Motor Sports

Formula 1 is my main thing, but you can expect some Formula E, World Rally Championship and occasional note on some other series.


Kimi Räikkönen just got shortly back behind the wheel, in Nascar. Pity that after reasonably good driving he ended crashing out (of no fault of his own as far as I could tell).


Formula E season ended couple weeks ago with former F1 driver Stoffel Vandoorne taking the title.
Next season will be interesting for several reasons. After twice winning driver and team championships, Mercedes leaves FE and McLaren takes over for them. Maserati comes in as new team and there are some other changes like Nissan fully taking over successful French e.dams team.
In Formula E same car standard is used for competing four years and because next season is ninth, it means bringing in new faster Gen3 cars.

F1 driver market has been pretty hot since Vettel announced retiring after this season and Alonso moved to replace him.
Now it's been confirmed Ricciardo won't continue at McLaren and will apparently be replaced by rookie Piastri, who has pissed off his until now supporters Alpine/Renault with this jump to other team just as they would've needed him.

Audi is rumored to have future plans in F1 in few years, though it's unclear if that'll be as engine manufacturer or what. There's some connection to Sauber (about which I'm confused if they're talking about Alfa Romeo team, the former Sauber, or starting a separate one).

Looks like Verstappen will take a second world championship. With Mercedes catching up to Ferrari, it doesn't look like anyone can do anything unless Max gets covid or something (and at the moment he can well afford to miss couple races).

Formula E and F2 champion Nyck de Vries gets to race his first F1 GP in Monza as Albon has appendicitis.
He may (hopefully) have a shot of being Albon's teammate next year.

There's to be 24 races in next year Formula 1 calendar. That's getting crazy, I'm not sure it was a good idea to go up from the old 16, much less over 20.

Next year there's also supposed to be 6 sprint races in F1, compared to 3 this season.

Potentially big weekend, Verstappen in F1 and Rovanperä in rally have chance to confirm world championships at sunday.

I'm looking into going to see this one.

KALLE ROVANPERÄ IS RALLY WORLD CHAMPION !!!

The youngest champion ever, by big margin. The first Finnish champion for twenty years! During that time a Finn was second in the championship 9 times.

Now French drivers have 18 titles, Finns 15 and rest of the world 11.

Verstappen is again F1 world champion - after a scoring mess that left pit teams looking at rule books.

I hate the new idea of four different points system depending how large part of race gets finished. The old simple system of half points for less than 75% race was used for decades because it was just fine!
The farce of Spa needed a reaction; two laps behind Safety Car is not a partial race. So, it was changed to two laps free of Safety Car (including Virtual) - great, now it's fixed, leave it there. Of course not.

But having different number of points for different number of drivers depending if less than 25%/50%/75% of race was completed wasn't enough. Apparently - and even reasonably informed me, nor apparently some teams, were aware of this - when a stopped race is resumed and ends on time limit with two full (free) laps completed but less than 75% of intended laps... full points are awarded anyway!

Now, there is method to this madness. The reason for cutting points on shortened race is that when accident or rain/conditions stop the race (so that it won't continue), it ends on random moment where some pit stop tactics have huge advantage by bare luck. So full points aren't deserved.
But in case like Japan now, after the race resumed teams were aware of when it would end, they could do normal tactical actions. Thus, full points are justified.

Nevertheless, just like with the several scoring systems, I think this rule is an unnecessary complication - which had audience and even teams confused on whether world champion had been decided. (Although that was further complicated by the last corner penalty of Leclerc that decided it.)

The remaining races (US & Mexico) of women's Formula W Series have been cancelled.
Jamie Chadwick was already practically certain champion (like on the two previous seasons).
Hopefully they'll be able to continue the series again next year. The only Finn Emma Kimiläinen was 8th, which (if they go by same rules as before) assures her a place in the series next year.

Due rain and red flag, Magnussen takes his first F1 pole position - to sprint race, but that's what officially counts.

This is first pole position to an American team since 1975 and first ever to a Danish driver.

Finland is having alltime rally year. First Rovanperä won the actual championship, previously Lauri Joona took WRC3 class - with Enni Mäkönen becoming first female co-driver to win WRC3 - and today in finale of season Rally Japan Emil Lindholm won WRC2 (also winning WRC2 Junior series).

In Japan former F1 driver Heikki Kovalainen raced his first world championship rally (on WRC2 car), finishing 10th - which gives a championship point and therefore ranking in the series (37th).

It's going to be interesting F1 season finale in team points. While Red Bull is dominant constructors' champion and Williams equally clear last, all other teams have big amounts of cash at stake in Abu Dhabi.

Mercedes has come to 19 points away from Ferrari's second place. That pretty much requires either another 1-2 or at least one Ferrari not finishing the race, but that's quite realistic scenario.

McLaren is similarly 19 points from Alpine for fourth place. That's almost certainly too much to catch, but with enough DNFs (including Alpines), 4th&6th or 3rd&8th would be enough... not entirely impossible to happen.

For sixth place, Aston Martin is 5 points behind Alfa Romeo. That'd take 7th or 8th&9th for AM with AR getting no points. Unlikely, but perhaps more probable than the two others.

And for eighth and ninth places, Haas and AlphaTauri have the tightest race with only 2 points between them. Most probable way for AT to beat Haas would be Gasly finishing 8th in his last race for the team.
But I wouldn't bet on that; my guess is everyone will finish as they are.

(Note that in all cases the leading team also has advantage if points are tied.)


And Perez and Leclerc get to straight up drive against each other for finishing second in drivers' championship.


