James Allen On F1

66: Red Bull F1 team boss Laurent Mekies on why 2026 is a new dawn

This week we have a special episode with two conversations from the Autosport Business Exchange in London. ABX is a gathering of leaders from across motorsport, exploring relevant themes. It takes place in London, Monaco and New York every year. As we head into a new season with so much renewal and so many question marks, the theme for London this year was The Powershift.  We hear from Red Bull Racing CEO and Team Principal Laurent Mekies, who was parachuted into the team mid-season in a moment of crisis and almost pulled off the most incredible comeback in the history of F1. And with the Mercedes team achieving a $6 billion valuation recently, teams have become a highly desirable asset class, driven by scarcity value, burgeoning revenues and effective cost control.   The JA on F1 Podcast will be taking a break for a while. Thanks to Producer Ben Holmes and Executive Producer Jason Swales. And thanks to you for listening.  Until next time.

65: Meet the woman who makes sense of F1’s most complex puzzles

This week we meet a woman who has worked in F1 for Ferrari, Haas and Sauber. She has been at the heart of decision making on the pit wall as head of race strategy and has now turned that into a new role as an F1 TV commentator and content creator.  Ruth Buscombe can speak to the vast new audience of F1 fans that have discovered the sport in the last five years as well as to the most committed and knowledgeable purists, with her unique insights into what is going on in F1 races. After getting a 1st in Engineering at Cambridge University why did she choose a career in F1? What was it like to advise the lead actress in the F1 movie? What is it like to make a high-pressure strategy call on the pit wall, knowing that you could make or break the entire team’s race weekend? How many bad races per season are strategists allowed before they get fired? Ruth answers all these questions and more in this fascinating insight and provides a window onto what fans can expect on track from the 2026 season under new F1 rules.  Watch out next week for news and highlights from the Autosport Business Exchange and Autosport Awards events taking place in London on 21 January.   Send your comments or questions to: @jamesallenonf1 on X or jamesallenonf1@autosport.com [jamesallenonf1@autosport.com]. A Motorsport Studios production for Autosport

64: Superforecasting the 2026 F1 season

It’s the first week of January, the slate has been wiped clean, a whole new year of F1 lies ahead. Before a car is launched and a wheel has turned everything is possible and at all the teams and drivers are equal. At this stage we like to look ahead to the new season and do some superforecasting.  We did it last year and some of the forecasts were pretty accurate, while others haven’t aged so well...  Who will win the 2026 F1 Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships? What percentage of Max Verstappen’s points total will new team-mate Isack Hadjar achieve? Checo Perez got 49% in 2023 while Yuki Tsunoda managed just 8% last year.  What will be the most high-profile driver move this year and which drivers will we be saying goodbye to?  Which F1 team bosses will not be in post in 12 months from now? To help us today we have a couple of subject matter experts, former Aston Martin Technical Director, Red Bull Head of Aerodynamics and friend of the pod, Dan Fallows and our F1 writer attending races around the world, Ronald Vording.  Send your comments or questions to: @jamesallenonf1 on X or jamesallenonf1@autosport.com [jamesallenonf1@autosport.com]. A Motorsport Studios production for Autosport

63: How the F1 calendar works and why promoters are signing long term

F1 Grands Prix have become much than sporting events. They now stretch over four days of fan engagement with star name music acts, cultural events, top chefs and diverse activities for fans. Promoter fees generate around $1 billion of income annually for F1, almost a third of the total revenue. They can also have massive economic impact for a city or country; Las Vegas has pulled in over $900m each year from its race, while Sao Paolo reported a positive impact of £329 from November’s race.  No surprise then that there are more cities and countries wanting F1 races than there are slots on the calendar. Fitting in 24 Grands Prix is no easy task. It falls to Louise Young, Director of Race Promotion at F1, who works closely with CEO Stefano Domenicali and Liberty Media. Louise rarely gives interviews, so what she has to say here is a must-listen for every F1 fan.  We are seeing a trend for longer term renewals, with Miami contracted to 2041 and many races including Monaco GP and the British GP at Silverstone signed up for a decade.  What do these long contracts say about the confidence on both sides that F1 will still be booming beyond 2035? How is the F1 calendar decided each season and will we see more races in Asia, the US or Africa at the expense of rounds in Europe? James is joined in the studio for analysis by Autosport F1 writer Filip Cleeren.  Voting is still open for the 38th Autosport Awards. Vote for your Driver, Team and Rookie of the Year. Go to https://www.autosport.com/awards-voting/ [https://www.autosport.com/awards-voting/] to cast your votes.   Send your comments or questions to: @jamesallenonf1 on X or jamesallenonf1@autosport.com [jamesallenonf1@autosport.com]. A Motorsport Studios production for Autosport

62: Freezing speed - F1 life through a lens

F1’s surge in popularity in the last five years is not because the sport itself has notably changed or improved. It is because people have discovered it, a sleeping giant. The sport lends itself so well to social media - being such a visually rich spectacle. With its extreme personalities and electrifying speed, it is also a wonderful platform for storytelling.  This week we are going to explore this side of the sport with one of the great photographers of the modern era of F1, Darren Heath. Darren works with speed, spectacle and personality. He freezes it, capturing a moment that would otherwise be lost forever, memorializing it for people around the world to enjoy. So what goes through his mind when he looks through the viewfinder and presses the shutter? How does he weave rich storytelling into an image? Which drivers’ faces are the most interesting? How do today’s compare to the greats like Senna, Prost and Schumacher? When he is trackside, the cars moving at 180mph a few feet away, what aspects of F1 does he see that don’t come across for fans on other media like TV or the written word? And how much can someone achieve trackside with an iPhone? This revealing interview takes the audience behind the veil of F1 and offers a fresh, close-up take of the people that make our sport. Send your comments or questions to: @jamesallenonf1 on X or jamesallenonf1@autosport.com [jamesallenonf1@autosport.com]. A Motorsport Studios production for Autosport