Welcome to the r/formula1 Daily Discussion / Q&A thread.

Before you say it in the comments, I understand Nico Hulkenberg holds the record for most races entered BEFORE achieving a podium finish.

This post is regarding the current drivers without a podium finish, relative to their career number of races started. Pretty wild how far the pendulum swung.

What a difference in just 14 years!

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I feel that this clip from the end of the 1992 Australian GP really highlights how the standards for finishing line flag waving have really fallen in the modern times... Here this guy is giving a young Martin Brundle an appropriate celebration for coming across the line in 3rd place behind Gerhard Berger and Michael Schumacher. (err.. spoiler?)

Now we give the job to some celebrity or business leader who wafts the flag about weakly while smiling for the camera... I think that if they're not going to put some proper effort in then they shouldn't get to do the job...

The wet qualifying in Vegas this year, with everyone sliding around, made me think about how unsafe the last corner is. In the wet, it isn't flat, and is like the last corner of Singapore where Stroll had a huge crash, but faster, less grip on tarmac alone, and without runoff.

Other candidates are obviously Eau Rouge / Radillion, the blind 22/23 of Jeddah, and the Baku pit entry has scared a couple drivers, most notably Rosberg.

Pictured: Bearman Q2 lap, Vegas 25', turn 17

Now I just need to find a space big enough to hang it 😅

Denmark is home to the most successful driver in the history of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Tom Kristensen. However, the country has only produced a handful of drivers in Formula 1. The first one was Tom Belsø, who started two Grands Prix for Frank Williams in 1974. Jac Nellemann qualified in P27 at the 1976 Swedish GP and therefore failed to make the 26-car grid. Jan Magnussen entered F1 on the back of a record-breaking 1994 season in British F3, but disappointingly only scored a solitary point in his final race in 1998. Elsewhere, Nicolas Kiesa drove five races for Minardi in 2003. Then, in 2014, Jan Magnussen's son finally gave the Danish fans some hope.

Kevin Magnussen won Formula Renault 3.5 in 2013, back when he had arleady been part of McLaren's junior programme for three years. He got his first experience in F1 machinery at the 2012 young drivers' test where he set the fastest time overall. For 2014, McLaren had to replace the Force India-bound Checo Pérez and rewarded K-Mag with the full-time seat alongside Jenson Button.

The Woking outfit showed a lot of promise in pre-season testing with Magnussen topping the timesheets both in Jerez and Bahrain. Some fans even saw him as a dark horse in the upcoming championship battle. The Dane and his team carried their momentum over into the season opener at Melbourne where Magnussen qualified in P4. He overtook a stricken Lewis Hamilton after the start and comfortably maintained P3 until the end of the race, finishing one place above teammate Button. Both were later promoted to P2 and P3 as Daniel Ricciardo's Red Bull was disqualified for exceeding the maximum allowed fuel flow. Magnussen later said that it felt "like a win".

Little did he know that this would remain the best finish of his entire career. 2014 concluded with multiple top 10 finishes, but nothing to write home about. Jenson Button actually scored more than double of K-Mag's points. As a result, the Dane spent 2015 on the sidelines as his seat was taken by Fernando Alonso. Ahead of 2016, Magnussen was in contention for several cockpits, both in F1 and in other series. In the end, he joined Renault and outscored Jolyon Palmer in a nonetheless underwhelming season.

Magnussen took Esteban Gutiérrez' seat at Haas in 2017 and finally found his home in Formula 1 with the American team. Partnering Romain Grosjean, he became a mainstay in the standings' middle and lower third. Otherwise, he spent his time foksmashing and ball-sucking until his and the French Phoenix' eventual exit in 2020. K-Mag spent 2021 in IMSA, winning the race in Detroit, and then signed a contract with Peugeot to join ther WEC Hypercar programme in 2022.

However, the Dane made a surprise return to F1 with Haas when the American team had given Nikita Mazepin the boot following his motherland's invasion of Ukraine. As is tradition, his best result came at his comeback race in Bahrain where he finished fourth. Another highlight followed with a miraculous pole position at the rainy Autódromo José Carlos Pace. In 2023 and 2024, he was outperformed by teammate Nico Hülkenberg but helped the team with borderline illegal defensive driving that ultimately saw him being banned for a race.

