2024 Pre-season Thread

[F1nKS]

Before 2024 season has started, the drama in Formula 1 is exploding.

1. Guenther fired before rolling out their car virtually.

2. Hamilton to Ferrari.

3. Where does Sainz end up?

4. Who is replacing Hamilton in Mercedes?

5. Redbull is having an internal power struggle. Horner has been accused of something - but not of a sexual nature. Reading between the lines, it sounds like he gave an employee a bad review and told them they were not pulling their weight - and they didn't like it and, instead of going to HR, went all the way to the top of Redbull...

There is a rumor that Redbull asks Horner to step down. He said no. Now there is talk that if Horner leaves, Newey has an out in his contract to leave also and is saying he will. This possibly means...

Verstappen to Mercedes

[Firstgear]

It's looking like an interesting pot of stew. Too bad F1 had to sh!t in it with their attitude towards Andretti.

[Matthew]

Oliver Bearman will be one of the Ferrari reserve drivers for the upcoming Formula 1 season. Antonio Giovinazzi and Robert Shwartzman will be the other drivers in the shared role. I wonder if all these drivers would get a chance to participate in a race in 2024.

[Nitrodaze]

By the looks of things, this season is promising to be much closer in the sharp-end and even more fiercer in the midfields. Whether enough to challenge Max and Redbull is yet to be seen. If not, then the battle for 2nd in the championship is going to be where the competition of the season is going to take place.

I am at least hoping that the cars have improved enough for at least one team to take more than one race win. Otherwise, the 2024 and 2025 seasons are set to be very boring seasons. Since the 2024 car is what would be racing in 2025 as ther teams turn their eyes to the 2026 cars.

[airshifter]

Plenty going on, that's for sure. How it all pans out only time will tell.

I've been paying more attention to the new cars and how much they are hiding them in the launches vs what will hit the tracks for testing. I figure most of the rest is just discussing the speculations swirling around all the team/driver changes and until it has some reality behind it then it's just noise.

A number of the cars seem to be making some aggressive changes for the season, and I'm really interested to see where the times end up as the season progresses. I suspect the Merc wing will be protested the first race, and I'm curious how that pans out as well. Though seemingly legal to the letter of the rule, also seemingly intended to produce outwash thus the old "spirit of the regulations" angle comes into the picture. Either way props for rolling those dice.

RB with really big body shoulders on the car along with deep valleys, and a vertical inlet in the reveal that some think is just the dummy for a hidden intake under the forward sweep of the frontal sidepod, or possibly a second intake area. There are also rumors of major sidepod changes coming fairly early in the season.

Ferrari with major sidepod changes, but otherwise looking conservative in comparison. But with aero wizardry in play, looks often don't mean much, and early reports that they have gained valuable downforce on the car.



Really interested to see how the season goes for Checo. With the Ferrari and Merc each having a driver on the way out, it could really spark things within each team. Sometimes that leads to great competition with the other driver, sometimes it turns into a fight for yourself crap show where team orders and common sense head out the window. Being Checo hasn't been performing all that well, it could make his season interesting for sure.


But it's all sparking off soon. Let the sandbagging begin!

[Nitrodaze]

I can see the possibility of Verstappen heading to Mercedes. He can see that Redbull is going to take a hit in performance with the change of engine supplier from Honda to Ford. And Mercedes seems to be ramping up quietly.
It would be quite the news if this switch were to occur. I think Verstappen is very much on Mercedes's radar.

[Used to be Starter]

I can see the possibility of Verstappen heading to Mercedes. He can see that Redbull is going to take a hit in performance with the change of engine supplier from Honda to Ford. And Mercedes seems to be ramping up quietly.
It would be quite the news if this switch were to occur. I think Verstappen is very much on Mercedes's radar.

Mercedes would be crazy if he wasn't. The question is whether they have solved their car problems yet. And will it carry forward to the new regs in 2025?

[airshifter]

From my initial impressions of testing, everyone is still working hard to try to close the gap to RB, but nobody seems to have made major ground. At this point it seems the "best of the rest" might still be close together in performance, but still lacking what RB has. Ferrari seem to be consistently improving things but Merc seems to be a bit all over the place with wings, ride heights, etc.... there were a couple runs with the car sparking around much of the track.

But they all need to hope the Horner thing kills RB, or the new car will suddenly develop major issues. The changes to the car are drastic, just about everywhere, and in some cases stuff nobody seems to know for sure what the function even is. Intakes behind the halo with ducting. New exhaust areas, as well as intake areas in the deep shoulder tubs. A vertical inlet that as of now, I don't think anyone has figured out. Newey and the engineers must be absolute machines to make sense of all the changes. Even the floor edge detail is through the roof stuff.

I predict another bad year for anyone not RB.



As for Max, I can't see any driver wanting to move quickly to a team that isn't winning when they are in a team that is winning. I think Lewis accepted that short of moving to RB, he was in a car that was likely not going to win much. And though Ferrari might have a better chance at wins, after two years of none at Merc the other factors come into the fold. But with Max setting records in the RB, the only real incentive to win would be someone else making a big move, and more than likely that won't even be on the radar until the new regs.

It's not as if RB have been tight with his contract, but even if they were when you are on top there are plenty of others contributing to what the drivers can spend.

[Matthew]

After seeing the pre-season results, it looks very unlikely that any team is going to catch Red Bull this season.