In Formula 1’s famously clandestine paddock, no one wants you to know how much they know.
Drivers are trained to reveal as little as possible, and team principals can be painfully economical with their words when they sense risk in saying too much.
They always know more than they’re willing to let on.
Watch every practice, qualifying and race of the 2022 FIA Formula One World Championship
live on Kayo. New to Kayo? Start your free trial now >
Yet Colton Herta, the Californian racer with dreams to compete in F1, insists he’s different.
Not only is he unsure whether he’ll be racing in F1 next year, he says he hasn’t even heard the announcement from Red Bull that it wants to sign him.
It’s all part of a management agreement that’s allowing him to focus solely on racing and to leave the off-track stuff until after this weekend’s season conclusion — or so he says.
With Red Bull hoping for a decision on Herta’s F1 eligibility as early as this week, we might get an answer soon enough.
HERTA ‘SURPRISED’ TO HEAR ABOUT RED BULL INTEREST
AlphaTauri and Red Bull have fired the driver market back into life with news that it’s willing to release Pierre Gasly to Alpine if it can convince the FIA to issue IndyCar racer Colton Herta with a superlicence to replace him.
As explained here earlier in the week, Herta doesn’t qualify for a superlicence, but Red Bull is attempting to get him around the system on grounds of force majeure.
However, in an interview this week, Herta said he was surprised to hear other teams were vying for his signature in Formula 1.
“When I heard about the interest, it was a bit of a surprise because I didn’t think I was on anyone else’s radar,” he told Autosport.
“Everybody at McLaren seemed really pleased with how the test went, and how physically and mentally prepared I was.
“So I think that helped. But yes, I was a little bit surprised to hear about AlphaTauri interest when it initially came out.”
Herta said he’d been letting his dad, who is also his manager, deal with off-track business while the IndyCar rushes to its final round this weekend.
“To be honest, I don’t know fully what’s going on because I haven’t wanted to know,” he said.
“I’ve been telling my dad to keep me out of the loop a little bit so I can focus on IndyCar. It’s a difficult one, there are many aspects to it that maybe I’m surprised to read about!
“Maybe it’s not all true, but I’m not 100 per cent sure to be honest.”
Most teams and even F1 have come out against the suggestion that Herta would be granted an exemption, but the American said his experience was evidence that IndyCar was undervalued in the FIA system.
“I think there’s a lot more to it and I truly do understand both sides of the argument,” he said.
“The FIA want to protect their ladder series and they want their drivers to go through their system. But I do believe IndyCar deserves a little more recognition besides being split between F3 and F2 for points.”
FERRARI’S NEW LIVERY
Monza is usually best described as a sea of red as hordes of Ferrari tifosi packed the grandstands of the historic circuit to cheer on their team, often despite a lack of on-track success.
But this year rosso corsa will be met with some Modena giallo.
The team has painted part of its rear wing, its logo, the car race numbers and the fin on the back of the engine cover in yellow to celebrate 75 years since the founding of the Ferrari car company. Both drivers will also race in yellow overalls.
Yellow is one of the colors on the crest of Ferrari’s home town, Modena, and has long formed an integral part of Ferrari’s brand identity. The background color of the famous cavallino rampante crest is the same shade of yellow, while the icon of the horse itself was given to Enzo Ferrari by the family of the Italian World War I hero Francesco Baracca, who carried the same image on the side of his plane.
The team adopted the red color when it started racing in deference to the nation-based color schemes used in Europe in the early 1900s. Red is Italy’s national racing colour; Aston Martin keeps the British racing green tradition alive, while Mercedes races in Germany’s silver and Alpine wears French blue.
In a happy coincidence, the Autodromo Nazionale Monza is also celebrating a milestone, with the track turning 100 years old this year.
Whether any of these feel-good changes will bring the ailing Italian team any luck in front of its home crowd remains to be seen. Ferrari is expected to struggle with the straight-line speed demands of the Monza circuit thanks to its car carrying too much drag.
There’s also an emerging superstition about one-off liveries in Formula 1, which sprouted at the 2019 German Grand Prix. Mercedes chose that race to celebrate its 125th year of competition by running a white livery and dressing up the entire team in period clothes.
But the German marque suffered a horror race Toto Wolff described as “Armageddon”. Both drivers crashed their cars in the wet, with Valtteri Bottas retiring from third on the grid and Lewis Hamilton limping home ninth after starting from pole.
Ferrari also ran a burgundy livery at the 2020 Tuscan Grand Prix, in which it scraped home a thoroughly unspectacular eighth and 10th.
ALPHATAURI CONDEMNS CONSPIRACY THEORIES AFTER DUTCH GP
AlphaTauri has been forced to hit back against abusive conspiracies flourishing online in the wakes of Yuki Tsunoda’s race-altering retirement from the Dutch Grand Prix.
Tsunoda stopped twice on track with what he thought was a loose wheel and then a differential problem, eventually triggering a virtual safety car that allowed Max Verstappen to make his second pit stop without losing track position to the two Mercedes cars, effectively sealing victory for him .
It didn’t take long for conspiracies to sprout that the junior Red Bull team was helping its leading man to victory.
Online they took an ugly and abusive form, with renowned Red Bull Racing strategist Hannah Schmitz coming being targeted in particular.
The abuse was significant enough to move AlphaTauri to release a statement condemning the online pile-on.
