It's unusual when the day's WEC news has caused me to increase the number of seats I think are at least partially open from 4 to 5, but Kubica has just unconfirmed himself, so I guess the Ferrari seats aren't entirely nailed down...

GT3 drivers be called Memo Gidley, apparently. The lede here is buried six feet deep, which is the Dustin Blattner/Chris Lulham/Dennis Marschall car, that is probably a championship contender.

Alpine if you guys think we're paying enough attention to distinguish all the different amounts of pink in your livery then I'm sorry but I have bad news for you.

OK, Genesis, but what does that actually mean? You've said you plan to run two drivers per car at the six-hour races with Mathys Jaubert and Dani Juncadella joining for the longer events. Does Chadwick replace any of them if they drop out, or will Jaubert or Juncadella step in at a 6hr?

While I don't begrudge anyone their chances, my rule of thumb for "will an F3 driver make an impact in F2" says he won't, since he didn't score 80 points in F3 last year (he scored 76, so a few points are not out of the question but I doubt he's getting over about 30).

Apparently people are learning today that Formula E lie about their audience sizes? I thought that was something that was just generally well-known. (I also think that F1 lies about its audience sizes but it does so much more Chinesely and less verifiably).

Possible reasons you might kill your WEC programme and double the size of your FE programme, quite possibly in the same meeting: - you don't trust the ACO's BoP process - WEC costs are spiralling even higher than we thought - you already have a sponsor lined up for FE team 2

More seriously, Porsche's announcement means that FE is likely back up to 12 teams for the start of Gen4, which is good news even if I'm still somewhat sceptical about the Gen4 producing good racing...

The real question, Porsche, is will you commit to renaming it every three years to meet the gold standard for second teams in FIA competition? www.the-race.com/formula-e/sh...

The thing I'm continually impressed with about Aston Martin is how it never manages to make any money but despite this there's never a shortage of people who think they can fix it. (Entirely possible PIF aren't expecting it to make money, but they probably ought to be given various other issues).

NEW: F1’s sticking-plaster fix for Qatar tyre failures is an embarrassment Formula 1 will resort to a rules fudge to avoid trouble with its tyres at Losail next week. Why hasn't it found a proper solution for this problem? More:

OK, being vaguely serious for once. Ella Stevens is actually a good signing in the sense that F1A is *supposed* to take drivers straight out of karting and this is a rare instance of them actually doing it. Good on McLaren for that. Ella Hakkinen, well, she's 14. Ask someone who knows about karting.

I'm not _entirely_ convinced that McLaren's strategy of signing everyone called Ella is necessarily the way to go about promoting women in motorsport, but hey at least it's a plan...

I guess FR at Macau is improving, from last year's "yeah Formula Regional for the Macau Grand Prix is a bad idea isn't it?" to this year's "well this race had a lot of good moments even if it was fundamentally unsatisfying"

Macau is one of the worst circuits to support the driver who's in the lead given the amount of time you lose to the slipstream inevitably leads to thoughts of "ugh he only pulled two tenths in that sector it won't be enough" the entire race.

You do feel like if you can't hold the lead off of pole position at Macau (which you usually can't) then maybe the grid stagger isn't big enough? Second place shouldn't be an advantage...

Macau commentary keeps calling Antonio Fuoco "Ferroco" which is just so weird his name is not hard to pronounce. Also they said "like a USB, you plug him in and he delivers" which definitely got a double-take out of me as it would be more like: "you have to turn him over three times before he fits".

Started watching the GT final at Macau. Somehow I think they managed to do lap one worse than the F4s despite there being rather fewer of them and their allegedly being professionals.

So one of the somewhat funny things is that national flags don't work properly in the bluesky Chromium client meaning my tl is currently full of IEIEIEIEIEIEIEIEIEIEIEIE. Though give I think that's roughly the noise that Irishsky is making rn maybe it's not a bug?

@stabbyabby.bsky.social's kitten is so loud it's disturbing Hazel across a continent and an ocean....

So Jules Roussel, the FIA F4 World Cup winner, was third in French F4 this year, which is respectable but nothing particularly impressive which I think mostly shows you that winning F4 in Macau is mostly about managing not to take yourself out and not to have anyone take you out...

