Word on the beat

Consecutive announcements at Suzuka confirmed that Pierre Gasly, right, will replace the departing Fernando Alonso at Alpine next year and that his place at AlphaTauri will be taken by recent F1 debutant Nyck de Vries. The driver market chaos set in place by Sebastian Vettel’s retirement is now almost complete. Williams has confirmed that Nicholas Latifi will not continue with the team next year and it is expected that his replacement there will be F2 frontrunner Logan Sargeant.

There are rumours of a possible resurrection of the Korean Grand Prix, but this time through the streets of South Korea’s capital, Seoul, left. This is concurrent with another, possibly related, rumour that Korean automotive manufacturer Hyundai is considering entering F1 as a naming partner with an existing team. The obvious fit for that prospect would be AlphaTauri and its Red Bull Powertrains PU.

Although its planned partnership with Red Bull was stillborn, Porsche is still investigating a possible route into F1 in time for the 2026 power unit regulations. McLaren is understood to be its latest team of interest, even though talks between Porsche’s stablemate Audi and McLaren broke down earlier this year.

Max Verstappen explained his part in the recruitment of his friend and countryman Nyck de Vries, left, to Red Bull’s junior offshoot AlphaTauri for 2023. “After Monza we were having dinner and I told him to just call Helmut [Marko]. He did and
I think their meeting went from there.”