In the round-up: Lance Stroll says he has taken extra care to avoid repeating the injury which kept him out of pre-season testing last year.
In brief
Stroll avoided any “funny business” over winter
The Aston Martin driver missed the sole pre-season test in Bahrain last year after suffering broken hands in a cycling accident. But Stroll says he’s been playing it safer this winter.
“I’m allowed to go running,” he told media including RaceFans. “Actually, no one’s told me this, but I think we live and we learn every day. So I’m running, I’m watching my step while I run. No ankle twisting, none of that funny business, just running in a straight stride and looking after my limbs. I want to get to Bahrain testing this year so that’s the game plan.”
However he admitted he hasn’t cut out risky activities entirely. “I spent a bit of time in western Canada, did a bit of skiing, which is always fun and a lot of training as well,” he said. “A lot of time reflecting on last season and thinking about how I can come back as a stronger, better athlete and driver this season.”
Maloney quickest in first dry day of F2 test
Sauber junior driver Zane Maloney set the fastest lap of the second day of running at the Formula 2 pre-season test in Bahrain, a tenth faster than DAMS and newly-announced Aston Martin junior Jak Crawford.Maloney’s best time of 1’41.501 for Rodin put him on top as drivers got to grips with the new F2 car in dry conditions for the first time. Enzo Fittipaldi was third fastest for Van Amersfoort, with Isack Hadjar fourth for Campos.
The third and final day of running takes place today before the season begins at the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend.
Drive to Survive season six teaser
Netflix have unveiled the teaser trailer for the sixth season of their popular F1 documentary series Drive to Survive.
Focusing on the events of the 2023 season, the teaser features some of the storylines which will appear in the show, which will be released to the public on Friday 23rd February.
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Links
Motor racing links of interest:
Horner-Affäre: Warum es am Freitag noch kein Statement gegeben hat (Motorsport Total - German)
'Bernie Ecclestone, as a close confidant of Horner, is said to have intervened in the matter in an advisory capacity with several telephone conversations, and Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali is also reportedly very interested in the topic.'
'Building on the team’s accomplishments in the 2023 season – including breaking the Guinness World Record for the fastest ever pit stop, with a 1.80-second stop at the Qatar Grand Prix, Optimum Nutrition will support the McLaren team to help everyone stay at the top of their game. Optimum Nutrition branding will feature on the pit crew overalls and set-up kit, and the driver overalls of McLaren Formula 1 Drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.'
Aston Martin is in talks to tackle $1.4 billion debt pile (BNN Bloomberg)
Lawrence Stroll: 'We are currently studying with our bankers the most appropriate actions of how to deal with it. Obviously it will be addressed in the most appropriate manner possible and in the best interests of the company and its shareholders.'
Hauger: ‘Rain limited us but early feeling is positive’ (Formula 2)
'There are a few differences, the car itself – the aerodynamics are a bit different, so it changes the car’s behaviour and the way we have to set the car up. There’s still stuff for us to work on there but so far, it’s been positive to drive around in and enjoyable. We need some setup tweaks and to get a feel of the car some more but again, here especially versus European tracks in the wet, it was quite high grip, so the plan is to now figure out what we need to do, but that’s the same for everyone, so we just have to deal with it.'
Six Nations player ordered to leave pitch after being hit harder than car crash (Wales Online)
'Under the current regulations, an impact above 70g and 4,000 radians per second squared will recommend a HIA for men's players, while women's players have lower thresholds of 55g and 4,000 rad/s². To put that into context, as the Telegraph reports, former Formula One driver Romain Grosjean experienced an impact of 67g when he crashed his car and it exploded into flames at the Bahrain GP in 2020.'
2024 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 revealed ahead of WEC debut (Daily Sportscar)
'This reveal comes after the new Vantage GT3 made its global race debut back in January at the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona, but before its maiden FIA WEC race at Qatar next month. The 2024 Vantage GT3 is a comprehensive evolution of the recently retired Vantage AMR GTE and GT3 cars, which made their debut in 2018. Sharing their mechanical architecture – and that of the new Vantage road car – it is built around Aston Martin’s bonded aluminium chassis structure and powered by the same twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8 engine.'
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Social media
Notable posts from X (formerly Twitter), TikTok and more:
First thoughts from Fernando after piloting our 2024 challenger here at Silverstone. 💭#AMR24 pic.twitter.com/M4dCfHqyiY
— Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team (@AstonMartinF1) February 12, 2024
🗣 “It looks racey, it looks nice. It’s red as expected!”
Fred, Charles and Carlos get their first look at the SF-24… Here’s their reaction 😆 pic.twitter.com/ZwzSxdBRHR
— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) February 12, 2024
— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) February 12, 2024
A guided tour of @ZhouGuanyu24's new lid in his own words ✨🖤🏙️ pic.twitter.com/KcRJWlAtns
— Stake F1 Team (@stakef1team) February 12, 2024
Redevelopment in F1 pace.#hungaroring #F1Hungaroring #HungarianGP #redevelopment #fejlesztés #market #marketepito #bayerconstruct pic.twitter.com/gjFpPMt9Sx
— Hungaroring (@HungaroringF1) February 12, 2024
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- Find more official F1 accounts to follow in the F1 Twitter Directory
Comment of the day
After Fernando Alonso did not shut down the possibility of potentially moving from Aston Martin to Mercedes next season, AdrianMorse sees flashes of Alonso from the past…
Usually drivers are quite coy about talking with other teams, so this feels like an open application to next year’s Mercedes seat. Of course, Fernando might want to see if the 2024 Mercedes is not a complete dog, and whether indeed he wants to continue racing, but who is he kidding with this Aston Martin first-priority talk?
