Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Formula 1 75th Anniversary Preview

Brian and Julie at the F1 race in Austin, 2019.

In 2025, the Formula 1 folks are celebrating their 75th season, since they've used that name since 1950. Sure, there were Grand Prix races long before that, but they weren't under the Formula 1 name until 1950. We're looking ahead to another great season of  racing, so here's 3 things to know before the season kicks off March 16th in Australia:

1: For the past 4 years, the World Champion driver has been Max Verstappen of the Red Bull Racing team. Max is still one of the top drivers, so the real question is if his team will provide him a competitive car, or if the other teams manage to find some improvements and tweaks to take the title away from Max. While a Red Bull driver claimed the driver title last year, they did not win the team competition. That honor went to the McLaren team, and even the Ferrari team scored more points than Red Bull. 

Overall the regulations for building F1 cars, or "formula," will be similar this year, so it's very likely that those three teams, possibly plus Mercedes, will still be fighting for the championship all the way to the end of 2025. That should give us some great competitive races all year long, so let's hope it plays out like that. There's nothing as dramatic as having a championship go down to the last race, and even the last lap of the last race like in 2021. 

Our money says Red Bull will maintain a lock on the driver's title, with Max Verstappen earning his 5th straight title. 

NMS enjoying the Texas sunshine in Austin, F1 2019. 

2: The biggest news this year is that several drivers have changed teams, and there's the new rookies coming in for their first full season, as well as other personnel and sponsor changes in F1. The highlight here is 7 time champion Lewis Hamilton wearing red and driving for Ferrari this year. Can he get back to  his title winning ways? I think the answer is "maybe," but first he has to score more than his teammate Charles LeClerc, and that won't be easy!

Rookie wise, we have to get used to having Oliver Bearman at Haas, Kimi Antonelli with Mercedes, Jack Doohan with Alpine, Isack Hadjar with the Racing Bulls team, and Gabriel Bortoleto driving for Sauber. These five rookies are a big change for the 20 seats in F1, since 2024 started with all the same drivers from 2023, which had never happened in the history of Formula 1! The history of F1 goes back to 1950, which is even before I was born! Honest!

In addition to the rookies, we have almost-rookie Liam Lawson now driving full time for the Red Bull team to replace Sergio Perez. Other changes include Carlos Sainz now at Williams (from Ferrari,) Nico Hulkenberg moved from Haas to Sauber, and Esteban Ocon left Alpine and is now at my favorite American team Haas. 

3: Oh, speaking of "American F1 teams" looking ahead to 2026 we will have another one! That's when Cadillac-Andretti will start competing, which will increase the grid to 11 teams and 22 drivers. This is a big deal for Formula 1, which traditionally has been based in England and Europe. Engine wise it will take Cadillac a few years to ramp up their production, so for their first few years they will be buying engines from Ferrari. My favorite part of this future Cadillac F1 engine deal is that their engines will be built by GM just up the road from NMS in Charlotte NC. 

The even bigger news this year, is that we're only one more year away from 2026, when Formula 1 will totally rewrite the rules/formula for how to build the cars. That means that all the teams are already planning ahead, and looking to design and build a totally new car for 2026 that just might put them way ahead of everyone else. This has been the pattern for a few decades in the sport, where the construction rules make a huge change (like all new engines, different body work, etc.) every few years to change things up. In the follow on years to these HUGE changes, there isn't as much change, so we've seen teams that get thing right can chalk up 4 or more years of championships in a row until the rules change again. Red Bull took 4 in a row from 2010-2013, followed by Mercedes with an incredible 8 in a row2014-2021. 

The other big change in 2026 is that the long time Sauber team will become the Audi team, bringing another galactically gigantic (meaning LOTS OF MONEY) car company into the sport, that just might be competitive. How big is Audi? Oh, they're just a part of a little company called Volkswagen, you know, the people that are the 2nd highest selling car brand on the planet. Of course that's counting all their brands, like VW, Audi, Porsche, Bentley, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Skoda, SEAT, etc. They're big!


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