engineer

Round eight of Formula 1 season takes place in Austria this weekend in the stunning surroundings of the Styrian hills.

Last time out in Barcelona, Mercedes were beaten in a grand prix for the first time this year with Lewis Hamilton taking victory.

The Briton’s first grand prix win for Ferrari, combined with Kimi Antonelli’s retirement late in the race, narrowed the gap at the top of the drivers’ championship to 41 points.

Before Sunday’s race in Spielberg, BBC F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions.

A retrospective podium for Pierre Gasly. Justice? Or a can of worms best left unopened? – Clive

Formula 1 has clearly got itself in a bit of a pickle regarding the pit-lane speeding penalties in the Monaco Grand Prix.

The facts are that five cars were given penalties for pit-lane speeding when none of them had gone over the limit.

The length of the pit lane had been mis-measured – it was possible to drive a shorter distance than officials initially realised, by 77 metres.

And as the pit-lane speed limit is policed by the time taken to pass through a series of timing loops over a specific distance, that meant the drivers were wrongly penalised.

This led to a sequence of events that had a dramatic effect on the race result.

George Russell was most badly affected by what followed, having a third place turned into a 12th and losing 15 points in the process.

But McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar also had their results changed.

Is it justice that Gasly is returned to a third place at the flag that he lost because Alpine refused to serve his penalty during the race, while the other drivers’ results are unaddressed?

Should the stewards who dealt with Alpine’s right of review over the Barcelona weekend have left it at that, and not raised the very obvious questions that followed on from it?

In terms of natural justice, the answer to both those questions is clearly no – there remain a number of issues raised by this situation that have not properly been dealt with.

McLaren and Red Bull have taken the case to the FIA court of appeal. No date has yet been set for that to be heard.

Mercedes have withdrawn their attempt to get the race result reviewed after concluding there was no viable mechanism for restoring Russell to where he could have finished, and it would not serve anybody to drag it all on.

As McLaren said in their statement about giving notice of intention to appeal: “We believe this case raises important questions concerning sporting fairness, regulatory consistency and the integrity of competition.”

The shame is that this could all have been avoided had the FIA and F1 acted differently before the race.

Teams warned the FIA that there was a problem waiting to happen with the pit-lane speeding limit during the Monaco weekend.

Officials did look into it, but their initial conclusion was that the concerns were unfounded. That was clearly an error. Had that been properly addressed at the time, none of this would have happened.

In terms of sporting fairness, it’s hard not to conclude that the issue should be taken to a full and proper conclusion.

Will Ferrari make Carlo Santi Lewis Hamilton’s permanent full-time race engineer, or is his role still considered temporary? – Anthony

The relationship between Lewis Hamilton and his new race engineer Carlo Santi has started off well.

Santi was initially meant to be a stop-gap before Hamilton received a new full-time engineer, but a Ferrari spokesperson says: “Carlo and Lewis are working pretty well together and there’s no plan to replace him.”

Hamilton has found a much more satisfactory relationship with Santi than he had with Riccardo Adami last year, and he’s tried to explain that without sounding too negative about his situation in 2025.

Hamilton said in Canada, where he finished second for what was his best result with Ferrari at the time, that Santi was “absolutely awesome and I’m really loving working with him”.

In Monaco he went further and compared the relationship with Santi to the one he forged over 12 years at Mercedes with Peter ‘Bono’ Bonnington.

“Driver-engineer working together is very, very important,” Hamilton said. “Last year, Adami and I had a really good relationship. He’s a lovely guy. We worked relatively well together.

“Catering to a driver’s needs takes time to learn.

“When you’re giving an engineer feedback, their understanding of through-corner balance, their understanding of all the elements that contribute to the struggles that you’re struggling with, you try to describe what it is, the problem you have, corner by corner, entry, mid and exit where you dissect it into five sections if you want.

“Having that driver-engineer collab, it’s hit and miss sometimes. With me and Bono, we hit it off from the beginning. He had a good working relationship with Michael (Schumacher). I do feel like Carlo is like my Italian Bono.

“He’s a bit of an OG. He’s an older guy that’s been around the block and he’s very calm. You can hear him on the radio. That’s the detail that we’re able to go into together. Our understanding of the engineer side, it’s something that’s very cool.”

The future of the National Science Foundation is in question after a slew of scientists who serve on the National Science Board, an independent body that promotes the progress of American science and provides advice to the U.S. president and Congress, were abruptly dismissed from their positions Friday by the White House.

All 22 current members of the board, which establishes policies for the National Science Foundation, were terminated, according to Yolanda Gil, a research professor of computer science and spatial sciences and principal scientist at USC Information Sciences Institute, who has served on the board since 2024.

Many of them received a curt email from President Trump’s presidential personnel office.

“On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I’m writing to inform you that your position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately,” read an email reviewed by the L.A. Times. “Thank you for your service.”

After receiving an email Friday afternoon, Keivan Stassun, a professor of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University and director of the Vanderbilt Initiative in Data-intensive Astrophysics, said he reached out to fellow board members. Every member he heard back from — about a third of the board — reported receiving the same termination notice.

For Stassun, a board member since 2022, the termination represented “a wholesale evisceration of American leadership in science and technology globally.”

