Lewis Hamilton to Join Ferrari in 2025 🏎

The biggest news in motorsports this week: Lewis Hamilton will join Ferrari in 2025. If you have been living under a rock and didn’t jump on the Formula 1 bandwagon after the success of Drive to Survive on Netflix, here’s the summary.

Lewis Hamilton is arguably the GOAT 🐐 of F1. Tied with Michael Schumacher for 7 Championships, he is on the hunt for his 8th Driver’s Championship.

Watch Drive to Survive Season 4 to see the entire season battle between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton. It literally came down to the final lap.

Mercedes struggled in 2022 with the entirely new Formula 1 car updates. They took a gamble with an aero package that looked entirely different than the rest of the grid. The “zero pod” design.

Lewis Hamilton had a miserable 2022. It was the first season in his career without a single win. He also ended 2023 in third place without winning a single race, making it 2 years in a row.

Some will say that Lewis has always had the right car and many blame his 2-year slump on Mercedes and their decision to stick with the zero pod design. We are just a few weeks away from the start of the season and soon will find out if the teams have caught up to Red Bull.

Lewis will take Carlos Sainz’s seat, who will finish the 2024 season with Ferrari. 2024 Testing kicks off on February 21 in Sakhir with the first race of the season the following weekend in Bahrain.

For the best fan experience, check out the F1 TV subscription for $9.99 per month. I watch the practice sessions, qualifying and the race on my Apple TV. You can also follow your favorite drivers and team cams instead of watching the primary feed.

Does F1 Hate Michael Andretti? 🥊

Formula 1 has rejected Andretti and Cadillac’s bid to enter the F1 championship for the 2025 and 2026 season. It seems like every door has been shut in Andretti’s face. Michael has said that he has made “millions” of attempts to buy the Haas Formula 1 team and has been constantly denied by owner Gene Haas.

The application was taken seriously and Andretti had even started wind tunnel testing for the 2025 car, but the current team owners couldn’t hide their greed.

You see, the current 10 teams in F1 do not want to dilute their prize money by adding an 11th team to the grid. Even the last place Haas team rakes in some cash.

The F1 prize money split is top secret but one can guess pretty close since some information is available in the public domain. Per the Concorde Agreement, which is the contract that governs the whole thing, the team prize money makes up 50% of F1’s commercial rights profit but F1’s cut of the pie increases if they exceed a certain revenue threshold.

In 2022 F1 generated revenues north of $2.57 billion. So even 45% of that is $1.156 billion. That amount is not divided equally between the teams of course.

Ferrari has a cheat code which guarantees them 5% for their historical significance in the sport.

So splitting the remaining prize money would look something like this:

Source: Motorsport.com

So it’s clear why even a last place team is unwilling to sell their spot in such a popular and rewarding sport. Red Bull only made $5 million more than the 2023 cost cap budget, which explains why they were not a fan of introducing an 11th team to the grid.

Ferrari The Movie

I’m not going to spoil the movie if you plan on watching it. The movie is more about the life and drama of Enzo Ferrari than it is about the cars. Ford v Ferrari is more about the cars, the drivers and racing. The Lamborghini movie is a little of both the drama and the cars. All that’s left is for a Porsche movie to be released, but not before Brad Pitt’s F1 film.

Car of The Week
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1985 Ferrari Mondial Cabriolet - $37,499

Keeping the Ferrari theme this week. This is currently the cheapest Ferrari in the country that I could find. It only has 26,061 miles which is about 25,000 more miles than the average modern Ferrari. Why would anyone seriously consider buying this. One reason: 1-owner.

• 8-Cylinder

• Manual transmission

• 1-owner

• Clean Carfax

• Mid-engine

Check out Chris Harris’ review here.

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