James Allen On F1

For the first JA on F1 podcast of 2025, we discuss Lewis Hamilton as he turns 40. The seven-time World Champion is preparing to drive a Ferrari F1 car for the first time this month. In his New Year message to fans, he said “Reinvention is powerful” So how will this reinvention for Hamilton go? What do we know so far about the 2025 Ferrari car he will be driving? And what does history tell us about...

Who will win the 2025 F1 Drivers' Championship? Will Lewis Hamilton score more points than Charles Leclerc? What impact will the struggles of car manufacturers, especially Europeans, have on F1 next year? How might geopolitics impact on F1, for example in the Middle East and Asia ? For our final podcast of the year, we thought that rather than looking backwards with yet another Season Review – we...

The F1 season is almost over. Max Verstappen has joined Alain Prost and Sebastian Vettel as a four-time world champion. But there is one very important matter still to resolve. The Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship may not have the same caché with fans, but it matters a lot to the teams; it dictates how much F1 prize money they earn. But this year it means even more; for the first time in 16 ye...

This week we are doing something a little different. We explore how F1 teams make key decisions on areas like driver recruitment, development and race strategy and compare it with how things are done at a top Premier League football club. F1 is a sport built around technology, whereas in football the smartest teams have began only in the last decade to use it for recruitment, for strategy, in-game...

This week we are looking at how you get an F1 team to the next level. In a super competitive environment like F1, where no-one stands still, how do you go from 8th in the championship to the top of the standings using technology and people?  We welcome another F1 team principal James Vowles, who is 18 months into his programme to take Williams, F1’s second most successful team, back to the winner’...

This week we delve into the curious case of Daniel Ricciardo. He once rode a horse into the paddock at Austin, but will not be lining up there in at this year’s US Grand Prix - or any other Grands Prix - after being dropped by Red Bull. Daniel was one of F1’s biggest fan favourites and an 8-time Grand Prix winner. But he’s not been the same driver for a few years now. As always with F1, a sport al...

F1 runs on money and this week James is in Singapore to dig into how F1 is now raking in around $2.5 billion a year in sponsorship.  Since Liberty Media took over in 2017, sponsors have flocked to the sport and its 10 teams and there are now over 300 active sponsors for the first time in F1 history. One of the most effective operators in this space is Jefferson Slack, who heads up Aston Martin’s c...

This week we look at why it is so tricky to build a winning team in F1 and why success is never guaranteed. We go behind the scenes of Adrian Newey’s big-money move to Aston Martin and ask what this means for the competitive picture in F1 over the next five years. And we hear from celebrated manager David Richards, who took BAR Honda to second place in the World Championship 20 years ago against M...

This week James looks into the future and asks what F1’s move to zero emission fuels from 2026 actually means. If the cars are zero emission, you don’t need hybrid technology anymore, so will it open the door for the return of the lighter, great sounding V8 and V10 engines of the past? Or is hybrid tech the only thing keeping the manufacturers in F1? And what exactly are these magical fuels? Forme...

This week we meet top F1 race strategist Bernie Collins, who has made a successful switch to TV, becoming a hugely popular presenter on Sky Sports coverage of F1. Bernie gives viewers the inside track on crucial decisions on the pitwall, bringing a new level of enjoyment to the fan experience. Bernie grew up in Northern Ireland and started as an F1 performance engineer with McLaren, before switchi...

This week we take the audience into the heart of an F1 team and look at how crucial decisions get made that can push the team up, or down, the grid; from where to spend the budget to get the best results, to hiring and firing drivers.  Otmar Szafnauer is a very experienced F1 team principal of Force India, Racing Point, Aston Martin and Alpine, with strong track record of getting bang for buck. He...

This week we welcome one of F1’s most charismatic figures: Guenther Steiner. His expletive ridden rants on the hit Netflix show Drive to Survive turned him from a cameo role in F1 into one of its most recognizable figures. Guenther brought Haas into F1 a decade ago with a different model, using as many components from Ferrari as possible. They achieved 5th place in the 2018 Constructors’ Champions...

This week we have a British GP themed discussion, with special guest Damon Hill, the 1996 F1 World Champion. Damon knows all about how an F1 driver goes from winning their first Grand Prix to winning multiple races and contending for a championship. We get into that in detail with him, with particular reference to Lando Norris and George Russell. F1 sparked into life in Austria with a controversia...

This week we speak to the man with arguably the hardest job in F1: Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur. Fred is bringing Lewis Hamilton to Ferrari next year. We get into that with him, what (or who) else Ferrari still needs to win a world championship and how Fred uses humour to get his way. He talks about managing the fragile confidence of Ferrari team members and how he is pushing them to take more r...

This week we welcome none other than Greg Maffei onto the James Allen on F1 podcast. Greg is the CEO of Liberty Media and the man who had his eye on F1 for many years before he bought it. F1 has changed a lot in the seven years since; bringing in millions of new, younger fans around the world. But how do they get the balance between those younger fans and long-standing fans, who aren’t so keen on...

This week the James Allen on F1 podcast comes face to face with the most powerful woman in F1; Renee Wilm. Renee is Chief Legal And Administrative Officer of Liberty Media, the company that owns F1. She has played a central role in the way the company has shaped and grown F1 since 2017. But she is also the CEO of Las Vegas Grand Prix, which meant she was in the hot seat and responsible for deliver...

This month the F1 world is celebrating Ayrton Senna, the three-time world champion who died 30 years ago. For many lovers of the sport, he remains the greatest driver of all time. His story and passionate, intense character are captured in the 2010 documentary Senna, a movie that crossed F1 over to mainstream entertainment audiences. This wasn’t a film about cars and race results. It was about a h...