Apparently crashing out of second in the F4 is fashionable or something? I'm kind of confused by what happened to Caretti, but presumably he hit a bump or similar.

Good to see Ary Bansal up there representing GB4 (do not screw it up Ary...)

I do feel like the Mygale's bigger radiators make it look more like a racing car than the Tatuus F4 chassis, but I doubt it actually helps much.

Come on F4, at least wait to Lisboa before having all hell break loose.

Just wanted to check that the people aren't watching Macau have seen the livery of Laurin Heinrich's car for this weekend

I transcribed all of the Indianapolis-based newspaper coverage leading up to and the actual 1925 Indy 500 race, compiled it and edited it down into a four part series so behold (Part 1 has links to the other 3 parts): motorsport-anthology.com/1925-indy-50...

Commentary celebrating everyone getting through turn 3 on lap 1 of the FR qualification race says a lot about Macau

What did the Italian motorsport press call Michael Schumacher? Almost every major Ferrari driver since John Surtees has had a nickname (though tbf "Il Grande Gianni" is just "Big John" which is definitely less flowery than they got later) so I can't believe they didn't have some name for him...

Unless I misread, the extension system is only from 2027 onwards.

OK well changes to the two-year maximum or not it seems like under no circumstances will Doriane be returning next year so now we just need Ferrari to say the same thing about Maya Weug

Watching the Macau qualification races. Started with F4 and the front row of the grid playing chicken with each other and both losing....

The problem with this phrase is it's hard to tell if it means "the teams hate it but have agreed to continue humouring Liberty" or "we'll consider this once we know if we actually have to panic about the quality of racing or not"

It's an out-of-stock car

Guenther is of course intimately familiar with bad leadership

Had to write some words about the #F1Academy and its new third-year clause, why its approach is now starting to come across as conflicting. Does it want a woman in #F1, or to be the separate platform series for marketing sake? www.motorsport101.com/does-the-f1-...

Brain, under no circumstances did you have to come up with "Premulator" to describe what Doriane is driving here

It's an interesting one, isn't it? I can't think of an occasion where F1's worst driver would be better than the current candidates for that title are, but equally I'm not sure that F1's fourth-best driver (Lando Norris?) is as good as 1980s Nigel Mansell, for instance. Decent debate topic...

Don't you fucking dare

Um, what? So I hope that Susie Wolff walks this one back because it seems to me like she's explicitly saying the point of F1A is to trap female drivers and prevent them progressing to higher levels of motorsport, if you want to "consistently features the very best female talent".

Check out that new 9 car

One way to square this circle is if they've concluded in Stuttgart that it's unreasonable to expect that the 963 can in fact win Le Mans absent a significant change to how the BoP is calculated or more luck than they can count on. After all, they had a "perfect" race this year and came second.

Stupid things looking at my Bluesky feed has caused me to think in the last five minutes: - it would be very funny if the championship battle in IndyCar next year is somehow between O'Ward and Lundgaard and we have McLaren nonsense: the sequel - obviously, an Audi A3 is twice the size of an A4

It's Macau week(end)! Excited to watch Formula Regional cars bring out red flags, probably on delay because you're not getting up to watch feeder series racing from China? I sure am!

I think in terms of WEC silly season we're now almost done with race seats being assigned, with only two at Alpine (quite possibly remaining with Ferdinand Habsburg and Mick Schumacher) and two at Genesis (quite possibly Paul-Loup Chatin and Mathieu Jaminet) unconfirmed?

It would be quite funny to have a very clearly privateer 963 entry listed in WEC as the works Porsche team while an equally obviously factory Ferrari entry is listed as a privateer, too....

I had been waiting for somebody to explain precisely what the heck was going on with all the various Porsche rumours. Here we go: (Short answer: some weird hybrid PenskeProton thing might potentially enter WEC, if Porsche don't veto it)

I do kind of give Audi credit for figuring out how to wangle multiple launch events out of one car. On the other hand it looks very F2-y with no sponsors and fairly plain lines.

Of course the thing about an Aitken/Bamber/Bourdais lineup is.... well, that's 2/3 of the Whelen car, who I thought was going to inherit Penske's Le Mans invite. Which might be tricky if their drivers are already there.

I mean fair enough that Cadillac lineup has worked for many years but are they going to let him out of the prison cell they photographed him in at some point?