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GA Prices in GBP
Miami $520
Austria sub-$100
Silverstone $280
Hungary $70
Monza $88
Singapore: $322
COTA $385 IIRC, we paid about $650 for 2 tickets at T9/T4 in 2017/2018 respectively, with reserved seats
Mexico $370
Vegas $405 But I'd read $800 for 3-day GA tickets elsewhere
1. Marty Smith as the host??? Does this guy even know anything about F1?
2. 20 minutes of the 60 minute event was for the announcement about Ford. That's a huge slap in the face to Honda, whose name is still on the car for the next few years.
3. I didn't get an invite to the event.
RB19: More of the same, looks wise, as expected.
But, is that a Rokit sponsor on the side of the cockpit? They weren't the brightest of sponsors with Williams, but not near as bad a Rich Energy.
I questioned Rokit the moment Williams signed with them. Looks like I was right. Here's an interesting article about Rokit. It's a long read, but very insightful about scam sponsorship in big time sports.
GA Prices in GBP
Miami $520
Austria sub-$100
Silverstone $280
Hungary $70
Monza $88
Singapore: $322
COTA $385 IIRC, we paid about $650 for 2 tickets at T9/T4 in 2017/2018 respectively, with reserved seats
Mexico $370
Vegas $405 But I'd read $800 for 3-day GA tickets elsewhere
I've heard fantastic things about Hungary's Grand Prix and going to try and see if we can make it there this year..
One of my daughter's high school classmates has lived in Budapest for ~5 years and really enjoys it there.
Originally Posted by F-C
Red Bull launch event was a big fail.
1. Marty Smith as the host??? Does this guy even know anything about F1?
2. 20 minutes of the 60 minute event was for the announcement about Ford. That's a huge slap in the face to Honda, whose name is still on the car for the next few years.
3. I didn't get an invite to the event.
bizarre to say the least, since Ford won't be in until 2026 so gotta wonder how the Honda relationship will be going forward.
Fresh from kicking off their 2023 season by presenting the C43 to the world, Alfa Romeo are auctioning off the showcar used for the presentation via the F1 Authentics platform.
Built by UK-based sports memorabilia specialist Memento Exclusives, it is the first in a series of planned 2023 Alfa Romeo display cars – and is expected to reach more than £400,000 in the auction.
Looking at the C43 more, I can rationalize the black over white in my head.
Last year, all the teams struggled to get down near the minimum weight, and even resorted to stripping paint to lighten up.
Alfa was the closest, IIRC. So, going to black there, you could go with bare carbon & not add the weight of paint or wrap to those parts.
Alfa Romeo’s 2023 Formula 1 car, the C43, features several key modifications at the rear compared to its predecessor, the team’s Technical Director, Jan Monchaux, has explained.
On Tuesday, Alfa Romeo presented their new challenger and new livery for the upcoming F1 season, as the Sauber-run operation look to build on a P6 finish in last year’s constructors’ standings.
Although the car is described as an “evolution” over the C42, Monchaux oversaw “a major change of architecture” at the rear-end during the winter period, covering the suspension, gearbox, cooling layout, bodywork and more – all while taking into account ride height and diffuser rule tweaks.
Speaking at Alfa Romeo’s car launch, Monchaux commented: “We identified areas where we thought there was still potential for us to unleash, potential we wouldn’t be able to unleash in the 2022 season.
“We concentrated mainly on the rear part of the car, where we just wanted to be brave enough to do the next step in terms of pure development on the rear end, which opened the door to a lot of other solutions we couldn’t implement last year.”
Offering up more details, he continued: “In effect, we decided to change the rear axis, redoing the rear suspension, and therefore the gearbox casing, which then opens the door to new layouts, especially on the [cooling] side, which once in place allowed us to develop the bodywork.
“Last year – during the season – it was not possible, and the concept we had followed last year, we were of the opinion that [it] had come to a sort of plateau, and to unleash the next level of performance, we had to do all those changes that have been quite a journey for us, because it’s a big, big, complex part we had to re-do.
"Then, evidently, all the rear-end work we see with the floor, alongside the new regs… so we’ve really been putting a lot of effort on the second part of the car, while the front will be successively developed during the season.
“[It is] quite a change for us in terms of the bodywork and how we handle the hot air coming from the radiators, compared to last year’s car. It’s not a revolution, [as] similar solutions were on the grid already last year, but it’s something we couldn’t implement without a major change of the architecture.”
Alongside Alfa Romeo’s quest for performance, Monchaux added that reliability has also been a focus for the squad ahead of the new campaign, having seen points go begging on several occasions in 2022 due to component failures.
“Throughout the course of the season, it also became relatively clear that we had reliability issues, so there [are] a lot of things we changed on the car, but also internally in terms of processes to address that topic,” said Monchaux.
"Historically, we were always very strong with reliability, but last year somehow we lost a little bit what used to be one of our biggest strengths, so it was clearly one of the focuses, or one of the areas of major focus for us last winter.”
