The rumour mill is spinning like crazy that Red Bull will announce RIC's gone then 10 minutes later that Lawson is in.

And there is the not-always-reliable Joe Savard soying PER will announce he is leaving after Mexico. [link] (https://joesaward.wordpress.com/2024/09/26/green-notebook-from-somerset/)

Updated the qualy battles plot, but did not want to burden the servers with it, so if you want to see a gif from the start to Singapore, here it is: https://i.imgur.com/KrbkqQF.gif.

And now we wait for the avalanche of stupid/crazy/ridiculous rumours about RIC until the next race.

Featuring Albon, Tsunoda, and Verstappen. Yet, here we are.

Telemetry Comparisons and Track Dominance plots

And, if you want to help me out, here are many Track Dominance graphics with different mini-sectors (numbers are under the images in the link): varied track dominance graphics What do you think is the most useful to understand where each car goes better?

Verstappen and Albon finally lost one this season!!!

Yes, Albon was pretty severely compromised in the last Q3 attempt by extra weight on his car, but still here we are. Williams and Red Bull no longer have zeros on the board (sorry, Logan, you remain at zero).

With a 30 points lead over Hamilton for points scored at Baku, Pérez will retain his lead, no matter what happens.

But with the current competitive state of the Red Bulls in tracks with slow corners, the lead could suffer a dent if Hamilton has a good weekend.

If Norris has a good weekend, he could jump a few spots, and Piastri could finally enter into the conversation, as he failed to score a point in 2023.

Anyone else surprised at the short gardening leave? Him starting in March changes things. I thought he would be out at least until September of 2025,which would hurt his participation in the 2026 design. If, however, he does start in March, he can absolutely be a major part of the redesign and that changes the calculations for who might be a force in 2026.

I have been toying around with F1 data and python plots, and got some average gap graphics in gif form, starting at Bahrain and up to Italy.

• Team Averages (only Q1): https://imgur.com/a/f4nBIO6
• Driver Q1 averages: https://imgur.com/a/kkJABGV
• Driver Q2 averages: https://imgur.com/a/VLhdOta
• Driver Q3 averages: https://imgur.com/a/ZFsGCzy

They are gifs, so check your wi-fi upon entering because there are many on each page, obviously.

Would have posted a few examples here, but apparently Lemmy is not keen on it. Hope imgur's servers do not crap out on me.

Examples:

• McL's averages: https://i.imgur.com/1nWQ1GT.gif
• Intra-team qualy battles: https://i.imgur.com/ayVxwJI.gif

Main points of the article:

Pirelli ran two tests of the 2025 tyres, one in Monza with Red Bull's junior team, one in Fiorano with Ferrari. It was wet in Monza and Lawson had some PU trouble in the VCARB01, while Fiorano was artificially wet for Bearman in the Ferrari.

Next up, Aston Martin will be the first to test the 2026 tyres at Barcelona after the Baku GP and then Mercedes at Magny-Cours with the 2025 tyres (1-2 October).

The irony of Fiorano being artificially wet and it was just raining in Monza is pretty great, yes.

Also, great practice for Bearman if he will indeed be in Baku in place of Magnussen.