An unspecified number of European Formula 1 grands prix face the prospect of hosting races on a rotational basis sooner rather than later, according to series CEO Stefano Domenicali.

With a record-breaking 24 rounds already crammed onto the F1 calendar, the scope for adding new venues is now arguably smaller than ever.

Domenicali has previously suggested rotating European races would be an option but now he has said such a move is on the cards.

“We have some news to share very, very soon with regard to the possibility in the mid-term to have some rotational European Grand Prix and some other new options coming later,” Domenicali said on a Liberty Media investors call.

“This is something that, of course, we will clarify in the due course. It is true that we have a large demand of new possible venues that want to come in and our choice will always be balanced between the right economical benefits that we can have as a system and also to leverage the growth on the market that we can see potential that will be beneficial for us to grow even further our business.”

Speaking at a Globant event during the United States Grand Prix, Domenicali named Argentina as a venue where he would like to see F1 return.

Race start – George Russell, Mercedes F1 W15, takes the lead over Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Including the Azerbaijan GP, there are currently 10 races in Europe, with Italy hosting two – Imola and Monza – and Madrid joining the calendar for 2026, while Barcelona’s contract expires at the end of that year. 

Recent reports claimed the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya would begin to share a spot on the calendar with the Dutch GP in Zandvoort, although the organisers of the race in the Netherlands distanced themselves from the idea.

One potential issue with Domenicali’s plan is the contracts already held by a lot of European circuits, while the financial future of some of those tracks is reliant on staging a round of the F1 season on an annual basis.

Silverstone, the Hungaroring and the Red Bull Ring have deals that run into the 2030s, for example, although Spa, Monza, Zandvoort and Imola are all up after next year. Monaco, too, is currently only signed on for 2025 but there is very little chance of one of F1’s most iconic races having to share its slot.

Conversely, with F1 currently riding high in terms of interest and revenue, plenty of venues are keen to get a slice of the action by getting their own race added to the calendar.

Eau Rouge track action

Photo by: Erik Junius

A second race in Saudi Arabia, at the Qiddiya Circuit currently under construction, a return to Africa with Rwanda mooted as a potential venue and the aforementioned potential Argentine GP comeback are just some of the locations that could be eyeing a spot if and when the European season is truncated.

The current Concorde Agreement, in place until the end of 2025, allows for 25 races a year in the F1 season – but Domenicali is happy with 24 for the time being

“We believe that the balance we have in terms of numbers is the right one, so 24 is the balanced number that we feel is right,” he added.

“I do believe that all the propositions that are coming on our table is just giving us the possibility to make even better choices for our future.

“So as always, we need to be balanced, knowing that we cannot follow only the pure direct financial proposition, because that is different from region to region, but it’s up to us to propose to our stakeholders the right choice.

“I think that we are in a good momentum to make sure that the strategy for the future is even stronger, and that’s why we are so confident about the fact that this will help to enhance our platform on the sport, on social and business perspective.”

David Beckmann set the fastest time on the third day of Formula E pre-season testing as reigning champion Pascal Wehrlein showcased Porsche’s strength by leading a 1-2 in the simulation race.

Wehrlein became the first driver to lap the Jarama Circuit just outside Madrid below the 1m28s barrier in the morning session on Thursday but was eventually pipped to the top spot by 0.008s.

Kiro’s Beckmann posted a 1m27.755s in the final hour to go fastest while also setting the quickest time of the test so far, with just Friday’s morning session remaining ahead of an all-female test in the afternoon.

The German, who is Porsche’s Formula E test and development driver, has yet to make his debut in the all-electric championship and has not been confirmed with Kiro for the upcoming season.

The second Porsche of Antonio Felix da Costa finished the morning session third, just 0.058s behind Beckmann’s time, as three Porsche-powered cars occupied the top three spots.

The Portuguese driver followed Wehrlein home in the 24-lap simulation race which was held at the start of the afternoon’s session and was the first chance for teams to see the new Gen3 Evo in close-quarters action.

