Mercedes thinks that its rollercoaster United States Grand Prix form was triggered by a set-up that ‘flirted’ with the ground too much.

The German manufacturer was left scratching its head at the end of the Austin weekend as it struggled to understand why it had been so competitive in sprint qualifying, with both cars in contention for pole, and then struggled so much the rest of the weekend.

Adding to its woes were identical spins that George Russell and Lewis Hamilton suffered at Turn 19, one in qualifying and one in the race, which fuelled questions over whether an upgrade fitted to the W15 had trigged some unexpected problems.

It has left team boss Toto Wolff convinced that its pre-summer form – when it won three races out of four – is now long gone and the squad is once again adrift of McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull.

“We’re back to underdog status,” said Wolff. “We are not back to the pre-summer situation. It’s not about coming into the weekend and thinking we’re going to win this.

“It’s more going into the weekend and thinking at the moment we’re the fourth team on the road.”

George Russell, Mercedes W15

Photo by: Andreas Beil

While the team is still working on understanding its car better, James Allison thinks that there is a simple explanation for what happened in Austin – and it revolves more around its set-up choices than anything else.

Speaking in Mercedes’ regular post-race debrief about what had gone wrong between Friday and the rest of the weekend, he said: “That is the million-dollar question.

“Not only did George nearly secure the pole in that [sprint pole] session, but Lewis also nearly smashed it utterly out the park. He was way ahead of any of the times until he got a bit tangled up with [Franco] Colapinto.

“Why that did not materialise in the rest of the weekend, is the key question for us. My guess is that we were flirting a bit too closely with the ground.

“These cars like running low and you generally pick up lap time as you can get the car nearer to the ground. But, push it too far and the car starts behaving in an unpleasant fashion.

“If you just hit a bump wrong, it will unseat the car, make the rear end come out on you and just deliver a level of performance that when it is good, it is great.

“But if you just hit a bump at the wrong moment or a crosswind at the wrong time, then you get punished for it. My guess is that we were just pushing our luck a little bit too much in terms of how near to the ground we got, how stiff we ran it.”

While Hamilton suggested after his early race exit that the team needed to question whether or not to continue with the latest upgrade package, Allison says there are no doubts it is a step forward.

And, while acknowledging that the spins suffered by Hamilton and Russell were unusual, he does not think they were triggered by new parts.

“All the things we measured suggested that the upgrade package was behaving as we would expect,” he said. “The downforce was there.

“We did not see prior to the spins anything breaking down on the flow structures under the car. There is every reason to think the updates were good and we will enjoy that for the remainder of the year.

“The spikiness that we saw that pitched us into the barriers on an unusual number of occasions was because we had the car too low, too stiff, and had the handling degrade unacceptably as a result.”

Valentino Rossi’s run in BMW’s M Hybrid V8 LMDh at the World Endurance Championship rookie test in Bahrain next month has been confirmed. 

BMW has officially revealed the seven-time MotoGP champion’s participation in the test with the factory WRT Hypercar class squad on the day after the final round the 2024 WEC along with that of fellow factory drivers Dan Harper and Max Hesse. 

The confirmation comes four weeks after Rossi, who is racing a WRT BMW in the LMGT3 class of the WEC as well as in the GT World Challenge Europe, unilaterally announced that his promised run in the M Hybrid would come as expected at the rookie test. 

Rossi, who got his first taste of a prototype in a WRT-run ORECA-Gibson 07 LMP at the rookie test last year, said: “I am thrilled that I can test the Hypercar – we have been looking for a date for a long time, and now it has finally worked out. 

“I really wanted to do this test to get a feel for what the BMW M Hybrid V8 can do. 

“Many thanks to BMW M Motorsport for this opportunity.”

BMW M Motorsport boss Andreas Roos added that he is “looking forward to seeing what our rookies can do”.

