Welcome back to another Ask Dre, the monthly piece where you send me your questions regarding the world of Motorsport, from F1, MotoGP, Formula E or IndyCar, and I do my best to answer them in a mildly entertaining manner. In this edition, I talk about F1’s growth into America, how I think the Constructors will end up, IndyCar’s Leaders Circle standings and more! Let’s get into it! (Apologies for the lack of audio on this one, I’m still a little sore in the throat from the flu, next time!)
Amid rumours that the Dutch and Belgian Grand Prix will alternate year-on-year, which US city do you think Liberty will inevitably fill the gap with? – Colonel Nutz
Ha, well played Colonel, I see what you did there. Depending on your perspective, this is a bit of a “good news, bad news” type deal.
On the one hand, F1 seems pretty adamant we’re sticking to 24 races a season. Greg Maffei said so on the James Allen on F1 Podcast (Hey, I produce that, shameless plug), and Stefano Domenicallli has held pretty firm on that as the “human limit” of a current calendar. But the sport is still eyeing up other venues. But NOT in the United States, I think 3 races there are already right at their feasible limit, a fourth screams overkill in a market they’re already bleeding for every cent.
The impression I’ve gotten this year is that F1 wants to expand further into Asia and Africa. Earlier in the year there were talks about a race in Thailand, potentially going back to South Korea was on the cards, and as recently as today, Rwanda has opened up talks. I’m all for this, the sport needs an African presence, it’s the last major continent with nothing at all.
And as you alluded to Colonel, this will likely mean that some of the European rounds, the bulk of the calendar, may become biannual to appease that push. I don’t think Spa and Zandvoort will squeeze first, I think Imola is the big European race that’s lagging as the sport wants their GP’s to be more like a festival than just a racing weekend. Imola got back on the calendar almost as a party favour when Covid landed and has stuck around since, but it feels like the sport will want a bigger race to replace it in the future. I’d expect that to go before we got Belgium, which has always been a fan favourite, or Zandvoort, given the ties to Max Verstappen.
Should any teams be worried about having neither of their cars within the Leader’s Circle this year? Is the Leader’s circle even relevant with the potential charter? – Alexander Pitt
Hi Alex! I think for context, here’s a look at the Leader Circle’s standings first. Remember, these are the owner’s points for the car, NOT the drivers standings, and only the Top 22 “eligible” cars get in:
20 – #66 Meyer Shank Racing (David Malukas) – 144 Points
21 – #30 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (Pietro Fittipaldi) – 135 Points
22 – #4 Chip Ganassi Racing (Kyffin Simpson) – 133 Points
23 – #20 Ed Carpenter Racing (Christian Rasmussen) – 123 Points
24 – #41 AJ Foyt Racing (Sting Ray Robb) – 121 Points
25 – #78 Juncos Hollinger Racing (Agustin Canapino Conor Daly) – 116 Points
26 – #51 Dale Coyne Racing (TBA) – 115 Points
27 – #18 Dale Coyne Racing (Also TBA) – 91 Points
Now, as a quick explainer as to why 24 cars are above the cut line, the reason is that the Leader’s Circle only counts for your first three entries per team (Unless you’re Andretti as they had four when the rules werre grandfathered in, but they’re at three anyway), so the #11 car for Chip Ganassi Racing (Marcus Armstrong in 14th) and #4, is exempt so that frees up two more spots, Christian Rasmussen and Sting Ray Robb.
So with that in mind, Dale Coyne’s #18 car looks dead on arrival, even more so after Jack Harvey’s recent injury struggles. They might still be able to salvage something with the #51 car depending on who’s in it, but given how poor their oval form has been, I’m not sure who else can salvage something with it. (Look, I love Katherine Legge and her ELF activation work has been superb… but she’s 43. If she’s your answer, I don’t know what the question is)
Beyond that, no one team has more than one car in danger, and it looks like seven cars in contention for five paying spots. I think Malukas is pretty safe barring a collapse, mind you. If Juncos puts Daly in for the rest of the season, I think he’s got a shot of outpointing Sting Ray Robb by the five points needed to bridge the gap.