The White House has not given any reason for dismissing the board members or provided any information on when, or even whether, they will be replaced. A media representative for the NSF directed all questions to the White House. The White House did not respond to questions from The Times.

The National Science Foundation was created more than 75 years ago as an independent federal agency when President Truman signed the National Science Foundation Act of 1950 to boost U.S. science for national security and international competition during the Cold War.

“The establishment of the National Science Foundation is a major landmark in the history of science in the United States,” Truman said back then. “We have come to know that our ability to survive and grow as a nation depends to a very large degree upon our scientific progress. Moreover, it is not enough simply to keep abreast of the rest of the world in scientific matters. We must maintain our leadership.”

The agency, which has a budget of over $9 billion, supports fundamental research and education across all non-medical fields of science and engineering.

“The genesis of it was to recognize that the world was increasingly being won or lost on the basis of scientific and technological capability,” Stassun said. “The National Science Foundation is the singular agency within our government that has as its focus making sure that we stay ahead in basic science, technological developments, training the next generation of scientists and engineers.“

After Trump’s dismissal of the board’s experts, Stassun said, the Trump administration could potentially run the agency directly through the Office of Management and Budget.

“What it means is that there won’t be any practical impediments to the administration essentially enacting their own budget and priorities and ignoring Congress’ directives or congressional law,” Stassun said.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren of San José, the ranking Democrat on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, dubbed the terminations just “the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation.”

The board, Lofgren noted in a statement, is apolitical and advises the president on the future of NSF.

“It unfortunately is no surprise a president who has attacked NSF from day one would seek to destroy the board that helps guide the foundation,” Lofgren added. “Will the president fill the NSB with MAGA loyalists who won’t stand up to him as he hands over our leadership in science to our adversaries? A real bozo the clown move.”

The National Science Board is typically made up of 25 scientists and engineers from universities and industry across the nation. Appointed by the U.S. president, they traditionally serve six-year terms.

Some of the board positions were vacant. The key position of NSF director has been unfilled ever since Sethuraman Panchanathan, a computer scientist and academic administrator, resigned in April 2025.

“Given that the NSF director position has been vacant for a year, and that the NSB’s main role is governing NSF, the agency is left in a very precarious position,” Gil told The Times in an email. “I think this is one more indication of the sweeping changes that the administration is planning for the National Science Foundation.”

Over the last two years, Gil said, the White House has proposed drastic reductions in the NSF budget — a troubling sign, she argued, that basic research in science and engineering and training students are not high priorities for the current administration.

In the last few months, Gil added, the agency had significant reductions of personnel, which she said “jeopardizes the peer review process that the agency is best known for and gives more decision power to program directors.”

In March, Trump nominated James O’Neill, a venture capitalist and biotech investor who served as former deputy secretary of Health and Human Services, to lead the foundation. O’Neill has yet to appear before Congress for a hearing, but Trump’s nomination received a storm of criticism from scientists.

“O’Neill would be the first head of NSF who wasn’t a scientist or engineer,” Dr. Julian Reyes, chief of staff of the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote in a blog post. “If O’Neill is confirmed as NSF’s director, the Trump administration will further tighten its control over an agency created by Congress to be independent in its work to advance science.”

Traditionally, Gil said, NSF directors have had a solid research career and strong familiarity with NSF processes. O’Neill’s background in finance and investments, she suggested, “may be an indication that the administration has a different idea of how to run a science agency like NSF.”

Already, the Trump administration has purged a raft of scientific advisory boards that provided the federal government with expert guidance. Last year, dozens of experts who provided independent evaluations for biomedical research were dismissed from National Institute of Health science review boards. All 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which provides federal recommendation on vaccines, were also removed.

In that context, Stassun said he was not surprised when he got the termination letter Friday. “At some point,” he figured, “they would come for the National Science Board, too.”

Going forward, Stassun said he expected the Trump administration to pursue a narrower agenda, from investments in artificial intelligence to building a fleet of Antarctic vessels.

“What we’re likely to see is a collapse of what has historically been a broad investment in American science and technology capabilities,” he said. “The most transformative discoveries are transformative because you can’t predict them in advance, so we invest foundationally in scientists and engineers to do basic science and engineering research.”

One of the board’s chief priorities since he joined in 2022, Stassun said, had been the idea of “talent being the treasure” — developing the best and brightest future leaders and discoverers to ensure a future for American leadership in scientific and technological innovation.

For the board, that meant investing in early science education and strong training for scientists and engineers at all educational levels and in all sectors.

“Discoveries and inventions don’t make themselves, Stassun said. “People do those things. I think there’s a kind of attitude in the current administration that such a worldview is sort of too soft or meek.”

The Trump administration’s interests and priorities, Stassun said, seemed quite different.

“They see the future in, or at least their interest is in, big data centers … not in addition to, but in place of, training human minds to be leading the way,” Stassun said. “It’s a dead end or a bridge to nowhere.”

Even the pioneers of AI will tell you, Stassun said, in many cases, what AI does very well is rapidly synthesizing, consolidating or repackaging existing information. A large language model can only tell you, perhaps very quickly and effectively, what’s already been said.

“Discovery and invention remain the purview of the human mind and creative human genius,” Stassun said. “So, yeah, I think it really does say something pretty foundational to choose to invest only in the one and not the other.”