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Formula One

Haas are first out of the gates to give us a look at their 2022 car:



Disappointing the livery remains the same. Hopefully they can be much more competitive this year!

I’ve got a soft spot for them after watching the Netflix documentary
Would love it if they did a Brawn
 
Thought it was worth sharing after two months of silence...

Interesting week ahead as drivers will meet with the FIA to discuss Abu Dhabi and last season in general, in particular the errors Michael Masi made. It is expected that Masi will not be race director for the upcoming season, and will likely be moved to another role.
 
Its interesting that nearly half the team principles are now in support of the actions Masi made at the end of last season.

Williams boss being the latest to throw his support behind him, after Zak Brown earlier this year, and the two Red Bull backed teams. https://www.planetf1.com/news/michael-masi-support-from-jost-capito-williams/

Blaming Masi for the mess last season, is ignoring the cause of the issue. The FIA failed to replace all the roles that Charlie Whiting under took, and Masi did not have the support or structures in place to handle everything that the teams threw at him.

As Zak Brown states, all the team principles agreed to finish the race under green flag conditions, Jost Capito fully supports the decisions Masi made. Red Bull and Alpha Tarui clearly happy with the decision. I dont think its as clear cut as Mercedes and Lewis fans make out that Masi is going to lose his job come the start of the season.
 
Audio recordings have been released from Abu Dhabi of RB's Jonathan Wheatly seemingly influencing Masi in the final moments of the race:



I'm not confident Masi is illecitely following Wheatley's instructions, but there is certainly some influence to this, particularly as Masi directly tells Toto they went motor racing moments after Wheatley said to go motor racing....

Shocking.

In other news, Lando has been confirmed to be staying with McLaren until 2025.
 
Whether it was as it appears or not -- you've got to take in to account that Masi was in a situation where if he was going to do something he had to do it straight away. It's probably fair to characterise race control as in a scramble.

The issue for my eyes was that Masi had put himself in that position by failing to call a red flag, which isn't but should be the automatic course of action in the event of a major crash with <10% of the race to go.

If he did nothing and followed the rules that would have been construed as acting in Merc's favour - important to remember the lap 1 incident which by almost all accounts should probably have gone against Hamilton too - it would have seemed like a stitch up.
 
That footage doesn't show anything. RB said that the lapped cars, once through, don't need to catch up to the back of the pack (which is correct) and Masi said he understood the message. While I think the constant badgering of the Race Director by teams is bad and, thankfully sounds like it is going to stop, Red Bull did this over the course of last season no worse than Mercedes.

The problem is, even if Masi had thrown a red flag, and then on the restart Max had overtaken Lewis and won, people would still say this was unfair and throwing the red flag was favouritism towards Red Bull, so he was in a no-win situation really with the way the rules are at the time. I think the thing everyone has to remember is, had the positions been reversed and Max was leading with Lewis behind, Toto Wolff would have been on the radio making exactly the same requests as Red Bull did. In playing the victim, Mercedes don't like to mention that apparently they were one of the most vocal teams in wanting races to finish under green flag conditions wherever possible, as that doesn't play into their narrative now.

I'm looking forward to all the car launches and then it'll be pre-season testing before we know it. The sooner the 2022 season starts the better, then everyone can stop going on about the end of last season - it's time to accept Verstappen won and move on.
 
Ooft.

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Yes, it feels like all these launches are just going to be the livery and will be pretty underwhelming.

This year in particular, we won't really know a lot until the season starts in Bahrain in March.
 
Yes, it feels like all these launches are just going to be the livery and will be pretty underwhelming.

My understanding from is that the Aston Martin car is the actual race car. It looks really good I think. Stuff will still change between now and first race of the season, but I think RedBull called out that each race the car will be different, and its a race to see who can develop their car the quickest.

This does put Mercedes at a disadvantage due to reduced Wind Tunnel limits, so going to be really interesting to see how the season plays out.
 
Doesn't look like Aston Martin got the memo on just slapping your livery on the 2022 demo car previewed last season. Those slots across the top of the sidepods look interesting, wonder if we will see that on other cars once they are shown properly. Slightly sad to see the last remnants of Racing Point disappear with the change from pink to green flashes on the wings, but it probably now looks better with this colouring. Presume this is also the slightly lighter shade of green so to look better when on track.
 
Aston Martin have begun testing:



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A thing of beauty visually and audibly.
 
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Slightly sad to see the last remnants of Racing Point disappear with the change from pink to green flashes on the wings,
BWT are going to be sponsoring Alpine this season, so expect to see some pink on the Alpine.
It sounds like a dolphin being murdered from afar:
That is a Mercedes engine as well, so hopefully its just a bad recording or running in some sort of low power mode. It sounds fine in the first video exiting the pits and sounds fine when close. Its not the new tyres making that noise is it?
 
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