Prime Tire Newsletter | This is The Athletic's twice-weekly F1 newsletter. Sign up here to receive Prime Tire directly in your inbox.
Welcome back to Prime Tire, where we're wondering if we have time for a joke in this section oh wait we don't aw shucks. I'm Patrick, my writers are at the Las Vegas GP, we have some breaking news and let's get to it.
Late (and I mean late) last night, news broke that General Motors is edging toward securing a place on the Formula One grid with its own team as early as 2026 when the field could expand to 11 teams.
The news was first reported by the Associated Press. What you need to know:
It's not a lot to go on, but you can read our story here. We detailed Andretti's ongoing effort to join F1 a few months ago.
I'm sure there will be plenty more to say about this over the next few weeks. For now, on to Las Vegas ...
2023 was about taking in the race's spectacle. We entered the 2024 race week hoping to dig deeper, report on some questions we and our readers had. Here is how we've fared so far:
Can you watch the race without emptying your savings?
Of course, we're still reporting all around the track on some fun stories this weekend. Make sure to check on our page every day. Now, let's throw it to Luke and Madeline in the paddock.
After any long-form story, the writer will likely have a notebook full of unused facts and quotes that did not quite fit the theme or final story word count.
I wrote an in-depth story about the history of Tommy Hilfiger and F1, which ran earlier this week, and gosh, do I have so much to tell y'all.
During his partnership with Lotus, the designer realized there was a market for F1 team uniforms among fans.
"My gut instinct told me that people would think it would be cool to wear the uniforms, and it may have come from my love for sports uniforms," Hilfiger said. "Growing up, I worked in a sporting goods shop, and I was handling a lot of the uniforms for the football teams, the basketball teams, the hockey teams, the soccer teams. And in those days, the way they made uniforms was much different. They made them out of a high level quality fabrication. The numbers were stitched on in satin. They didn't have tech fabrics then, like we have today.
"But the football uniforms, basketball uniforms, baseball uniforms were made of a different type of material than you would find in sort of normal clothing. And when I started my brand, I took that inspiration and incorporated it into what I was designing. So when we started coming out with sportier looking clothes, they were very authentically built."
We were talking last night about how different Wednesday practice felt from a year ago, when a water valve cover threw the night into disarray. (Don't worry, that should be fixed.)
Instead, the running last night was relatively ... boring? No incidents. Just cars rubbering in the track. The crowd even thinned out midway through FP2. (It was past midnight.)
Mercedes led both sessions, but I wouldn't place bets based on that. We should see Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren establishing themselves tonight for FP3 and qualifying. Schedule below -- check here for live coverage in a few hours.