Formula Lego: Season 08

Throughout Season 8, the front end of the teams began to work much more cohesively than before, rather than as individual drivers running on similar machinery. Josep Vikalkin, the defending Title champion, often discussed how he felt bad for not being able to close the gap on Sayll and help his teammate Sanchez win the Season 6 Title, and then for capitalising on a bad moment from her to win his own title in Season 7. Through Season 8, he intentionally put himself as a second driver, behind Kira Sanchez, helping her to win her 3^rd Title. He gave back the lead he had gained after Sanchez’ pitstop in race 3, took the win in race 4 since Sanchez couldn’t make it past second place Gasly, and took his second win of the season in race 6, as Gasly stayed ahead of Sanchez again. Vikalkin was widely regarded as the MVP of the season, as his contributions directly led to Sanchez’ 5-point margin of victory. Osborne also secured their 5th consecutive Constructor's Title, which they didn't know would come crashing down the next season.

As Season 8 was going on, Bryne Ellys’ potential F1 venture became more and more widely discussed throughout the nation, and it developed a face: as teams would have to shrink in order to keep roughly the same number of drivers on the grid, Camilla Cyne from the Octan team was “traded” for a small sum, so that Octan could maintain their position of never firing a driver after just one season. She was a very good prospect for the new team, too, since she had finished 16^th overall (with 80 points) in season 8. Ellys also hired Sarah Martins, who had performed poorly in Season 8 (finishing ahead of only Christina Fittipaldi, overall), but showed potential with high race pace in the new team’s trials on the testing cars. Their final recruit from the F1 grid was Russel Perez, who had raced for 2 seasons with National (6-7), finishing 21^st and 22^nd overall, respectively. He, too, showed great race potential in their practice cars when he attended their trial races. The final four drivers Ellys hired based on their performances at the trial races were Ariadne Stryke, Aurora Kryze, Eva Renita, and Nhadi Yousuf. Now that her lineup was complete, Ellys announced, with much media attention and buildup, the purple & orange car her drivers would race, and the name they would race under. Fire FL was ready for their first race, in Season 9.

Technical Changes

Kai Octan expressed how he was very pleased with this result, and, as usual, discussed how he expected to catch up with Osborne in the next few years. However, one topic he never answered a question on was “Enginegate”, which was still a hot issue. In Season 6, despite a national driver winning the title, both Octan and National (who were running on their own versions of Octan’s UX8 engine at the time) remained somewhat uncompetitive as teams, and were blown out of the constructor’s championship by Osborne. Then, before the beginning of Season 7, Octan sold National the entire season’s-worth of new Power Units, as the they had done for every previous season. However, after National had purchased their UX9s, they noticed that they were almost exactly the same as the last year’s entirely uncompetitive engine. Just two days after National had closed the deal, Octan revealed their new Wankel Engine design that they were now intending to run for the season. Suddenly, it became clear what had happened. Although publicly, Octan intended to run on UX9 engines, they diverted only the smallest fraction of resources to making just slightly better than the previous year’s engine, and certainly not up to snuff for the slightly varied engine regulations of Season 7. Then, while National bought an uncompetitive engine, which diminished their threat to Octan, Octan could run the new URX1, which lowered the gap to Osborne. Representatives and drivers from Osborne and National both were very outspoken about the backstabbing, and even many of the Octan drivers condemned their team’s actions as a betrayal of the sport. The small National engineering team managed to pull miracles off, though, and managed to squeeze a surprisingly high amount of power out of the UX9s before the season started, and didn’t end as far distant as Octan expected.

By the start of Season 8, National had decided not to purchase any new hardware from Octan, and began looking into producing their own engines and chassis. However, this left them with another dilemma; how much should they focus on getting the right car for the Season 8 races, especially since they knew that new engine and chassis regulations were going to be drastically different in Season 9. Eventually, the decision was made-in conjunction with the drivers-to effectively give up Season 8, and make only slight upgrades where absolutely necessary, and instead focus strongly on developing their own Season 9 technology. It was a bold decision by National, and the effects really showed strongly on the aesthetics of the cars. Their and Octan’s Season 7 chasses had been quite similar, with only minor differences, and most of the differences between their Season 8 cars came from things that Octan had changed and they hadn’t. Octan had rounded their air intake, while National didn’t. Octan slightly modified their front wing, National didn’t. Octan lengthened their side down diffusers, which National didn’t. National maintained its distinctive high nose, and pointy rear wing, while Octan kept with their swept nose, and flat rear wing. Internally, the cars were very different, though: Octan was running an upgraded Wankel Engine, while National ran what was effectively a Season 6 Octan Powertrain. Their points reflected their decision, too: the gap between them and Octan widened again, as they scored only 4 points to Octan’s 20. Surprisingly to many, Evangeline Sayll managed to finish 4^th in the championship, and fellow former title holder Vance Lewison came right behind her in 5^th overall, and their young teammate Anna Aster came through with a 7^th overall finish. Reportedly, National Headquarters was very, very pleased with the result, even if they did only barely score positively as a team.

