Monster Week In F1 News

Lewis Hamilton to Ferrari for 2025

(1 February 2024) - In an absolute bombshell, Lewis Hamilton is moving to Scuderia Ferrari F1 on a multi-year deal for 2025. He’ll be alongside Charles Leclerc.

This comes shortly after he’d signed a contract extension with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team for 2024. According to various outlets, he exercised the release clause in said contract extension — reportedly the reason it took so long for him to reach a new deal with the team.

The reason for Lewis’ departure has yet to be confirmed, given pre-season testing hasn’t started yet. It’s thought that he likely wasn’t pleased with Mercedes’ current development path for the coming regulations. It’s also worth noting that, much like Charles; Lewis and Fred Vasseur go way back. Fred was team principal at ASM and ART GP when Lewis was in F3 and GP2.

Fred Vasseur has been exceptionally vocal in that he sees 2025 and 2026, particularly, as “reboot years.” He’s started poaching top technical staff from other teams to lay the groundwork for those crucial seasons; most notably. His first big hire was Loic Serra, who’s the Head of Vehicle Performance at Mercedes.

Formula One Tells Andretti to Fuck Off

(31 January 2024) - Formula has rejected Andretti Global’s entry bid into the sport with the coming 2026 powertrain regulations.

Statement from FOM:

The statement is as lengthy as it is emphatic:

How Did We Arrive Here?

Back in 2021, Michael Andretti expressed interest in fielding an entry in F1. Around that time’s US-and Miami Grand Prixs, he could be seen talking with F1 CEO Stefano Domenicalli and various team bosses. He even reportedly attempted to buy out an existing team. However, it wasn’t until October last year that the FIA formally announced that it’d sifted through expression of interest requests from prospective entrants, and it was satisfied that Andretti’s technical capabilities were strong enough for it to justify an 11th entry on the Formula One grid for 2025.

Only one problem: as a part of the Concorde Agreement, Formula One Media (FOM) — and the teams, to a lesser extent —- had to reach a deal before Andretti was going to be allowed to compete.

(Speedrunning this a bit; plenty of outlets have covered this shitshow in-depth. Also could pave the way for something from us later on.)

Breaking Down FOM’s statement

A large part of FOM’s reasoning hinges around Andretti-Cadillac not bringing any value to the sport. Which is objectively incorrect given that the team would carry one of the most famous names in racing, alongside one of the biggest automotive conglomerates on the planet though General Motors. Of course, the statement is absolutely right that an Andretti-Cadillac entry would benefit from being on the F1 grid; but fails to realize that, particularly in the American market that FOM is bent on dominating, a team like that would have a huge benefit.

Another large contention point is competitiveness; FOM goes out of its way to cite competitiveness, or a lack thereof multiple times. This is also bullshit. You have three teams that are perennial bottom-feeders in the constructors’: Williams, Sauber, and Haas. Occasionally Red Bull’s junior team, Visa CashApp RB (nee AlphaTauri) will get in on the action. No one expects Andretti to win on debut, but it’d almost certainly been faster than those four, given the mountains of resources both Andretti and GM were pouring into the fledgling outfit.

It’s worth noting that, at least in the beginning, Andretti team would likely be using a Alpine customer PU branded as a Cadillac job until the new PU regs come into effect in 2026 – something with which FOM takes particular umbrage with. At which point, it’d be a proper GM/Cadillac PU; much like what Ford is doing with the Honda-Red Bull engine.

To FOM’s credit; of all the customer engines Andretti could use, the Alpine PU is arguably the worst one. However, as many F1 pundits pointed out, Alpine is an absolute trainwreck that has spent the last nearly ten years squandering massive amounts of spending from the Renault Group. Ergo, their position in the WCC the last few years likely isn’t indicative of the latent potential of that package.

Now, interestingly, FOM has opened the door for GM to return in 2028 but there’s no mention of Andretti, who actually filed the application to make the grid in the first place.

(Discuss these points.)

Andretti Angy

Only a few hours after, Andretti Global released a statement saying it “strongly disagreed” with the contents of FOM’s statement and reassured their devotion to the project as well as promising continued development; which implies Andretti still plans to make the F1 grid in ‘25. And while Michael nor co-owner Dan Towriss have personally made any statements, Mario Andretti took to Twitter to say he was “devastated.”

UPDATE 2/2/24 - Andretti released a statement emphatically refuting FOM’s claims. According to them; they were working towards an 2026 entry (not 2025 as the length of the process took that out of contention). Additionally, they were not aware that the offer of a meeting had been extended and would not decline a meeting with FOM (and wants one).