As I drove past Neudrossenfeld, it struck me that this ought to be the German name for Formula 1 coverage on the Internet. Neudrossenfeld, in my mind at least, means “new field of dross”, as German words are often composite by nature, which means that the nation cobbles together words to create new ones.
I have heard some folk describe German as a Lego-like language because of these composite words, which end up with expressions like freundschaftsbeziehungen or rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften. You can look them up if you are interested.
A simple example of this would be Schuhmacher, which is made up of schuh (shoe) and macher (maker). However, since Michael, Ralf and Mick came along, some Germans seem to think the word means racing driver.
Still, a little knowledge about anything is dangerous. Having said that, I have some vague idea. We all do funny things in our lives, particularly if people asks us nicely. Years ago, when I was trying to learn some German, my tutor asked me to be in a German language play. I thought this was rather a daft idea as I didn’t speak German, but he said it would be easy enough. All I had to do was to learn all the lines parrot-fashion and say them at the right moment. Amazingly this worked. And thus I would have been able to write on my CV (not that I actually had one) that I had been in a German play…
I remember almost nothing of this adventure except that the aforementioned tutor, was mad about the works of Richard Wagner and would disappear off to Bayreuth each summer to see performances of Der Ring des Nibelungen (an operatic cycle which consists of four four-hour operas), which if my mathematics is correct, goes on for 16 hours.
To be fair, Wagner did write the Ride of the Valkyrie, which I believe is the prelude to the third and final act of “Die Walkure”, which is the second of the four operas. This is a brilliant piece of music which everyone of a certain age knows because it was used in an extraordinary scene in Francis Ford Coppola’s movie Apocalypse Now.
My tutor also wrote learned books about Wagner’s letters and always used to say that I must go to Bayreuth one day. Rather more than 40 years later, I decided to finally do that on my journey between Spa and Budapest and thus I found myself in Neudrossenfeld…
Readers may remember that last year, doing the route the other way round, I ended up in Berlin, so the fact that the route is not a straight line should not make any difference. One can do quite a lot in three days, if you have the mind to do so, and German autobahns still have sections where you can drive at impressive speeds, which makes it much more interesting that the rest of Europe.
Anyway, I like to think I understand German, but if I ever try to speak it, the hotel receptionist immediately breaks into perfect English, which is lovely, but rather depressing.
The Spa weekend was pretty much what I expected it to be. It was sunny. It rained. There were traffic jams. Oscar Piastri won.
As I wrote in my column in GP+ magazine, “when you go to Spa you must always remember that it is a racing circuit that has the character of a bunny-boiler. It changes personality in a flash. One day it can be beautiful and utterly charming; the next it can be a bitch of a place, where all you want to do is leave. You need to pack gumboots and shorts, sunglasses and heavy-duty wet-weather gear…”
But, as much as I try to hate Spa, it always ends up seducing me because it is just such a wonderful place to go motor racing. The drivers love it, but they know that it can be a treacherous place, even with all the safety crusades that have taken place over the years. The risks and the thrills and the speed make Spa a special place and very few drivers have a bad word to say about the place. The best moment for them are in qualifying when they are flat out they can show the world what they can do. It’s awesome stuff to watch, but when things go wrong at Spa, they can go wrong in a big way.
I always stay in Germany for the Belgian Grand Prix, a decision designed to reduce costs, but also to punish all the hoteliers of Wallonia for being too greedy. I understand that they want to make as much money as possible on their big weekend of the year, but they should remember that F1 folk have to pay for 24 big weekends each summer, so they can collect their money from others. This meant that I was well-placed to begin a German odyssey, and I spent the first hour or so wiggling about, trying to get out of the Eifel mountains. I could have gone to the Nürburging, but I wasn’t really interested in “a flyby”. After that I just worked my way across Germany, ending up in Wurzburg. I was tired and getting there was easy.
Right now, I am in Görlitz, a town on the German-Polish border. This not really on the straight line between from Spa to Budapest, but I’ve done the logical route far too many times and I wanted to do something different. Who knows where I will end up tomorrow? I blame this on Joseph Stalin (the last Russian dictator before Vlad) because if he had not been such a nasty murderous bastard, the east of Europe would have been open to the world in the 1980s and I would have explored it all long ago. Sadly, in those post-Stalinist days Europe was divided by a thing that Winston Churchill labelled “The Iron Curtain” and so I had very little chance to explore. I am making up for it now.
