The Pin is mightier than the sword

Dunne probably won't have enough points for a Superlicence unless the last two rounds go pretty well for him.

You'd think Lawson's baseball cap was his race number but actually it's a reminder to Helmut Marko of how many points Lindblad has scored in F2 since Barcelona.

also I seem to have deleted the 8 Hours of Bahrain while I was trying to sort the formatting out

Today's discovery is that the Brazilian F4 championship's official name is "BRB Fórmula 4 Brasil" which by coincidence is also what you say when it starts.

I mean I'm not including support series in these lists so they fit on a table. Most of these events that aren't Formula E do actually have quite long bills on them.

Somebody who pays attention to GT series, which I do not, could likely fill this out rather more.

So I had a quick think and as far as I can see most weekends have something on until we get as far as February which doesn't have much in it...

I thought it was widely understood he was off to Genesis which makes me think I'm confusing my Porsche drivers.

An additional point will be awarded, at each Competition, to the “pole position” team in each category (best time achieved by the car in each category during Hyperpole, with the exception of additional cars), as well as to all the Drivers making up the crew of the car concerned.

And, here we are: the only "invisible" cars are "additional cars" which means race-by-race entries of you check back to section 3.2.5. So, um, this is dumb? But those are the rules they wrote so they have to apply them. Fix the stupid thing for next year though, chaps?

Upon the Manufacturer entered in the Hypercar Championship that has scored the greatest number of points after consideration of all the results obtained by the two cars designated by that Manufacturer in each Competition. The points will be attributed by the table defined in Article 15.3, in the order of the cars classified, entered in the FIA Hypercar World Endurance Championship.

2/3 Not so fast, said the FIA. And, stupidly, they're right. This is the invisibility regulation and it only applies to the table in section 15.3, which contains points for race positions; the point for pole position is in a separate regulation, so it's clear the invisibility doesn't apply.

1/3 This is dumb, but I think ACO/FIA got it right. Well, right interpretation, stupid rule.

Ferrari complained that they didn't get a point for pole at CotA in the manufacturers. The #83 was on pole, but that car is invisible for manufacturers points, so it should have gone to the 2nd-placed #51.

"We're here to negotiate the rights to Car"

He is also still Silver rated (until the end of the year) and so fits into most GT3 squads if they just wanted a ringer for some reason.

If the Mercedes engine is as strong as some of the rumours suggest I feel like this could get a lot of attention next year, as if they're regularly running in the scrum behind the McLaren/Mercedes scrap and have the current string of reliability issues people are going to notice a lot more.

Proton, maybe? We know Nico Varrone is off to F2 next year, maybe he's departed ahead of time to do something more single-seater related?

Sure, there's reasons why it's lightly used, same as there are for Monza, but it's still a low number for a Grade 1 track.

A quick survey suggests 11 is quite a low number of weekends for a permanent grade 1 facility. There are such tracks used less often (Monza, Indianapolis) but most of the other tracks I looked at have at least 15 weekends; some (Silverstone, Sepang, Spa-Francorchamps) have well over 20.

Marta García's lap record at CotA in F1A is three and a half seconds clear of Chris Bell's Cup Series one! It's not actually that surprising - the Cup car does have a slightly better power to weight ratio (3.6x power, 2.5x weight), but any single-seater's got much better aero.

The lap records for the configuration NASCAR used, showing the XFinity Series record being faster than the Cup Series record.

OK I was looking at the lap records for the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez to figure out what had raced there when and now I have a question: what the hell, NASCAR? (Not the F4, F4 is usually quicker than NASCAR, why is XFinity quicker than Cup?).

It solves that problem but it creates a different problem, which is 324 VSCs during the race as every time somebody goes wide they deposit a bunch of gravel on the track and we need to sweep it all up. I guess if you prefer that it's a solution?

I think the only realistic way you can avoid creating strategic advantages in pit stop times is just by having what rapidly turns into a spreadsheet of minimum pitlane times depending on the circuit state. Which I don't think is at all a bad idea but that's another story.

From a sporting perspective, slow zones can have a significant effect on the race depending on when they're imposed. But it'd be relatively easy to minimise this by having a slow zone be lifted after each car has been through it the same number of times. Can anyone think of other problems?

There are a few things I can think of. One is that drivers going full gas up to the edge of the slow zone and braking hard creates a hazard in itself. Indeed, this has caused crashes at Le Mans in the past. But this should be less of an issue in a full-pro series like F1 with fewer cars on track.

The fact that the only international level series that uses slow zones - WEC - only does so at Le Mans, a very long circuit, suggests they have significant disadvantages most of us have not considered. It's not entirely obvious to me what they _are_, though.

I do think it's a problem that drivers travel far too quickly through double yellow zones. But I also think this is a non-answer to the question "why did this particular incident happen", since there is no way race control or the marshals could have expected Lawson to actually slow down properly.

...national sporting body suddenly realises no F1 driver has respected article 2.5.5 b) of Appendix H of the FIA International Sporting Code for at least a decade, decides now is a good time to make an issue of it.

There's a few different ways they can follow through on the denial the program will be WEC-only next year. In order of probability:
- the karting team, (still racing at the moment), continues.
- they continue to back Doriane Pin doing....something
- they support an F1A seat
- ELMS
- GTWC

Tatuus buys top kart brands Birel ART and Kart Republic - Formula Scout Single-seater manufacturer Tatuus has made a landmark move by becoming the majority owner of kart manufacturers Birel ART and Kart Republic.

🇮🇹 Single-seater manufacturer Tatuus has made a landmark move in the karting sphere, buying the rival Birel ART and Kart Republic brands, engine supplier IAME and creating a new Italian motorsport group:
formulascout.com/tatuus-buys-...

So based on these results NASCAR made an operating profit of about $102 million based on income of $1.7 billion (~6%). This suggests F1 is about three times as effective as a moneygrabbing enterprise, making $492 million off income of $3.4bn. Might explain the desire to exploit harder....

Depressingly this means I'm agreeing with Jacques Villeneuve. Stopped clocks etc.