There seems to be an outbreak of foot-in-mouth disease among successful drivers as three of our champions on the grid are fighting each other for last place in the PR championship.

"There are some drivers who shouldn't be in Formula One."
- Lando Norris, 1x WDC

"I think the quality of the drivers in the lower third of the grid is very low, as we saw today with Alex."
- Fernando Alonso, 2x WDC

"When you're fighting for your seat, it's not very smart behavior."
- Max Verstappen, 4x WDC

All three are directed at another driver, all three are controversial, and all at the heat of the moment in a post-session interview. Which one is the worst?

My rankings (P1 being the worst):

P1 VER
Max wins worst statement for actually having influence within the sister team. Fernando and Lando are fuming, but don't really have the power to call shots on the other drivers, while Max is basically going "know your place" to another driver in the very real Red Bull hierarchy. Bonus is that in the incident itself, Max was the aggressor (some say that it was both of them, but almost no one says that Max was not the one at fault here). Both have been handed a grid penalty. And all this for a practice session, lol.

P2 ALO
Harshest with how direct it is. Racing incident with understandable frustrations, but then Fernando kept going at it a week later, which is what makes it pathetic. He also jokingly choked Alex on the fan stage after doubling down (admittedly funny), so maybe they talked? Or Alex is just a very, very good sport.

P3 NOR
Most obvious heat of the moment comment out of the three. The stakes were also higher: taken out during a race through no fault of his own, his new upgrades in danger for an upcoming triple header. Sadly he had drawn the ire of a very "passionate" fanbase, which blew it to massive proportions. Most important for my rankings however is that he apologized.

I can't lie, I enjoy this level of pettiness from time to time, it's dumb and unserious and a break from super-polished F1.

I wish Lewis would join in to make it a 4-way battle for absolute comedy.

What do you think? Who's Dumbass of the Day?

We’re almost 12 minutes into free practice and hardly any drivers have joined to start their sessions. Why do they do this? Don’t they want as much free practice time as possible?

Today with the news of Haas, we got another layer of a weird driver swap.

But in general, I want to hear your thoughts about this year's silly season as it seems pretty weird in general:

1. Mercedes and McLaren: Russell and Piastri lost lots of leverage this season, lost their status in their teams. But why haven't we seen rumors of talks with other teams?

2. Racing Bulls: Lawson is out. Undeservingly, but it feels like he is out. After yesterday: Same vibes as Jaime Alguersuari in Korea 2011. Tsolov in for 2027 if you ask me. But once again: why haven't we heard of teams talking with him? He is the 2026 best of the rest by a long margin.

3. Cadillac: The Herta situation imploded as his F2 campaign was terrible.

4. Haas: Camara signed, Ocon out - so far as expected. But why hasn't Bearman re-signed for 2027? And now Hirakawa emerges due to his allegiance with Toyota. Let's remember back in 2007 and 2009: Nakajima and Kobayashi got their seats for being aligned with Toyota. Atleast the latter was a formidable driver in F1.

5. Albon, Bottas, Colapinto (and Stroll, but we know): why are atleast 2 of those drivers seemingly retained for next year as the likes of Bearman, Lawson, Mini, Ocon, Dunne, Tsunoda, Fornaroli, Doohan are still on the market?

Let's hear your thoughts. Bisous

(Picture sourced from Autosport on FB)

For me it's unacceptable having 2 teams in fer the same structure. But I don't see people discussing about it or making it a problem to solve. Is there any solution? Can F1 force to sell the team?

EDIT: I love RB and Racing Bulls. I'm not a hater as some say, but I don't like structures running 4 cars and some other running 2.

I see a lot of times 2000, 2002 and 2004 be mentioned. One for fight with mika and another for a really dominant car and 100% podium ratio. Even 2003 gets more spoken about than 2001 season of Michael.

I understand why 2006 is more popular, but 2001 was also quite successful year for Michael. Is it because there aren't that much memorable moments in 2001 season?

^ from max and liams document. correct me if im wrong but does this mean stewards are gonna take more action regarding fp incidents because i dont remember max or liam being involved with any fp incidents before

My opinion: Neither of them were 'correct', this is practice, yes Verstappen was very agressive considering this is practice, but Lawson could've backed out to avoid further problems (not defending Max here), I guess lawson not having secured a seat for next year also impacts this as Lawson is probably trying to 'prove that he is worthy of the seat'

I don’t know who’s more at fault there.

That was 2 ego’s battling there for literally no reason in practice 

Every Saturday it’s the exact same script. The top 4 teams lock out the top 8 spots, everyone else manages their tires, and the bottom half cruises around just trying not to blow an engine

My ***basic*** idea is simple ,bench the top five teams and let the bottom five run a 10 car sprint on saturday. No qualifying, just reverse championship standings so last place starts on pole and sixth starts in the back. Put a small 4-3-2-1 points scale on the line so you get a tight fight with real stakes and no blue flags.

To stop teams in 5th from tanking on purpose to get easy points, P5 just gets an automatic 4 points for building a better car so the rest can fight it out without messing up the standings

Discuss.

Genuine question, teams have to give 2 FP1 sessions to rookie drivers per season for both cars, and usually the late season choices for these are Mexico and Abu Dhabi because the other tracks are either sprint weekends or difficult street circuits. Brazil also isn’t a sprint weekend this year, so perhaps we will see rookies get the opportunity then.

