DBMotorsport

  Abstract The first article of this series [1] mapped the visible architecture of an F1 team: who leads, who engineers, who executes. This one goes further. It follows four specific roles through the people who currently hold them, and through two careers that has crossed both sides of the regulatory table, FIA to team or vice versa. None of these four people has ever touched a steering wheel despite all four carry more weight, right now, over where a championship goes than most of the drivers actually chasing it. The Team Principal: A view From the Regulator's Side Laurent Mekies became Red Bull Racing's Team Principal midway through 2025, taking over from Christian Horner after two decades in the job. What is important to underline in this change at the apex of the team is the résumé behind the new TP. From 2014 Mekies worked inside the FIA itself, first as Safety Director, then as F1 Deputy Race Director, before Ferrari hired him as Sporting Director in 2018. He has ...

  Abstract This article is written as a tool for dialogue, not confrontation, in the belief that regulatory debate is what actually moves this sport forward. What happened on Sunday at Spa-Francorchamps produced three separate incidents that, taken together, circle back to a question already raised in this space over the past few weeks: what happens when a regulation hands over to discretion something that could instead rest on a verifiable standard. Lap One at Les Combes Lap one, Turn 5: Lewis Hamilton and George Russell collide. Russell goes for the outside line; Hamilton, defending on the inside, understeers into him, catches Russell's car with his left-front wheel and sends him into the gravel, out of the race. FIA Document 57 holds Hamilton wholly responsible for the collision but hands him a 5-second penalty rather than the standard 10, citing mitigating factors: he acknowledged Russell's presence, tried to leave space, lost the front end through no aggressive intent,...

  Abstract This article is not intended as an accusation against the Federation. Rather, it is intended as a tool for dialogue and comparison, based on the belief that it is technical and regulatory debate, rather than confrontation, that moves the sport forward. However, what happened at Silverstone on Sunday, at the end of the 2026 British Grand Prix, highlights an issue that was identified well before the start of the season in an academic paper written by Magdalena Ferrer, Anirban Aly Mandal and myself, which compared the 2024, 2025 and 2026 Sporting Regulations. The paper concluded that granting Race Control greater discretion without providing clear objective criteria would inevitably lead to the kind of inconsistencies witnessed on the track on Sunday. A Longstanding Flaw The starting point here is not new. The paper said as much already [1] . Article B1.8.6 of the 2026 Regulations gives Race Control absolute discretion over whether a driver should hand back an advantage...

Abstract Two episodes from the 2026 Austrian Grand Prix weekend appear, on the surface, to have nothing to do with each other. George Russell’s contested pole position survived a yellow-flag scare moments after Max Verstappen crashed at Turn 9; a day later, Carlos Sainz’s stricken Williams sat on the main straight under nothing more than a Virtual Safety Car. Dig into the telemetry, the regulations, and this season’s precedents, though, and the two cases turn out to share the same root cause. It is not driver behaviour, although that deserves its own discussion, it’s the lack of objective criteria behind race control’s calls, a gap that threatens safety well before it threatens the standings. Russell’s Lap, Flag by Flag Everything happens in the closing minutes of Q3 at Turn 9 of the Red Bull Ring. Max Verstappen loses the rear of his RB22, slides through the gravel and slams into the barriers hard enough to matter. Race control now faces the one call that actually counts: red flag...

  Abstract On 6 May 2026, the Swiss Federal Council revoked the ban on circuit motor racing, which had been in place since 1955. This decision closes a regulatory chapter that was opened during one of the darkest periods in the history of motorsport. In light of the radical transformation in safety and the economic value of the sport, this decision comes seventy years late but is still in time to establish Switzerland as a genuine motorsport hub. 11th June 1955 and the Law That Followed Some legislative decisions are born of grief, not deliberation. The one taken by Switzerland in the summer of 1955 belongs to that category. On 11th June of that year, during the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Pierre Levegh’s Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR struck the Austin-Healey of Lance Macklin, who had been forced into a sudden swerve by an abrupt braking manoeuvre from Mike Hawthorn’s Jaguar. Levegh’s car used his rival’s as a launch ramp, flew into the grandstands and disintegrated on impact with the crowd. ...

  Abstract A mandatory two-stop rule introduced specifically for Monaco in 2025 was designed to generate strategic variety on one of the calendar's most processional circuits. What it actually produced was coordinated, deliberate slow driving (one car dropped several seconds per lap below race pace to manufacture a pit-stop window for its team-mate), exploiting the structural impossibility of overtaking at Monaco. This tactic has not got a name until today and I want to call it “Monaco Trick”. The real issue behind this situation is not the FIA's own regulatory framework because it already provides the tools to eradicate this behaviour. The real problem and only missing ingredient are the will to apply them. The Rule That Created the Problem The Monaco-specific provision mandating a minimum of two pit stops and three different tyre sets was ratified by the World Motor Sport Council and applied for the first time at the 2025 Monaco Grand Prix. [1] Its stated objective was l...