Capito and fx gone from williams yesterday, rumours that seidl is leaving mclaren to go to sauber to set up for audi.

Quite where williams are going to come up with a new tp and technical boss from at short notice i dont know. If the seidl rumour is true it looks like mclaren are going to be scrabbling around for a tp.

I give vasseur 2 years max before the scuderia management are out for blood again

Vasseur can always go back to running f3 and f2 teams where he brought it is i leclerc through.

Seidl does right to grab the audi job with both hands, to square away a new full works team is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Mclaren and williams won't get their glory days back. In my view mclaren has been rebuilding since mika hakkinnen took his sabattical, they screwed adrian newey over, and ferrari took over as the dominant team. They were an absolute shower when it came to reliabilty when kimi was so unbelievably quick, mclaren did him out of 2 drivers titles. Lewis came in and they built a good car, then imploded again with spygate, lewis won despite mclaren in 08. Even when ron dennis got pushed out and it was supposedly a new dawn, all the mclaren shortcomings were exposed. Their treatment of honda was very shoddy, they shoved a renault in the back of it and the car was shown up as a dog. Even with the merc in the back of it it was a dog. Their cars have been crap for the last 10 years and they have been too arrogant to see this until seidl and brown came in and told them how things actually were.

Williams are just a shadow of the force they were. Bmw pulling out of f1, an exodus of talented personnel, frank williams being unable to run the team and claire williams been unable to change the entrenched ways of working that frank left, no money for 10 years and an inabilty to turn the ship. When bottas left for merc in 2016 they had a reasonable car but took a wrong turn and never found their way back.

I dont hold any particular faith in mclaren, i think norris should be somewhere else, imagine what he could do in a car that isnt crap. Quite frankly he hasnt driven what i would consider a good race car. Now seidl has gone Piastri may be kicking himself this time next year

What i would like to see is porsche to buy into williams and honda to buy alpha tauri. Neither team are relevant, propping up the back third if the grid. Haas are relevant simply because they are american, alfa are now relevant because of audi. Racing point are relevant because of aston martin and the massive investment, alpine because they are a works team. Making williams and AT porsche and honda works teams running at the budget caps would be very exciting.

Having merc, ferrari, rb, audi, honda, alpine and porsche works teams all running at the budget cap would bring a level of parity not seen since the eighties.

That would leave mclaren, racing point and haas as customer teams with the pick of 7 engine partners, bring in andretti and 2026 could be phenomenal

Vasseur will be gone by then and have been replaced by the scuderia canteen manager because he is italian

As it stands now barring a proper upset in 23 where someone, probably alpine have the potential, builds a monster of a car, there are 6 plum f1 seats. The merc, the ferrari and the rb seats.
So we have verstappen and perez, hamilton and russell, and leclerc and sainz in the plum seats.

If alpine pull one out of the bag, that puts gasly and ocon in potential competitive seats.

Of those 8 drivers, hamilton is likeliest to go over the next few seasons when he decides to retire. But give him a workable car and he will race the wheels off it.

Of those 8, hamilton leclerc and verstappen are the best of the best. Of the remaining 5, russel is maybe one step down, sainz another step down, maybe, but a very very canny customer that i would not discount.
Perez, ocon and gasly are not particularly special.
Id say there are 4 shoe ins for title condenders, hamilton leclerc russell and verstappen. Those 4 are obvious.
What isnt so obvious is the other 4 who should be in the other seats.
Sainz yes, norris yes, alonso yes. Who would be the other? Nobody else stands out as anywhere near capable of being a championship contender.
When hamilton retires merc would be completely daft not to try and snatch norris, and merc is the only one likely to be in the market any time soon unless perez comes unravelled at rb. Or unless sainz comes unravelled at ferrari. Norris is stuck for the next few years at mclaren or until lewis retires. Even if perez gets the boot, who wants that poisonous second rb seat? And sainz would have to become a human disaster to get the boot from ferrari who above all need some stability. And a pitwall who arent watching reruns of allo allo on gold during the race



Norris right now is stuck between a rock and a hard place with nowhere to go until someone jumps ship