FORMULA 1 UNITED STATES GRAND PRIX 2025 Live Thread, Sun, October 19th, 2025
First Grand Prix: 2012
Number of Laps: 56
Circuit Length: 5.5133km km
Race Distance: 308.728km
Lap Record: 1:36.169
Charles Leclerc (2019)
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Didier Pironi failed to podium in 18 consecutive starts when he first got hired by Ferrari. Kimi Raikkonen, on the other hand, had had a successful stint at the Scuderia in the Oughties, even taking one WDC. But when he came back for a second dose in the 20-teens, he went 22 consecutive races without scoring a podium.
So the writers ("Staff") at RacingNews365.com apparently picked up on the story from somewhere but left out one critical detail, that Pironi's 'record' only applied to new-hires.
In any case, Hambone likely will supplant Didier this Sunday, becoming Ferrari's worst-producing new hire ever, but he'll have to wait until Qatar to become the worst ever of any stripe.
Hambone also is beavering away, ingratiating himself to the team by pointing out details they're apparently too thick to notice. Like he wants them to stop his tires losing heat when he's stuck in a queue on pit lane waiting to be released during qualies. He apparently believes he's the only one in the queue experiencing this, and the Ferrari engineers should be able to bend the laws of thermodynamics for his benefit.
On a related note, it's mathematically possible for me to win the PowerBall lottery every month for the next three years.
The FIA is creating a kill switch for 2026 to prevent a repeat of 2014. It’s called Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities (ADUO). What it is, is an admission that Mercedes’ run of seven consecutive WCCs and WDCs (beginning in 2014) was as much due to the FIA’s screw-up as it was to Mercedes’ brilliance.
Which, by extension, is also an admission that Lewis Hambone isn’t the greatest driver since Ben Hur, but he is the luckiest driver in the history of F1. More’s the pity there won’t be an asterisk next to his name in the history books, like there is next to Roger Maris’ 1961 baseball season.
2009 was a sterling example of how F1 SHOULD WORK in a sane universe. Brawn Racing showed up with a dominant car by virtue of its innovative “double diffuser.” However, Button took his last pole of the season at the 6th race and by the 7th, RBR had a double diffuser that was better than Ross Brawn’s. By the final third of the season, McLaren-Mercedes also had a double-diffuser at least as good as Brawn’s and Button struggled to keep pace. If it weren’t for Vettel having three DNFs to Button’s one, Vettel probably would have taken WDC and Red Bull WCC.
The next four seasons were RBR on a tear, not because the regulations limited development of all the other teams but because only one team had an Adrian Newey designing their double diffuser. And the cream rose to the top, as it should.*
But it took eight seasons for anyone to catch Mercedes (and not for nothing it was Adrian Newey’s team what done it), not for lack of ingenuity but because of the FIA’s absurdly restrictive ‘Token’ system for limiting development and updates.
“ADUO” will allow the FIA to subjectively decide to grant backmarker teams an increase in their spending cap and extra time with PU bench testing, and to make changes to the homologation regulations that reflect the results of the teams’ research.
And what THAT is, dear friends, is socialism posting as motor sport, all so the FIA can promote their radical environmentalist agenda.
*You also might well argue that RBR’s dominance 2010-14 were the FIA’s screw-up, too, because RBR protested Brawn’s double-diffuser because Newey already had considered it and believed it was prohibited by the TR. When the FIA decided to the contrary, Newey opened a large can of whoo-pass on the rest of the field.
An my don’t the racing gods have a wicked sense of humor?
Change of time:
“Race: Sunday, October 21, 3:00PM ET”
now to
Race: Sunday, October 21, 5:00PM ET
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