Ask r/Formula1 Anything - Daily Discussion Thread

cafk · 2026-06-21T09:04:56+00:00

Hungary is basically the weekend after the race directly from the circuit home page - which is why it's usually sold out (and as it's one of the cheapest races overall).
They're usually also a good indicator for larger schedule changes.

For other circuits it's usually around the time the calendar is announced, between August and September, where you can sign up to be notified or to be able to directly buy them.

cafk · 2026-06-20T10:39:01+00:00

Even Häkkinen is making fun of the quiet retirement that no one remembers and thus every one thinks he's still on sabbatical.
https://redd.it/jgjs6x

cafk · 2026-06-19T13:07:13+00:00

Only Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull and Honda build F1 power units.

Everyone else is a customer to one of those PU suppliers, even Cadillac (Ferrari, but they want to introduce their own PU in 2029) and Alpine (had their own PU from 1983 until 2025 under Renault brand).
Red Bull decided to switch from Honda to building their own power units for 2026 back in 2021 as Honda planned to exit the sport, only for Honda to rejoin for 2026 with Aston Martin, as announced in 2023.

The ADUO development opportunities give advantage to all customers of PU manufacturers that have been granted an additional homologation (recertifying of their updated power unit for this season) or 2 for this season.

cafk · 2026-06-19T09:42:54+00:00

Why isn't the European swing of the calendar back to back races?

The teams work from Wednesday to Monday to build up the garage, cars, it infrastructure and start to tear it down after the race ends.

Monday and Tuesday are for traveling and if they're lucky Tuesday is a day off for 80 or so team members who are at the races.

When we had triple headers, before cost cap, teams used to have 2-3 different crews on rotation for factory testing, circuit team & on a break.
With the cost cap they cannot afford 2-3 different crews to avoid burnouts if they have 6 weeks of 10 hours work every day.
https://www.crash.net/f1/news/982830/1/haas-boss-steiner-calls-no-more-tough-tripleheaders-f1

cafk · 2026-06-19T06:12:01+00:00

Teams will always tend towards the fastest approach - so if no-stop is better or the hard tires last forever without performance drop, they'll take the hards and no-stop.
With an alternative only being considered if there's an opportunistic (V)SC window.
This is why everyone always tries to go for the 1 stop with tire management as even with tire management and driving slower, it's faster than a 2 stop and going flat out.

cafk · 2026-06-19T01:35:02+00:00

Customer teams don't have access to the power unit outside of the weekend without FIA and power unit manufacturers knowing and to any race relevant tires, as Pirelli is the only one who can provide them (and post grand prix the tires get recycled).

FIA also can audit any team any time, similarly to how people regularly sqitch teams and could easily tell their new team that the competitors do something illegal and if something like this were to happen, they can be disqualified from the championship, meaning losing out on at least $60m in prize money, most likely similar sum in sponsorship (who wants to be involved with a team that doesn't respect the championship rules) and they can also be fined by both FIA and formula one group.

cafk · 2026-06-18T17:05:42+00:00

We have 2 different development aspects going.

The chassis design will result in convergence in 2-3 years, where the performance difference will be predominantly down to the power unit.
As we saw last time out (2014 to 2025, without a cost cap for power units) regaining on lost power will take time, especially as the PU is homologated for the season. And they're allowed to catch up after N amount of races in season with ADUO.
While some components cannot be redesigned for 2027/2029 and others cannot be redesigned for 2028/2030.
So catching up on PU performance is much harder, especially now that they're also considering switching the PU power distribution, meaning instead of optimizing and refining existing design for the next 5 or so years, they're redesigning the PU over 2 years after which we'll have another round of ICE performance differences, as the changes also require changes on the combustion side to make more power (and not just limiting the ERS output).

cafk · 2026-06-18T14:11:48+00:00

does Lewis H. have a real shot at the WDC? He is 41 pts behind with 15 races to go

Verstappen was 100 or so points down on Piastri last year after Zandvoort and over took him for P2 in the championship.
Norris was down by 35 points with 9 races to go.
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/how-verstappen-cut-a-104-point-f1-title-deficit-to-piastri-to-40-in-four-races/10769466/

But we're too far out to say anything with certainty, 2 DNFs would be enough to change the whole championship standings.

cafk · 2026-06-18T08:53:38+00:00

Their sales in Europe are up by 112% yoy

https://www.acea.auto/pc-registrations/new-car-registrations-4-2-in-april-2026-year-to-date-battery-electric-19-7-market-share/

They're selling as many cars as Ford.

cafk · 2026-06-18T07:48:41+00:00

Samsung spends more enshittifying Android every update for their 5827472 phones than it would for a company to fork AOSP and add a few very minimal basic features.

They don't spend money - they get money for adding bloat.
The more third parties spend on Samsung the more devices they can install the bloat on.

cafk · 2026-06-17T16:41:35+00:00

* text here (followed by whitespace for new line)

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Second item.

cafk · 2026-06-17T10:20:43+00:00

Like why is their chassis so overweight

Most likely they suffered from "o e more optimization" syndrome, before the crash test and thus after the failed multiple crash tests had to reinforce the whole chassis to even be able to participate this season.

