, and Piastri who if they hadn’t pitted early and toughed out the medium tyre would have been a much better chance of 2nd or a tilt at Max.He got no luck with full SC- the 20 second he had advantage was wiped out in a stroke.Guy Smiley wrote: Tue May 20, 2025 9:13 am I didn’t say it was to his advantage, I said he got all the luck.. the timing of the SCs worked well for him and his tyre life. Contrast with LeClerc who definitely got the wrong end of the stick with both SCs, and Piastri who if they hadn’t pitted early and toughed out the medium tyre would have been a much better chance of 2nd or a tilt at Max.
I think RB have been sandbagging a little over the last few rounds. Miami doesn’t suit their car so much but they had speed. Then they’re right back in it at Imola. They’re back. We could be in for a classic season with several drivers vying for race wins.
F2 race earlier in the day. Porsche Cup also had a Turn 1 crash.Slick wrote: Sun May 25, 2025 8:27 pm Did anyone else see the reports of a 12 car pile up on the first lap in Monaco? Heard a couple of people taking about it in the afternoon and was annoyed as I was watching the highlights later, then my wife told me after I’d finished that she had heard the same but hadn’t said anything!
AhhSandstorm wrote: Sun May 25, 2025 8:49 pmF2 race earlier in the day. Porsche Cup also had a Turn 1 crash.Slick wrote: Sun May 25, 2025 8:27 pm Did anyone else see the reports of a 12 car pile up on the first lap in Monaco? Heard a couple of people taking about it in the afternoon and was annoyed as I was watching the highlights later, then my wife told me after I’d finished that she had heard the same but hadn’t said anything!
. But I’m pretty sure it was reported, albeit briefly, on the BBC news site as being the F1 raceI saw George Russell was suggesting a couple of time trials (he called them qualifying races) on the Saturday and Sunday which might not be a bad idea.Lobby wrote: Mon May 26, 2025 9:59 am The Monaco F1 race was even more farcical than usual. Mandating 2 pit stops was supposed to introduce some jeopardy on a track where overtaking is impossible, but instead resulted in Lawson, Albon and Sainz pootling round the track at about 50 mph to hold up all the drivers behind them to allow their teammates space to make 2 pitstops and not drop a place.
If they want to have an actual race, they either need to make the cars slimmer for Monaco so there is room to overtake, or drop it from the calendar and have them race on a proper track.
He’s such a cock during and after races. I like him a lot in between. I totally get being a different beast during competition but he really needs to stop being such a petulant child.Punter15 wrote: Sun Jun 01, 2025 6:21 pm Verstappen is such a spoilt little fanny.
‘Does it matter?’ Yes it does you cock.
Actually got a proper sleep last night for a change so I didn't watch the race and had to scroll through a couple of highlights vids to cover it...Slick wrote: Sun Jun 01, 2025 9:11 pmHe’s such a cock during and after races. I like him a lot in between. I totally get being a different beast during competition but he really needs to stop being such a petulant child.Punter15 wrote: Sun Jun 01, 2025 6:21 pm Verstappen is such a spoilt little fanny.
‘Does it matter?’ Yes it does you cock.
Thought the female questioner from SKY/C4 did a really nice job of not collapsing to his shit
Verstappen is one disciplinary point away from a ban apparently.Guy Smiley wrote: Sun Jun 01, 2025 11:08 pmActually got a proper sleep last night for a change so I didn't watch the race and had to scroll through a couple of highlights vids to cover it...Slick wrote: Sun Jun 01, 2025 9:11 pmHe’s such a cock during and after races. I like him a lot in between. I totally get being a different beast during competition but he really needs to stop being such a petulant child.Punter15 wrote: Sun Jun 01, 2025 6:21 pm Verstappen is such a spoilt little fanny.
‘Does it matter?’ Yes it does you cock.
Thought the female questioner from SKY/C4 did a really nice job of not collapsing to his shit
it looks for all the world as if Max just drives into the side of Russell's Merc. Russell is clearly in front, in the corner.
That should be a ban, not a time penalty. I can't see how there's any condoning the action.
