The rain-affected Brazilian Grand Prix delivered what was perhaps the biggest shock podium of the Formula 1 season so far.

Max Verstappen‘s charge from 17th on the grid to the front had been anticipated by very few people, and it marked his first triumph since the Spanish Grand Prix back in June.

Right behind the Dutchman were the two Alpine cars of Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, who scored more points for the squad in a single afternoon than they have all season so far.

The joy of the top three was in contrast to the struggles that other teams faced in the wet conditions, with recent benchmark squads McLaren and Ferrari struggling with a lack of pace.

World championship contender Lando Norris was fighting front-locking problems, while Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc described his SF-24 as pretty horrendous to drive.

“We were just not fast enough,” declared the Monegasque after the race. “The car was extremely difficult to drive and very, very pointy, very digital, very oversteery.”

While Verstappen and the two Alpines were certainly given a helping hand to their result by the red flag that handed them a free tyre change, it would be wrong to say that this was a fluke result won by a roll of the dice.

Even after the red flag resumption, the trio were the fastest cars on track, showing that the end result was certainly more down to how the relative cars performed in the wet.

It is a well-known phenomenon that some cars are more suitable for wet conditions than dry, as multiple elements come together to help drivers overcome deficiencies that are exposed in the dry.

Pierre Gasly, Alpine

Photo by: Alpine

One factor that almost certainly helped Alpine was the fact that the wet masked one of its main weaknesses: engine performance. With the tricky conditions more about managing throttle input than simply having the most power, the squad was on a much more level playing field than it is in the dry.

But one other interesting element popped up as a factor that could explain the shuffling of the order in the wet – and that is the aero impact of wet-weather tyres.

The current generation of ground-effect cars are very sensitive to ride height, and just a couple of millimetres of difference in ground clearance can have a pretty big impact in terms of downforce levels, with all the juicy performance coming as close to the track as possible.

So with the diameter of the inter tyre that most teams use being 5mm greater with its tread pattern than the slick (725mm compared to 720mm), there is a direct impact on where the car platform is running compared to where it sits on a slick.

And it must be remembered that teams were already finding that they could not run as close to the ground as they would have liked in Brazil because of the Interlagos bumps, so those cars already falling out of the ideal window will have been further pushed away by running on inters.

But it is not just the minuscule ride-height impact that can make a difference when it comes to the aero impact of the tyres, because sidewall stiffness is perhaps an even more important element.

How the tyre deforms under cornering load, and when downforce is applied, has a big impact on the car’s aerodynamics, which is why teams put a lot of effort into ensuring that their cars are optimised to take the changing shape of tyres into account.

That is why wind tunnel tyres are designed to replicate in perfect scale the sidewall deformation that real-life tyres have.

A change of sidewall stiffness and a subtle impact on ride height is certainly more than enough to alter the aero map of a car, potentially shifting the balance and making what is a benign car in the dry quite pointy in the wet.

Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu, whose own team seemed to be worse off on the inter than the slick, said it was not a new phenomenon for his squad – as Spa earlier this year had exposed problems of his car losing rear downforce when put on to rain-weather tyres.

Pirelli tyres on the car of Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL38

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

“The amount of aero balance we need to take out just shows the rear of the car is weak on the intermediate tyres, which is a new problem this year,” he said.

“You design the car with your wind tunnel tyres for dry conditions, obviously. Then, I can’t remember when we first ran the inters or wet, but straight away we lost so much stability.”

On the flip side, the Red Bulls and Alpine certainly seemed to be a step ahead of the opposition in the wet.

What the data says

While teams do not yet have answers as to whether the aero influence of the tyres was decisive in Brazil, analysis of lap times definitely points to some shift in trends.

Most interesting is that the Brazilian GP weekend, with its dry sprint event and wet rain race, offered us a snapshot of performance differences across the two conditions.

And while qualifying comparisons are not totally indicative, because some cars did not show their full potential in the same conditions as others, they do at least show how some teams moved around in the pecking order – with Alpine and RB certainly looking relatively better in the wet and Ferrari dropping back.

The below results show the fastest car from each team in Q3.

Sprint qualifying result – Dry

Qualifying – Wet

But a more accurate gauge of the pace of the cars, and how things moved around from the dry to the wet, comes from race pace.

