(Motorsport-Total.com) – Sending our readers into April with a fictional news story has a long tradition at Motorsport-Total.com (and our sister portal Formel1.de). And so, this year again, we allowed ourselves a little April Fools’ joke to send our readers into the fourth month of the year in a fitting manner.
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Did you pause for a moment while reading our report on the “fight against superclipping” in Barcelona? Did you wonder if 1.2 megawatts of charging power in the pit lane is really a good idea? If so: take a deep breath. Neither will mechanics “pedal” for electricity on ergometers in the garages, nor will the asphalt at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya be converted into an induction loop.
Difficulties with the energy management of the new generation of Formula 1 power units are real, and the FIA is indeed looking for ways to curb “superclipping”. But anyone who looked closely could discover the hidden clues.
Names like Dr. Alejandro Abril and “LIRPA Engineering” were obvious. Only at second glance is Naysan Pehla revealed: “Naysan” is the Arabic name for the month of April, while “Pehla” means “the first” in Hindi. And anyone who additionally strings together the first letters of the article’s paragraphs deciphers a secret message.
Physically, the 18 megajoules in 15 seconds at 1.2 megawatts of power sounded like Formula 1 level, but the thermal load of such a charging process would currently present the battery components with unsolvable tasks. And at the latest with the idea of mechanics pedaling in the background on bicycles for “bonus kilowatts” and mobile nuclear power plants in the paddock (“SMR” stands for “Small Modular Reactor”), the smirking should have set in.
We hope that we succeeded in tricking one or two readers and, above all, making them laugh. And we also hope that we are not taken too seriously and quoted in other editorial offices again. Because that has happened quite often with our April Fools’ jokes in the past …
A small look back at our previous April Fools’ jokes:
2025, we reported a radical rejuvenation for the sport. From 2026, a strict age limit of 40 years was to be introduced to create more space for talent from Formula 2. The news caused quite a stir, as Lewis Hamilton was not only 40 years old at the time but had just completed his high-profile move to Ferrari. The idea that the FIA would send the record world champion into forced retirement in the middle of his Ferrari adventure caused discussions on social networks.
Read the 2025 April Fools’ joke here again!
2024, we scared Formula 1 fans a little with a prescribed race report. Some might have checked briefly to see if a race really took place, because we moved the Japanese Grand Prix forward to Monday. Reason: severe storms were announced for the weekend. Oscar Piastri’s first real Grand Prix victory, however, was only a few months away. Alexander Albon, however, is still waiting for a podium with Williams…
Read the 2024 April Fools’ joke here again!
2023, we jumped on the hype surrounding Artificial Intelligence and, based on the ChatGPT program, came up with ChatGP. The system was supposed to replace the race engineer in Formula 1, among other things, we wrote. Alexander Bodo, CEO of technology company PACETEQ, thankfully made himself available to give our story more credibility with an insider video on the Formel1.de YouTube channel. In fact, AI is playing an increasingly important role in Formula 1. However, ChatGP still doesn’t exist.
Read the 2023 April Fools’ joke here again!
2022, we gave hope to all opponents of DRS. According to our news, the FIA would dispense with the adjustable rear wing from the coming season. Instead, drivers would be allowed to slow down the driver in front at the push of a button in order to be able to overtake them better – a kind of reverse DRS effect that cannot be seen from the outside. But basically both come down to the same thing, so it’s not bad that it was just a joke in the end.
Read the 2022 April Fools’ joke here again!
2021, after our “Shoey ban”, the 2019 April Fools’ joke on our sister portal Motorsport.com Germany, it was time to play with the Formula 1 regulations again. A fictional FIA campaign called “Score for Trees” was quickly found during an evening video chat. For Twitter users, a hashtag and a fashionable abbreviation were included, a few quotes collected, a bit of playing with Photoshop and the basic ingredients were ready to send you into April with “#Score4Trees”. Actually a charming idea, right?
Read the 2021 April Fools’ joke here again!
2020 was the first year of the coronavirus. And because the motorsport season started particularly gloomily that year, our April Fools’ joke that year was that there wasn’t just one April Fools’ joke! We don’t want to rule out that Lewis Hamilton will have a race track dedicated to him by some sheikh in the future, but that the track consists of the number 44 and each 4 is 4.4 kilometers long is far-fetched and obviously as false as the Sheikh Amahed al-Maris. But the fact that the report was so obviously false only served as “camouflage” for our second April Fools’ joke. Because we’ll spare the public the fact that Formula 1 wants to run ten races without an audience in Le Castellet.
Read April Fools’ joke #1 from 2020 here again!
Read April Fools’ joke #2 from 2020 here again!