Here's the issue with Max... he's obviously a very good driver with a rare talent, but he has a serious character flaw when it comes to dealing with on track pressure. He's got a history of recklessly dangerous acts putting other drivers at risk along with his habit of first corner 'passes' that leave him in clear air when he should give position back.
He's good enough to let his driving do the talking but he falls into the trap of spoilt brat petulance that can be quite dangerous and gets a free ride from many for that when he should be getting a meaningful penalty.
Yeah, he's the worst when it comes to penalty points accumulation. He still gets to finish the race and show up again next round despite that. The stewards should show some gumption and black flag the twat for that sort of behaviour, then hand down a race ban as well.Big D wrote: Mon Jun 02, 2025 9:51 am Verstappen is one disciplinary point away from a ban apparently.
Schumacher had some class and personality off the track (so did Vettel who everyone loved by the end of his career).Rhubarb & Custard wrote: Mon Jun 02, 2025 1:57 pm Schumi had one of the most famous driving into another car moments intentionally ever, and he came back to be very highly regarded, even by British racing fans who might have felt the most annoyed about his crashing into Hill. So one never knows. That said this latest from Max is just very odd, and on the face of it simply dangerous for no good reason, that first bump by Russell into him isn't close to justification
Stroll shouldn't have a seat. He is awful. Lucky is old man is loaded.Guy Smiley wrote: Mon Jun 02, 2025 10:14 amYeah, he's the worst when it comes to penalty points accumulation. He still gets to finish the race and show up again next round despite that. The stewards should show some gumption and black flag the twat for that sort of behaviour, then hand down a race ban as well.Big D wrote: Mon Jun 02, 2025 9:51 am Verstappen is one disciplinary point away from a ban apparently.
You don't stop dangerous behaviour by accommodating it... it's well past time drivers like Max actually had to face some serious consequences.
Lawson's another one who needs to learn a lesson regarding driving into people. Stroll as well, if he actually comes back from this apparent wrist / arm injury.
While there is a difference between driving into someone because you’re a cūnt and because you are useless, the result is the same. Hang them both from the gantry.Big D wrote: Mon Jun 02, 2025 3:12 pmStroll shouldn't have a seat. He is awful. Lucky is old man is loaded.Guy Smiley wrote: Mon Jun 02, 2025 10:14 amYeah, he's the worst when it comes to penalty points accumulation. He still gets to finish the race and show up again next round despite that. The stewards should show some gumption and black flag the twat for that sort of behaviour, then hand down a race ban as well.Big D wrote: Mon Jun 02, 2025 9:51 am Verstappen is one disciplinary point away from a ban apparently.
You don't stop dangerous behaviour by accommodating it... it's well past time drivers like Max actually had to face some serious consequences.
Lawson's another one who needs to learn a lesson regarding driving into people. Stroll as well, if he actually comes back from this apparent wrist / arm injury.
If we punish useless fuckers who are only there because of the cash they bring as well as petulant children then we are going to need a bigger gantry.Punter15 wrote: Mon Jun 02, 2025 5:56 pmWhile there is a difference between driving into someone because you’re a cūnt and because you are useless, the result is the same. Hang them both from the gantry.Big D wrote: Mon Jun 02, 2025 3:12 pmStroll shouldn't have a seat. He is awful. Lucky is old man is loaded.Guy Smiley wrote: Mon Jun 02, 2025 10:14 am
Yeah, he's the worst when it comes to penalty points accumulation. He still gets to finish the race and show up again next round despite that. The stewards should show some gumption and black flag the twat for that sort of behaviour, then hand down a race ban as well.
You don't stop dangerous behaviour by accommodating it... it's well past time drivers like Max actually had to face some serious consequences.
Lawson's another one who needs to learn a lesson regarding driving into people. Stroll as well, if he actually comes back from this apparent wrist / arm injury.
We'll have to find a way of keeping Williams funded too, as they've brought a bunch of the aforementioned tossers into F1Dinsdale Piranha wrote: Mon Jun 02, 2025 6:02 pmIf we punish useless fuckers who are only there because of the cash they bring as well as petulant children then we are going to need a bigger gantry.Punter15 wrote: Mon Jun 02, 2025 5:56 pmWhile there is a difference between driving into someone because you’re a cūnt and because you are useless, the result is the same. Hang them both from the gantry.Big D wrote: Mon Jun 02, 2025 3:12 pm
Stroll shouldn't have a seat. He is awful. Lucky is old man is loaded.
