It’s only the hoopla around the race. Doesn’t make any difference to me as I won’t be there. Enjoyed the race and hope it continues on the calendar.Good. It was a great race last year (despite the exploding drain cover) but this is good news.
Motorsport Off Topic Thread
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Soldato
Refreshing to hear people/organisations speaking so openly about the mistakes that they made and how they have learnt from them.Good. It was a great race last year (despite the exploding drain cover) but this is good news.
Soldato
30m a year for Newey. That's a lot of moola, not surprised he was willing to jump straight back in. Fresh project, a lot of politics at Ferrari i imagine
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Associate
Would imagine will add at least that to the value of the AM F1 team when he comes to sell with a future owner knowing they have Adrian Newey if pappa stroll decides to sell up! Probably a shrewd investment!
Soldato
What if Newey doesn’t make the AM any better?
Man of Honour
Then he retires much more wealthy than he is now but with no silverware to show for it!
I do feel its a gamble, its not as if under Newey Red Bull have won everything for 10 years or something, they've had plenty of cars that weren't at the front of the grid as well.
All of their cars were solid on aero. Most of their issues were because of Renault i.e. rubbish engines and weren't able to package the car as they wanted.
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Soldato
Paying him more money than Alonso who they're expecting to drive the car is pretty interesting!
Though having said that by the time any of this bears any fruit Alonso will be 44/45 and assuming they'll still have the dead weight in the other car if they come with an out of the box flyer to the first race in 2026 do really they have the best driver lineup to capitalise on it?
Though having said that by the time any of this bears any fruit Alonso will be 44/45 and assuming they'll still have the dead weight in the other car if they come with an out of the box flyer to the first race in 2026 do really they have the best driver lineup to capitalise on it?
Soldato
If he still has the desire then being 44 shouldn't be too much of an issue. It's not like he's playing a sport like football, tennis, or combat sports, and people over estimate how important reaction of fast twitch fibres and endurance are in F1 IMO. Though on that, didn't Button break the record recently for reaction time in his 40s.
Man of Honour
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Especially in this age where it’s a bit less physical than it used to be, reaction time doesn’t drop off enough to matter much, especially if you have a competitive car to compensate. I suspect that experience probably counts for more.
Caporegime
Plato and Matt Neal were winning in their 50's. I understand the physical needs are not as much as F1 but you still need to be mentally sharp for race craft and there are plenty of studies that show reaction time whilst starting to drop at age 24 are so miniscule up till your late 70's. Also as with everything genetics plays a big part in it. Someone can have better reactions than someone in their 20's in their 40's because when they were in their 20's they were just higher so the drop has brought them more in line.
F1 is also a sport that has a tiny pool of people because the entry level requirements need lots of funding. I know it is fag packet maths but I would argue the vast majority of F1 drivers would not have made it if the selection criteria was akin to say football where you are in a pool of hundreds of thousands. That means there is a very broad spectrum of racing talent from the best to the worst.
Soldato
Max will be the next to go to AM...2026 maybe?
Alonso could 100% still win a championship. He’s easily a better driver than at least half the grid, and he has a ton of experience.
Commissario
Is it actually officially confirmed he’s going to AM or still just speculation?
It's not "official" yet but should be formally announced at a news conference AM have called for Tuesday, it seems to be more substantial than idle unfounded speculation
Soldato
Isn’t it getting announced on Tuesday when his Red bull contract officially ends? Or have I just added more speculation 
Man of Honour
The amount of speculation/info now feels like when Hamilton signed for Ferrari; its pretty clear its coming this week; there's too many sources with too much information leaking now for it to be anything else
Caporegime
Or, alternatively, Newey was too egotistical to make the compromises needed to let the engine work properly and kept Red Bull on the back foot for years.
Possibly, but it is pretty well known that Renault have had the worst engine for years. McLaren Honda made the mistake of compromising the engine for their size zero concept, which is similar.
Not saying it’s all Newey; I find it hard to believe that 1 dude is significantly better than every single aero engineer in F1, let alone a full team of them.
Caporegime
True, but how much of that was being forced to compromise the engine to fit the car? And being unable to work on performance because they needed to work on reliability issues because the badly packaged engine couldn't cool properly?
I agree it's not all Newey either way, the whole teams gets it right or wrong but I do think Newey's presence made it hard for Red Bull to get the balance right.