#20 BMW M Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8: Sheldon Van Der Linde, Robin Frijns, Rene Rast

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Advertisement

Briton Harper and German Hesse are being given an outing in the M Hybrid after impressing at the wheel of BMW’s M4 GT3 since their graduation from the marque’s revived junior programme to full factory status for 2023.

Their successes together this year include a third-place finish in the Nurburgring 24 Hours with the RMG team and a GTWCE Endurance Cup victory at Paul Ricard in April, sharing an M4 GT3 with Charles Weerts and Augusto Farfus respectively. 

Harper and Hesse have already driven the M Hybrid: they have undertaken aerodynamic testing and Hesse has been involved in development on the simulator.

Rossi, Harper and Hesse join a growing list of drivers confirmed to take part in the rookie test in Bahrain aboard Hypercar machinery.

It includes Theo Pourchaire and Clement Novalak with Peugeot, Victor Martins with Alpine and Arthur Leclerc with Ferrari. 

Esteban Masson will be given a run with Toyota after racing for sister marque Lexus in LMGT3 this year.

Reshad de Gerus, who finished third in LMP2 at the Le Mans 24 Hours with IDEC Sport this year, has been nominated to take part by the series organiser. 

The Frenchman will drive for whichever marque wins the manufacturers’ title. 

Motorsport.com says

Valentino Rossi driving a car that competes for outright honours in the WEC and at Le Mans  may grab the headlines for BMW as well as the series, but his run shouldn’t be regarded as a try-out for a seat in one of the M Hybrids for next year or any other time. 

This is a PR opportunity and a bit of fun for Rossi. We shouldn’t forget that his post-MotoGP career on four wheels is as much about enjoyment as trying to win races. 

Rossi has stated that his target isn’t to race BMW’s LMDh, though he has qualified that with a ‘you never know’. 

The reality is that he is nearly 46 and coming to the end of only his third full season of car racing. He’s not on the pace of his professional team-mates in the M4 GT3, so it would be unrealistic to expect him to match them in a prototype. 

Hypercar in the WEC is far too competitive to have any weak links in the chain.

The world shouldn’t be speculating whether Rossi will ever race the M Hybrid, rather where he will be competing in 2025. The Italian plans to cut back on his schedule next year and will have to decide between the WEC and the GTWCE.

In the margin of the US Grand Prix weekend Red Bull’s Helmut Marko caught flak for pointing out what he called Lando Norris’ “mental weaknesses” as he weighed up the title chances of the McLaren driver against those of Max Verstappen in a recent interview.

“We know Norris has some mental weaknesses. I’ve read about some of the rituals he needs to do to perform well on race day,” Marko said, referring to Norris’ admission of feeling nervous and anxious on race weekends, with the pressure making him struggle to eat or drink before a race.

Marko was countered by McLaren CEO Zak Brown and team boss Andrea Stella, who said it was “like you destroy in a comment the work of 20 years. Max was addressed for swearing. For me, this is much more severe in terms of what a member of the F1 community has said rather than one bad word in the wrong place.”

While it is not Marko’s first comment that some would categorise as jurassic, it is debatable whether or not the Austrian was engaging in mind games or just being the straight shooter that he is. That attribute has made the 81-year-old a popular sounding board for F1’s media corps. Ask Marko a question and you get an honest answer, with little regard of how it is received or whether it is adhering to PR lines.

Often that honesty can be refreshing, but by dismissing Norris’ pre-race experiences as mentally weak, Marko has unknowingly still crossed a red line according to experts working in the field. Simon Fitchett, a mental coach and psychotherapist who was a former trainer in F1 for the likes of Sergio Perez, David Coulthard, Jerome D’Ambrosio, thought Marko’s comments were potentially harmful. Not to Norris, who likely brushed them off, but to other people facing mental health struggles around the world and aren’t as far in their journey to mitigate or overcome them.

“If we look at what Helmut Marko said, it’s disappointing when you hear that, especially when mental health is a massive issue worldwide at the moment with so many external factors going on,” Fitchett tells Motorsport.com.