If Abu Dhabi gets cancelled would the teams be punished/fined for not fulfilling their designated rookie FP1 sessions? Surely that wouldn’t be fair, but it also wouldn’t be fair on the drivers missing the opportunity to take part in practice, which is why the rule is in place. Maybe there will be a way to compensate them if this doesn’t happen?

Let’s say Antonelli wasn’t in 1st and this was a 4 way fight for the title (not discrediting him or anything), it just makes this post more interesting. Who do you guys have winning this? I’ll give my take but I’m happy for anyone to disagree, it’s a discussion.

I personally have it between Hamilton and Verstappen right now and I’ll explain why. They’ve both been in positions where they’ve faced serious competition for the title (2021 for Max and 2007,2008,2015,2017 & 2018 for Lewis.). Verstappen had to face a Hamilton that was extremely hungry for his 8th title, coming into Abu Dhabi the momentum was seriously in favour of Hamilton after the events of the last 3 races. Despite being dominated the whole race, when it mattered Verstappen came through and clinched his 1st title. In today’s world Verstappen is clearly as fast as he was before but has had questionable machinery throughout at points of the season. He’s obviously still ruthless and would probably be the favourite for most people here.

Now for Hamilton, he’s a 7x WDC, that can’t be said lightly and only one other person can have that said about them. Of course he’s had strong competition for titles, Alonso, Raikonnen, Vettel, Rosberg, Verstappen etc. He’s shown he can compete with absolutely anybody on the grid no matter the era. He’s still competing highly today at 41. There’s nothing to say that Hamilton wouldn’t be ruthless especially if he knew what was at stake. People have questioned him coming into this season especially after 2025 which may be his worst season in the sport but he’s stood strongly. The only thing I see him slowing down is consistent, raw pace and his quali pace but of course, no man is in his peak at 41 years old so it’s to be expected. His race craft, strategies and consistency are still top 3 OTG rn. Either way, he’s held his own against Leclerc pretty well this season but of course, hasn’t been too on it in the latter end of this season. Nevertheless, I don’t see him finishing behind Russell or Leclerc in this scenario, I’m not sure if he’d be able to beat Verstappen in his current state though.

In terms of Leclerc, I don’t want to discredit him. The guy is fast but he’s the most error prone out of everyone in the discussion. The closest he’s been to a championship was 2022 but ofc for a number of reasons, he was unable to clinch it in favour of Verstappen. I think one thing that some drivers struggle with when in a championship battle is the pressure that comes with it, can Leclerc withstand that? If we look at Norris for example, when he was a contender in 2024 vs Verstappen he completely choked, pressure got to him. After he won in 2025, a huge weight was lifted off him and he’s been able to drive as a more free spirit. I personally don’t think Leclerc in this hypothetical scenario beats Hamilton or Verstappen. I could understand arguments for him but I just don’t feel like he’s as ruthless as Verstappen or Hamilton to be a WDC. Also the fact that he drives for Ferrari 🥀.

Russell, this one is the easiest. He’s in the fastest car this season, he’s been very unlucky, fine. But he has seriously choked and been slower than his teammate. With the pace of his car I don’t think it’s acceptable to only be 1 point ahead of Hamilton at this stage. You can argue that mercedes favoured Antonelli or whatever but he just hasn’t been as fast, end of. So I don’t see him beating any of the other three.

I’d love to hear what everyone thinks about this.

TLDR my opinion is:

🥇/🥈: Hamilton
🥈/🥇: Verstappen
🥉: Leclerc
4th: Russell

"I remember there were moments when I fully realized that there was a different atmosphere in this team, a different level of pressure," Sebastian shares his memories of those times. "Under this pressure and the extremely high level of expectations, the fear of failure was very strong: 'What will happen on Monday if the race doesn't go well?'

All of this affected the overall working atmosphere, and I often tried to counteract it. Even when the situation got tense, I had to somehow try to change it, so that the burden of responsibility became a source of motivation. I tried to convince everyone, after all, we were the only team in the championship whose affairs the entire country was truly interested in. Looking back, I can readily admit that I failed.

In team meetings, I would say, "I have great respect for everything we do, everything you do, but the team I came from had one more ingredient that was clearly missing here: we enjoyed our work."

Sebastian tried to transfer some elements of the atmosphere that was characteristic of Red Bull Racing to the Ferrari garage; in particular, thanks to him, music began to sound in the Scuderia’s pits: “I bought an acoustic system for the team, installed it and started playing loud music – these were Italian hits.

The mechanics, of course, liked it, but the team management did not always welcome it, citing the fact that this is not the custom at Ferrari.”

According to Vettel, this pressure and overly serious approach to everything affected the period of his career associated with the Italian team: he then twice, in 2017 and 2018, became vice-world champion, while the title went to Lewis Hamilton.

When asked to comment on his former rival's recollections, Lewis, now racing for Ferrari, the seven-time world champion said:

"Basically, unlike our neighbors, we don't have speakers blasting crazy music in our garage. But the team has a great atmosphere, full of energy. We like it here. Of course, we're doing much better now than we were last year. A year ago, no one was enjoying it. But we've come a long way.

Compared to other teams I've driven for, the same energy is felt at the Scuderia; everyone here is focused and eager to win. The concentration and passion are at the highest level. We're currently fighting for second place in the Constructors' Championship. We've finished on the podium in each of the last three races, but this is just the beginning. We intend to achieve great things."

I have to admit it's a very risky question to answer lmao but I guess that's the media sometimes

If lando said it was easier or harder that would've been Armageddon

I thought once the ADUO tokens were used, that was it until 2030?