This is a story about forces — because, in a way, everything is. It’s about the forces which hold our world together, from those which govern the tiny particles within an atom, to those which draw people across the face of our planet. It’s about the power of money, and the force that can exert on a field of human endeavour like a sport. It’s about the force of character, of perseverance, of sheer talent, and how sometimes, that force just cuts through.
It’s about formulas: those by which we understand our world, and those by which we divide it into categories. It’s about a father and son, and how, together, they reached the pinnacle of motor racing. And it is also, in no small part, about Sir Isaac Newton. We’ll come back to him later.
If you’ve watched Formula 1 this season, chances are you’ll have noticed the young French driver Isack Hadjar. Along with Kimi Antonelli of Mercedes, he has been the most impressive of the six rookies. After sliding off the track on the formation lap of his first grand prix in Australia, Hadjar has barely put a foot wrong. He’s finished in the points in his past three races: ninth in Emilia-Romagna, sixth in Monaco and seventh in Spain.
Having been by no means the most hyped of the rookie class, Hadjar has been a revelation, easily outperforming the two other drivers in the Red Bull stable besides Max Verstappen, Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda, who have exchanged the roles of Verstappen’s team-mate and Hadjar’s at the junior Racing Bulls outfit.
For the 20-year-old Parisian, like most drivers, F1 is merely the culmination of his passage through the tiers of this sport, a long and gruelling climb which reads like a countdown to ignition: F4, F3, F2.
“The jump to the next level has always been quite similar,” he says. “But in F1, every aspect, whether it’s the car or the work you do in front of a screen with the engineers, or even everyday life away from the track . . . it’s an exponential leap, it’s another dimension.”
If that language strikes you as suggesting an acquaintance with the worlds of science and mathematics, you would be right. Isack’s father, Yassine Hadjar, is a quantum physicist. He is a senior researcher at the University of Technology of Troyes, in the Laboratory of Light, Nanomaterials and Nanotechnologies. He has co-authored papers with titles such as Compact interferometer transducer based on surface plasmon phase resonance.
‘From when I was very little, I just wanted to play cars’
The video conversation that the three of us have a few days before the Spanish Grand Prix, with Isack wearing the liveried apparel of Racing Bulls and Yassine sitting beside him in his “driver room”, is the newest part of a shared journey which began in the family home in the suburb of Issy, to the southwest of Paris, with Isack rolling a die-cast car over the varied terrains of their front room — “this very one”, he says, holding up a miniature of Lightning McQueen from his favourite childhood film, Cars. In the background, the spell and spectacle of Formula 1 on television — the sound, the colours, the cars rising shimmeringly out of a dip — began to work on his subconscious.
“From when I was very little, I just wanted to play cars,” he says. “Maybe I was just programmed that way. As for F1, my dad would have it on the telly. He put me in a kart when I was five. I started in tiny karting races, ‘learner races’, they were called.”
Hadjar says he was “programmed” to approach driving in a rigorous way and his passion for France and Algeria was clear from an early age
FAMILY HANDOUT
A little after that, Yassine enrolled him in a weekend karting school, “Because when you like something, the best thing is to go to school and study it,” he says. “That’s just how I am, I’m an education man through and through. So, karting school it was. And that’s how the adventure . . .”
Isack chimes in, “. . . how the adventure begins.” At the beginning, Formula 1 was never the grand plan, but as Yassine puts it, “the kid unwound the thread, and we — his mother and I — just kept following it.”
Isack recalls his first three years in karting, from the age of seven to nine, as his happiest. “It was the bottom rung of the ladder, but that’s when I loved it the most,” he says. “There was no pressure, just pure racing, for the sheer fun of it.”
To a normal, middle-class family steeped in academia, a career in F1 seemed neither imaginable nor accessible, and so, at that stage, it exerted no gravity. “This was never in our frame of reality,” Isack says. “It was never mapped out like that,” Yassine adds. “What was mapped out for him was that he would do his studies. He was predestined for university.”
