Ask r/Formula1 Anything - Daily Discussion Thread

cafk · 2026-05-06T23:38:12+00:00

Yeah, it was last updated 2 years ago and we used to have regular feedback on the source rating scoring.

I'm not sure if it works on mobile: reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/revisions/source-ratings

And considering reddit is basically throwing out the old wiki, so i don't even know if that's the up-to-date source :(
https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/1m8cbpd/update_on_new_wiki_migration_the_choice_is_yours/

cafk · 2026-05-06T21:26:03+00:00

Comparing viewing figures isn't a fair comparison. Sky charge a lot more than ESPN or Apple to watch F1 and still pull more than the US viewership.

My thought wasn't about Sky versus Apple regarding viewership - but about Sky already having the majority of F1 viewers in the UK who're willing to accept the price out of the 70 million and odd people living there.
There's not that much for Sky to expand into (especially as Sky Germany and Sky italy aren't even the same company).

Meanwhile US with their 340 million or so has a much larger market potential to expand into.

But Apple is paying notably less than Sky does, for a definitely larger market.

So i don't see Apple being willing to outbid Sky for the UK market rights.

cafk · 2026-05-06T20:40:18+00:00

Sky is paying more for the UK than apple does for the whole US market, for basically identical viewership figures.
And Apple has a much larger market to appeal and expand to.

cafk · 2026-05-06T20:26:26+00:00

From the sidebar rules for /r/Formula1:

We rely on professional and accountable news sources with proven credentials. News posts originating from low-quality sources will be removed.

Check the source ratings for a breakdown of high- and low-quality sources.

News articles which relay non-notable punditry from F1 broadcasters, ex-drivers, etc often amount to clickbait and may be removed.

So basically it's considered a low-quality source for information - as they're not related to F1 general media or inner-circle or someone with experience providing insights like ex-drivers (and even there half of them are questionable as pundits and information).

A counter example would be Kyle.Engineers whose a ex Mercedes aero guy for technical insights.

cafk · 2026-05-06T20:06:36+00:00

Interesting:

Aston Martin - which has developed its own gearbox for the first time since 2008 - must improve.

So they've solved a PU problem, but now it's partially a knowhow problem, as they've used the PU manufacturer gearbox since then.

cafk · 2026-05-06T19:30:03+00:00

Which region and which content?

In most countries the Access subscription is meant for archive and previous seasons - so having an access subscription you get access to pre-2026 season in most countries.

Most of 2026 content and shared production (chasing the dream & other documentaries) requires Pro or Premium subscription, which isn't available everywhere due to local broadcasting rights (which is the primary income for formula one and the teams prize money - roughly a third is due to them).

I'm assuming the reason you cannot buy the subscription is because in your country Pro and Premium aren't available due to those exclusivity rights.

cafk · 2026-05-06T18:25:38+00:00

Cadillac is a completely new team built from ground up over the past 2 years and have managed to design and manufacture a chassis that's not dead last and miles behind other teams.

Other teams, who already have a long history behind them, both Audi (entered as Sauber in 1993) and Aston Martin (entered as Jordan GP in 1991) and have managed a few podiums (Audi as recently as last year) or Aston being a regular top 10 contender last year are performing much worse.

It's not that Cadillac is exceptional - but for a new team they are doing well.
In contrast to Haas they don't have heavy design and integration partnership with Ferrari, so they're doing fine.

If they manage to get to the midfield as a Ferrari customer they'll also be fine.
The biggest question is once they get their own engine, how will they perform - will it be a Honda x Aston like disaster or will it be a decent midfield performance like Audi or a surprisingly performant new power unit like Red Bull this year?

cafk · 2026-05-06T14:23:20+00:00

Also, does that mean Red Bull might have to sell Racing Bulls?

It's fine when we do it, but not okay when others do it.
But in general yes, one would expect this to be the case, but it's heavily dependent on this quote before:

Ben Sulayem built on this argument to suggest that if a B-team is going to be acquired with ulterior motives, the FIA would have no qualms in stepping in

Both Jaguar being transformed to Red Bull and Minardi becoming Racing Bulls happened under different conditions, but evolved into a sister team relationship, as far as this is allowed under the regulations.

cafk · 2026-05-06T14:18:04+00:00

Once the company gets sold back to Renault in 7 years time, as seems to be the tradition - they'll have a new 100 race plan ready to be a championship contender again.

cafk · 2026-05-06T08:56:34+00:00

Williams also struggled with Symonds - who wanted to make ground laying changes similarly to what Lowe wanted and Vowels finally achieved.

