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Welcome back to Prime Tire, where today I still can’t fathom the calm that’s followed the Formula One storm of Zandvoort-Monza, with the lull ahead of Baku next week.
That’s what happens when the main first portion of 2025 is so jam packed.
The season has now got more quiet troughs to join the interspersed race weekend peaks, before the final triple header of Las Vegas-Qatar-Abu Dhabi. That run will close out the championship that will either go to Oscar Piastri or Lando Norris, as good as Max Verstappen was for Red Bull in winning in Italy last weekend.
I’m Alex, and Luke Smith will be along later.
How McLaren Mateship ComparesPiastri vs Norris evokes forgotten F1 traditions
“Mateship is an Australian cultural idiom that embodies equality, loyalty and friendship.” There you go, thanks to the internet’s go-to encyclopedia. And yes, I am crowbarring that in to describe the current state of intra-McLaren title fight simply because Piastri hails from Down Under.
I don’t think he’d mind, he’s a very laid back bloke. He even happily chatted to members of the F1 press corps at his 21st birthday party.
But lots of people did object to how Piastri handled the end of last week’s Italian Grand Prix. Specifically, handing second place back to Norris, after the Briton’s slow pitstop. Many more couldn’t understand McLaren for putting Piastri in such a situation.
Piastri claimed he “wouldn’t regret” losing the 2025 title by the three-point margin he swung back Norris’ way come the season’s end. And Patrick Iversen eloquently explained why he didn’t believe this, nor agree with Piastri’s decision to acquiesce to McLaren’s request, to you in Tuesday’s PT.
Pat followed Luke arguing that something just “feels off” about the jovial nature of the 2025 title fight as it currently stands.
My colleagues are right. As F1 observers, we’ve ended up conditioned to think an intra-team title fight must get nasty because the most famous examples of this situation have contained such a twist.
From Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost at McLaren in the 1980s, to Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton with Mercedes in the 2010s.
Even the fleeting title challenge of Piastri’s manager, Mark Webber, against his Red Bull teammate Sebastian Vettel (and others) in 2010 contained the immortal line of needle, “not bad for a number two driver,” after Webber’s point-making win in the 2010 British GP. And then, as Luke covered, Vettel stuck his own needle in with the needless Malaysia 2013 Red Bull team orders debacle.
Going back in F1 history, famous team boss Enzo Ferrari was very much not of the modern McLaren school of intra-team harmony. The duels between many of the drivers at his eponymous Italian squad have gone down in F1 legend. None more famous, and tragic, than Gilles Villeneuve and Didier Pironi in 1982.
But this actually makes the tale of the 1956 Italian GP even more intriguing. There, Peter Collins (car number 26, above) gave his Ferrari over to teammate Juan Manuel Fangio (car number 22, above), while running in third place and with a shot at winning the title — if he could steal the race while the legendary Argentine stood in the pits. Fangio’s car had suffered a broken steering arm.
But, with Stirling Moss and Luigi Musso (who’d refused to hand over his Ferrari to support Fangio) far ahead, Collins was “perfectly content to wait till another year” — according to the race report in then British weekly magazine, Autosport. Collins was killed in a 1958 German GP crash, without ever getting another title chance.
And that’s far from the only example of sporting chivalry in F1 history.
David Purley, Mike Hailwood and Senna are just a few of the true heroes that risked their own safety to try and save peers after terrible accidents. Thankfully, with increased safety standards, this has become far less common.
But F1 still witnessed Vettel checking on Norris after the latter’s Spa 2021 Eau Rouge qualifying shunt and George Russell doing likewise (albeit on foot) after Zhou Guanyu’s scary flip at the start of the 2022 British GP.
Then, in a sporting sense, there are some other famous acts of F1 generosity.
Stirling Moss (right) reassures Mike Hawthorn (center) his result in the 1958 Portuguese GP is safe (Bernard Cahier/Getty Images)
Moss was never certain Fangio hadn’t agreed with Mercedes to leave him ultimately uncontested to win the 1955 British GP in front of his home fans. And Moss himself showed a tremendous level of sportsmanship at the 1958 Portuguese GP (above, right).