Reigning teams’ champions Jaguar occupied the front row with the grid determined by a random draw, and Mitch Evans led for the opening segment of proceedings after a delayed start.

Mitch Evans, Jaguar TCS Racing

Photo by: Malcolm Griffiths / Motorsport Images

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This was due to Zane Maloney, who will make his Formula E debut this season, being unable to launch off the line in his Lola/Yamaha-powered Abt, and the driver from Barbados completed no laps.

Evans held the lead until lap nine before da Costa moved to the front, with DS Penske’s Jean-Eric Vergne taking the lead on the following lap.

The Frenchman’s new team-mate Maximilian Guenther moved into first at the halfway point, as 11 drivers made a mandatory pitstop to receive a pit boost charge.

The concept, whereby drivers receive a 10% battery charge at 600kW which is achieved in approximately 30 seconds, has been under development for more than two years.

The simulation was the first time teams were able to run the procedure during a race, with a decision set to be made by the FIA and championship on whether it will be implemented at points this season.

With all drivers completing the mandatory stop by lap 15, Vergne resumed in the lead but just three laps later, and after a planned safety car test, Wehrlein hit the front and began to pull away.

Team-mate da Costa moved into second at Turn 3 on the penultimate lap at the expense of Nick Cassidy.

António Félix da Costa, TAG Heuer Porsche Formula E Team

Photo by: Andreas Beil

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Cassidy finished third ahead of Andretti’s Jake Dennis and team-mate Evans, with Mahindra’s Nyck de Vries completing the top six.

Normal running resumed for the remained of the afternoon, as Mahindra finished on top. De Vries posted a 1m28.010s which left him 0.451 clear of team-mate Edoardo Mortara in third, with Evans between the pair.

Formula E Race Test Result

Bob Pockrass

FOX NASCAR Insider

Research many of the stats on William Byron’s season, and they will tell the reader absolutely nothing about the likelihood of Byron winning the NASCAR Cup Series title on Sunday at Phoenix Raceway.

His three wins this season match those of each of his three competitors for the title — Joey Logano, Ryan Blaney and Tyler Reddick. But Byron rides a 27-race winless streak into Phoenix, while the other three drivers have combined to win the last three races.

Byron’s average running position in the nine playoff races is 7.48 and his average finish is 9.33. None of the other three has an average running position better than 11th and an average finish of better than 15th. And, yet, Byron still enters with arguably the least momentum thanks to that winless streak.

So which Byron gets in the car on Sunday? The one who runs and finishes well on average or the one who hasn’t won a race since April?

“I feel like the driver that is capable of winning this championship,” Byron said. “And the reason I say that is because, yes, we haven’t won yet [in the playoffs], but it’s coming, and we’ve been working towards it nonstop.

“We’ve been incredibly consistent, incredibly fast, and it’s just a matter of time for our team.”

The Hendrick Motorsports driver opened the year with a victory in the Daytona 500 and then added wins at Circuit of the Americas and Martinsville. Winning at three different style of tracks — a superspeedway, a road course and a short track — buoyed talk of him potentially dominating the season.

It never happened.

“I should have enjoyed it a little more,” Byron said with a laugh about the quick start. “But it’s just the nature of the sport. It’s challenging, man. We got a little bit off through the summer, just in terms of what we were looking for in the car and some of our communication.

“We formed that bond again through these last seven, eight weeks, and I feel like our team is just on the cusp of winning another race.”

The team never expected the dominance to last, and it had nothing to do with the competition’s improved performance.

“To be honest with you, early in the year, we were outkicking our coverage in some of those races,” Byron crew chief Rudy Fugle said. “We were finishing better than our cars were performing, and we were confident and got the wins.

“And since then, I think we’ve had four second-place finishes — those are one thing here or there that gets you another win. …. We think we found our stride at the right time.”

Byron agreed with the Fugle assessment, that he had a little bit of angst in winning so many races so early.

Kevin Harvick reacts to William Byron’s Daytona 500 win

“We were not where we wanted to be, and we had conversations about that, and it was tough because we were still winning races even though we weren’t where we wanted to be,” Byron said.

