Round-up: Ben Sulayem starts re-election bid, Tsunoda endures ‘longest race’ and more

29 comments on “Round-up: Ben Sulayem starts re-election bid, Tsunoda endures ‘longest race’ and more”

1. 

   StefMeister (@stefmeister)
   26th May 2025, 1:34

   The problem with Monaco for me is that the thing that once made Monaco such a special event has been eroded over the past 20 years. That been the challenge.

   The barriers been moved back, The circuit been re-profiled, Opened up & kerbs placed ahead of some of the barriers in key places created more margin for error and took away some areas which once had a high possibility to catch drivers out.

   And then you have the circuit been more regularly resurfaced with tarmac that is similar to what’s used on the permanent venues which took away the dirt, bumps, imperfections and surface changes that also once used to catch drivers out.

   And of course you have the cost reduction regulations of the past 20 years which have taken away the element of unreliability which once used to help create some unpredictability.

   And you have things like parc-ferme regulations which mean the cars you qualify is the same you start the race with which takes away the element we once had where cars could be radically different in terms of performance from qualifying & the race. Be it because the car just didn’t work so well on low fuel or because a team could fix a bad setup overnight and turn a bad qualifying car into a great race car or vice versa.

   And then you have management. Yes it’s always been part of the sport be in tyres, fuel, engines, gearbox’s etc.. But today it feels more artificial and more predictable and they are often so much further off the pace that it reduces the challenge in terms of reducing the risk of mistakes.

   And as i’ve said before this year a positive that can become a negative is how close the field is now. If you have the whole field able to lap within a second of one another then you just don’t have the performance delta to the cars around you to make anything happen and that is an issue on many circuits and not just Monaco.
   1. 

      BobbyJaffa
      26th May 2025, 3:56

      Spoken like a true non-fan.
      1. 

         LosD (@losd)
         26th May 2025, 11:16

         Ah yes, the good old declaring what fans like.
   2. 

      MichaelN
      26th May 2025, 7:38

      Indeed, there used to be a lot more variables. And less neutralisations. I was looking back yesterday at some older results, and if those races from 20 years ago had happened now we’d probably see the majority of laps done under safety cars. Also not ideal.

      Monaco is just Monaco, I guess. It was never great, but it looks cool.
      1. 

         Esploratore (@esploratore1)
         26th May 2025, 9:52

         There were some great wet races here, think about 1984 and 1997 for some examples; 1996 was also a crazy dry-wet race.
   3. 

      Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
      26th May 2025, 9:17

      All good points. I think the problem is that Monaco is the circuit that really emphasises these issues which affect the racing today at a lot of circuits. If Monaco is to stay, I guess we have to live with it but I am not sure this year’s rule change really helped.
2. 

   SteveR (@stever)
   26th May 2025, 4:44

   “Raw deals have been given to the FIA. It doesn’t make sense to me that one (Formula One) driver and one team principal make more money than all of the FIA, and the FIA owns the championship. Is that fair?,”

   Well, the FIA ‘leased’ the rights out to Bernie for 100 years. Stop complaining. The teams could easily start their own championship without involving the FIA and then where would the FIA be? Please, Mr. Sulayem, how much do you charge drivers for their licenses, not to mention the swearing fee of Euro 40,000, then double that for a second offense. Cry me a river…..

   Let’s not even mention the moves by Sulayem to remove transparency in FIA operations, not limited to self serving authority to stop any ethical investigations. He needs to be gone…..
   1. 

      MichaelN
      26th May 2025, 7:42

      There is no benefit for FOM to run the whole series. The FIA does a ton of work behind the scenes. FOM is happy to pay a small bit of money to outsource all that. Ben Sulayem is just negotiating the price a bit since the Concorde Agreement needs renewal and he has an election coming up later this year.
      1. 

         Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
         26th May 2025, 8:00

         MichaelN, if the FIA derived no benefit from F1, it would have dropped it or drastically reformed it. (It can still do that – Liberty has a commercial licence, not full ownership or executive control).
         1. 

