this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2024
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I know nothing about what's happening except that Lawson is an NZer. The article makes it sound there's been drama within the team. Can I get a crash course?
Red bull have 2 teams, 4 drivers. Their top driver Max is the world champ, his team mate is finishing at the bottom of the top 10 in the best car. It's hard for anyone to live upto max but he's been really under performing. Lawson had a couple of solid races last year as a reserve driver. Everyone expected them to dump Max's team mate during the mid season break and bring up a driver from their second team. They've stuck by him and the assumption is that it's to keep interest in his home race in Mexico coming up.
So the drama is that they have to dump someone to bring Lawson in, and they've had so many chances to dump the under performing one. The Japanese and Ozzy driver in the lower team are both great.
If they don't give Lawson a drive next year his junior driver contract says he's free to go elsewhere. But F1 is littered with great drivers who don't get a chance for commercial reasons, and crappy drivers who hang around also for commercial reasons.
There's also a second level of drama within the Red Bull team.
It's divided into an 'old' guard, with Marko in the lead and the 'new' guard formed by an investment group from Thailand headed by Yoovidhya. These two have been having a power struggle since Mateschitz died. This has lead to the dirt on Horner coming out, Newey leaving the team and Jos Verstappen publicly airing the dirty laundry and stirring the pot as he does.
Marko hates Perez, because he's an old racist bastard who hates everybody with a bit of a skin color. So he wants him gone, but for some reason the other faction within the teams want to retain Perez. I'm not sure why, because he has been under performing, but the Thais keep everything to themselves so we don't know.
Ah right, so this isn't an announcement that he's made the team, it's an announcement to say don't worry, we will get him on the track before the contract expires?
The guy looks super young, I think I saw he's about 22, that Max guy is 26? Have formula 1 drivers always been this young? I must be getting old.
Yes. In fact Max had his first F1 race a few days after turning 17. However, drivers often continue on well into their 30s and even 40s such is the case with Fernando Alonso at the moment.
The bonkers thing is that with this announcement it means either the ozzy driver Riccardo will be promoted into the fastest car next year, or be out of the sport all together.
Weird question that shows I really know nothing about this, but... why is there a "fastest car"? Is it a money thing, where they put all they can into one car then just do their best for the others? I would have thought if they have the technology they would want all their cars to have whatever it is that makes it the fastest.
And no they don't put all the money into one car, they tend to be the same car for both drivers in a team unless they are testing one upgrade idea against another. There is a a cost cap and testing cap, which limits how much they can throw at brute forcing the optimal car.
I guess my question is one that arose when you said:
Why don't all the drivers on the two red bull teams have the fastest car? Do they not share their designs?
No, the teams must design most of the car themselves. They are allowed to buy the engine, gearbox and some suspension parts from other teams. But all the aero parts and chassis must be designed in house. The FIA have access to their computer systems and factories to police this and the cost cap. The teams being constructors is a key feature of F1. Red Bull's second team RB is based in Italy, while the top team is in the UK.
Ah, that explains it. Thanks!
The teams make everything about the car except the tyres and some of the electronics. This makes it a constructors championship as much as a drivers one. It's amazing that all 10 teams get within a few percent of each other in absolute pace when they all get there by different ideas. For cost cap reasons, Limited amount of on track, wind tunnel and computational simulation time makes it hard to totally catch up if you make the wrong decisions before the season starts.
So the teams that hire and retain the best engineering talent, and have the best management structure to let them work effectively, tend to get the fastest car. It's a human and technology optimisation equation.