Sporting Regulations

The biggest Sporting Regulation change for Season 8 was one actually introduced part-way through Season 7, which was a set of expectations about what Team Officials & Representatives were allowed to say about each other in any official capacity. Most notably, this banned all discussion of how another team may have wronged them.

Team Rosters

Osborne

League #	Team #	Name	Experience
1	1	Josep Vikalkin	7 Seasons Osborne, S7 Champion
14	23	Sira Bowler	1 Season Osborne, 5 Seasons National
3	3	Jacob Norris	7 Seasons Osborne
46	17	Kira Sanchez	4 Season Osborne, S4 & S5 Champion
70	24	Jaymund Beorhtio	Rookie
71	25	Ryelly Payne	Rookie
7	7	Avayah Osborne	7 Seasons Osborne
55	22	Carl Shwartzman	1 Season Osborne, 2 Seasons National
72	26	Efrim Bowe	Rookie
73	27	Ethan Piastri	Rookie

National

League #	Team #	Name	Experience
11	1	Vance Lewison	7 Seasons National, S2 Champion
24	36	Thomas Collet	1 Season National, 5 Seasons Octan
26	41	Logan Latifi	Team Rookie, 4 Seasons Osborne, 3 Seasons Octan
74	42	Ashley Stanek	Rookie
2	32	Kyle Giovinazzi	2 Seasons National, 2 Seasons Octan, 2 Seasons Osborne
27	27	Eva Sayll	3 Season National, 4 Seasons Octan, S6 Champion
44	39	Anna Aster	1 Season National, 3 Seasons Octan
75	43	Anthony Stanek	Rookie
76	44	Sarah Martins	Rookie
77	45	Elizabeth Collet	Rookie

Octan

League #	Team #	Name	Experience
21	1	Salem Hoods	7 Seasons Octan, S1 Champion
22	2	Mikael Cagne	7 Seasons Octan, S3 Champion
23	14	Lily Gasly	6 Seasons Octan, 1 Season Osborne
78	22	Walter Faber	Rookie
64	19	Julia Young	2 Season Octan
58	23	Ella Fader	Team Rookie, 3 Seasons National
58	17	Lily Octan	3 Seasons Octan
79	24	Max Feser	Rookie
69	21	Christina Fittipaldi	1 Season Octan
80	25	Camilla Cyne	Rookie

Season Progression

Sanchez, though, was not handed a title by fluke. Her form was incredible throughout the season, although as Octan began to catch back up to Osborne in terms of direct power, she couldn’t clean the board like she had in seasons 5 & 6 (in Season 6 she didn’t win the title, although she only missed the win in one race). Her lowest position throughout the season was 3^rd place, which is a crazy, crazy thing to manage to do. There was nothing wrong with her form. Although the debate is still out as to whether she would have won or not without Vikalkin giving her help, and even a race win, she wasn’t undeserving of the win. And Lily Gasly, although extremely disappointed after missing out on a world title by such a small margin, discussed how she didn’t begrudge Osborne for using everyone on the team to try and get Sanchez another title, since “Just being fast doesn’t make you the best driver. Your car, and your teammates make you the best driver.”

Lily Gasly herself also drove an incredible season, and came tantalisingly close to winning a world title. Thanks to the Wankel Engine, Octan truly was becoming a much larger competitor to Osborne, although they hadn’t worked out the formula for winning everything yet. They scored 20 constructors points as opposed to Osborne’s 30, narrowing the gap by more than half from Season 7, where they had only scored 12 to Osborne’s 34.

At the end of Season 8, it was announced that, for the first time, Season 9 would race without every previous champion on the grid. At the end of Season 8, the Season 3 Driver’s Title Champion Mikael Cagne, part of the Cagne family, who owned the majority of Cagne Island (this might be a recognizable name; Cagne Island Circuit, anyone?), announced his retirement from the sport. For the first time, every title driver wouldn’t be represented on the grid. Although the departure of a driver who had an average standing of just over 5^th place was only mildly affecting to the sport, but the departure of a Champion felt quite important to the fans, and represented an event that was going to become much more common over the next few years.

Technical Details

Through Season 8, National limped along with the OE29C05D1 Chassis, and the UX9Z9 Engine. Octan drove on the OE33L19 Chassis and the URX2 Engine, and Osborne won another title, this time on the Osb26P Chassis and the OsbA29D Engine.