Some Bits Of F1

We've arrived to the fourth post of SBOF1. Yet, as every other week, we've had a lot of news out there. One of which was not related directly to F1, but it was within the motorsport world, and that is that we want to congratulate Carlos Sainz Sr. as he has won the Rally Dakar 2024. From SBOF1 we express our encouragement to keep going and congratulations on that fourth Dakar. You've done a tremendous competition, Matador.

Alpine's leakage of staff

Former sporting director of Alpine, Alan Permane, will be working from now on in AlphaTauri (or Racing Bulls). This set of departures is setting up a lot of doubts of whether Alpine will live up to the expectations of its fans.

In addition, we've known that Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, both the actual drivers of the French team, are wishing to abandon it at the end of 2024.

They are uncertain about whether Alpine will take advantage of their capabilities, and they've given the green flag to their managers to look for what other teams can offer them.

Is Mercedes really capable of beating Red Bull?

Early this week, Mercedes invested a lot of money in a lot of equipment for their future Pit Stops (indeed, Aston Martin will also benefit from this movement). Their intention with this is to make their Pit Stops as fast as possible, not only to be a competitor for the DHL Fastest Pit Stop award, but also to use it to gain a few tenths on the track.

According to media, Toto Wolff will be the Team Principal of Mercedes up until the 2027 season at least, as he signed recently a three-year contract, which makes him one of the two most long-running team principals, only behind Christian Horner, which will be directing Red Bull for 17 years since then.

All of these changes, according to the team, is to be able to beat Red Bull this 2024. They're confident they will pull up some sort of changes in the vehicle that will give them the advantage to finish ahead of their main rival.

Visa? CashApp? What does RB stand for?

These are the three questions all fan of F1 has had to have when they knew about the new name of the Red Bull's team B, formerly AlphaTauri, they announced they will be called from now on Visa CashApp RB

We don't know for sure if "RB" stands for "Racing Bulls" or "Red Bull", in fact, could be both. In theory, it stands for Racing Bulls. With this most recent change, theories and suspicions are on everyone's lips. Even McLaren's CEO, Zak Brown, has advised us. He suggests that Red Bull and AlphaTauri's relation should be deeply investigated, as they keep getting closer, it all seems more suspicious.

Whatever it takes

Whatever it takes. This is the new motto McLaren have adopted for the incoming 2024 season. Half-passed this week, all McLaren social media was "deleted" to introduce us the renewed team for 2024. Their accounts weren't literally deleted. They deleted all posts and changed for a few hours their profile picture, leaving only one video on their account. It was the announcement of their new philosophy.

Hours passed and they uploaded the video. A video I'm pretty sure no one was expecting. It was their 2024 car's livery reveal. Abandoning the blue from their 2023 car, the new McLaren car will be featuring their new familiar but changed colour scheme, the classic papaya orange and black.

The media was shocked as this was unusual. Let's see what McLaren can apport their fans this season, but I'm sure their new philosophy will help them in some way.

Madrid's Grand Prix imminent announcement

The "Comunidad de Madrid"'s president Isabel Díaz Ayuso, region in which is situated the capital of Spain, Madrid, has made declarations about the possible arrival of the F1 to Madrid. She has said: "We want Madrid to be consolidated as the BEST circuit in the world".

Then after that we heard about the notice that Stefano Domenicali, actual F1 President, will travel to the Spanish capital the 23rd January in order to review, amongst other things, all the facilities the city might have in case the GP was announced.

And after all the expectation of the F1 fans, mostly Spanish ones, the announcement was made by Albert Fabrega. The Spanish Grand Prix taking place in Madrid announcement will be made the following 23rd January. Alongside with the official announcement, the definitive track layout will be shown to the people. This will be the 6th place in Spain to ever hold a F1 Grand Prix.

Not related to Madrid but with new GPs, it's Osaka. As the contract for the actual circuit where the Japanese Grand Prix is taking place, in Suzuka, is ending after the 2024 season, Osaka has expressed its wishes to hold the Japanese Grand Prix in the following years. Nothing's confirmed, it's just a rumour, but it has been leaked that the theoretical circuit would be a street circuit.

Ferrari might have found the key to success

The Ferrari 676 (the name of the 2024 car while's in development) is expected to reach the minimum weight limit. This would be really great news for the Scuderia as it might impact enormously on the car's performance and might result in better qualys, better race pace, and most importantly, it might result in a faster car.

They must have their feet on the ground though, because it isn't a surprise to anyone that Red Bull is going to create, if possible, a car with less weight than Ferrari's, and they are already testing different tweaks to the car to keep it with as lightweight as possible.

Parallel to this, the Scuderia has showed interest in the actual Alpine driver Pierre Gasly for the upcoming seasons in case the negotiations with Carlos Sainz don't work out. Apparently, Sainz wants to renovate for a minimum of 2 years. The team, however, only would be willing to renovate him for a year.

As we said in previous posts, and apart from Gasly, another driver in which Ferrari would be interested facing 2025 would be Alexander Albon.

The 2024 season is just around the corner

The FIA has confirmed the times for all the sessions of the 24 GPs the 2024 season will be having. This means, obviously, that in just a matter of weeks we'll be expectant to see the cars' performance, and soon after that, nervous to see if our favourite driver has qualified well, and if they're having a good pace in Bahrain.

Presentation dates so far

In this week we didn't know when the only team that hasn't made an official announcement, Haas, was going to present their 2024 car. However, we knew about Red Bull, whose car presentation has been moved from the 8th to the 15th.

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Miguel, Co-owner of SBOF1