Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Spanish GP is next, 5th round of the 2016 Championship at the Circuit de Catalunya.

As we know Verstappen replaced Kvyat at Red Bull right after Vettel blamed the Russian for punting him out the last (two?) races, but in reality that move was on the cards long before those incidents.

Verstappen has known he was going to get a seat in the senior team, Red Bull was eager to secure him when speculation came Mercedes and Ferrari were showing interest in the youngster in case ROS or RAI respectively do not renew for 2017. And now that “Kvyat  is “2 tenths slower than Ricciardo” says Marko, if Max is to work with the senior squad team better to prepare him early. From the very beginning Max’s management  -his father Jos- sold his services to Red Bull under very high conditions, like getting an F1 seat at 17 years supposedly because Mercedes and Ferrari wanted him for their junior teams back in 2016.

Helmut Marko, Red Bull’s owner Matuzich right-hand man is a shrewd and ruthless business manager, specially when it comes to drivers. Like no one before in Formula 1 the drinks giant successfully runs a Driver Development Program where drivers are used and disposed like commodities. By controlling 4 of the 22 seats in F1 they had become a dominant force in the market. And by the way, their drivers’ salaries are about a tenth of what the big teams pay. ($300 - $600 thousand a year).

It will be very interesting to watch how the RIC-VER and KVY-SAI rivalries will play out. If the Russian is not clearly quicker than the very fast SAI they will soon show him the door, just another name in Red Bull’s long list of disposable drivers, like Alguersuari, Klein, Liuzzi, Buemi, Vergne...

In other news all the relevant players in F1 had finally reached a deal on engines for the 2017-2020 period. The power units will be cheaper and more standardized for the smaller teams. There will be changes that will make them sound better (louder) as well. The customer teams will pay 1 million euros less for the next 3 seasons and 3 millions euros less for 2018 when buying units from the four manufacturers -Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault and Honda. In a curious twist to the story a few days after reaching the agreement the FIA published a clause in which teams and their engine suppliers are not allowed to publicly denigrate each other, falling just short of mentioning what Renault and Red Bull did last year. And to make sure conflict is always around the corner in F1, Ron Dennis told the media that he will block Honda from supplying engines to Toro Rosso. That was only a few days after his McLaren team sign the agreement stipulating exactly the opposite…

Oh well, but let’s get back to what we really love: the F1s will be unleashed tomorrow in Barcelona. Until then.

Cheers

Cato