🇶🇦 F1'24: R23 - Look back in anger

It’s only a mirror, how much harm can it do?

Well, if you’re Formula 1 race, quite a bit. 

Alex Albon’s mirror fell off down the start-finish straight at Lusail. This is the fastest part of the track, and even though it was off the racing line, it was on the only overtaking opportunity offered around the circuit.

The obvious call was a full safety car with the cars going through the pit lane to allow the intact bit of glass (is an F1 mirror glass?) and carbon fibre to be removed and handed back to Williams to add to their collection of car part jigsaw pieces that the second half of 2024 has created in particular.

If you do that, I’d probably be struggling to find the thing to write about, but Albon’s mirror ended up being the trigger for a race that revealed a lot about the drivers and the people who run Formula 1.

THE DECISIONS YOU MAKE… OR DON’T MAKE

We’ll start with the decision itself to not pick up the debris, which would have been made by the race director. It’s a tumultuous time for the FIA at the moment, with several key staff leaving the organisation. Niels Wittich replaced Michael Masi, and seemed to be competent. Race directors don’t normally change midseason, and the BBC reported a source that said Wittich’s relationship with FIA Director Mohammed Ben Sulayem was to blame.

Up steps Rui Marques, who also calls the shots for Formula 2 and 3. That decision to not pick up the mirror led to double waved yellows for a number of laps. Lando Norris didn’t slow while hurtling down the straight and Max Verstappen, a couple of seconds down the road, noticed, reporting it to his garage. The stewards picked up on it too, and gave the McLaren driver a 10-second stop-go penalty. 

This was the letter of the law but felt somewhat harsh, with a 36-second penalty being applied, compounded by the field being bunched together after the safety car had come back in. Norris fought his way back to tenth, securing a point and doubling it with the fastest lap prize as McLaren added two more to their total to go along with the 15 that Oscar Piastri’s third place got them.

KNOWING WHERE YOU STAND

With the mirror not being picked up, it was inevitable that someone was going to run over it. Valtteri Bottas secured seven years bad luck by smashing the glass after seven laps of flags, and the resulting shards may have pierced the Pirellis of Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton. The two drivers will be linked forever with the British driver’s move to Ferrari to take the seat of the Spaniard. Those punctures forced pit stops and finally some action to clear the debris, with the full safety car taking the pack through the pit lane at reduced speeds to give the marshals time to clear it.

However, for Lewis Hamilton, he forgot to press his pit limiter button. He was accused of brake testing Lando Norris, but took yet another penalty for the race as the stewards reached deep into their bag of available penalties. The departing Mercedes driver false started, and then during his second penalty of the day, asked - and then a stronger request - if he could retire the car. Just write it off for the day and move on. He finished the race and ended 12th for the day.

It’s a rare mental miss for Hamilton, and reminded me of Baku 2021 when he forgot to turn off his brake magic system, locking his front brakes and missing out on points when his title rival took nothing.

There are rumours - but that’s all they are - that Hamilton might not take the wheel for his final race as a Mercedes driver. I would say this is highly unlikely, but stranger things have happened. Hamilton’s relationship with his team feels broken at the moment, with both sides knowing it’s over, but neither truly erupting at each other with everything left as riddles and pass-agg soundbites. 

No one really knows where they are, but Hamilton is mentally already wearing red.

And you can see what the opposite of not knowing where you stand looks like, because everyone truly knows where they stand over at Alpine. Well, mostly. This isn’t about Pierre Gasly who negotiated the chaos well and brought home 10 valuable, vital points for the team. Esteban Ocon, and his relationship with Alpine has collapsed. And in fairness, this felt like it was ready to explode since Monaco.

Ocon had a miserable weekend, which culminated in qualifying last and ending his race on lap 1 after a collision.

The rumour and report is that Jack Doohan will be taking Ocon’s place in Abu Dhabi, while Ocon will be waiting for 2025. 

This should have been a weekend of celebration for Alpine, with Abbi Pulling clinching the F1 Academy title after a dominant season, Paul Aron winning an F2 race while being announced as the team’s reserve driver next year, and Gasly’s result. But the Ocon uncertainty is all the media is going to care about.

Ocon wasn’t on track when the mirror caused the chaos, long having jumped out of the car, potentially for the last time. But when so many people don’t finish, it gives teams that don’t normally score points a chance to do so.

REDEMPTION

If you are a good Premier League team, you might go as far as Italy or Portugal. An exotic Wednesday night in Tblisi awaits etc. It’s not your bread and butter and at last 22 times a season, you can sleep in your own bed after matchday. It’s not an easy gig, but you can mitigate it a bit with the stuff money can’t buy.

If you are a bad Formula 1 team, you still go around the world, not quite knowing what the time is, and not really seeing much else except an airport, a race track and a hotel. Maybe you get the inside of a sponsor’s office. 

So when it’s gone badly all season, and you’re writing your F1 career epitaph, it must have felt so, so good for Zhou Guanyu and the rest of the Sauber team to register four wonderful points. 

The reward for the hard work the team has put in all season, four points will not move the prize money needle, but is going to feel like THE result of the season for the grid’s smallest team while the transition to their future name as Audi. The team had last picked up points in Qatar 2023 and Sauber made the most of F1’s first Round 23 in its history.

fbewqjfrhewf efw wqefihqekfl, indeed.

Zhou is being linked with a reserve role at Ferrari from next season, and this is a brilliant way for him to sign off from full-time F1 driving.

There is still one more race next weekend with Abu Dhabi closing the season. We don’t yet know who will drive the 20 cars around Yas Marina (or do we?) but one thing that seems worse every week is the relationship between the drivers and the FIA. This relationship needs a reset, but it’s looking increasingly likely that both sides are digging it. That can’t end well.

Mirror mirror on the floor
Have you caused an all-out war?
Between the drivers and the FIA
Do they care what the other side say?