Alonso is a political animal enough to say all the right things regarding his current employer, but it does not sound very different to his Renault days, where there was talk of becoming more involved in the team and the project. And then he left quite abruptly – and correctly, as it turned out.
The 2025 season might be one last hurrah for Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari, and, as a consequence, one last hurrah for Alonso at Mercedes, with both drivers hoping to add one final title to their tally. They will face tough competition from their team mates, though!
AdrianMorse
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Geo132, Jason, Sebastien Carter, Shyguy2008 and Sparky!
On this day in motorsport
- On this day in 2005 Maurice Trintignant died at the age of 87. He is the only driver other than Lewis Hamilton to win a world championship grand prix in car number 44, which he scored in the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix for Hamilton’s next team – Ferrari
Tristan (@skipgamer)
13th February 2024, 0:32
Woah, wait, woah, wait, wait… Hold up… Stroll’s racked up $1.4 billion debt with Aston Martin?
I mean, they’ve been advertising the investment they’ve been making… But over a billion dollars? Am I just getting old but is the economy just expanding seemingly at an exponential rate? It feels like every decade that passes the numbers are going up by a factor of 10.
Will it be required to invest 10’s of billions come 2030 and hundreds of billions in 2040 to be successful in F1? At some point one will be forced to asked, are there not better pursuits?
S
13th February 2024, 1:07
This isn’t just about the F1 team. Aston Martin had significant debts long before Stroll’s group purchased it.
GeeMac (@geemac)
13th February 2024, 4:09
@skipgamer In my professional experience when billionaire businessmen say they are investing in businesses, 99.999% of the time the funds being injected are debt. The super rich don’t get super rich by spending their own money. The only cash which they handle is the dividend they take out each year…
Tristan (@skipgamer)
13th February 2024, 6:05
Hmmm yeah, I had to go looking at AM financials. I guess I was attributing too much of Stroll’s project with AM to the F1 team… Still not sure what part of that is going to it, but whatever it is, it seems to be working given their figures, at least from my understanding of it.
BasCB (@bascb)
13th February 2024, 7:30
Good point @geemac. It probably means that the AM organisation will see another 1.4 billion added to their already big debt pile. They badly need to build some profitable cars and sell them there, but then, that has been AM’s long standing main issue for a decade or 2 now.
Facts&Stats
13th February 2024, 9:44
That’s only partly and indirectly true.
Any smart investor looks at leveraging their money, and thus try to get some financing involved as well. Even the mere mortals do this when they go to the bank for a mortgage to buy a home.
But in 99.999% of the cases the investor has some skin the game as well.
In this case Stroll (via an investment vehicle) invested a couple hundred millions of his/their money in AML. The debt was already largely there when they first invested (close to a Billion GBP). And since then there has been some serious Equity raising of AML (by him and others).
But as losses also mounted over the past years (a Billion GBP over 3 years), which extra Equity couldn’t cover, and and additional Debt was needed.
Overall Financially AML doesn’t look any healthier today than it looked when Stroll stepped in initially (share price is further down). And it wouldn’t even surprise me if he sells out soon and taking some losses.
The F1 team is a totally different story though: significant value appreciation, though mostly due to riding the wave of F1 overall.
MichaelN
13th February 2024, 12:12
Yeah, even a savvy guy like Stroll isn’t going to get people to invest big money if they all see he’s staying far away from it. They might like his leadership, and see potential, but not that much that they trust him on a venture he isn’t willing to get involved in himself.
They say that, but none of them are selling shares nor the teams themselves. The growth of F1 popularity is a nice pitch to sponsors and might increase the value of the ‘car as a billboard’, but as far as the value of the teams themselves is concerned it’s been a lot of posturing and bold claims but very little actual proof.
Facts&Stats
13th February 2024, 13:57
AM and Alpine (and I believe McLaren) had equity investments over the past 12 months. From memory all of them came in at about (or above) $1B value.
And I believe that is ‘Market Cap’ (i.e. value of the Equity) rather than ‘Enterprise Value’ (including the net Debt).
I guess that most team owners believe there is more appreciation to come.
$1B is a lot of money, but still below each single of the 32 NFL teams and most Premier League teams.
Entertainment like Music and Sports are attracting a lot of investment.
tim
14th February 2024, 2:00
To be clear, that debt is owned by Aston Martin (the publicly traded car manufacturer whose Executive Chairman is Lawrence Stroll), not Aston Martin F1 Team (which is owned by AMR GP, which is substantially owned by Lawrence Stroll).
It shocks me far less that a medium luxury car companies with Aston Martin’s recent history is up to its eyeballs in debt.
Jere (@jerejj)
13th February 2024, 6:31
The word ‘logo’ apparently doesn’t have a (fitting) Chinese equivalent.
Mark Zastrow (@markzastrow)
13th February 2024, 7:23
Here’s an idea for the Ferrari marketing department, if they haven’t thought of it already. 2024 will mark the 60th anniversary of John Surtees clinching his F1 title — remarkable, as readers here will know, not only for his becoming the first and only world champion on two wheels and four, but also for the fact that he was driving a blue Ferrari. This was when, in the midst of a feud with the ACI over the FIA’s refusal to homologate the 250 LM, Enzo Ferrari had temporarily sworn off competing as an Italian team and instead entered his cars under the US-flagged North American Racing Team in blue-and-white for the last two races of 1964 at Watkins Glen and Mexico City.
How about honoring the Surtees family’s legacy in motorsport and reliving a bit of history by running a blue alternate livery for the US and Mexican Grands Prix? A blue Ferrari would be a sensation, and some of the mockups floating around the internet look lovely.