“I thought those comments were below the belt. Sometimes when people try and pull someone or something else down, it’s often to pull themselves up, that’s a very common analogy. If you look across all sports, people take these little cheap shots at each other to try and destabilise or create a reaction or a distraction.”

Simon Fitchett working with Sergio Perez in 2012

To be fair to Red Bull at large, team principal Christian Horner applauded his Mercedes rival Toto Wolff for speaking up about mental issues in the past. Verstappen has also made contributions by participating in popular motorsport streamer Jimmy Broadbent’s Race for Mental Health, which is raising funds for Mind, the UK’s leading mental health charity that works with Mercedes and was previously partnered with McLaren.

Whatever Marko’s intentions, it has to be stressed that appraising a driver’s mental strengths and weaknesses in general is not the same thing as poking fun of someone’s mental health.

“Depression and anxiety and relating behavioural symptoms come under mental health,” says Fitchett, who now coaches a range of young drivers. “In terms of mental performance, yes, of course, anxiety, depression, panic attacks and inability to eat, they can impact your mental performance, absolutely. But what we’re looking at here is someone who’s being aware of certain weaknesses, happy to share it, and someone having a bit of a pop at it to see if he can get a reaction.”

But while McLaren and Red Bull continue to generate talking points as they duke it out on and off the track, what seems more interesting and relevant to the whole conversation is whether this mental weakness that Marko brought up is really that, or whether Norris’ refreshing openness about his mental health could be actually become a strength over time.

Lewis Hamilton – the most successful driver of all time – has also been vocal about his own battles against depression, and Wolff called it a “superpower” once he addressed it with hundreds of hours of therapy.

In a sport where the pressure of being responsible for the results of a 1000-strong team is enormous, where races are decided by the finest margins and lives are at stake, drivers are athletes who have to be finely tuned both physically and mentally to thrive. Just like young drivers being subjected to Formula 1’s G-forces for the first time might have to head back to the gym to beef up their neck muscles, identifying and acknowledging a mental “weakness” is the first step towards addressing it.

Lando Norris, McLaren

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

As a public figure Norris’ on-going openness over his mental health has undoubtedly helped numerous people going through struggles of their own. And while his admission of feeling sick and nervous before every grand prix was revealing because of how rare it is to hear a driver say it out loud, he argues it has actually become a tool that helps him perform, sitting in his toolbox alongside his trademark extreme self-criticism that has also been ridiculed.

“It’s just about how you turn that into a positive thing. How do you not let it affect you in a bad way, and how can you actually use it in a good way, to help you focus on the correct things,” he said.

“Because I struggled quite a bit with it in the past, I feel like I’m able to deal with it in a much better way now, and therefore it doesn’t have much of an effect. I’m comfortable that I just have to go out and drive and that’s all I can do, not think about these external things. In the place I am now, fighting for wins and fighting in the championship, honestly, I feel like it’s another weekend.”

Speaking from his experience working with countless drivers, Fitchett agreed the way Norris has addressed his struggles is a strength rather than a weakness. “Absolutely, for me it’s a sign of strength that he’s comfortable with saying that,” he explained. “If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t say it. He deserves huge respect for that because so many remain silent.

“The last couple of years Lando wasn’t in a race winning car and he’s now been thrusted into this position where he’s expected to win races, and that is a massive pressure for anyone. Having had the privilege of working with some of the drivers during my seven years in F1, I often saw those moments where they were struggling. If you learn how to manage it, it is a game changer. For me, it is the difference between winning and losing.

He added: “But none of us are bulletproof and obviously you’re going to see some little wobbles, but if you look at Norris now compared to five or six races ago he’s evolved a lot. If you look at Lewis now compared to when he came in, he is an absolute role model for youngsters coming up and every season he just went from strength to strength.

“You really have to learn how to build up a resilience to these external distractions or things that can destabilise you, but I have huge respect for Lando for being open about it. For me, that shows a strength, because he’s actually acknowledged: ‘I know I’m not great at this, this and this’. But I’ll tell you what, give him another year or so and he’ll have developed huge resilience in those areas.”

