Word on the beat
No room for Liam Lawson at Alpha Tauri in 2024
Lawson lights up episode 9, but goes unrewarded
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- Impressive rookie stand-in Liam Lawson, above, was informed (by Red Bull’s Helmut Marko) just after qualifying his AlphaTauri in Q3 at Singapore that there would be no race seat for him at the team in 2024, as it intended to retain its line-up of Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo once the latter was back from injury. However, there is significant interest from Williams and it may be that Lawson will replace his former F2 team-mate Logan Sargeant in ’24. If not, he will be retained by Red Bull as reserve.
- It was widely expected at the time of going to press that Pirelli, and not Bridgestone, would be awarded the F1 tyre supply contract for 2025-27.
- Felipe Massa’s legal team (representing his contention in the UK high court that he should be retrospectively declared 2008 world champion because of events in that year’s Singapore Grand Prix) have issued preservation of documentation notices to several parties involved in the subverting of the Singapore race by Nelson Piquet Jr’s deliberate crash.
- The new regulations of 2026 are expected to feature a DRS function which gives an extra electrical power boost when deployed. Because the cars are expected to be lower drag, the DRS would not be as effective without this. help.