“Such hateful behavior cannot be tolerated, and to entertain accusations of foul play is unacceptable, untrue and completely disrespectful towards Hannah and us,” AlphaTauri said in a statement.
“We have always competed independently, fairly and with the highest levels of respect and sportsmanship.”
A closer look at the situation shows the conspiracy to be baseless.
The confusion at AlphaTauri stemmed from Tsunoda reporting a loose wheel when what he was actually feeling appears to have been a differential issue, which was only detected once his car had been given the visual all-clear.
Watch every practice, qualifying and race of the 2022 FIA Formula One World Championship
live on Kayo. New to Kayo? Start your free trial now >
Believing the conspiracy also means ignoring the fact that Verstappen had a decent shot at victory anyway. Indeed Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner said the VSC actually made life more complicated for the Dutchman by forcing him onto the hard tyre, which he couldn’t get the best out of, rather than his preferred soft.
Verstappen was also already 93 points up in the championship battle before arriving in the Netherlands, meaning there is virtually nothing to gain on the title table in exchange for the significant risk of cheating.
Tsunoda will take a 10-place grid penalty at this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix for collecting his fifth reprimand of the year for racing with loose belts at Zandvoort.
VETTEL ACCUSED OF GREENWASHING AFTER FORMULA E SNUB
Sebastian Vettel has stirred up considerable disquiet in Formula E by branding the sport as irrelevant to electric mobility, attracting heavy criticism from FE champion and former F1 driver Luca di Grassi.
In an interview about his post-F1 ambitions, in particular how he could marry environmental activism with his motorsport passion, Vettel told German newspaper Zeit that working with Formula E wasn’t an option because the sport “doesn’t fully convince” him.
“I don’t understand the meaning behind [Formula E],” he said. “The battery technology that is being developed has nothing to do with the technology that a normal car could use.
“It is not good for the environment if the batteries are not charged with renewable energy but with fossil fuels.”
It triggers a furious response from Di Grassi on social media, where Vettel was accused of being dishonest.
“Ether [he] has no idea of what he is talking about or is trying to mislead the general public on purpose,” Di Grassi wrote. “And/or all that green stuff he has been doing lately … is completely greenwashing.”
There has also been a notable crossover of Formula E technology into the automotive sphere, particularly when it comes to drive train efficiency given the drive train is one of the few parts of the car open to development.
Formula E boasts Nissan, Maserati, Porsche, Jaguar, Mahindra and French luxury brand DS among its manufacturer entries, with McLaren joining the sport next season with a Nissan drive train.
The battery, however, is a control part and of limited road relevance. Its dimensions are designed with the restrictions of a racing chassis rather than a road-going wheelbase, and the technology itself is different too — whereas road cars are looking for batteries that deliver consistently for long periods of time, racing batteries are about peak power output over a short distance.
That’s not to say there’s no potential crossover in battery tech, but as it stands, Formula E isn’t much of a proving ground for automotive battery technology.
With valid arguments on both sides about just how relevant Formula E is to the road, perhaps this is a case of agreeing to disagree.
CRUNCH TIME FOR MERCEDES 2023 CAR CONCEPT
Mercedes will decide “in the next weeks” what direction it takes with its 2023 car design despite not yet having a firm grasp on the problems affecting its current machine.
The reigning constructors champion won’t defend its crown this year thanks to its dramatically unpredictable W13, which has been good enough for one pole and no victories so far.
With next year’s rules largely stable, experiments with this year’s car are useful in setting design cues for next year — though with the car so volatile, Wolff has said decision-making for 2023 is proving especially tricky.
“It’s a very difficult situation because we obviously have a certain concept of the car, and it’s not like we can experiment a lot this year and simply [try] stuff out and test,” Wolff said in Belgium. “So whatever we decide for next year, it needs to be carefully evaluated.
“We have massive swings in performance that we can’t really get on top of. In this very moment to take a decision for next year — whatever it may be; the concept changing dramatically — how can you be sure that’s the better direction to go?”
But with pre-season testing around five months away, deadlines for final decisions are almost approaching.
“There’s various cut-off points relating to these various parts of the car that happen really in the next few weeks.
“You’ve got to commit to a chassis concept, you’ve got to commit to a suspension layout et cetera. And how do you do your cooling? Where do you place your radiators, how to integrate the engine?
“That is something which we need to decide really in the next few weeks.”
MORE MOTORSPORTS
‘BREAKING POINT’: Hamilton explains Zandvoort radio blow-up
‘BASICALLY S*** MY PANTS’: Title fight steps up a gear in changing of the guard
‘FULL PACKAGE’: Ex-Supercars star blowing US minds after another IndyCar win
Speaking at the Dutch Grand Prix, Wolff said his team’s worst weekends were proving the most educational in deciding what direction to take for next year.
“The bad one was really necessary in order to comprehend why it was going good [at Zandvoort],” he said. “Because as weird as it sounds for a hi-tech science lab on wheels, the data don’t seem to correlate this year.
“We are gathering data on the track in order to put the puzzle together. We added a few new bits of the puzzle to comprehend for next year.”
Though much has been made of Mercedes’s no-sidepod design this year, it’s a bit of a red herring, with the floor far more important to performance than the bodywork. Ferrari and Red Bull Racing also field dramatically divergent bodywork solutions, although less strikingly so.