But as you said Alex, I’m not sure how much any of this is going to matter in the future if this charter system goes through. The initial talks sounded positive, but we just don’t know the terms of the agreement and how much of an effect it will have on that LC pot. We’ll have to wait and see, but for now, that’s how it stands.
FE Question for you – apart from a new car, what do you think the series could do to improve the raceability of the series? – Ciara Molloy
This is something I’ll give Formula E – If they get the fast recharge ability sorted out for Season 10, there’s a good chance it’ll improve the racing. I fear Formula E has generally leaned a bit too much on the regen side of the game, where the first 75% of a race turns into a procession where no one wants to lead and everyone’s trying to save, making their races rather predictable, and the pack racing leads to silly racecraft.
Turning races into a Sprint with a pitstop in the middle should solve some of those problems and break the field up a bit. I hope they scrap Attack Mode to go alongside it, it’s been the biggest mis-sell in Motorsport history. Why call it Attack Mode when all it does is force teams to regen more? They’re keeping it, but I’m curious to see how Gen3.5’s Evo car turning it into a 4WD car in that mode will affect the racing.
So there’s some potential to where Formula E’s going with the overall scope of the series via its Gen 3 Evo car. The execution for the series always seems to be the hard part.
So, it’s a badly kept secret that Juri Vips will be driving for RLL for 2025, but the question is, will it be in the 45? (if HyVee sticks and let’s face it, Fittipaldi brings more money for the 30 team.) or will it be in the 30? – KorewaKicksAss
I’m inclined to agree with you, mate. The fact that RLL is starting a fourth car at Portland for Vips in Portland says to me they’re serious about him, and with Christian Lundgaard leaving for McLaren at the end of the year, it seems Vips is the natural replacement for the #45 given just how long he’s been in that camp testing and using their simulator. So unless RLL feels like flipping seats around like they’ve done before to appease certain sponsors, I think you’re right about how it’ll play out as like you said, Fittipaldi brings in good sponsor funding and isn’t terrible in the car.
Honestly, though, what does RLL see in Vips that I’m missing? I get that he was a pretty good F2 driver, and whatever if you still think it’s worth it to bring him in despite the racist scandal (It’s not a dealbreaker in modern-day Motorsport, even if you think it should be), and when he did briefly run in 2023, he was just mid. Even if to be fair, mid is pretty acceptable for RLL right now.
Does IndyCar’s recent short-oval woes spell doom for that type of circuit, or is this a problem even a penny-pinching series can engineer its way out of? Semi-related, is it too early to write off the hybrid? It’s had issues in a few races but seemed ironed out but Toronto. – DGS
Great pair of questions. It’s a strange one. I suspect this question came off the back of Iowa. Now in this year’s case, the partial repaving did the place no favours and made it a boring one-line track, but I’ma be real with you, I was never a massive fan of Iowa anyway. And as much as IndyCar went hard on ovals this year, let’s not forget that before this year, the series was cutting ovals left and right. Pocono, gone. Fontana, too dangerous, Phoenix, gone. Texas, PJ1’d, Milwaukee, back now after a nine-year hiatus. Nashville was forced as a Plan B. Weirdly, the series “Ace in the Hole” and its massive unique selling point were also being cannibalised. Again, I’d say: “Get a new car” at this point because this car and its aero kit has been done to death, but the series doesn’t want to drop the big bucks on it.
As for the hybrid… yeah, it probably is too early to completely write it off. Toronto was the first weekend where everything seemed to run perfectly, which is great. But it was the series’ fourth attempt. It’ll only get better as time and experience kicks in with it, but as Ed Carpenter rightly pointed out during Iowa, is this making the racing product any better? A little supercapacitor and all the added cost that comes with it isn’t making the series any more watchable but with huge added expense thrown in. I don’t get it. No one in Motorsport is ever going to say: “They’ve added hybrids, NOW I’m in!”