As Isack continued, though, it became clear that his talent demanded not only indulgence, but also fulfilment. And as the dream of racing in F1 became more real, with every season he felt the stress rise and the enjoyment diminish. “He had to make up for what we lacked in terms of funds,” Yassine says. “And that was horrible in terms of pressure.”
To explain the unevenness of Isack’s world, he reaches into his own for an analogy. “At school, you don’t have one student with a calculator which can do calculus, and another student doing everything on paper. Either calculators aren’t allowed, or they both get one. But that’s not how it works in motor sport: you can have a calculator, as long as your parents can afford one.”
Perhaps that’s why the Hadjars feel such an affinity with Anthony and Lewis Hamilton, another father-son duo who had to scrap and scrimp to join the scions and princelings of this sport. Lewis is Isack’s idol, and when he crashed in Australia and was distraught at his mistake, Anthony sought him out for a consoling hug. “I wasn’t there when he went off, I had only just arrived with [Isack’s] mum,” Yassine says. “That he did that, when he didn’t have to: I found it a truly exceptional gesture.”
These days, Isack’s mother, Randa, an HR director who helps to manage his career, is the more visible presence at grands prix. Yassine was the one who accompanied Isack at the outset of his journey, acting in the junior formulas as his son’s race mechanic. “He’s my binôme,” says Isack, a word which in informal French means “buddy” or “partner in crime”, but which also has a deeper, mathematical meaning: binomial, an expression with two terms, like 2x + 4y; as in, most famously, the binomial theorem of Sir Isaac Newton.
It was Newton, Yassine says, whose laws of motion first captivated him, as a 15-year-old in physics class at his lycée in Algeria. As you might already have guessed, Isack is named after him. Yassine “always had a thing for cars”, he says, but no means of nurturing this passion.
“In Algeria, there’s no karting, no way of learning to drive a racing car,” he says. “We were completely cut off from F1, it simply wasn’t a thing.” Then, one day, he was watching a Japanese manga cartoon which mentioned Formula 1, and the name Niki Lauda. He was transfixed. “There was no internet, no library where I could look at press cuttings about him,” he says. But nor could he forget what he had heard, that whisper of speed and daring from a foreign land.
At the same time, the political climate in Algeria was becoming tense, and Yassine’s interest in physics, a fascination kindled behind closed doors, was now seeking an open one. He decided, at the age of 18, to emigrate to France. There, he was able to watch grands prix on Sundays, and the sport’s main characters stared out from every newsstand.
His helmet is decorated with an assortment of algebraic formulas
Yassine’s academic career advanced quickly. After five years, he had reached a level equivalent to a postgraduate MPhil, known then as a DEA. He chose to apply to the most prestigious and exclusive course known to him: the DEA in quantum physics at the École Normale Supérieure. He was one of 18 students accepted.
“It’s a family trait,” Isack says. “We pursue something to the highest possible level, or we don’t do it at all.” His driver’s helmet, the internet has not failed to notice, is decorated with an assortment of algebraic formulas more commonly chalked on blackboards by professors with leather elbow-patches: Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, Schrödinger’s equation, the Planck relation, the Dirac equation. “They are the formulas which underpin the world in which we live,” Isack explains, nonchalantly, adding that some of them, like Bernoulli’s principle of fluid dynamics, have a direct relevance to the workings of an F1 car.
But the meaning of the helmet runs deeper than that. These equations were Yassine’s portal; now his son wears them as his armour. “It tells you where I come from,” Isack says. “In F1, a lot of people come from money,” Yassine adds. “What I hope for Isack is that he never loses touch with the world of scientists, those who are not in the spotlight.
“Nobody talks about physicists. A physicist does their work, goes to university, toils away in the lab, with no media or anything like that. They have to fight to get funding, to scrape together that 10,000 or 20,000 euros to run an experiment. And so the equations [on the helmet] are also . . .”
Isack finishes the thought: “An appeal.”
