you do not see your question here, it is coming in Part Two.
Is Flavio Briatore ushering in the return of Nikita Mazepin at Alpine, via the Oliver Oakes/Hi Tek/Uralkali connection? – pluralthallid
Well so much for easing into this Q&A with a batting-practice pitch down the middle of the plate. We’re getting 98-mph heat on the inside corner, up and in.
When Alpine announced that Flavio Briatore was joining the team in May of this year as a senior advisor, it raised some eyebrows around the paddock. Part of that was due to his checkered past — Briatore was banned from the sport as part of the investigation into the 2008 “Crashgate” scandal, although that ban was later overturned by a French tribunal — but part of it was due to questions about the direction he would take the team.
One of his first major decisions, beyond solidifying the team’s driver lineup for next season, involved a change in team principal. Bruno Famin was moved out of that role, which he held on an interim basis following last season’s sacking of Otmar Szafnauer, and into a role heading up all motorsport activities for the Renault Group.
The new team principal? Oliver Oakes, a former racer and Red Bull junior driver, and part of the vision behind Hitech Grand Prix.
This leads us to the portion regarding Nikita Mazepin and Uralkali.
Hitech has blossomed into one of the leading teams at the junior levels of the sport, with drivers like George Russell among their list of alumnae. Another name on that list? Mazepin, who last drove in F1 for Haas during the 2021 season. He was set to drive for the team again in 2022, as he was on a “multi-year” contract with the team, but was dropped as a driver — and his father’s business, Uralkali, was dropped as the lead sponsor — just before that season due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. When that invasion began the European Union instituted sanctions against various Russian businesses and individuals, including Mazepin, his father, and Uralkali.
That led to years of litigation between Haas and Uralkali, which was only recently resolved.
With that resolution, could the door be open to Mazepin returning to F1, perhaps with Alpine given the driver’s relationship with Oakes? Perhaps, but that door might just be open a crack. Alpine has already confirmed that Pierre Gasly will be back next year on a new “multi-year” deal, and the team also announced that Jack Doohan will be driving for him in 2025. There is a lot of internal excitement regarding Doohan, who passed on a potential F2 season to focus on his reserve driver duties for Alpine this year.
My hunch is that Alpine envisions a Gasly/Doohan partnership into the new regulations, provided the rookie driver shows growth and potential next season.
Is the impact of Adrian Newey at Aston Martin going to be felt in 2025, and when will we see Fernando Alonso back on the top step? – naughtfollowers
Photo by Zak Mauger/Getty Images for Aston Martin
When Adrian Newey announced his plan to step away from Red Bull at the end of the year, an announcement that came ahead of the Miami Grand Prix, the only thing hotter than the turf at Hard Rock Stadium that week — remind me to pack smarter for next year’s race — were the takes about where he might land for 2025.
That move has been solidified, as Aston Martin announced at a press conference last week that the legendary designer would be joining the team as their new Managing Technical Partner in March of 2025.
That means that the AMR25, Aston Martin’s challenger for the 2025 season, will not have Newey’s fingerprints on it. At least when the season begins.
Newey’s biggest influence for next year likely comes in the form of midseason upgrades to the AMR25, as the team evolves that challenger throughout the 2025 campaign. Where Aston Martin might benefit best from Newey’s mind is in 2026, the first year under the incoming regulations.
What could that mean for Fernando Alonso and his pursuit of that elusive 33rd win? One might eye races later in the 2025 season when any Newey-inspired upgrades could be bolted onto the AMR25. The Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August — a race where Alonso finished second a season ago — could be an option. Another? The 2025 São Paulo Grand Prix, which comes at the end of the season. Alonso, while Aston Martin was fading down the stretch in 2023, still grabbed a P2 at that race.
How long do you think it will take for the efforts of F1 Academy to be fruitful, where we’ll have more women at every level of Formula Series racing? – amberwvzz
Photo by James Sutton – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images
Susie Wolff, the brilliant Managing Director of the F1 Academy, said back in June it might be “five or six years” before we see our next female F1 driver.
But in terms of when we will see the efforts of that series impact the entire world of motorsport, and more women at every level of racing, that day is close at hand.
F1 Academy has taken a huge step forward this year, starting with buy-in from all ten teams. Then there is the news that the F1 Academy is getting its own Drive to Survive-style treatment, with a docuseries in partnership with Hello Sunshine, Reese Witherspoon’s production company.
But the best evidence the series has to offer when it comes to their drivers moving up the single-seater ranks?
The drivers themselves.
Take Abbi Pulling, who currently leads the F1 Academy championship standings. Pulling has been near-dominant this year, capturing a win in five of the eight races this season. But in her time away from the F1 Academy this year, she has been driving in British F4, where she has a victory and two P2 finishes, and sits sixth in the standings.
Pulling told me ahead of the Miami Grand Prix that P3 is her stated goal for next year, and her success this season has me convinced that she would be successful at that level.
But Pulling is not the only F1 Academy driver making a strong case to move up the ranks. Chloe Chambers, for example, delivered the first-ever win for Haas in single-seater racing when she captured the second F1 Academy race at the Spanish Grand Prix. Doriane Pin, who has a pair of F1 Academy wins this season, lists the Formula Regional European Championship as another of her racing pursuits, where she is competing this season.
The F1 Academy drivers themselves are the best evidence of the sport’s success, and their growing resumes are an indication that before long, the goal of seeing more female drivers throughout the single-seater ranks will be achieved.
And I cannot wait to see them, and more, move up the ranks.
