In the round-up: Cadillac’s announcement it will enter Formula 1 as an engine manufacturer in 2028 won’t lead Andretti to delay its arrival.
In brief
Andretti still wants to enter F1 as soon as possible
The earliest Michael Andretti’s planned team can make it onto the grid is 2025, one year before a major change in F1’s technical regulations. Andretti previously announced it would enter in conjunction with General Motors brand Cadillac, but has not yet agreed commercial terms for joining the world championship with its owner Liberty Media.
Cadillac announced yesterday it plans to enter as an engine manufacturer in 2028. Despite that, Andretti remains committed to entering sooner.
“This [announcement] does not mean that Andretti is deferring its planned entry,” an Andretti spokesperson told RaceFans. “Andretti Cadillac will still enter F1 as soon as possible. The team would then compete under GM power starting in 2028.”
Williams adds Lia Block to their academy
Williams have made a surprise signing with the latest addition to their academy: 17-year-old off-road racer Lia Block.
The American was a class champion in the USA’s national rally championship this year and has also raced in Extreme E and the Nitrocross rallycross series. Her Nitrocross season continues into 2024, when she will also move into single-seater racing by driving in the Formula 4-spec, all-female F1 Academy series for the ART Grand Prix team, alongside new McLaren junior Bianca Bustamante.
“I’m so excited to be joining the Williams Driver Academy and competing in F1 Academy in 2024,” said Block. “This is something I never could have dreamed of. I can’t wait to embrace this new experience and learn as much as possible.”
Her father Ken, who died earlier this year, was a winner in major rallycross championships and competed in the World Rally Championship. He was best known for his Gymkhana stunt driving video series.
Ecclestone wanted F1 to race down Las Vegas’s Strip in the 1980s
Bernie Ecclestone, who headed F1 before Liberty Media took over the championship, says he tried to take the series to the Las Vegas Strip when it held a pair of races in the city in the early eighties.
The race, run in 1981 and ’82, marked F1’s first visit to the city of Las Vegas which it returns to this weekend for the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix. While drivers will be racing down the city’s famous strip on Saturday, the car park of the Caesars Palace hotel was used for the first two races.
“The only problem last time was we couldn’t run on the Strip, which is what I wanted to do,” Ecclestone told Reuters. “I wanted to make sure when somebody turned their television on they knew they were in Vegas, not in the desert. They promised me ‘yes, we can do it’.
“The first year we ran in this area which was Caesars Palace car park, or part of it, but it was on the understanding that the following year we’d be able to do what I had in mind. But it never happened because the people in Vegas, all the hotels, couldn’t see that it was going to be any good for them.”
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