“Exactly, an appeal,” Yassine says. “Because, if you’re in an F1 car, with all that technology — and not just an F1 car, it could be a machine in a hospital, or a scanner — it all comes back to physicists. They’re what keeps this world turning smoothly. Without them, everything grinds to a halt.”
There is also, of course, a significant scientific and technical element to the job of an F1 driver: they are, as Isack has put it, the primary sensor that their teams rely on for feedback. And it is here, it becomes clear, that Yassine, though he may no longer be Isack’s mechanic, remains his guiding influence. How much, I ask Isack, does he draw in that behind-the-scenes work on his father’s example? “That’s the basis of this whole project,” he says matter-of-factly. “It was my father’s experiment.” Yassine interjects: “And it’s still in progress!”
His theory was that F1 in particular, where the driver is not just an athlete with great reflexes, but a pilot charged with steering an ongoing process of mechanical refinement, would be ideally served by the same principles he would have impressed upon Isack had he followed him into science: unstinting rigour, scholarly discipline, methodical analysis. If his son was set on entering a world of chaos and flux, he would arm him with what a physicist knows best: constants.
“I made things very clear to him,” he says. “He stayed in school as long as possible, up until the Bac, in an academic environment. So he knows what it’s like to take instruction from a teacher, to have a methodology, to solve problems, and to manage the stress of it all, because school is also a grounding in that.
“We forced him to have that academic approach, to the detriment of his karting. In the junior formulas, it doesn’t add much value; the best thing you can do at those levels is just drive, drive, drive. There’s not a huge problem-solving element. But now that he’s in F1, he has the approach it takes.”
‘I’m 20 years old and I’ve been programmed for this since boyhood’
Sport does not lack for father-son stories. There are myriad tales of footballers who are the sons of footballers, boxers who are the sons of boxers, jockeys who are the sons of trainers. What is nice about those stories is the sameness, the closeness, the sense of carrying on the family business. When I first discovered Isack’s father’s occupation, I thought this story would be the quirky antithesis of that: a tale of father and son whose professional worlds are worlds apart. What could be more different, after all, than the milieu of a quantum physicist, the long hours of selfless inquest over a microscope, and that of a racing driver, a kinetic blur of glamour and ambition played out under a microscope.
But what’s magical about the coexistence of Isack and Yassine’s worlds, I realised, is not the distance between them, but the interaction; what happens when you bring two particles of our world which have almost never before been in proximity, elite sport and quantum physics, into contact; how the force of one acts on the other.
“I’m 20 years old and I’ve been programmed for this since boyhood,” Isack says. “To approach things scientifically, the way my father drummed into me — that’s never going to leave me. The work that I do ‘behind’ the car is what’s going to take me to another dimension as a driver.”
Whether he will one day be the Formula 1 world champion, no one knows. But what has carried him this far, and may carry him further yet, is the same meticulous diligence which transported his father from a classroom in Algeria to the leading edge of scientific research. As Newton found out all those years ago, the apple doesn’t fall from the tree.
Human Rights legislation prevents employers from doing that kind of thing !Insane_Homer wrote: Fri Jun 06, 2025 1:29 pm How come not a single F1 journo has had the foresight to get hold of Stroll's team radio transcripts from the last 3,4,5 race weekends and counted the number of times he's moaned about his wrist?
Yeah really enjoyed it, especially being intellectually erectGuy Smiley wrote: Fri Jun 06, 2025 4:49 pm That article on Hadjar is really good reading, Slick.
Really good. Intellectually erect sort of thing. Heartwarming and inspiring.
Are you Dr Evil?Flockwitt wrote: Fri Jun 06, 2025 9:05 pm It's a wierd thing, this human potential across the globe and amongst us. I remember going upriver in Borneo, Sarawak, to a long house where you could stay for free, just roll in and the tribe'd put you up. That's the communial building where everbody in the tribe lived. I'd pulled down a wicker basket hanging from the roof in the living room as it were, there were a fair few of them, to discover it was full of human skulls. You see grandad in the corner there to get married had to go and get a skull. Yep, actual headhunters. Now the chief of this tribe was barely 2nd generation non-headhunter, and he was one of the most impressive individuals I've ever met in my life. Focused, utterly professional in his demenor and actions who radiated considered thought and charisma. Handled family disputes, managed the tribes finances and purchases (I met him again when he came down to Sibu for business), education (they got volunteer teachers to come over from Malaysia proper). Spoke a bunch of different languages including English and Mandarin. An extraoridinarily intelligent and talented man capable of anything.