Ballpark predictions for how many wins each of the top 4 teams in F1 score in the remaining ten races? – Galarian Mike
Well, let’s do some spitballing. Here are the teams in the last eight races, as a pretty good sample size of current form:
Red Bull – 169 / McLaren – 239 / Ferrari – 158 / Mercedes – 202
Now, given we have 10 races and three Sprints still left on the calendar, I’d say adding around 30% to that would be a pretty good rough estimate. Now, some things to factor in. Red Bull has an anchor in the form of Sergio Perez. Mercedes should probably be a little higher due to George Russell being shafted out of at least 25 points (Silverstone water failure, Belgium DQ, got a lucky 10-point boost in Austria). Ferrari is probably the worst of the four major players right now and has developed themselves into a corner. And we don’t know if upgrades or updates will have an impact on the state of play. So factoring in my maths, and where I think the teams are at, this is how I roughly have it…
McLaren – 320 / Mercedes – 245 / Red Bull – 210 / Ferrari – 140
So, adding that to the current standings and you get this:
McLaren – 686 / Red Bull – 618 / Mercedes – 511 / Ferrari – 485
McLaren should win their first Constructors Championship since 1998 (They’re only -42 right now), Mercedes’ bad start will likely deny them a run for second against Red Bull, but I do think the Silver Arrows will ultimately salvage third ahead of a struggling Ferrari. Maranello won’t be best pleased given they started the year in arguably the silver slot. We’ll see.
If you were to make a Jon Bois Secret Base-styled documentary on F1, what topic would you choose? – Narendtoro
This is a tricky one, because it’s more than obvious Jon Bois is a little bit narcissistic when it comes to his creative projects. He doesn’t go for the obvious. I mean for frig sake, his latest announcement on Patreon had them do a 75-minute special on Kadarious Toney, the Kansas City Chiefs receiver who was largely rinsed in 2024 for fouling his way into oblivion. The man’s genius knows no limits.
It would have to be a really quirky story or one that excavates a huge amount of emotion that would engage a large audience. Saying something conventional like the 2021 Season would be too straightforward.
I’m split between two. Either piecing together the whole 2012 F1 season or the Hamilton vs Rosberg Silver War from 2013-2016.
2012 for me remains my favourite season of all time. It was a season that had everything. New stars like Sergio Perez came to the forefront, the massive variance in the field that season, where half the grid won a Grand Prix and the sport had seven different winners in the first seven races. You could branch off into certain iconic drivers like Pastor Maldonado or races like Valencia where Fernando Alonso won from 11th on the grid. You could talk about Michael Schumacher’s final season and his final pole position in Monaco. Kimi Raikkonen winning again. Lewis Hamilton’s switch to Mercedes. And of course, the final title fight between Alonso and Sebastian Vettel. You could make a five-part series out of that, easily.
Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton’s four years in Silver would also be really interesting to me. Rosberg finally got his big break at Mercedes after years of grinding away at Williams, dispatched Schumacher and then immediately had to deal with his former best friend becoming his fiercest rival on track. All while in an era that for 75% of their time as teammates, was with a broken team, the only one capable of winning the Championship. Seeing their friendship fall apart, the flashpoints within them as they both took every liberty in the book to try and win and ultimately, the limits that Rosberg broke to win the title in 2016 and then immediately retire, is something I’d love to see told in Jon Bois style. Either works for me.
Seeing as the rumours dropped today, what’s the likelihood Audi will give Alex Palou a call to get him into F1 next year? Should he do it? – ScuderiaMax_22
…It’s about the same as me getting my own Netflix comedy special.
I hate being blunt about these things, but until I see evidence to the contrary, F1 as a whole just doesn’t take IndyCar seriously as a pathway into the series. Alex Palou tested with McLaren, but when it came down to it, Zak Brown chose Oscar Piastri and his European junior background over both Palou and Pato O’Ward, who had already established himself as a title contender stateside.
SHOULD Audi consider Alex Palou? At this point, why the hell not? They tried to get Carlos Sainz and failed. They’ve got a great base in Nico Hulkenberg, but how appealing is a 36-year-old Valtteri Bottas at this point, or Zhou Guanyu, who’s going through his worst F1 season yet and will be lucky to be on the grid for 2025? Alex Palou is as good as any racing driver today, and I think F1 is missing a trick by NOT going after him. It’s a shame the sport itself disagrees.