This will also be the last race of four-time champion Vettel and possibly last for Ricciardo, Latifi and even Schumacher.
Vettel is one race behind Kimi Räikkönen in statistic of finishes on points, so we'll see if he can tie that.

Fun fact: yesterday was first time ever "God Save the King" has been played to Formula 1 race winner.
While F1 championship started 1950, no British driver or team won before 1953.

Logan Sargeant finishes F2 season 4th which gives enough credit for the super licence required by F1 and thus gets officially announced to drive Williams next season. He will be the first US driver in F1 since Alexander Rossi 2015 and presumably becomes first to compete a full season since Scott Speed 2006. And if he's able to score points - not certain when you drive a Williams... - he'd be first American to do so since Michael Andretti 1993.

Formula E will have some dramatic changes for season 2023 (because this is first Gen 3 season, beginning of a new four-year generation).

These include:
- race length will no longer be defined in time but laps like most motor sports; also Safety Car/full course yellow now add laps like time was added previously
- Attack Mode has been changed for some of the races (in a way that I don't quite yet understand... I think it involves a stop to "supercharge" the car?)
- there is no longer Fan Boost (THANK YOU! This is a race, not a popularity contest!)
- similarly to F1, teams must have rookie drivers appear in couple practice sessions along season

In the new (started last year) electric car off-road series Extreme E this year titles go to rally champion Sébastien Loeb and Cristina Gutiérrez and their team X44 (run by Lewis Hamilton).

Nasser Al-Attiyah has won Dakar Rally (which since 2020 has been raced in Saudi Arabia).
This is 5th win and 11th podium to Al-Attiyah who, aside various rally titles including 2 WRC-2 championships, has Olympic bronze in skeet shooting.

There's been a Finnish driver in F1 in every season since 1989. We are concerned the streak may come to an end in near future and speculating who might save us from that. While Bottas will hopefully drive F1 several more seasons, there are limited number of young Finnish drivers with any real chance of reaching F1 by then.

Tuukka Taponen: Karting world champion recently joined Ferrari academy, so his future is looking bright. This year he's driving Formula 4, currently UAE series - just took first win, now 4th in points and leading rookie category - and will later this year race the Italian F4 championship in top team.

William Alatalo: Last year 18th in Formula 3, not sure what's he up to now.

Niko Kari: has competed several years in GP3/Formula 3 and bit of Formula 2, but seems to be running out of money and time.

Iker Oikarinen: Now to compete in Formula 3 Euro series. That is a potential stepping stone to F3/F2.

But it looks ominously that this season there won't be Finns in F2 or F3, the most important way up to F1.

I used to cover a couple of the NASCAR series. In fact, one of the features is still online:

http://themediadesk.com/files8/pit18.htm


But since we moved, I've almost totally lost interest in it.

Finland was supposed to have our first ever Nascar race next month (as part of Nascar Euro series, although not scoring championship points), but it's been cancelled.
It was supposed to be on ice track, but apparently they came to conclusion it wasn't possible to prepare cars in time for the special conditions. (I'm not sure how late last year they came up with this idea.)

Swedish Rally didn't go well for Finns, our drivers finishing 4th, 7th and 10th. Better than nothing.

Meanwhile in UAE Formula 4 series our possibly best hope for a Future F1 driver Tuukka Taponen confirmed rookie championship, practically the team championship and is in tough fight with his teammate for the title (with couple other drivers still in contest before final race next week).

The so called winter test days suggest F1 season is going to look much like last year. The clear 1-2-3 are still Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes respectively.

Beyond that it's a bit more interesting. Last year teams 4&5 Alpine and McLaren don't look as strong now, especially McLaren may be into a rougher season again. Meanwhile Aston Martin seems to be on top of the middle pack and Alfa Romeo will hopefully have as good start for season as last year (and better end).

Williams should do better than last year - can't do much worse - but I'm not sure that's enough to reach the middle teams, only to beat Haas and AlphaTauri. It's a shame the latter looks so bad because I would've wanted to see Formula E champion de Vries in a competitive car.


Having injured hand, Lance Stroll missed the tests last week and it's unclear if he can drive this opening weekend in Bahrain. His replacement would be Brazilian last year F2 champion Felipe Drugovich (which would make three drivers in their first F1 race plus de Vries in his second).

Formula 1 season opener in Bahrain predicts an interesting year - except for the titles. Red Bull and Verstappen look hard to beat.
But on the other hand Aston Martin has caught up with Ferrari and Mercedes behind RB.
And the rest six teams are going to have colorful fight between themselves for the remaining points.

A points finish 8th is a fine season start for Bottas. I hope Alfa Romeo will continue as the fifth fastest team their last season under that name. (I'm not sure if they'll go back to Sauber for a season or two or switch straight to Audi, their future partner.)

Some absurd situations in the Australian GP today. There was red flag and restart couple laps before end; this resulted to several crashes and another red flag.
There was only one lap left - from pit to starting grid, in effect a formation lap - but according rules that had to be driven. Because before the crash they hadn't been able to drive far enough in the restart, they would start on the final formation lap, and therefore finish, in the order of the previous restart minus cars that were out in the crashes.
Except... Sainz gets 5 second penalty for causing a restart crash. This is the craziest part of it all: not that he loses lots of positions and points, but that cars are actually driving for positions and points in formation lap behind safety car where you're not allowed to pass, nor slow down or speed up unreasonably. Because cars behind are fighting to stay within 5 seconds to Sainz and he's trying to jerk some distance.

Other than the silliness, actually pretty good racing today.