There, Moss’ title rival Mike Hawthorn was initially disqualified from second place for restarting his car against the traffic flow on the course (as with car swapping, part of the rules of the era) after a spin.
Having witnessed what happened, Moss went to the race officials to get the verdict overturned. This restored seven points for Hawthorn, who would later win the 1958 world title over Moss by just one point. Moss would never become an F1 world champion.
“The fact that he was my only rival didn’t come into my thinking. Absolutely not,” Moss would later say.
Such things were of a different age. But disagreeing with McLaren’s current approach isn’t wrong. In a world lionized as the “Piranha Club” and with racing tactics getting more aggressive as F1’s world championship history developed, expecting a more selfish approach is understandable.
It’s also a compelling narrative.
Right now, McLaren is showing something different in the modern era. And something rather pleasant at that when you really think it through. It’s worth savoring, even if it isn’t ultimately a call you’d make yourself.
Inside the Paddock with Luke SmithCOTA tracking for one of its biggest U.S. GPs yet
F1’s European rounds are done for the year, so attention shifts to the flyaway races of the title run-in. Two visits to the United States are now looming.
October’s United States Grand Prix in Austin remains one of the biggest races on the calendar, with the crowd level regularly breaking the 400,000 mark. And 2025 is poised to push the event’s own record.
“This year is going to be in the top three attendance-wise,” Bobby Epstein, Circuit of The Americas chairman, told The Athletic on Friday. “We’re still a month away, so it could really push the limits of the biggest year. But we’ll certainly be up there in the top three, which is wonderful.”
Epstein said the F1 movie’s success had provided a “bump” to ticket sales. All the main hospitality clubs are already sold out, and there is great interest in the Garth Brooks show at the track on Saturday night.
Embracing the local culture, COTA is planning to turn Saturday’s qualifying day into “Hat-urday” by encouraging fans (and members of the paddock) to wear cowboy hats. A special COTA cowboy hat is also due to be sold.
“We’re selling thousands of cowboy hats,” Epstein said. “You look at a lot of sports that have events that have traditions. And so we thought, why don’t we have our own tradition?”
COTA’s existing F1 contract expires in 2026, but Epstein was relaxed about talks over a fresh deal with the championship’s organizers, saying there was “no reason why it won’t be here for a long time.”
Why Sainz’s Penalty Appeal MattersZandvoort incident assessment result delayed
Carlos Sainz and Williams still don’t yet know the outcome of their “Right of Review” appeal over the Spaniard’s controversial penalty for colliding with Racing Bulls driver Liam Lawson in the recent Dutch GP.
A hearing with the Zandvoort stewards was convened on Friday afternoon, but the FIA has confirmed to The Athletic that a verdict is now not expected until Saturday.
This all matters because Sainz could yet get the two super license penalty points he received from the stewards (along with a 10-second in-race penalty that can’t be deleted) for what was blatantly a racing incident rescinded. And, if he doesn’t, this just crystalizes a big problem with F1’s racing rules in 2025.
We’ll be running a full assessment on whatever happens early next week, as well as reporting on the full outcome tomorrow.
Carlos Sainz with a puncture after his clash with Liam Lawson in the recent Dutch GP (Marcel van Dorst/EYE4images/NurPhoto/Getty Images)Outside the points
🇳🇱 Max Verstappen is gearing up for his first real-life foray into sportscar racing, in this weekend’s NLS series race at the Nürburgring. It’s unclear so far if he’ll use his Franz Hermann pseudonym while driving a Porsche.
🏆 Earlier this year, Verstappen told Madeline Coleman about his sportscar ambitions — and his desire for anonymity — in this wide-ranging interview.
🇯🇵 This week, Madeline ran through Red Bull’s choices for which driver it will partner Verstappen with in F1 2026. This reveals just how much pressure Yuki Tsunoda is under to save his F1 career.
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(Top photo: Action from the 1956 Italian GP. Ami Guichard/Klemantaski Collection/Getty Images)