“We’ve worked really hard. It’s been, in some ways, a trying year, but the team that we have has really stayed together and the bond has grown really strong. And now we’re ready to go out there and win.”

Fugle indicated that he felt they had 10th-place cars at best during the summer, but the playoffs have shown that they have top-five speed at the right time.

Hendrick Motorsports vice chairman Jeff Gordon, a four-time Cup champion, indicated that in the playoffs, a driver sometimes can’t take risks if the driver doesn’t have a dominant car, because the driver needs to maximize points.

“This weekend. It’s just all or nothing,” Gordon said. “It’s throw it all out there, make the aggressive calls, aggressive setups, and be aggressive on the racetrack as well if you’re going to win the championship.

“And they’re ready to do that.”

Kevin Harvick pitches a NEW playoff format the NASCAR Cup Series

Byron and Fugle also have experience of competing for the Cup title, having come up short last year in their first attempt as they won the pole for the championship race but faded over the second half of the event, finishing fourth in the race and third among the title contenders.

“[Byron] has learned a lot,” Gordon said. “And he’s matured a lot, and the team has as well to be able to handle the pressure that comes along with this week — and walk through the paces, and know what to expect, and be able to still stay focused on what they need to do to go out and execute.”

Byron knows exactly what he learned last year after that first trip as a championship contender.

“I hate to lose, and I hate that feeling after the fact of that we didn’t have enough,” Byron said. “This year is going to feel different in that way. I know it will. I just learned a lot of lessons about what we need to do on the car side and throughout the race to be good by the end.

“I just want to get back to that opportunity. That’s what we’ve been chasing all year.”

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.

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Aston Martin has got to the bottom of its troubled Brazilian Grand Prix that left Lance Stroll out on the formation lap and Fernando Alonso battling extreme bouncing.

The Silverstone-based team endured a hugely challenging race afternoon at Interlagos as Stroll spun into the wall on the formation lap after his rears unexpectedly locked, before he managed to beach himself in the gravel.

Then Alonso struggled throughout with similar rear locking issues plus excessive porpoising that left him struggling with back pain at the end, but he was determined to push on and see the chequered flag.

Speaking on the team radio at the time, Alonso, who finished 14th, admitted that something unusual was happening. “This bouncing is not normal,” he said.

With no immediate explanation for what happened on both cars, Aston Martin has spent some time since returning to its factory trying to get a better comprehension of the factors at play.

It now suspects that the problems on both cars were triggered by a super nervous rear-end characteristic that had been introduced as a result of car changes made following the qualifying crashes the team suffered on Sunday morning.

Both Stroll and Alonso had hit the barriers in the wet qualifying session, damaging the Suzuka-concept specification floors the team had intended to run for the Interlagos event.

Lance Stroll, Aston Martin AMR24, crashes out

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

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With no spares of that specification available, Aston Martin had to revert to a previous floor version – which was the one it first introduced at the Hungarian GP.

Normally teams cannot change specs between qualifying and the race, as that is a breach of parc ferme regulations and mandates a pitlane start.

However, things are different on a sprint race weekend when allowances are made if there is a shortage of spare parts.

Article 40.4 says at sprint weekends teams can change specification if they can “demonstrate there is a shortage of parts, and provided that the replacement part is of a specification that has been previously used in a qualifying session or a race”.

It was this rule that Mercedes used at the United States GP to allow George Russell to go back to an older specification of floor following his qualifying crash.

The complication for Aston Martin, however, was that the change of floor had to be made without it being able to alter the mechanical set-up around it – as suspension settings are totally fixed in parc ferme.

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin AMR24

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

So on a weekend where teams were battling the problems of excessive bumps on the Interlagos track, plus tricky weather conditions, the end result was a car whose aero platform and mechanical settings did not match up.

Speaking about what Aston Martin has found out since Brazil, team principal Mike Krack thinks a combination of elements came together to leave both its drivers with a car that was ultra nervous.