He signed off: “The [new] car hasn’t run yet, so reliability is perfect! I assume it will stay as this. Touch wood, but I’m fairly confident we have left these issues behind us.”
Alfa Romeo will shake down the C43 in Barcelona later this week, before all 10 F1 teams head to Bahrain for pre-season testing from February 23-25.
Roll hoops came under the spotlight after Alfa driver Zhou Guanyu's huge accident at the start of last year's British GP.
Alfa was the only team using the blade design permitted by the FIA, and in an unprecedented occurrence, its pointed top dug into the track and was eventually snapped off.
The incident prompted an investigation by the FIA, which included three meetings of the Technical Advisory Committee in which all teams play a role.
One of the conclusions reported by the FIA was that "the wording, as currently in the regulations, allows teams to homologate their roll hoops with forces acting through a lower point than intended. This can lead to the roll hoop resisting forces that are lower than originally intended by the regulations".
For 2023 the FIA duly mandated "a change to require a rounded top of the roll hoop, which will reduce the chance of it digging into the ground during an accident," plus "a change to ensure a minimum height for the point of application of the homologation test" and "the creation of a new physical homologation test where the load pushes the roll hoop in the forward direction."
In addition, the FIA confirmed that it will introduce much stricter load tests for 2024, while giving teams enough time to comply with the new requirements.
Alfa had already decided that it was too late to abandon the blade for this season.
However, in addition to complying with the 2023 requirements, including a more curved top, the team has also decided to meet the load tests planned for 2024 as an extra safety measure.
"We will use a completely different roll hoop," Alfa technical director Jan Monchaux told Motorsport.com.
"It's still a blade, because when the decision was made to change or tweak the rules, it was at a point where we had already made some strategical decisions on what is carry over and what is not, from which we couldn't revert, because it was summer.
"And all the other teams were in a similar situation. So we agreed between FIA and the teams to do effectively three steps.
"A first step is in '23, which is mainly a geometrical constraint to avoid sharp edges that cut and things like this on the top, to make it harder for a roll hoop in such a situation to dig into the track.
"For '24 there are some additional rules and some new load cases that are more demanding, that everyone will have to pass.
"What we decided to do was to already anticipate our roll hoop shape, investing extra weight, to fit the 2024 rules. Because we were involved in the accident, we didn't just want to comply with the '23 demands, we made a further step already, strictly speaking being legal for '24."
Monchaux acknowledged that the FIA would have made the stricter tests compulsory for all teams in '23 had the Zhou incident and subsequent investigation not happened so late in the season"
Even if we are probably going to have a different roll hoop in '24, we made an extra effort, because we had to and we felt obliged to do that for our drivers.
"And also, because the FIA could have changed more for '23, but it was kind of too late. At some point, you need to be also realistic, you can't force teams in August to re-do a chassis for the following season. It's too late.
"So it will still be a blade, but it's a significant departure from what we had. It's smoother, fatter, stronger. The original roll hoop did its job, because people tend to forget that it did its job, Zhou had no bruises. And now it would do an even better job, let's put it like this.
"We are working very hard also with the FIA in view of '26 to improve in general the roll hoop specification, because there is room for improvement for F1 for the topic of roll hoops, not just us. We can do a better job on this subject for '26 for the new rules."
One of the articles I'd read earlier this week was talking PU suppliers for 2026.
Mercedes was only marked as supplying the works team & Williams. Not sure if that has more to do with current PU contracts, or if there's some background work already in progress for McLaren & Aston.
As you can see, I'm just putting on the jacket as an example for price comparisons. Interesting that the RB and McLaren jackets are made by the same supplier but priced differently. Not sure if they are exact materials,
Tell me if you find any, I'd be interested as well. I was hoping to get some 2022 Red Bull Puma stuff at a discount because they were discontinuing with Puma, but I can't find anything.
When Red Bull and Ford tied the knot, I immediately thought that McLaren and Honda made the most sense.
Would either side really be willing to go down this road again? Obviously Honda is not the same PU supplier that they were nearly a decade ago, but I thought that bridge was burned, nuked and burried.
I can see McLaren and Honda working together again. Most of the problems with the 2nd partnership were McLaren's although Honda bore some responsibility for their approaches with the management and tech solutions they attempted (axial turbo, size zero,...). It took 3 major ICE clean sheet designs to finally get it right which worked out pretty well for RBR and AT. Adrian Newey and Horner gave them alot of time and low pressure environment, and didn't expect the rate of change that. McLaren did. Also many of the Honda staff felt like it was less of a factory PU partnership and got bullied around by McLaren management, most of which are now gone.
02-03-2023, 12:08 PM
One of my daughter's high school classmates has lived in Budapest for ~5 years and really enjoys it there. 
bizarre to say the least, since Ford won't be in until 2026 so gotta wonder how the Honda relationship will be going forward. 
Ron Dennis should also be brought back 