And even if Audi was interested… Is Palou that desperate to be in F1 he’s prepared to spend a year with the worst current team in the series and then pray the Audi project (That isn’t exactly inspiring confidence right now), comes through? It’s a hellacious gamble and I’m not sure finishing 14th every week is something I’d find appealing as I enter my prime years as a racing driver. But we’ve seen how desperate Alex Palou has been for an F1 seat in the not-too-distant past. For his sake, I hope it’s not a real story.
May I ask you for your thoughts on England’s recent descent into madness? – Marj
Well, Marj, it’s a complicated one, and I don’t mean that in a good way. For those who haven’t been keeping up with the news, a 17-year-old from Wales went on a stabbing rampage in the small town of Southport and stabbed multiple children and adults in the streets in what was supposed to be a Taylor Swift-themed children’s party. Three children died as a result.
This quickly escalated as a bunch of thugs from outside the town came into Southport and started wreaking havoc, including vandalising the local mosque, mostly because they were bigoted, and/or they got misinformation about the aggressor of the crime. Fake news claimed that the aggressor was Muslim, with alleged human trafficker and racist Andrew Tate claiming he was on an MI6 watchlist. The aggressor was later found to be a black Rwandan man who was born in Cardiff and whose parents emigrated to the country legally. But that didn’t fit the narratives or the misinformation the thugs were told. Of course, this escalated to widespread riots across the country by far-right-leaning, mostly white people, including burning down police stations and libraries, as well as targeting hotels with Asylum Seekers in them and trying to burn them down too, with xenophobic slurs on the wall. Safe to say, this stopped being about Southport some time ago. Because nothing says protecting your community like… damaging your community, right?
In my opinion, this is the natural breaking point when a few horrible things combine. The UK has spewed anti-immigration rhetoric amongst its politicians for years, dating back to the Brexit referendum in 2016. Terms like “Stopping the Boats”, and attempted shipping of illegal immigrants off to Rwanda became government policy and controlling our borders became mainstream public chat. We as a country were asked to choose between a European Union relationship none of us understood, or leaving it (Something no country had ever done before), offering vague talk of “border control” and blue passports as genuine incentives. People didn’t know what they were voting for, and it showed via a narrow 52/48 vote split and everyone going: “Well what the fuck happens now?”
Brexit combined with a Tory government of the last 13 years that believed in cruelty and austerity led to multiple recessions and us being the first generation to grow up worse off than their parents. So when the frustrated and misinformed see one too many “Polski Sklep” or takeaways that aren’t Fish and Chips on the streets, and the government is lying about immigration being the magic bullet solution that will fix everything, they start thinking that anyone that isn’t white and English is the problem.
This was never about the tragedy of Southport. It was about a bunch of fascists and Neo-Nazis who used the excuse of the aggressor being black as an excuse to try and reclaim the streets, pushed on by former co-founder of the English Defence League and member of the BNP, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (Currently seeking asylum in… Ayia Napa while he avoids arrest. How ironic!), and now spread further thanks to the owner of Twitter; Elon Musk, who is finding more and more creative ways to deal with the struggle of his 12 kids not talking to him.
The UK has so many fundamental problems with how it functions. It had a government that stole from the poor and gave to the rich. It has a media network manipulated by the Murdoch family who have convinced people that the 18% of the country that isn’t white is stealing off their plates when it’s actually the big corporations not being taxed properly, and giving fascist politicians like Nigel Farage a completely disproportionate amount of media coverage and platforming for him to spew his racist policies. Social Media sites have let large networks of fake news and misinformation run riot and have completely misled large portions of the public into believing the worst narratives about how the country is, and we don’t have the media literacy to separate fact from fiction. Put all that in a blender, hit frappe and you get a cappuccino that makes a small minority of people think that burning down a library is a “Gotcha”.
I’m glad that so many more people hit the streets in recent days in counter-protests because they’ve had enough of the minority trying to speak for them. But it feels like another blip and flashpoint where we need serious change across so many landscapes of modern life. From our politicians and government to the control of our media, to revisions on how social media sites are maintained, and so much more.
I’m 32 on Saturday. I’m the son of a Jamaican immigrant, second generation, my late Grandad came here to help rebuild the country in the 1970s. The Windrush generation was a huge part of what’s made the UK what it is. I’ve never felt more unsettled to be on this nasty, sometimes rather hateful little island. Thanks for reading, and stay safe out there.