“It was clear that both drivers were battling a car that was incredibly difficult to drive during Sunday’s race,” he said. “Our post-weekend analysis has highlighted several factors that explain this.

“Following both car’s accidents in qualifying, we had to replace a lot of components with a different specification due to availabilities at the end of a triple-header. This is allowed by the Sprint Event regulations, and you declare your shortages and replacement options to the FIA before the event.

“[But] you aren’t allowed to change the mechanical set-up of the cars. This meant we could neither check nor adjust the set-up of the cars, which negatively affected aerodynamic behaviour and performance.

“Add in treacherous wet conditions, along with an incredibly bumpy track, and you begin to understand that both drivers had the odds stacked against them.

“Both cars were highly susceptible to wheel-locking, and we can see in the data that this is what caused the issues for both Lance and Fernando.”

Aston Martin has been experimenting with its floor choices in recent races, with an upgrade it delivered for Austin not delivering the step forward hoped for.

It reverted to the Suzuka spec from Mexico, and may commit to the Budapest version for the next high-speed races in Las Vegas and Qatar.

In the final part of his prize package, 2023 Autosport Young Driver of the Year Award Winner and Rodin F3 driver Joseph Loake heads to Silverstone to test the Aston Martin AMR22 F1 Car.

Narrated and presented by Motorsport Engineer Blake Hinsey, we gets a behind-the-scenes look at how Aston Martin conducts a track test for a new driver, as well as insight from Joseph and his family on the emotional journey climbing the ladder of junior motorsport, and the thrill of driving an F1 car for the first time.

#f1 #josephloake #astonmartin

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Ferrari driver James Calado has revealed that he was hospitalised with malnutrition early in this year’s World Endurance Championship campaign as a result of his efforts to lose weight.

The Briton has disclosed that he became “properly ill” after the Qatar season-opener as he strived to overcome the performance disadvantage that comes with carrying extra kilogrammes in the WEC’s Hypercar category, which does not include the driver in the minimum weight of the car.

“I was sick this year because I lost so much weight – I went to hospital after Qatar with malnutrition,” he explained. “I was on medication because I was running and not eating, trying so hard to lose weight.

“It’s too dangerous for me to go down to the weight I want.”

Calado explained that he is “70-something kilos” and that could result in a performance disadvantage of as much as half a second a lap on a regular circuit to a driver who weighs 20kg less.

“I would love to be able to qualify, but I’m too heavy,” he said. “I would love something to make it more equal like karting or in other championships.

#51 Ferrari Af Corse Ferrari 499P: Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi

Photo by: Shameem Fahath

“It’s not easy to manage because it’s endurance racing – three drivers per car, two in others – I know that, but let’s try and do something.”

Calado’s revelation comes at a time when there is a push to mitigate the advantage that running lighter drivers brings.

BMW M Motorsport boss Andreas Roos revealed to Motorsport.com that he has raised the issue with the FIA and the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, which jointly run the WEC.

“There should be compensation for driver weight as there was in the past in LMP1 and we are pushing for that,” he said.

“We shouldn’t get to a situation where the manufacturers are looking for the lightest drivers; there should be a situation where every driver can be competitive.

“This is also a safety topic: drivers try to lose weight, but this is endurance racing so it can be dangerous.”

James Calado, Ferrari AF Corse

Photo by: Nikolaz Godet

ACO technical director Thierry Bouvet admitted that the idea is being discussed, but stressed that no decision has been made.

“When people have ideas, we and the FIA look at the pros and cons and see if they need to be adopted or not,” he said.

A rule introduced in LMP1 for the 2015 WEC season increased the minimum weight of a car in which the average weight of its two or three drivers was less than 80kg.

Three drivers with an average weight of 75kg had to carry 5kg of ballast in their car, for example.

The rule didn’t remove the advantage a lighter driver had over heavier co-drivers but equalised the cars across the grid.

The cars of Formula 1 drivers who weigh less than 80kg in their racewear have to carry ballast to bring it up to the 798kg minimum.

The Hypercar technical rules for 2025 have already been approved and published but could be changed with the unanimous support of the manufacturers.