#driver lineups

[herohimbowhore]

Could we get a timeline of how long the 2024 grid has been with their teams?

seems like it would be interesting to see the difference in contract lengths and which years caused the most silly season team changes

Here's a little timeline to show how long each driver has been with their current team.

The start date for all of these was the first grand prix that they raced in with their current team. Unsurprisingly, Lewis and Max have been with their respective teams the longest of the 20 drivers for the 2024 season, while Daniel has been with his team the shortest.

I think that seeing the different contract lengths like this helps to visualize how approximately a third of the grid has changed between seasons in previous years. It also helps to show that about half the grid has only been with their current teams for like a year or two.

Even without the AlphaTauri mid-season swap, 2023 had the most movement among the current driver lineups due to Sebastian's retirement and 3 (Daniel, Mick, and Nicholas Latifi) drivers losing their seats in 2022.

[f1-ferraero]

Prema announcing their Indycar debut in 2025 with the racing numbers 83 and 90 (representing the founding of Prema in 1983 and their first championship victory in 1990)

Oh I am so excited!!!

[eirianerisdar]

DOINTS AND YOINTS 🎉 DOINTS AND YOINTS 🎉DOINTS AND YOINTS 🎉DOINTS AND YOINTS 🎉DOINTS AND YOINTS 🎉DOINTS AND YOINTS 🎉DOINTS AND YOINTS 🎉DOINTS AND YOINTS 🎉DOINTS AND YOINTS 🎉DOINTS AND YOINTS

[evilscuderia]

the myth that leclerc and sainz work well together as teammates did irreparable damage to ferrari discourse

[cecoeur]

[sunrizef1]

Not that I whole-heartedly believe this, but if it is true, we narrowly avoided a much worse timeline where James had kicked Logan this week and stuck Esteban in his place

[leclerdelune]

WE EATING GOOD THIS WEEKEND BOIIIII

[italianseasoning]

huge announcement from the Iron Dames🔥

after announcing the signing of the 2023 F1 Academy champ, Marta Garcia, the Iron Dames have put out that they’ll be competing in FRECA this year, with her and the pocket rocket Doriane Pin as the line up

[herohimbowhore]

Formula One Analyses and Essays Masterlist

The One Direction to F1 Pipeline and Fan Culture

So much of the fan culture that we see in F1 now can be traced back to One Direction

Red Bulls Driver Lineups

A look into the timeline of Red Bull driver lineups (including the timelines for Merc and Haas).

Driver Lineups Through the Years

A look at the driver lineups for all 10 teams.

2023 Special Helmets

An analysis of the 2023 special helmets

Sunset Lap vs Storm Lap

A look into the differences in perception/narrative surrounding Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen.

Ferrari and Why it Exists

A brief rambling of how Ferrari exists due to the desire to race and the belief of the Tifosi.

Formula 1 Car Naming Conventions

How teams name their cars every year.

F1 Race Winners and Where Have They Won From

The positions that 17 Formula 1 race winners have won GPs from.

[im-probably-crying-rn-ngl]

i know what's coming and i know how everyone is gonna act about it including merc and toto. but idc it should have been alex albon or fred vesti and no one can convince me to change my mind.

[floridazcrazy]

Shout-out to Bianca Bustamante for signing with Mclaren for their drivers development program!! Can't wait to see where the other f1 academy drivers signed to.

[evilscuderia]

lots of mendacious propaganda lots of chicanery at the moment so i would also like to ask one thing with malicious intent. how and why (i.e., under what circumstances) did charles stop trusting carlos with tow strategies in qualifying?

[rickybaby]

Two years?! I need him to flop so bad 😭

Forget the Daniel angle of it all, they could have considered Yuki (because he deserved it after his season start) or even Carlos because forget winning the constructors next year, they’re likely not winning it this year

[soyouwinagain]

if you were wondering how little attention I’m paying to F1 this season - I just saw a post on ig informing me that Hulk has a 3 place grid penalty and went “he’s in F1?????????”

[leqclerc]

Am I the only one who can’t see Lewis to Ferrari happening, like, at all? Hear me out...

It’s not just about the money, or the duration of the contract. Mostly, I think they clash too heavily in their respective philosophies. Lewis is a seasoned, established figure at Mercedes, and as such, he enjoys a lot of freedom regarding his commercial and personal image. He plays a role in the creative decision-making in the team. He says what he wants, he wears what he wants, he’s involved in several ventures and he generally has Mercedes’s support to do all those things. And then you have Ferrari, where The Brand always takes precedence, where maintaining a very specific kind of image is of paramount importance. Even now, when they’ve crossed the threshold and embraced 21st century internet culture and are seemingly actively committed to appealing to a younger social media audience, some things just don’t change. It’s undesirable and inconvenient for Ferrari to have a driver whose star power overshadows The Brand itself (a problem they’re arguably close to facing with Charles and his ever-growing popularity.) I mean, hell, they apparently had the power to pump the breaks on his fledgling leisurewear fashion company after he’d registered it as a business and started making and test-wearing prototype ‘fits. Allegedly because of the Ferrari x Puma sponsor deal that’s in place (I guess they let him design, or at least contribute to the design of the Monaco GP 2023 special merch line as a consolation prize but still.)

Second of all... it’s Ferrari. Contemporary Ferrari, who has endured a whole slew of disappointments and bizarre decisions and mishaps that have turned them into a meme. They seem to be unable to maintain consistency throughout a season (never mind a regulation cycle). There’s a lot of turnover at the team. There’s a lot of internal politicking, different factions pushing and pulling in different directions, often to the detriment of the racing team (something Seb himself has spoken about.) When Mercedes produces the third fastest car, they act like it’s a disaster. We’ve had Toto outright apologizing to Lewis for “what he has to drive.” You don’t get that at Ferrari: you drive the car available to you and you do so with minimal complaining. Sometimes, depending on who is in charge on the pitwall at the time (hello, Binotto 🙄) you might even get told that the car is fine, the strategy is fine, and you are probably the problem.

Ultimately it takes a lot of patience and a fair amount of brainrot to willingly subject yourself to that by getting on the Ferrari struggle bus. Charles and Seb for example always talked about how it was a childhood dream to one day make it to Ferrari. It was always a goal, the main goal, and not just a random career stepping stone. And even they often got chewed up and spit out and endured heartbreak and disappointment and betrayal. For drivers who don’t have a team bucket list... contemporary Ferrari probably isn’t worth the trouble tbh.

The latest batch of rumours that has been swirling in the midst of a slow news week suggests that Lewis would be signed to work alongside Charles, and not, as previously assumed, replace him (in what perhaps could be a direct Mercedes-Ferrari driver swap.) Even so... we’ve seen how they mismanaged Charles and Seb, and then proceeded to let Seb go arguably too early, so now we’ve got a lineup where technically nobody is an outright number one, nobody is an outright number two, and we lost a massive source of motivation, internal competition, and knowledge for Charles. Having to go through yet another cycle of “who gets to be number one” or, alternatively, boxing Lewis into a support role from day one (seeing as the latest Gazzetta article suggests Elkann still plans to build the team primarily around Charles as the lead driver), is hardly going to go down well imo.

We’ll see how this situation develops in the coming weeks/months of course, but I wouldn’t put much stock into the rumours. At best it would be a lateral step for Lewis—at worst, a downright downgrade.

[tsuumies]

🇺🇸🦅🫡