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I may have misunderstood, but isn't any new team allowed to join the party with a 100'000'000$ entry fee ?

Of course, that's so much money that such team would to be really, really rich, but technically it's still possible ?

They call it an "anti-dillution fee" And it's 200m. But the other teams need to approve, evidently, and they are not. There's big push-back, and a variety of things are floated, including how Manor dropped out, like that's relevant.

In my view this is simply a matter of the existing teams not wanting to split the F1 pie 11 ways. Publicly they are all talking about integrity and sustainability and yadda yadda. But let's be real, the reason is they don't want to share the spoils, which would probably grow with another American team, but let's not use logic here.

Oh yeah, nearly forgot.... back at it this week boys. Final race of the triple header at Monza.

Fez is rolling out a livery and the drivers will be clad in yellow. Quite sharpish if you ask me.

They should have added a red round nose to complete their clown appearance.

Not a fan?

I like it.

Another round of grid penalties this week, including Hamilton and Bottas and I expect a few more surely. No one will want to be doing so in Singapore, so Monza makes sense. This could leave us with another mixed-order grid and I'm here for it.

Grid penalties for new components for

Verstappen (only ICE at this point, five places)
Hamilton
Bottas
Perez
Sainz
Tsunoda (who had 10-place for reprimands in previous races anyway)

FP1 in the books and Ferrari look fast, but we usually see evolution from Friday to Saturday so we'll see how things shake out over the next two free practice sessions.

Unless something dramatic happens, the real fight will be for second place, or third depending on Perez's quali.

RB's low drag package is most likely worth half a sec by race lap.

Hope I'm wrong ofc.

He looked good in final practice, that RB18 appears locked in. And he doesn't have that odd flutter in the upper element of the rear wing like Perez does. What is that and why isn't it the same for both cars?

Let's see how qualifying and penalties work out here.

I made some changes to my fantasy team. In order to get a better constructor than the Haas/Alfa level. I dropped Perez and replaced him with Alonso. That freed up the funds to make Alpine my constructor. With little money left for the final driver I took Albon with my last substitute.

Then he goes and gets appendicitis! Good grief. With no subs left and the game not making any allowance for his enforced absence, I had to play my wildcard just to sub Albon.

Come on Max!

Somehow I ended up with De Vries anyway. I hope I didn't burn my wildcard while making no changes.

How are you guys not in front of me?! Bungling, I am.

I have lost some faith in perez, but replacing him by Alonso is quite bold.

Ferrari didn't botch quali, thankfully they have a full race to do it tomorrow.

Well, it's not because I think Alonso will outperform him, but to cut some money to afford a better constructor. We'll see how it works out. I'm gunning for a 200-point weekend, it's been a long string of pedestrian performances out of my lot.

Ah well, since they tend to score both, it could quite work.

Haas and Alfa have been... quite as expected.

Disappointed for no restart, but well at least LEC didn't finish as far behind VER as expected

In retrospect the decision to pit under the first safety car was a bad one, but they couldn't have known it at the time. When Max stayed out and did half the race distance on the softs it was effectively over, bar any additional safety car restarts. The RB18 was able to run higher downforce than Ferrari at Monza and still have the pace and that is a crucial difference, allowing better exit speeds and better tire preservation and those factors were key in the end. To illustrate, Sainz was fastest through the speed trap at 221 MPH while Max never exceeded 209 with of course some laps aided by DRS. Yet Max was 16 seconds clear of the other Ferrari when the final SC was triggered.

What a moment for De Vries. He must be over the moon and I was pulling for him. He never put a foot wrong and deserves the result. Latifi has managed to look even worse now than he already did and if Williams don't make a change for Singapore they must do so at season's end.

My fantasy results were disastrous, Alonso's retirement the icing on the cake. I also got docked 30 points for substitutions which I hadn't noticed before. How many points have I lost this year for this? I was hoping for a good week and instead had maybe the worst.