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, 1st position, Lando Norris, McLaren F1 Team, 3rd position, chat in Parc Ferme

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Nevertheless, F1 has long been an environment in which showing any sort of vulnerability is considered a cardinal sin. So has Norris handed his rivals an opening to be mercilessly exploited or has he already disarmed them by beating them to the punch? If it’s already out in the open, what is left to exploit?

“A good example of this comes from the world of boxing,” says Fitchett. “There was a fight a number of years ago between world champion Carl Froch and George Groves, who really got in his head. After their first fight Froch took on a sports psychologist and Groves was goading him about it. But Froch’s whole behaviour and reaction was completely different, he said absolutely nothing. You could see Carl won the second fight mentally before they even got into the ring. Groves didn’t know what to do, he wasn’t getting the reactions from Froch he was getting before.

“And because there is this stigma – and it definitely exists in motorsports – that if someone is seen to have been working with a psychologist, they think it’s because they’ve got a weakness. Well, none of us are infallible. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and we’re all different to each other. Froch said the reason he took on a psychologist was because he just didn’t want to leave any stone unturned, and in doing that he identified his weakness and he made himself even stronger. He said he wished he’d done it years ago.

“There are a number of F1 drivers currently working with psychologists, but they do like to keep that quiet. And of course you have to respect that, but at the same time it does highlight a lack of wanting to disclose that information, maybe because of what other people think.

“Self-awareness is one of the most important attributes in anything we do in life, be it elite sport or in the corporate world. Because once you understand who you are and what your strengths and weaknesses are, you can then actually understand others very quickly. And that really is a superpower.”

Liam Lawson‘s impressive Formula 1 return at the United States Grand Prix will force Yuki Tsunoda to step up another gear, says RB team boss Laurent Mekies.

Lawson was brought back for the final six races of the 2024 season as Red Bull weighs up its options for the Red Bull seat alongside Max Verstappen for 2025 and beyond.

Incumbent Sergio Perez has not been consistent enough to help Verstappen and Red Bull defend their constructors’ championship lead thus far so, despite the Mexican having a two-year deal, Red Bull could yet opt to make a change at any time.

Daniel Ricciardo was brought into its satellite RB squad as a potential replacement but failed to convince Red Bull, leading to the Australian’s departure from Austin onwards.

Tsunoda now has another challenger in the form of Lawson, who made an impressive start to his second F1 stint after a five-race cameo in 2023.

Lawson made a statement by taking third in Saturday’s Q1, setting a faster lap than Tsunoda managed during the entire qualifying session, and then recovered from a grid penalty to move up from 19th to ninth in the race as the only RB to score points.

Lawson’s weekend was dubbed “just about perfect” by team boss Mekies, who says it was a reward for the 22-year-old’s 12-month long efforts behind the scenes to be ready to grab his chance with both hands.

Laurent Mekies, Team Principal, RB F1 Team, Liam Lawson, RB F1 Team

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

“It’s a mega impressive weekend,” Mekies told Motorsport.com. “We are very, very happy for him, because you don’t get there by luck, you don’t get there also just with talent.

“You think back to the full year that he has been doing in the engineering office, watching the onboards, watching the data, the hours in the simulator, the very little occasions to actually run the car. And you have to give him credit for the amount of hours he has put in it with little return.

“He was certainly 100% ready to jump in the car, so well done. It was already a mega statement in Q1, we thought that could be the statement of the weekend.

“But then a faultless race, the right pace. There is not much more you can ask, honestly. It’s just about the perfect start.”

There was no evidence of Lawson’s racecraft being rusty either, given the aggressive way he defended against Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso in Saturday’s sprint seemed to rattle the Spaniard.

“I think also that was refreshing, he was already not overthinking things and just defending his positions in the right way – that’s what you want to see with this sort of guy,” Mekies said.

