Urban concrete truck drivers, specifically the ones in and around NYC and the boroughs, have one of the hardest driving jobs in the world. They have only an hour or two to get a truck full of concrete in nearby NJ or one of the boroughs to Manhattan or a denser part of one of the other boroughs. Regular rush hour and daytime traffic can often turn a 6 mile trip into a 2-3 hour journey so these trucks have to haul ass in a vehicle that is extremely wide and heavy and shoot gaps that are inches wider than the truck. I have an old friend who used to drive one of these trucks and he used to tell me stories about weaving through traffic and changing courses to make that delivery. At one point, he may have even dinged one of Vin Diesel’s side mirrors but was very cool about the whole experience.
The risk of wastage is not really about the cost, since a truck of concrete is only around $1,500 (peanuts compared to the total construction cost in the tens or hundreds of millions) but rather to the production process of the construction project. Concrete slab-pouring crews are well-oiled machines that run around the clock during working shifts and any sort of downtime, even the loss of a truck or two of concrete, can throw off their pace of work and due to the incredibly high overhead cost, cut into their profits significantly. These drivers definitely have a significant amount of pressure to deliver their goods very quickly!
Sorry Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, your car is pretty much only going to get less competitive as the 2021 season drags on, because Scuderia Ferrari says it’s moving “90 to 95 percent” of its focus to developing its 2022 car and the new regulations. It will not risk compromising next year’s car to try and beat McLaren to third in the championship this year.
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2020 was not a good year for Ferrari, as it couldn’t do any better than sixth in the constructors’ championship. After it was forced to rein in its illegal 2019 engine, the car was significantly slower. Imagine that. For 2021, however, the Scuderia has managed to find a way to make its engine more powerful, presumably in a legal fashion this time. The SF21 isn’t as hopeless as 2020’s SF1000 had been.
After the first four races of the season, Ferrari trails behind McLaren by just 5 points, and Charles Leclerc is currently in fifth position in the world drivers’ championship. Clearly the team has found the speed needed to compete at the front of the mid pack. But it wouldn’t take much improvement for Alpine or Alpha Tauri to catch them up.
Laurent Mekies, Ferrari F1 sporting director, has said he has committed to fully focusing on next year’s car. “We are pretty much already in full switch, it’s already the case for us. If you want to put a number to it, if you call it 90 percent, 95 percent, whatever you want to call it, but it’s pretty much where we are.”
“This is very clear to us, we are focused on 2022,” Mekies added. “The fact that the field is tight that you may need a few hundredths or a few tenths to switch from sixth to third will not change our strategy, the focus is on next year. We have switched the large majority of our resources to it already. It doesn’t mean that some details will not change on the car from now onwards, as we all do with what we learn at the racetrack. But the focus is on next year, even if the field is tight. For us it is a clear decision.”
Interestingly, McLaren have taken the opposite tack.
Team boss Andreas Seidl commenting at the Spanish Grand Prix, “If you look since the first test this year onwards we simply tried to continuously bring updates to the car, to make continuously steps forward with the performance We’ve also brought upgrades for example to Portimao, we’ve brought updates for the car also here in free practice. And our plan is to still bring further updates also in the coming races.”
He later added, “It’s obviously a very tight battle, especially with Ferrari, and it’s simply important to make sure we keep bringing upgrades to the car in the next races in order to keep this battle of P3 alive.”
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Mekies seems to be totally fine with Ferrari sinking down to 6th in the championship again this year. It is only the third team (after Haas and Williams) to announce they had no more intention of developing the 2021 chassis. There’s no telling what other teams will do between now and then, but if I were Alpine, I’d be working on some mid-season updates right about now. Good luck with your 2022 car, Ferrari, it sounds like you’re going to need it.
The Haas Formula One Team finally did it. It fired both of its current drivers and replaced them with two young guns that have been competing in the junior ranks of the sport. In 2021, Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin will hit the F1 grid for the first time in their careers. Let’s run you through what you need to know about both of ‘em.
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Mick Schumacher
If you see that last name, you know exactly who this is. Mick Schumacher is Michael Schumacher’s 21-year-old son and a driver that, in part because of his performance and in part because of that loaded last name, has caught the gaze of motorsport pundits around the globe since he first got behind the wheel.
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Let’s run through his stats:
Four top-three finishes in various championships
Leading 2020 Formula 2 points standings
Nine top-three finishes in F2 this year
For a young driver in a competitive world, those are some fairly impressive numbers—certainly far more impressive than other drivers that have ridden to the pinnacle of a racing discipline on the back of a famous name. Expectations will be high for Mick, but there’s no reason to believe he won’t meet them.
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Schumacher joined the Ferrari Driver Academy in January of 2019, so his promotion to Haas makes sense—the team is powered by Ferrari engines.
He was due to make an FP1 outing at the Eifel Grand Prix, but bad weather saw his chance behind the wheel postponed. Instead, the first time we see Mick on track during an F1 race weekend will be the first free practice session in Abu Dhabi.
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Nikita Mazepin
Russian-born 21-year-old Nikita Mazepin is currently sitting third in the Formula 2 championship with two wins and six podium positions to his name. He has also finished within the top three in the GP3 championship and the F3 Asian championship. That said, he hasn’t really been pegged as one of the drivers expected to progress into F1—you’d likely only recognize his name if you avidly watch the junior formulae.
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And he comes along with his fair share of criticism, both of being a pay driver and for his unsportsmanlike behavior, which includes beating the shit out of one of his competitors.
Yes, Mazepin is largely part of the 2021 Haas squad because he has a lot of money. His dad is worth over $7 billion as a result of the family chemical company, and the family was in talks with the Force India team as it went into administration and was ultimately bought out by Lawrence Stroll.
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That said, he’s showing brief glimpses of promise in his career. He’ll need to work hard to achieve consistent results, but I can imagine Haas will cut him some slack if he’s able to cover his bills.
What’s Happening To The Old Lineup?
Current drivers Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen are both looking like they’re done with F1. There’s been a lot of back-and-forth talk about where they’ll end up—IndyCar, IMSA, Formula E, wherever—but this late in the year, finding a seat can be difficult.
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That said, Kevin Magnussen has joined Chip Ganassi Racing’s DPi program in the IMSA series. Grosjean’s plans are currently to be determined.