How much of next year’s development will teams sacrifice in order to get ready for 2026 and will this mean that the season won’t be as exciting as this one has been? – helz_ha_ha
Do we expect a 2025 season to be as much fun as this season has been? Will we be terribly wrong again? – undergroundf1
I grouped these two questions as there was a lot of overlap between the answers.
Given McLaren’s incredible development path over the last calendar year, and the looming specter of the 2026 regulations, there is reason to believe that 2025 might not be as thrilling as 2026. Teams will roll out their challengers for the 2025 campaign, but perhaps sacrifice midseason development of those cars as they focus on the next generation of cars we will see under the new regulations.
Which, should trends hold, could lead to McLaren running away with things next year.
But here is why I’m optimistic that 2025 will provide as many thrills as 2024 has, after hours of thought, and it comes down to this.
2021.
2021 was the last F1 season before the current set of regulations went into effect, a sea change in the sport. Ground-effect cars, which were done away with in the early 1980s, were back. Similar to the massive changes we expect to see for 2026 — and the regulations are still being worked through as we speak — the incoming regulations for the 2022 season required a ton of thinking from the teams, and resulted in some fascinating designs when the covers came off in Bahrain in February of 2022.
(Glances in the general direction of Mercedes).
While many — myself included — thought the looming specter of the 2022 regulations would mean that 2021 would simply mirror 2020, and Mercedes would run away with things as teams focused on the upcoming regulations, the opposite happened. 2021 went into the books as one of the more fascinating seasons in F1 history, a two-way fight between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen that came down to the final laps of the season and remains a point of contention to this day.
If the past is prologue, 2025 could be just as exciting as this season.
Of course, to the point made by my good friend Casey — who refers to a pre-season episode of the Underground F1 podcast where we all predicted that Max Verstappen and Red Bull would simply run away with things this year — I could be completely wrong about this.
Who’s getting the last seat at Sauber and why won’t it be Liam Lawson or Franco Colapinto? Also, will Max Verstappen make a move away from Red Bull? – melody.c.lam
Photo by Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images
A fascinating game of driver musical chairs, kicked into motion by Lewis Hamilton’s shocking announcement that he was leaving Mercedes for Ferrari following the 2024 season, is down to just two seats remaining.
One of those seats is the spot at Visa Cash App RB F1 Team alongside Yuki Tsunoda. If you read the tea leaves — or look at the social media cues offered up by the team as the brilliant Terry Widdows, the mind behind Coffeecornermotorsport, instructs us — it seems like a Liam Lawson announcement is coming soon at VCARB.
Which leaves just the seat at Sauber alongside Nico Hülkenberg.
A few names have been linked with that second seat, and two front runners have emerged. First is one of the current Sauber drivers, veteran Valtteri Bottas. The other is Gabriel Bortoleto, who currently drives in F2 after capturing the F3 Championship in 2023. Bortoleo now leads the F2 Championship with two race weekends — and four races — remaining. Bortoleto has a pair of F2 Feature Race victories this season, and his stunning win in the F2 Feature Race at the Italian Grand Prix, where he won despite starting at the back of the grid, has turned heads in the F1 world.
Someone else who has turned heads is Franco Colapinto, who stepped into a seat at Williams after the mid-season sacking of Logan Sargeant. He finished a respectable P12 in his debut at the Italian Grand Prix and followed that with a P8 finish in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, his first time driving the Baku City Circuit at any level.
That success has Williams Team Principal James Vowles vowing to secure him a spot on the grid next year, but with Carlos Sainz Jr. and Alexander Albon in place at Williams for 2025, Vowels is looking to Sauber/Audi. “In two races, he [Colapinto] showed the world he’s deserving of a place in Formula 1,” Vowles told Autosport.
“I have always been a firm believer that you have to let good drivers race. So we’ll see if we can find a way of working with Audi in that circumstance. That’s what I was implying for next year.
“Let’s see what it ends up being because we have our driver line-up cemented – I think it’s still the right line-up for Williams as we’re growing and becoming world championship material.”
A potential sticking point could be Williams’ ability to recall Colapinto if needed next year. When Williams announced the signing of Sainz for 2025, many joked that Vowles was building an “appendectomy-resistant” team for next year, given how both drivers missed a race due to appendicitis. But should something happen to one of those drivers, Williams might want to be able to slide Colapinto in as a reserve. That could be a sticky situation to resolve.
In the end, I think the Sauber/Audi seat comes down to Bottas and Bortoleto, and it will ultimately be a matter of what the team wants from that second seat. Do they want experience, so they can be competitive in 2025 and have feedback from two veteran drivers as they plan for 2026, when the new regulations arrive and the team becomes the Audi works operation? Or do they think they already have enough experience with Hülkenberg, and now value pairing that experience with a young driver like Bortoleto?
If I had to make a guess, I think Sauber would go with Bortoleto, but that is just a guess, and it is going to be a close call between him and Bottas.
As for Max Verstappen leaving Red Bull?
All the news around Red Bull this season has sparked continual rumors that Verstappen could leave the team, with Mercedes listed as the eventual destination. Toto Wolff has not shied away from talking about that potential pairing, and it has kicked off another war of words between Wolff and his counterpart at Red Bull, Christian Horner.
Meanwhile, Verstappen continues to indicate he’ll stay at Red Bull under his current deal, which runs until 2028.
I just don’t see him leaving, despite the many contractual clauses he reportedly has in that deal which could give him an out.
Although, I would not have imagined Hamilton leaving Mercedes so …