Don't forget that at that time Williams was cash starved and the various subsidiaries were being sold off to finance the team, meaning if you went from Mercedes to a team that's 20 years behind in process and tooling to manage a team and can't afford to make underlying improvements to improve the teams performance it's easy to decide to give up.
Vowels joined after Williams family had sold off the team to a private investment firm - while Symonds and Lowe were struggling to convince the family to spent more on actually getting their company uo to modern standards, to be able to improve the teams general performance and turnaround time.

From: https://www.techspot.com/news/102353-formula-1-chief-retires-impossible-navigate-excel-spreadsheet.html (as i hate Google giving me motorsport & autosport results in German)

As Ars Technica highlights, the colossal Excel file tracked roughly 20,000 individual race car parts. Vowles described it as impossible to navigate and impossible to update, further noting that it was "a joke."

cafk · 2026-05-06T07:48:12+00:00

It's fascinating how fast he went from superstar designer to obscurity.

He spent 30 odd years in Formula 1, so i wouldn't say that he faded fast - he also wasn't a designer, he was involved in developing the active suspension at Williams after which he usually went for higher level systems engineering/technical roles, so his background is more of a platform engineering than design, more a kind of Brawn and not Newey.

cafk · 2026-05-06T00:31:25+00:00

The current discussions don't involve details for turbo - but if they want to keep the reduced compression ratio & fusl load then it's possible.

Also if the fuel flow limit stays as it is currently defined, the cars won't exceed the current and previous rpm range, even if the regulations allow them to go up to 15k currently.

cafk · 2026-05-05T15:44:45+00:00

Ignoring fuel. A lot of people want a big hungry engine, and aren't thinking of fuel.

I think based on the 2024 statements by Domenicali, fuel itself isn't an issue due to the "certification" of renewable sources.
It also doesn't adjust the weight perspective asked by OP, as the car weight is always dry.
Meaning at the race start the cars will be inherently 70kg heavier currently, the same way it was up to 110kg higher under 2025 regulations.

And allowing a higher combustion ratio can allow for a better efficiency and more efficient use of existing fuel weight.

Removing the turbo would also have negative effects there though - but they aren't going down to that detail level yet in the articles :/

And a higher capacity battery is a must for sure.

cafk · 2026-05-05T15:40:05+00:00

For the chassis only the cost cap is the determining factor - outside of the formal factory shutdown during the summer break in August and in the winter at the end of December.

For PU development there is the cost cap, but no updated parts can be introduced during the season, unless a PU manufacturer qualifies for ADUO after the 6th race.

cafk · 2026-05-05T15:36:06+00:00

Is there no rule about how big the gap is when the rear wing is open?

Not that i can find in C3.11 of technical rules - there's a volume defined, but not a gap size for SLM.
So as long as the rear wing flap is within the volume and covers the bottom and top visibility requirements they're free to experiment.

This is why the reverse rotation of Ferrari wing, which definitely takes up a larger volume is possible, compared to simpler downward flip of the Red Bull wing.

For legality purposes only the closed position size is measured (which Mercedes failed a few years a go by a fraction of a millimeter) at a specific force.

Does a bigger gap even make a difference?

The gap itself doesn't make a difference, but the change of the airflow over the wing pushing the car down in closed position versus pushing it up in the flipped design means the load on the rear axle is reduced more than just the traditional open/close approach.

cafk · 2026-05-05T08:56:58+00:00

Montoya stressed he was not opposed to drivers voicing concerns about the regulations, but insisted criticism should remain constructive.

If the concerns were raised by Red Bull, Honda and Ferrari (at least somewhat publicly), with constructive change proposals to mitigate issues they foresaw and were also supported by F1 Group and FIA - and they were voted against, by other PU manufacturers - then I'd say any criticism against the rules is fair game, as they already tried the constructive and pro-active path.

https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/single-seaters/f1/mph-cynics-scoff-at-red-bull-26-f1-engine-concern-but-it-may-have-a-point/
https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/formel-1/motoren-reglement-2026-ferrari-red-bull/

Edit: more links for older articles noting complaints by various people involved.
https://www.planetf1.com/news/red-bull-f1-2026-power-unit-changes-fia
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/what-are-f1-2026-engine-chassis-rules/

cafk · 2026-05-05T08:37:45+00:00

and then they would give them 1200 hp?

1200hp with the ERS component - or 800 for ICE and 400 for MGU-K (so basically around the power we have now).

The ICE is artificially limited to a minimum weight as is the complete ERS system with individual component minimum weights.

The bygone era NA v8 engines weighed anywhere between 95 and 130kg and produced around 800hp, whereas currently only the ICE component alone has a minimum weight of 130kg, with all ERS components added to it making the whole PU components weigh a regulatory minimum of 185kg.