His potential was not wasted as it were, but I find it utterly facinating this source of ability that can be found anywhere amongst anybody. And you have to realize in wars and despotism how much of this goes to waste.
The older I get the more I realise how narrow minded my views as a young man were. That growing awareness has a lot to do with travel, among other factors.Flockwitt wrote: Fri Jun 06, 2025 9:05 pm It's a wierd thing, this human potential across the globe and amongst us. I remember going upriver in Borneo, Sarawak, to a long house where you could stay for free, just roll in and the tribe'd put you up. That's the communial building where everbody in the tribe lived. I'd pulled down a wicker basket hanging from the roof in the living room as it were, there were a fair few of them, to discover it was full of human skulls. You see grandad in the corner there to get married had to go and get a skull. Yep, actual headhunters. Now the chief of this tribe was barely 2nd generation non-headhunter, and he was one of the most impressive individuals I've ever met in my life. Focused, utterly professional in his demenor and actions who radiated considered thought and charisma. Handled family disputes, managed the tribes finances and purchases (I met him again when he came down to Sibu for business), education (they got volunteer teachers to come over from Malaysia proper). Spoke a bunch of different languages including English and Mandarin. An extraoridinarily intelligent and talented man capable of anything.
His potential was not wasted as it were, but I find it utterly facinating this source of ability that can be found anywhere amongst anybody. And you have to realize in wars and despotism how much of this goes to waste.
Flockwitt wrote: Fri Jun 06, 2025 9:05 pm It's a wierd thing, this human potential across the globe and amongst us. I remember going upriver in Borneo, Sarawak, to a long house where you could stay for free, just roll in and the tribe'd put you up. That's the communial building where everbody in the tribe lived. I'd pulled down a wicker basket hanging from the roof in the living room as it were, there were a fair few of them, to discover it was full of human skulls. You see grandad in the corner there to get married had to go and get a skull. Yep, actual headhunters. Now the chief of this tribe was barely 2nd generation non-headhunter, and he was one of the most impressive individuals I've ever met in my life. Focused, utterly professional in his demenor and actions who radiated considered thought and charisma. Handled family disputes, managed the tribes finances and purchases (I met him again when he came down to Sibu for business), education (they got volunteer teachers to come over from Malaysia proper). Spoke a bunch of different languages including English and Mandarin. An extraoridinarily intelligent and talented man capable of anything.
His potential was not wasted as it were, but I find it utterly facinating this source of ability that can be found anywhere amongst anybody. And you have to realize in wars and despotism how much of this goes to waste.
It's publicly broadcast information ever race. Like when Hadjar's balls where being crushed by his seatbelt in Japanfishfoodie wrote: Fri Jun 06, 2025 2:42 pmHuman Rights legislation prevents employers from doing that kind of thing !Insane_Homer wrote: Fri Jun 06, 2025 1:29 pm How come not a single F1 journo has had the foresight to get hold of Stroll's team radio transcripts from the last 3,4,5 race weekends and counted the number of times he's moaned about his wrist?
and people say Saffers have no sense of humor ....Insane_Homer wrote: Sat Jun 07, 2025 3:52 pmIt's publicly broadcast information ever race. Like when Hadjar's balls where being crushed by his seatbelt in Japanfishfoodie wrote: Fri Jun 06, 2025 2:42 pmHuman Rights legislation prevents employers from doing that kind of thing !Insane_Homer wrote: Fri Jun 06, 2025 1:29 pm How come not a single F1 journo has had the foresight to get hold of Stroll's team radio transcripts from the last 3,4,5 race weekends and counted the number of times he's moaned about his wrist?
Pity. Imola is an interesting track and usually has decent racing.fishfoodie wrote: Tue Jun 10, 2025 2:48 pm Imola officially dropped, & to be replaced by yet another fucking street circuit
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/ar ... 0g7gd4x5xo