Anyway, Spa was pretty quiet when it came to real news. I reckon that we will soon hear that Max Verstappen will be staying at Red Bull in 2026. His contract renews automatically if he is third or above in the Drivers’ World Championship at the end of July. Thursday is the end of July, so I suspect we will hear an announcement on Friday. There continues to be chatter about who will drive for Cadillac although I have to admit that I do not see it being that important as it would be a miracle if the new team does anything other than finishing last. F1 is not easy. Just as Luca de Meo… the former head of Renault, who made a pig’s ear of the F1 team recently known as Alpine. There were some interesting stories about the Alpine executive advisor, written by a US investigative reporter called Whitney Webb on her Unlimited Hangout blog. I won’t go into too much detail, suffice to say that the name Briatore is heavily linked in this article with a couple of blokes called Trump and Epstein, and I am not talking about the US Grand Prix promoter Bobby Epstein. Whether it will make any difference to Briatore’s position in F1 remains to be seen, but it is hard to imagine that this is the sort of PR that F1 wants at the moment.
F1 is still on a high and the latest numbers from the box office for the F1 movie continue to impress. The movie has had receipts reaching $509 million, after a month in cinemas. The word is that the film will be back in IMAX theatres again next month thanks to its good performance.
Elsewhere, Formula E is once again trying to jump on to the F1 bandwagon and there is now talk that the all-electric series is trying to take over from F1 at Zandvoort, after the current Dutch GP deal finishes next year. Zandvoort does need to get some more events but given the history of FE races, it might not be a long-lasting deal.
Spa, in the meantime, is now busy trying to extend its Formula 1 contract, which runs until after the race in 2031. When I say expand, I mean that the current deal is for four races over six years, with Grands Prix in 2026, 2027, 2029 and 2031, but no Grand Prix in 2028 and 2030. The F1 group may wish to expand its global footprint by alternating events but this makes little sense finally for any race promoter because you have fixed costs every year and only one pay-day. There has been much speculation that Barcelona might be willing to do such a deal, having lost the Spanish Grand Prix to Madrid, but F1 is not so keen on having two races in the same country and wants to develop alternation in order to get more countries involved in Formula 1.
It seems that the Belgians have decided that it is best to secure the two missing years to maintain continuity and to show F1 that Belgium wants to continue its long-running history with F1. The Wallonia region has been investing in Spa and it is only logical to try to get a race every year. This year’s crowd was a record 389,000 over the three days. We hear that the region, which pays most of the fees is looking for more cash, but the good news is that local politician Georges-Louis Bouchez, who is a big Formula 1 fan, argues that the publicly-owned regional investment company should open up to more private investors to increase its available capital which will allow it to invest more to help develop the economy. This is sound logic. MotoGP, which is now owned by Formula 1, has announced that it will host a race at the Autodrome in Buenos Aires in 2027. It is anticipated that if Franco Colapinto can achieve more in F1, there could be an Argentine Grand Prix in F1 in 2028.
Over in the US, I think NASCAR hit on a great idea when it was announced that Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster would be the grand marshal at the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis. Sadly, the monster did not deliver the all-important “Gentlemen, start your engines” message, for reasons that no-one really understands. I think F1 should employ the blue furry thing to wave the chequered flag at some race because kids remember this sort of thing and they become fans as a result. The Muppets are now owned by Disney and F1 recently signed a promotional deal with the firm and I think that while Mickey and Donald might suit old folks, the Cookie Monster would be a better F1 ambassador, although perhaps the monster’s sentence construction might not be great. Still, there are a few folk in F1 who understand the English language less than the Monster… so he could rush about saying “Me like Oscar” and other such things.
This is not as weird as reality and perhaps the most interesting thing at the moment in F1 is that Frederic Vasseur is now being defended by his rivals, rather than by Ferrari management. You do have to wonder if the world is entirely sensible when Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff says that Ferrari would not find a better if it got rid of Vasseur. There remains no contract for Fred in 2026 and a thunderous silence from the high-ups in Maranello… and if Christian Horner can be moved on from his role, anything can happen.
If you want all the best stuff that Joe Saward writes about F1, you should click here and get a weekly insight into global motorsport news… but wait a few weeks because there will be two issues fewer than normal in August as Joe takes time off during the summer break.
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