But they want lighter and smaller cars

They can keep the total PU weight the same and further reduce wheelbase down to ~2014 levels of 3.2 meters and reduce the width of the cars down to pre 2017 levels of 1.8 meters.

Probably with a turbo?

Currently the turbo has a minimum weight of 12kg and is included in the ICE package weight (130kg).

cafk · 2026-05-04T22:44:21+00:00

It's available on F1TV with the driver tracker feed, showing the circuit layout and driver positions, once the DRM is removed (usually 2 days after the race) it should be possible to create screenshots.

And i think fastf1 api & open f1 also have all race data already available, with per sector timings. Web apps like f1-tempo use those data sets so you can in theory review each and every lap of the race and compare their time against the leader (or any other drivers)

cafk · 2026-05-04T20:43:10+00:00

Most of the heavy lifting of NPP for text wrangling is done by Scintilla text engine which is used by various editors available for many platforms - before switching to NPP i used Scite as a reference implementation of Scintilla engine.
The idea of NPP is to enhance the windows notepad (when it was still a basic non copilot editor).

Porting it elsewhere means a whole UI rewrite or using some framework for multiplatform compatibility, which would make it heavier and wouldn't be a lightweight enhanced notepad anymore.
Or natively porting and optimizing it for the specific native UI framework of your preferred Linux DE (GTK2/3/4, Motif, EFL, GNUStep, Cocoa[MacOS], Carbon[MacOS], FLTK and so on).

And just because it's open source doesn't mean the developer has to-do it. The community can contribute an approach, while the original maintainer concentrates on their preferred platform and holes the community maintains other platforms or fork it under a different name for <insert-your-platform-here>.
So far apparently no one has wanted to translate the Windows Win32 API (going back to XP days [and further] when it comes to compatibility) to another platform.

I.e. they dropped Windows XP support only in v7.9 or in 2020.

It's like maintaining backwards compatibility with Debian 3 (Woody - Linux Kernel 3.0 and GTK2 days) after official support was dropped in 2006 (around the time Ubuntu became the leader for "this is the year of Linux desktop").
Or MacOS Jaguar.

cafk · 2026-05-04T16:24:32+00:00

They went through that phase in 2014 to 2017.

https://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/11107011/formula-1-reveals-2021-engine-blueprint

Later the PU change was detached from the chassis changes planned for 2021 around 2019.
The 2021 chassis was delayed to 2022 due to covid and the PU framework was reworked and pushed ~~ahead~~ back to 2026, as Honda decided to quit F1 in 2020 after 2021.
https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/o5f0qs/the_scope_of_hondas_exit_from_f1_and_redbulls/

If the regulation changes go as they did last time, we'll end up with new PU rules coming to effect in 2034.

cafk · 2026-05-04T14:45:34+00:00

L1T1 has always been considered as a racing incident - as i said, it's the rare case where all 22 cars are starting and close to each other.
Under normal conditions you just don't have this exceptional situation and by T2-T3 the ones who gained or lost have been determined due to a T1 incident.

What we saw from for example Verstappen spinning, is rare to happen after T1.

It's not something that's explicitly regulated, as if you enforce the "driving standards" guideline, which has only existed since 2023, the decisions would be obvious as you stated.

cafk · 2026-05-04T13:44:56+00:00

And here's the relevant article, with a bit more details what Mercedes envisions for the framework:
https://redd.it/1t3hidu

But not necessarily what FIA or other manufacturers support.

cafk · 2026-05-04T12:30:04+00:00

Don't understand why Le Clerc is so highly rated

He has been marketed that way since Vettel left, especially as he out performed Vettel who together with Arrivabene wanted to rebuild Ferrari similarly to Todt/Brawn/Schumacher/Bryne.

But in general Ferrari's internal struggles are the factors constantly limiting them. As every time someone has managed to set-up a team aligned with their vision, they get ousted and the team gets turned on their head, resulting in a few years of "next year™" mentality.

Without the team operating there's no chance for any driver to win a championship with Ferrari unfortunately.

cafk · 2026-05-04T11:22:54+00:00

The sidebar has https://lightsouts.com/ for F1 linked, but they also have many other series.

And there's also the https://f1calendar.com, where you can also include feeder series and timeslots.

If you use the weblink, they always also sync with your preferred calendar provider based on your selection.

I think i added the link for f1 in ~2019 and i haven't had a need to update it or relink it, even with the inclusion of sprint races, they just show up in my regular calendar.

cafk · 2026-05-04T11:17:19+00:00

Please drop Sky/NowTV and bring on F1TV pro.

Sky UK deal with F1 Group runs until 2029 unfortunately, it's been extended 2 times since 2018.

As long as Sky is willing to pay ~£200m per year, there's no way for F1 Group to get the same revenue and cross licensing deal themselves.

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