“Not only has he not been driving in a race in a year, but also he has never been driving here in Austin.”

Liam Lawson, RB F1 Team VCARB 01, Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin AMR24, Esteban Ocon, Alpine A524

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Lawson’s performance also seemed to tickle Tsunoda, who was frustrated at the New Zealander’s reverse one-stop strategy – starting on hard tyres instead of mediums – landing him ahead after the pitstops, before Tsunoda dropped to 14th.

Asked if he understood Tsunoda’s frustration, Mekies replied: “Of course. It’s not every day that an overcut happens.

“Obviously, the reverse strategy worked very well – certainly, for Liam, also for [Williams’ Franco] Colapinto. They took some risk on the strategy.

“Obviously, it’s a call that is easier to make when you are starting at the back, but it worked particularly well.

“The race was more frustrating for Yuki because of a bit more time in traffic, and it’s always difficult when you are eighth in the first stint to find yourself outside of the points.”

After easily seeing off Nyck de Vries and Ricciardo, Tsunoda seems to be facing his fiercest challenger yet in Lawson, as they vie for a potential Red Bull promotion.

“It is absolutely an opportunity for him to reach another level,” Mekies agreed. “Again, it’s exactly what we want, two team-mates that push each other, and one is going faster in this corner, one goes faster in this other corner, and they both are able to put in very consistent laps.”

Having two drivers firing on all cylinders will be necessary for RB to see off the much-improved Haas team, which outscored the Anglo-Italian squad and is now leading the race for sixth place by two points. After going down the wrong update path over the summer, its latest upgrades in Austin appear to be working as the fight looks set to go the distance.

“We have run with two different set-ups, so there is a lot to learn through the new updates, which seem to work,” Mekies added.

“In Barcelona, we had this update that didn’t work and it sort of stopped our season. It took us some time to understand the roots of it, and it’s probably the first time since Barcelona that we actually managed to get the car to behave differently.

“Hopefully, there is more potential in it. We are leaving here two points down on Haas, who also did a fantastic job with their cars this weekend. But it gives us good confidence that we can take up the fight with Yuki and Liam for the final five races.”

For over half a century, controversy and debate surrounded a NASCAR Cup Series race at Bowman Gray Stadium on August 6, 1971.

It was one of six races that year featuring a mixed field with Cup cars and the smaller Grand American cars. Bobby Allison chose to drove a Grand American ’70 Ford Mustang that day and ended up beating all of the Cup stars, leading 138 of 200 laps with Richard ‘The King’ Petty a few seconds behind in second place.

While Allison went to Victory Lane and hoisted the trophy like any other week, the win was never actually recognized in the record books. In fact, no one was awarded the Cup win for that race despite it being an official part of the 1971 schedule. The fact that he wasn’t driving a Cup car in the mixed field meant that he wasn’t credited as a Cup Series winner.

Bobby Allison being recognized for 85 NASCAR Cup wins

Photo by: NASCAR Media

Advertisement

Allison has not been quiet on his views on the race,  having been adamant about having 85 Cup wins — not 84. It’s even more important since being granted that win would break a tie with another NASCAR Hall of Famer. Well, it’s finally happened. NASCAR has dug into the record books, grabbed some white out and made it right. At 86 years old, Allison takes sole possession of fourth on the all-time wins list after being tied with Darrell Waltrip since 1992.

Allison, who won the 1983 NASCAR Cup Series title, was also inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2011. This also comes at some interesting timing as Bowman Gray — the site of this controversial result — is returning to the Cup schedule in 2025. The historic short track in Winston-Salem, North Carolina will host ‘The Clash’ in 2025, which serves as the unofficial kick-off to the new season.

It will be the first Cup race at Bowman Gray since that controversial 1971 event where Allison didn’t get credit for a win that was rightfully his. As the newly crowned most recent Cup winner at Bowman Gray, he will surely be there next February when the green flag flies.

Updated All-Time Wins List