Looking at the fastest car from each team, based on clean racing laps – so not including pitstops nor restarts – we get the following data set.

Sprint – Dry

Race – Wet

Red Bull and Mercedes’ pace was certainly much improved in the wet relative to its rivals, while McLaren and Ferrari fell back.

And Ferrari’s was perhaps the biggest drop-off, as Alpine and RB proved to be quicker over the stints.

In 2001, Whitley left Manchester City on a free transfer and returned to his adopted home by signing for Wrexham, going on to be named player of the season in his first campaign.

It was during his time with Wrexham that Whitley rediscovered a passion for singing, which he says he had neglected upon leaving the school choir. It returned when a solo artist visited the club to collaborate on a song.

“She wanted all the Wrexham lads to record the chorus line,” Whitley explains.

“The guy who was doing the sound liked my voice. He pulled me aside and asked if I’d like to come and do a guest spot in a theatre that the artist was performing at.”

An opportunity arose afterwards to play Sammy Davis Jr in a production with a West End cast.

Whitley told BBC Sport that he found himself moving more into this world as injuries piled up, saying it “filled a void” when he retired from football.

“It’s gonna be a blockbuster! I don’t think Roy’s gonna come out too well in this film to be honest.”

Jason McAteer is looking forward to seeing Saipan at the cinema. After all, the former Liverpool midfielder is set to be portrayed in it.

However, the tale of the infamous bust-up between Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy at the 2002 World Cup is not a great memory for him.

Steve Coogan has been cast as Republic of Ireland manager McCarthy, with Éanna Hardwicke taking on the Keane role as they depict the fallout, which took place on the small Japanese island of Saipan and resulted in the captain leaving the camp.

McAteer, 53, first got wind of the project via a text from an actor friend in Ireland.

“It was a picture of this kid and he asked ‘do you think this guy can play you in a movie?” he told the BBC podcast, Sacked in the Morning. “Obviously it was Brad Pitt – I’m joking.

“He said they’re making a film about Saipan and I was like ‘shut up’. I asked was it a documentary and he went ‘no, it’s a big movie’.”

Manchester United midfielder Keane had angered the FA of Ireland by giving a newspaper interview in which he criticised training facilities, including a “rock hard” pitch and missing equipment.

McCarthy’s decision to send Keane home triggered a media frenzy and divided supporters.

“There was always tension between Roy and Mick,” McAteer remembered. “It went back from when they played together.

“When Mick was (Republic of Ireland) captain and Roy was a young kid, they clashed a number of times.

“Then Mick got the manager’s job and Roy became one of the best midfielders in the world, so it was always a difficult relationship.”

MANCHESTER UNITED fans are buzzing over the ‘Amorim way’ after Sporting’s sensational team goal against Man City.

Sporting thrashed Pep Guardiola‘s side to inflict a third defeat in a row for the Citizens – their worst run for six years.

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Viktor Gyokeres stole the limelight with a hat-trick, but it was Maximiliano Araujo’s goal which captured United fans’ attention.

It came immediately after half-time with the scoreline 1-1 after Gyokeres cancelled out Phil Foden‘s early opener.

From kick-off Sporting played the ball back to centre-back Ousmane Diomande, a £70million United transfer target, who then started a brilliant passing move.

Sporting moved the ball quickly from defence to midfield and Pedro Goncalves dropped his shoulder brilliantly to deceive Mateo Kovacic.

A clever run from Gyokeres dragged a defender away from his team-mate, with Goncalves moving into acres of space as he dribbled closer to goal.

He then slipped in Araujo who had also made a brilliant run, and the midfielder made no mistake with the finish as he fired beyond Ederson.

City were caught off guard, a rarity for them, and United fans are excited to see similar football under Amorim at Old Trafford.

One fan reacted saying: “His way.. the Amorim way.”

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Another added: “That’s Amorim ball.”

A third wrote: “Now it’s Man United Way 😁”

And another commented: “We hope this is what he’s bringing to Manchester United.”

Amorim has built a reputation for free-flowing attacking football at SPorting with his side scoring 52 goals in 17 games this season.

“They’ve turned that around quickly” an impressed colleague said to this writer on entering the media centre at the Jarama Circuit on Tuesday morning, as a banner reading “2024/25 Madrid Official Testing” was being erected.