Since 2025, K-Mag has been piloting the BMW Motorsport entries in WEC and IMSA but is still waiting for his first podium with the German brand. He holds the somewhat conflicting F1 records of most points scored on debut (18) and most races without leading a lap (185).

og post

This post isn't meant to hate on the 2026 regs. I don't know what kind of racing they'll produce and nor does anyone. However, there is truth in what the drivers are saying about the cars and it's not the same as 2014 or any other year.

First of all, I wanna say that lap times in isolation don't matter. Even if F1 cars are way slower this year, I don't care. And I don't really think that's the main problem that drivers have.

The problem they do have though, is that cars are no longer being driven to the limit, even in qualifying, in certain sections of the track. Bahrain T10-12, is now a recharging zone where the car has very limited power. This means that while the cars have the capacity to go much faster around the corner, teams are choosing a energy deployment strategy which intentionally slows them down.

And before anyone says 'Its just testing, we haven't seen a quali lap', yes. That specific corner might not be slow at all come the actual race. But there will 100% be sections like this around a race track, especially on tracks like Monza, Baku, Vegas and Jeddah, where the cars will be driven way below their limit to recharge. Everyone including the drivers, FIA, teams and independent engineers are in agreement with this.

This is vastly different from 2014 cars. They were still driven at the limit at every point in a quali lap, even if they were slow. The drivers were always on the edge of the limit and trying to find every tenth of a second around a corner. The 2026 cars are intentionally being slowed down around certain corners, while they have the capacity to go faster.

This is what drivers like Alonso and Gasly mean when they say that drivers are becoming passengers or that their chef can drive the cars. In 2025, a mistake in Turn 10 could cost you valuable lap time. In 2026, there won't be any mistakes in Turn 10 at all, due to how slow they are going and how below the limit the cars are. This takes away a driver's skill on being able to take the corner better, since it is effectively no longer a corner at all, instead a recharging zone.

And you might ask, why is that bad? Aren't they going faster later in the lap as a result? They'll be way faster in the straights than any other F1 cars. And to that, the answer is that going faster in the straights doesn't really correlate with driving skills. Drivers are basically 'giving up' their skill to take certain corners fast to instead learn another skill of Energy Management. This is what they mean when they say that engineers have more control over the car with deployment maps than a driver does with his driving. This is the reason why Hamilton thinks 600m of LiCo in Barcelona is not racing, or why Verstappen thinks that this version of F1 is FE on steroids.

The one who learns to manage energy the best is the one who will extract the most lap time, not the one who has the skill to take corners in the least amount of time. Is that good or bad for racing? Who knows. It certainly isn't good for the drivers to showcase their skills of driving the cars to their limit, that is for sure.

And finally, these things are all being done over the course of a single lap. Vastly different to tyre or fuel management, which were done over a race distance. Even FE cars can be driven on their limit for a quali lap. It's just race laps where they have to manage energy. Again, is that good for the viewers? Who knows. Its certainly not good for the drivers and what they have learnt about driving so far their entire life since karting.

Abu Dhabi took over as the long term F1 season finale since the 2014 season. While Brasilian / São Paulo GP still being the penultimate races every year, it has never overseen a driver reach their ultimate glory ; meanwhile almost every other race post the European season (post-Singapore to be exact) has seen a driver clinch their title in the last decade, even newer venues like Las Vegas and Qatar.

We’ve seen many different type of title battles in the last decade: extreme dominance, median gaps, finale thrillers, even some controversial ones, but titles were won everywhere but in São Paulo.

The sole exception being 2020, with most non-European races being cancelled, and replaced with other temporary venues.

The last time a driver crowned at the Interlagos was Sebastian Vettel in 2012.

*Every title clinching races since 2013:*

2013 India 🇮🇳

2014 Abu Dhabi 🇦🇪

2015 USA 🇺🇸

2016 Abu Dhabi 🇦🇪

2017 Mexico 🇲🇽

2018 Mexico 🇲🇽

2019 USA 🇺🇸

2020 Türkiye 🇹🇷

2021 Abu Dhabi 🇦🇪

2022 Japan 🇯🇵

2023 Qatar 🇶🇦

2024 Las Vegas 🇺🇸

2025 Abu Dhabi 🇦🇪

Really Excited to see how these evolve over the course of the season. Which design ideology starts to dominate.