Auto Motor und Sport report Tsunofa to stay at Alpha Tauri for 2024.
Daniel Ricciardo looks unlikely to return for Suzuka; if Liam Lawson can score a point and finish ahead of Tsunoda, he’ll single-handedly double ATs points in just 3 races, but may still not get a drive.
Williams may consider LL…
Suspect Honda’s ¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥ says he stays. His results certainly don’t!
Very late to the party. I was on holiday and did not have my logon available, but did post this elsewhere:
In qualifying a few things happened that resulted in RBR being slower than usual in Singapore.
Firstly, very little time was spent above 280 kph, which is where the low drag of the RBR has such a dramatic effect. So at the moment it is not clear whether the flexi aero changes did or did not affect RBR.
Secondly, the RBR rear tyres were down on temperature (no data to prove this just knowledge of how tyre temp affects performance) for most of the lap and only got to the point in the last 2 corners of not losing time to their main competitors.
In the race VER was faster than the vast majority of the field, but still slower than Lewis and RUS, who were on newer medium tyres. Most of the field were on much older tyres and so were and would in any case be slower. I need to equivalence VER’s stint to the end with RUS’s stint, taking out the fuel effect and balancing tyre age.
I think that Lewis was right that it would be faster as a two stop race, complicated by needing to maintain track position vs being able to overtake. SAI demonstrated very well that it could be a one stop, but he might not have been able to keep Lewis behind him, had he needed to do that.
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Also posted this elsewhere, which may be of interest:
I think the RBR concept is to generate the downforce as much as possible at higher ride heights and then stall the car aero at around 280 kph (they set the ride heights to achieve the stall at the speed that best suits the circuit), I.e. lower ride heights.
One of the consequences of this approach is that they will on occasion have tyre warm up problems in qualifying (not able to put enough energy into the tyre on the out lap), but in the race they are likely to have lower degradation if over heating is a problem for other teams (it generally is in high speed corners). So, for example, at Spa VER was quite average through Eau rouge but was still very fast by the end of the straight.
And at Singapore, the performance generally dropped off for the reasons that I have given in the post above.
How you get the aero to work reliably in this way (I.e. very effective at pretty much any circuit) must be a difficult challenge as no other teams have achieved it.
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IME this is the way to get a winning car and has always been aerodynamically very, very difficult, and I’m not sure many people have ever achieved it (or, in some cases, realise this should be the objective).
Having low tyre deg has always been good for racing but a challenge to get warm up in qualifying.
If you look at the time grip limited it is far more at high ride heights than low, on top of which both tyre and, probably, the driver can’t exploit the easy to get low ride downforce for load treasons.
IME getting more downforce at high ride heights is a crucial but very difficult requirement not often realised by competitors so not even a target for some - who believe aero is for high speed and mechanical for low which is only partially true. Mechanical grip is 99% having the tyres at the optimum temperature for as much of the grip limited time as possible.
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We are in agreement.
My comments were from looking at the delta time analysis around the lap of Singapore (and other circuits this year), which clearly show the low to high speed differences.
Merc did manage it to an extent in 2021 later in the season, with their collapsible rear suspension (most likely heave spring assembly), which dropped the drag dramatically at a certain load (and hence speed) so that at circuits like Brazil they were much faster down the straights that mattered.
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Indeed Ian,
It was my objective on every car I did the aero on once we lost skirts. I didn’t always achieve it, it is very difficult, the natural tendency of almost every element of the car is the opposite, but always tried.
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Fascinating insights guys, much appreciated.
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^ this ^
Thank-you Ian & Frank 
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I am not sure what the etiquette for this is, but I did my first webinar for an Indian company that is organizing a training and development eco system for Asian students. The company is called the United Motorsports Academy and I was asked to be a volunteer on their advisory committee to try and make sure that their masters level students were taught what they needed to know. I volunteered as I like the people running it, a good friend of mine, Willem Toet is an aero specialist and is helping them, and I want to help students learn, without being a lecturer!
So as part of promoting the growing eco system in India I was asked to present some analysis based on public domain data that showed what McLaren had done to make their massive turn around in performance this year. It is this kind of analysis that I set up in F1 around 25 years to follow what competitors were doing and so I am very familiar with the process. It turns out that there is a data feed that some kind people have given access to and the basic data that you need to do help you understand vehicle performance changes is there (car speed, time, distance, throttle, DRS). So all it needed was my expertise to develop and deliver some coherent analysis.
I presented what I have done in a hosted webinar. Apart from my not sharing my screen to start with I am told that people are really happy with what I did, but I am open to feedback as I only 20 mins for the presentation and then 30 mins for answering questions.
UMA webinar on vehicle performance
I hope that some on here find it interesting.
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Brilliant, awesome, wonderful…
I so fervently wish that information sharing of this scale and nature had been readily possible in my formative years. Sadly, and while I was actively involved in local circuit motor racing, breaking into international racing was perhaps akin to becoming a F1 driver - it wasn’t what you knew or how good you were, but having the right contacts.
I’m not suggesting I was the ‘right’ person for any of the roles I tried to get into, but I’m sure Ian and Frank have seen their share of unsuitable yet shoo-in candidates!
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Thanks.
With no GPS data available 25 years ago we had to develop video analysis techniques to create this data. Basically we (a team of us after qualifying) aligned on car video from our car with competitors and with data alignment, created very similar data, but as it was linked to the video frame meta data, we could do a more detailed analysis of driver errors, and why.
And yes, like Frank, I think that that there are some people that should not have been in F1.
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Looking forward to reading this, Ian
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If you blinked while watching the Qatar GP, you may have missed Lando Norris’ 1.80s pit stop.
McLaren have been practicing.
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His defence Christine Montgomery KC told judge Justice Bryan the defendant “bitterly regrets the events that led to this criminal trial”.
I bet he fucking does - mainly the being found out part.
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One rule for the rich……
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That is precisely what I thought when I read it. I know Bernie well and he would be able to say that with a straight face.
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I cannot imagine anything about the verdict comes as a surprise to you 
With the law skewed hugely in defendents favour (fess up, pay up a wee bit of the receipts owed, move on) it’s really rather unsuaul that HMRC gets such a win, and it requires the defendent to have been a weapons-grade plonker to have lied - or tried to - their way out of it.
Edit - I don’t pretend to know the first thing about horse racing, but after further reading, it would appear the other notable ‘celeb’ to have talked himself into a fine was Lestor “seems-like-me-might-not-be-an-altogether-top-chap” Piggott
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Bernie’s limitless arrogance finally caught him out.
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