While the sight of a banner might seem like one of the least impressive feats at a race track, the quick turnaround of the wording perfectly encapsulated the mighty effort and great lengths at which Formula E has gone to in order to ensure pre-season testing takes place this week and, at the time of writing at least, without issue.

The all-electric championship’s announcement to cancel its pre-season test in Valencia last Thursday and move to another location inside just 72 hours was both ambitious but also completely the right decision.

With more than 200 killed, many still missing, and infrastructure ravaged by flash flooding, the championship had a moral obligation not to go ahead with four days of running at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit.

“The test was kind of a second thought. We were there to try to help the community, to try to serve them and trying to get back to normality as soon as possible. That was the top priority of Formula E,” championship co-founder, Alberto Longo, told Motorsport.com.

“There was no chance that [testing] could have happened. I believe that operationally, it was doable, but it was more on the sense of we couldn’t be taking resources out of that city, at that particular moment where there are still people missing.”

Decision to cancel made, attention immediately turned to whether an alternative could be found at such short notice and “how do we get approximately 100 tonnes of equipment from Valencia to any track in the south of Europe and within a time frame of 72 hours”, adds Longo.

Despite the events of the past week, Formula E has been able to deliver a pre-season test to schedule

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

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With its relatively close connections to Valencia, being only 350km (or an approximately four-hour drive) away, on-site infrastructure and a FIA Grade 2 homologation, Jarama was the first and realistically only choice, and an agreement was quickly reached with the circuit operators.

While teams had avoided getting equipment stuck in the Valencia region and able to relocate relatively easily, this was not the case for Formula E as its entire logistical base is situated at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit.

Questions arose over whether it would even be possible to get supplies out of the city given the battered road connections, let alone whether it would be feasible in the short time available given the trouble in sourcing transport. In the end, some eight trucks made nearly 40 trips ferrying equipment through Spain to the country’s capital, the first only arriving at 11pm on Friday and the last at 3pm on Monday.

“At some point, even [last] Thursday, I was telling Jeff [Dodds, CEO] that we might not even do the first race because we have all the equipment there in Valencia” Formula E co-founder Alberto Longo

“We have a very positive attitude in Formula E, we have a lot of people that are fully committed to the company and they have worked 24/7 for three days, and the spirit was always very positive,” says Longo.

“If you talk to the people in the ecosystem, they will all tell you that there is no chance that we will ever make it. Not because they don’t have trust in us, because I actually believe that they do, but because of the whole situation.

“You could just watch the TV and say how on earth are these guys going to get all the equipment to Madrid and have enough time to provide services to the level that we’re providing services today.”

Even with the infrastructure now in place at Jarama, another issue arose in the form of making sure the extra equipment which is needed to host a race was going to be available, without which the season-opener in Sao Paulo on 7 December would be at risk.

Championship co-founder Longo with Zane Maloney and Lucas Di Grassi at Jarama

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

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“We needed to bring absolutely every piece of equipment that we have in Valencia here in order to organise all the logistic for the races,” says Longo.

“At some point, even [last] Thursday, I was telling Jeff [Dodds, CEO] that we might not even do the first race because we have all the equipment there in Valencia and obviously that equipment is absolutely critical for Sao Paulo and Mexico.”

Formula E has been criticised over the last decade on its direction with regards to its racing and for various other aspects, some often warranted, but what has been achieved over the last few days has been nothing short of impressive, while at the same time not forgetting those who have suffered because of the floods in Valencia.

A minute’s silence was held before any running on Tuesday in honour of the victims, while a donation of €50,000 has been made by the championship to offer support, with a fundraising page created for others to make offerings.

Perhaps somewhat ironically, Formula E’s DNA of trying to put on world championship races in the heart of cities across the globe has prepared it for the events of last week, allowing it to be fluid in how it deals with crisis maybe unlike any other championship.

“Operationally speaking, we have [dealt with] worse things than this one, there have been miracles in many other places in the world,” adds Longo. “Normally we race in the heart of the biggest cities of the world, with a lot of impact politically. You have seen some cancellation of events, all that is because of a political issue or challenge.

“We have never seen an issue in terms of operation. Why? Because we have an amazing team that can really deliver and this is the perfect example again.”

As Formula E commences pre-season testing, it hasn’t forgotten the victims of the Valencia flooding

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images