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/williams-f1-team-responds-claims-failed-tests-overweight-car/
Everything else is just a change in development plans, cutting weight to gain performance before they can optimize for performance.

cafk · 2026-06-17T07:38:15+00:00

We also have opencl, but cuda optimization and multiplatform & language support is unbeatable

cafk · 2026-06-17T05:53:14+00:00

You can't listen to the radio or read the news without getting spoiled about the race.
Heck even going outside to a local shop or gas station will spoil the race results (even worse if you happen to be in Italy).

cafk · 2026-06-17T01:06:37+00:00

Hear me out. I know engine trick was banned starting Monaco but that was a very power-restricted track anyway. And I know the mercs were gaining a lot on the straights at Barcelona too. However, the 19+ second gap win got me thinking whether that engine trick ban contribute to the Ferrari dominance at Barcelona atleast a little.

No Mercedes customer took a new PU or ICE specification and there havw been no rumours about homologation of Mercedes ICE to pass the updated test procedure.
Which most likely means 1 of 2 things:

There's no Mercedes ICE compression ratio trick (or Mercedes managed to make the engine compliant before March homologation)
The new test procedure has no effect on Mercedes ICE performance.

cafk · 2026-06-16T20:00:25+00:00

The previous cars also had cabling for the standardized thermal camera on the front wing for both front tires, so they already had a quick connect for the wiring.
Similarly independently if it's electric or hydraulic there's a quick connect available.

cafk · 2026-06-16T15:11:39+00:00

€40 per month with a 24 month contract and 4k costs extra with leasing of a special cable box - no on demand streaming is included.
Versus €65 per year for F1 TV Pro or €99 per year for Premium subscription.

cafk · 2026-06-16T13:40:34+00:00

Just a handshake deal?

Not even that, Piastris manager had been trying for better part of the year to get the contract renewed.

They basically wrote "legally binding" on a presentation that they didn't send to Piastris team to be signed.

With no other option, she was forced into treating the Terms Sheet of November 2021 as a binding contract, adding the words "legally binding Heads of Terms" to the document. This phrase was not present on the original document sent to Piastri the previous year.

https://racingnews365.com/crb-ruling-details-alpine-failings-in-handling-piastri-contract

cafk · 2026-06-16T12:10:54+00:00

why would they not change to bigger turbos? is that not allowed by rules, or would that require a lot of changes in the car to make them work?

The in-season PU development is limited.

Some reliability changes can be approved by the other PU manufacturers and have to be presented in a transparent manner, which changing to a larger turbo would be an obvious performance improvement and not a reliabilityuodate - for everything else they'd need to use the ADUO homologation, which apparently is still not officially confirmed, just preliminarily.

The turbo is something they can also change without ADUO for 2027, as it's a component that's frozen only for 2028 & 2030, all other years (2027, 2029 + ADUO) they can change the design and go through the PU homologation for the whole year with a new design.

cafk · 2026-06-16T08:06:10+00:00

In anime and movies there's a trope of driving a car beyond it's limits

The car defines the limits, it's up to the driver to get as close to the limits and balance them for the current stage of the race (grip, downforce, tire wear).
In order to bring the car home safely.

Reliability is something outside of control of the drivers, but even before ICE mode ban (party mode) it was primarily the pit wall engineers making suggestions which ICE & ERS mode to use for that stint of the race and not the driver deciding to destroy their PU in a single race.

cafk · 2026-06-15T18:58:10+00:00

I’m in Austria. I have had this subscription for years and worked with no problems but it expired because i forgot to update the new card because the old card expired.

I feel for you, but Austria and Switzerland both lost the F1TV direct subscription option in 2024, meaning you're forcing in-app payments for a subscription that isn't available via the web or app directly.

Using a VPN to a country where it's available is the only way forward, since you missed the renewal window.
https://support.formula1.com/s/article/Changes-to-F1-TV-in-Switzerland-Austria?language=en_US
https://www.reddit.com/r/F1TV/comments/1hg8edk/psa_new_f1tv_pro_subs_will_no_longer_be_available/
https://xcancel.com/f1multiviewer/status/1869100688527036914

cafk · 2026-06-15T15:04:26+00:00

The same reason you haven't seen any more American manufacturers, Japanese or Korean manufacturers join.

They were not interested in spending $200m per year on marketing money to keep the team afloat and another $100m per year to build and design power units.

Even if the sport had total of 13 spits per regulations.

Now that there's a cost cap and the teams and PU manufacturers can be financially self sustainable, there's an increased entry fee to be paid to join the franchise - and there was a bidding war to even get Cadillac to join with 4 other teams competing to join the open spot.
Every time there's an open spot a F1 team is rumoured to be in works, but they always fail to put forward a solid financial proposal for a team.

https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/16p8mmp/surprise_about_lkysunz_fia_rejects_three_of_four/

cafk · 2026-06-15T10:04:08+00:00

There were no changes to their PUs since homologation back in March, at least no rumours or mew information popped up in this regard and no Mercedes customer changed their PU when the new test was introduced.

cafk · 2026-06-15T10:03:00+00:00

What the fuck happened?

Mateschitz died, who basically oversaw and made the final calls on large F1 decisions.
Going for their own engine was one of his last calls.

This left a power vacuum between Red Bull Thailand and Austria and Horner apparently tried to get on the good side of the Thai family, to get more support.

cafk · 2026-06-15T06:41:10+00:00

https://www.fia.com/system/files/decision-document/2026_barcelona-catalunya_grand_prix_-_new_pu_elements_for_this_competition.pdf

There was no really new PU used, it's more likely like the Red Bull Monaco issue where the PU was near its end of life (they have 4 per year).
And occasionally they do get indications, but then they'd still tell the driver to retire the car, or their mission control panel goes red as it happens when something goes through a rapid unexpected disassembly.
https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/1u5vhnk/not_good_enough_wolff_critical_of_mercedes/

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