No real surprise tbh, it took them years to stop racing in South Africa, 1993 was the last one, whereas other pro sportsmen were getting banned for playing there from 81.
I was going to post this earlier but forgot . Disgusting IMHO . Sillyman and Dave Richards both said he had to go , so he stepped down . Now sillyman is accountable to nobody , he comes back
Nothing much to do with F1 I suppose , but Bernie Ecclestone ( 95 ) Has 4 children . The oldest is 70 , and the youngest is 5 .
I notice that Adrian Newey with his arrival at Aston Martin is starting to take an effective contol of design management with unconfirmed reports claiming that aerodynamics chief Eric Blandin is among at least seven staff to depart the F1 team.
Yes confirmed now on the BBC . Though not all being laid off hopefully . Aston Martin remove at least seven F1 design staff 6 November 2025 Aston Martin have removed at least seven staff from their Formula 1 design department as part of a restructure before the 2026 season. Among those to leave the F1 team is Eric Blandin, who was recruited from Mercedes as deputy technical director in 2022 but since the start of this year has been serving as aerodynamics director. An Aston Martin spokesperson said: "We don't comment on internal matters and we don't have anything to announce yet. "However, we are going through a technical restructure ahead of the 2026 season which will be announced in the near future." The spokesperson refused to confirm any names but BBC Sport can reveal that among the others is former chief designer Akio Haga. Some of the staff leaving the F1 programme may be retained in other parts of the Aston Martin motorsport business. The group also owns an advanced technologies division, where former chief technical officer Andrew Green was moved before the 2023 season. Design legend Adrian Newey joined Aston Martin as managing technical partner in March this year and is leading the team's 2026 car design. The team have also recruited former Ferrari chassis technical director Enrico Cardile, who started work in August after leaving Ferrari in July 2024. Among the factors behind the restructure is the need to stay within F1's cost cap. All salaries of people who work on the design of the car are included within the cost cap, apart from those of the three highest-paid executives. Aston Martin has been through an extensive recruitment drive in recent years as they seek to turn themselves into world title contenders. Among those recruited by billionaire team owner Lawrence Stroll, in addition to Newey and Cardile, is team principal and chief executive officer Andy Cowell, who was formerly the head of Mercedes' engine company, HPP. Next year, Aston Martin start a factory engine partnership with Honda, who have supplied former champions Red Bull since 2019.
Ouch, shots fired at Ferrari. https://www.skysports.com/f1/news/1...-less-and-focus-on-driving-after-sao-paulo-gp
More like In Ferrari...I am sure that is what you meant. Seems to me he is part of the problem. Ferrari's performance has been off for some years, or hasn't he noticed?
Hmm, maybe, it makes sense the way you put it - I figured it would be like “There’s trouble at Ferrari?” Away from my average English, I guess he’s coming from the perspective that they were pretty good last year and have regressed. When I first saw it, I thought maybe it was a way of drawing attention to Ferrari’s success in sports cars and using the much larger F1 audience to spread that around. Taking aim at the drivers in particular seemed a bit off though especially off the back of Charles putting in his qualifying of the year and then being the entirely innocent party in being taken out of the race.
Ferrari have tried many drivers in recent years and seem not to be able to extract the best from the drivers, seems to be the opinion of its chairman. I am sure Elkann is a very intelligent man and according to Sky he just wants them to focus getting back to second in the championship, or if not third. A double DNF probably upset the chairman. I suspect next year is going to be a dice roll in terms of which cars perform best. In any event, let's see which driver wins the WDC this year. It is still a close call. Really hope it goes down to the last race.
It’s an interesting perspective that the drivers are underperforming imho. Since Schumacher, you’d say that Raikkonen/Massa performed as you’d expect in 2007, then Raikkonen fell off a cliff. Fernando/Masa also performed as/above expectations, but luck/Ferrari strategy and being up against strong competitors all went against them achieving what they might. Vettel/Raikkonen was a disappointment, but you could see the logic behind the decision and it didn’t really matter because Merc was going to win everything anyway (and maybe contributed to drivers who’d already achieved, not being at their best). Then Leclerc/Sainz was basically again what you’d expect (maybe Leclerc has developed a bit slower than you might expect, especially in terms of consistency) and even Hamilton has basically performed as expected in that he’s generally a small amount behind Leclerc with some dips you can attribute to changing teams. If you look across the period since they were last successful, their problem has been the car/team generally not the drivers. Alonso’s driving deserved at least one title during 2010-2014. 2022 was a great chance, but Ferrari’s inability to match RedBulls development was ultimately more important than whether Verstappen would have beaten Leclerc in a straight - or even a slightly disadvantaged - fight. This year was also a great opportunity given the platform of 2024, but again the car is the reason they aren’t competing for this championship or even for wins.