            MichaelN
            26th May 2025, 8:23

            The FIA benefits from F1, of course. Its a major source of their revenue.

            But FOM benefits from the FIA as well. And when they do, the teams do as well. So it makes little sense for them to want to run things on their own, which is often touted by fans when the FIA does something odd, but has never materialised for good reasons.
   2. 

      BasCB (@bascb)
      26th May 2025, 7:56

      Yeah, the FIA is explicitly NOT in the business of making money off of F1, apart from receiving the licence fee and probably reimbursement for organising the stewarding, inspections etc at race events.

      If Ben Sulayman is not fine with that, good luck trying to go back to the EU to try and argue your case that you should be doing the commercial stuff too (I doubt they would be capable, even if that was realistic. In reality it would mean the FIA having to allow competition for “F1” which they would clearly NOT enjoy) or go get some good lawyers, look at the contract and go to Liberty to try and get them to pay more for the rights or something.
      1. 

         Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
         26th May 2025, 8:02

         @bascb The FIA in reality does make a lot of money from the licence fee, and has a 1% cut in Liberty’s profits. It was a key part of Sulayem’s solvency plan for the FIA. Rhetoric and reality don’t match.
         1. 

            BasCB (@bascb)
            26th May 2025, 14:30

            Good point there @alianora-La-Canta – I had forgotten about that part, so it is not even true that the FIA earns very little from the championship.
      2. 

         anon
         26th May 2025, 8:45

         @bascb the entire reason why we have a separate organisation (FOM) with the commercial rights to Formula 1 is because the European Commission ruled in 2001 that the FIA was operating an illegal monopoly over motorsport and, as part of the agreement, had to relinquish direct control over the commercial rights of Formula 1.

         As an aside, when you say that “it would mean the FIA having to allow competition for “F1” which they would clearly NOT enjoy”, the terms of the agreement that the FIA struck with the FIA means it is already legally required to allow such competition if another party wished to create a rival series, and that the role of the FIA is, to quote from the judgement, “limited to that of a sports regulator, with no commercial conflicts of interest”.

         Additionally, it should be noted that some of Sulayem’s comments do seem questionable when you consider the legal status of the FIA. The FIA is registered under French law as a non-profit entity, which means the FIA currently receives tax benefits and relaxes some of the administrative requirements on them.

         Some of Sulayem’s comments about wanting to increase the profitability of the FIA do seem to run somewhat counter to the legal status of the FIA as a non-profit organisation, and the French government have already reportedly been a bit unhappy about some of Sulayem’s actions, given they have reportedly investigated the FIA over the expenses claims that Sulayem has charged for the use of his private jet to travel to FIA events amidst questions over whether those expenses were reasonable (as a non-profit organisation, they are not meant to provide the president with a salary and only provide payment for “reasonable expenses”, and one might question whether using the FIA to pay for a private jet is a “reasonable travel expense” when commercial options are available).
3. 

   verstappen (@verstappen)
   26th May 2025, 7:06

   I was surprised when I checked this site late last evening. I just saw a very entertaining race (with the default Dutch commentary).

   But on this site it was only negativity!
   It’s Monaco, the track where it is all about saturday. Races are almost always dull here. It’s the way it is.

   So to me teams trying different things was entertainment. Was the new rule the best solution? Probably not, maybe no mandatory tyres would be better for next year.

   Monaco and Suzuka and other races will always be “dull” by default, so I just manage my expectations and sometimes I get a surprise.
   1. 

      Jere (@jerejj)
      26th May 2025, 7:13

      I also always manage my expectations regarding the championship’s least overtaking-friendly circuits & especially in Monaco’s case, I never expect much from a dry race beforehand to avoid disappointment altogether.
      1. 

         Simon
         26th May 2025, 12:37

         But at least you could enjoy wanging on about the two-stop rule, eh?
   2. 

      Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
      26th May 2025, 8:05

      @verstappen The race had its moments, but I think would have been more fun had the regulation not been in place (or all the teams understood the implications of the regulations and gone to pit on laps 1 and 2). At the very least, the Williams and Mercedes would not have been mocking the whole idea of racing under the 2025 Monaco regulations (it was the primary reason why the advantage needed to pass at Monaco increased from 3 seconds to at least 4.5 seconds – which is half the gap between the speed of the cars with full tanks on medium tyres and their qualifying pace on tyres so soft that at Imola they lasted about 4 corners on some cars).
   3. 

      Esploratore (@esploratore1)
      26th May 2025, 9:53

      It’s just that we got absolutely 0 overtakes and even the strategy didn’t bring any interesting result, even the terrible race last year had a few overtakes!
      1. 

         verstappen (@verstappen)
         26th May 2025, 21:00

         I later remembered a blog on the old version of the Verstappen.nl website, comparing monaco to a “flower car processiion” (dutchies: bloemencorso) -> in the days when Jos was the Verstappen behind the wheel.

         To me nothing new, an anomaly on the calender which I like (as stated above)
4. 

   Jere (@jerejj)
   26th May 2025, 7:11

   COTD: Artificial measures are more or less the only way to achieve any sort of excitement & tensity in dry Monaco GPs.

   Tsunoda may have felt like this race was the longest ever, even though it wasn’t purely duration-wise the longest race he’s driven in F1.

   I thought Russell would’ve paid for the dinner as a sportsmanship move.
   1. 

      Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
      26th May 2025, 8:22

      @jerejj Tsunoda’s done longer races in F1. Japan 2022 was 3 hours and 1 minute, including a 1 hour rain delay – the regulations were such that the last lap technically should not have happened due to timeout, and Australia 2023 was 2 hours and 32 minutes due to three separate red flags.

      Perhaps more tellingly, this year’s race (1 hour and 40 minutes) is the second shortest Monaco race Yuki Tsunoda has done, and the shortest since his debut in 2021 (1 hour and 38 minutes). Monaco 2024 was 2 hours and 23 minutes including a red flag, 2022 was 1 hour and 56 minutes and 2023 was 1 hour and 48 minutes.

      I believe Albon paid as an apology for baulking Russell so much that he felt obliged to give himself a minute of penalties out of sheer frustration, which Albon had done as part of a team ploy rather than because of its being his actual pace.
      1. 

         Esploratore (@esploratore1)
         26th May 2025, 9:55

         Wow, 1h 38-1h 40 are pretty long races to be the shortest monaco ones he’s done, to think it can be significantly longer in the wet and that it still has a special rule that makes it only 260km instead of 300 like the other tracks!
5. 

   CarWars (@maxv)
   26th May 2025, 9:14

   hope Ben Sulayem goes, this guys Ego and eagerness to stand in the center of everything is beyond annoying. Apart from that cant think of anything he has changed for the better, only came up with weird things and not in the spirit of F1.
   1. 

      Esploratore (@esploratore1)
      26th May 2025, 9:56

      I wonder what happens if he’s the only candidate but gets exactly 0 votes!
   2. 

      Ferdi
      26th May 2025, 12:00

      Insignificant man he is. Liberty is the issue here. They need to go.
6. 

   Keith Campbell (@keithedin)
   26th May 2025, 10:14

   Re-CoTD The Qatar race was slightly different, as the unique regulation for that race was done for safety reasons because of concerns over tyre failures on the jagged kerbs, whereas they were clear that the Monaco regulation was purely for the purposes of spicing up ‘the show’.
7. 

   LosD (@losd)
   26th May 2025, 11:15

   Raw deals have been given to the FIA. It doesn’t make sense to me that one (Formula 1) driver and one team principal make more money than all of the FIA, and the FIA owns the championship. Is that fair?

   He sounds like Trump
8. 

   André
   26th May 2025, 11:38

   F1 can’t endure another mandate of that clown. He’s done nothing but making the category look ridiculous.

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