Wow, what a rough year for Lewis Hamilton. No wins this season and he's currently in 6th place in the points standings. Verstappen is unstoppable with 11 wins.

It's been a poor season by his lofty standards. But I don't think he's driven poorly. It's the car. Mercedes just didn't design a great car for 2022, their 'no-pod' design has weaknesses, not least of which is the long-standing struggles with bouncing.

The Mercedes has also really struggled with switching the tires on, getting in and holding the tires in the right window. This is especially troublesome in qualifying and we've seen it again and again as Merc struggles with this.

The Merc also struggles in low-downforce/high power tracks but is much better at the twisty ones. A horse for a course, as it were.

So their car has let them down, but even then it's been the third-fastest on the grid all year, so it's not like they totally stuffed it, but when you're compared to Red Bull and Ferrari -- two teams who nailed the new regs -- they come off looking pedestrian. And you could even argue that their position in the table flatters them a bit as they've been remarkably reliable all year. Lewis has just one retirement, when he clipped Alonso in Les Combes. He's finished every other race, and only one other result was out of the points, at Imola.

The best barometer as far as I'm concerned is head to head with your team mate, and it's here where Lewis' struggles appear. You can argue that Hamilton has not had the rub of the green, that Russell has had the better fortune when safety cars come out and that sort of thing. It's true to a degree, but you make your own luck as they say. And in that head to head Russell has out-performed Hamilton. Qualifying is about even I think, but Russell has had the better results. Russell is a talent, but it's still his first year in a competitive car and I think most expected Hamilton to win the battle. That he hasn't is down to a number of factors, but in the end, points are what matters.

I think Hamilton's focus has been on helping the team as much as possible, and in the first races it meant he tried some car upgrades that didn't work, since Russell and he drive mostly the same car results have been more similar. But then again George is no slouch. We won't know who's the better until they can fight for the championship I think, until then they'll just cooperate as much as possible.

Now I wonder who'll be able to contest max's domination and when, he has the car, team and talent to dominate for quite some time. Leclerc really needs to up his game, and Ferrari's strategists to review how to strat, can't say I'm confident that's a prospect.

Now If Mercedes build a better car next year, maybe.... but that's also not accounting for RB's own progress.

Max could wrap up the driver's title at Singapore if results go his way. This is unlikely, though possible, and more likely is Suzuka (or later).

If Verstappen wins Singapore with fastest lap (one extra point) and Leclerc finishes eighth or worse, and Perez finishes fourth or worse, Max is champion.

There are a thousand permutations after that, and none are especially likely. But disaster would have to strike Red Bull now, or Max would have to be ruled out of some races or something to keep him from his second title this year.

If he does so he joins this list as two-time winner of the driver's championship

Ascari
Jim Clark
Graham Hill
Fittipaldi
Hakkinen
Alonso

Only ten drivers in F1 history have won more than two.

He also has a good shot at tying or eclipsing the season wins record, held by Schumacher and Vettel at 13. Max is on 11 with six rounds remaining. Of course this is a much longer season (more race events) than those guys had.

Singapore is a very demanding circuit, and it's one of the few this year that may not suit Red Bull, but then again Checo won Monaco didn't he? The track is very hard on the car, and on the driver, and it seems we have wet conditions every year. It's been a couple years since we last raced here due to the pandemic. The races here are usually exciting, even if there's like one place to overtake. But the nature of the track produces mistakes, crashes, overly-ambitious moves and retirements and we should be in for a good one.

Singapore Grand Prix is October 2

I trust very much RB to be in for the win, if not with pure pace, with strategy.

What I'm now watching is qualis and the second place contest. Clownari or Mercedes ?

If Max can contest most season wins, I think Charles is in for most pole positions.

Good point, the record is 15 by Vettel in 2011. How many is Charles on now?

Seems that he has eight. With six rounds remaining he can only take 14 if he takes pole at every race.