Cadence, McLaren, and the United States (Austin) Grand Prix

As you probably know, Cadence has a technology partnership with McLaren racing. I wrote about it when we announced it in my post Cadence Shifts into High Gear with the McLaren Formula 1 Team. If you live in the U.S., this weekend is one of the big events, the Austin Grand Prix, technically named the United States Grand Prix. In case you don't follow Formula 1 that closely, there will be practice sessions on Friday (today) and early Saturday, then qualifying on Saturday at 5pm (to decide what order the cars start in), and the race itself starts at 2pm on Sunday.

This year there are two Grands Prix in the U.S., but you missed the other one in Miami held in May. Next year, the 2023 schedule has three Grands Prix in the U.S., Miami in May, Austin in October, and the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix, on a street circuit at night on the strip. It appears that tickets for the Vegas event are already sold out.

Formula 1 is one of the few sporting events that literally billions of people watch. Of course, people watch a lot of soccer/football, but those are all different games. The World Cup is the huge event in that sport, but it is held only for two weeks every four years. It is held in the even years that the Olympics are not held, so this year. It is much later in the year than normal since it is in Qatar, where is too hot to run around a field kicking a ball until November/December.

McLaren Drivers

The story of McLaren's drivers this year has been a bit dramatic. Formula 1 teams have two drivers, usually one more experienced and one more of an up-and-comer. The experienced driver is Australian Daniel Ricciardo (aged 33). The younger driver is Brit Lando Norris (aged 22). The results this year have been pretty impressive with many finishes in the points. And as is typical in F1, filled with some unexpected twists along the way. Norris has qualified quite well several times and has finished in the points several times. Unfortunately Daniel hasn't had consistently great results. For example, the most recent Grand Prix was Singapore where Lando Norris came fourth, and Ricciardo came fifth, I think McLaren's best result this season.

Ricciardo was in year two of a three-year contract but it was agreed that he would leave at the end of this season. McLaren hired (another Australian) Oscar Piastri from Alpine-Renault. So Norris and Piastri will be McLaren's two drivers in 2023.

Austin Office

On Thursday, prior to the Grand Prix, some of the McLaren team were in the Austin office, including Daniel Ricciardo. I wasn't there, I was at the Jasper User Group.

Drive to Survive

I have read several analyses of why Formula 1 has suddenly become popular in the U.S. The big reason for that seems to be four seasons of the Netflix fly-on-the-wall documentary Drive to Survive. Since the series is released after the season is over, there is not a lot of tension in focusing on the races since everyone already knows the results. The races form the background for the intrigue inside the constructors (like McLaren), usually focusing on one team each episode.

This year, 2022, Netflix has been filming again. If the schedule matches previous years, the season will finish and Netflix will have the series ready for release in about March. So look for season five in March 2023. That is also almost exactly when the new season starts again. It used to be that pre-season testing took place in Barcelona during MWC...in fact, one year Lewis Hamilton was on stage at the conference with his car (see my post Barcelona MWC: ARM, Virtual Reality, Formula 1) but now that is all in Bahrain.

Zak and Our Automotive Book

Here's another McLaren-Cadence connection. The day before we launched Verisium, we had an invitation-only event at Levi's Stadium to pre-announce the product under embargo. One of the speakers was Zak Brown, CEO of McLaren Racing. so it was the perfect opportunity to get a photo of Zak holding a copy of our book Automotive Electronics Redefined.

Comme la Voiture

I lived in France for nearly six years in the late 1980s and early 1990s. That's one way I know that the plural of Grand Prix is Grands Prix. This led to a funny McLaren story. When I would call up a restaurant to make a reservation (this was long before things like OpenTable), they would obviously ask me my name:

"Je suis Monsieur McLellan," I would say.

"Comme la voiture?" they would almost always reply. This means "like the car?" and at first I had no idea what they meant. Then I realized they'd misheard my name and thought I'd said McLaren.

If they didn't say that, they would ask how to spell my name and I'd say "M" "C" and they would repeat "M" "A" "C" and I'd have to tell them that there was no "a" in "Mc". They would often say that wasn't possible until I pointed out that McDonalds (very popular in France) has no "a" either.

Of course, it doesn't really matter if you use your real name to make a reservation at a restaurant, it's not as if they check your ID. Once I realized that, I simplified the whole process by saying "Je suis Monsieur McLaren, comme la voiture" and they never asked me to spell it. And they didn't try and spell it "Mac".

2026 Power Units

The next new power units (aka engines) will be for the 2026 season. Here's The 2026 Engine Regulations: All You Need To Know! video.

On the same topic, see our corporate blog post Formula 1: Riding the Sustainability Wave to Full Electrification, Of course, in one sense it seems ridiculous to worry about the sustainability of Formula 1 cars. Ten teams each fly about 100 people, two cars, who knows how many spare parts, and more around the world 23 times this year (24 next year). So how much the vehicle itself uses is irrelevant. But technologies that start and are perfected in Formula 1 find their way into high-end road cars and, eventually, into the mainstream of vehicles we all drive.

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