April Fools! So, did you fall for it too?

– 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 we have once again allowed ourselves a little April Fool’s 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” 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 lines up 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 have 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 frequently with our April Fool’s jokes in the past …

A little look back at our previous April Fool’s jokes:

2025 we reported a radical rejuvenation for the sport. From 2026, a strict age limit of 40 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 of the FIA sending the record world champion into forced retirement in the middle of his Ferrari adventure caused discussions on social networks.
Read the 2025 April Fool’s 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 Fool’s 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 intended to replace the race engineer in Formula 1, among other things, we wrote. Alexander Bodo, CEO of technology company PACETEQ, kindly 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 Fool’s 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 touch 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 Fool’s joke here again!

2021, after our “Shoey ban”, the 2019 April Fool’s 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 Photoshop play and the basic ingredients were together to send you into April with “#Score4Trees”. Actually a charming idea, right?
Read the 2021 April Fool’s joke here again!

2020 was the first year of the coronavirus. And because the motorsport season started particularly gloomily this year as a result, our April Fool’s joke this year was that there wasn’t just one April Fool’s joke! We don’t want to rule out in the future that Lewis Hamilton will have a race track dedicated to him by some sheikh, but the fact 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 Fool’s 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 Fool’s joke #1 from 2020 here again!
Read April Fool’s joke #2 from 2020 here again!

2019 the whole world was at the feet of environmental activist Greta Thunberg. So why not Formula 1 too? So we thought that the Swede, together with tens of thousands of Chinese schoolgirls, could hijack the Shanghai International Circuit, which would mean that free practice for the race in China would have to be cancelled. In the past, a practice session in Shanghai had already had to be cancelled – due to poor environmental conditions. So the story wasn’t too far-fetched. A curious (but true) story about a start-up by Toto Wolff helped to camouflage our “fake news”.
Read the 2019 April Fool’s joke here again!

2018 there was heated debate in Formula 1 about the abolition of grid girls. This prompted us to make an April Fool’s joke that Red Bull wanted to have grid boys appear for the first time in Spielberg – who would then also come to all other races. The interview with Dietrich Mateschitz was just as real as a YouTube video with Daniel Ricciardo and the model agency starboxx, which really exists in Heidelberg. But the fact that starboxx was looking for male models for the Hockenheim weekend with newspaper advertisements was fictional. In the end, by the way, grid kids came instead of grid girls.
Read the 2018 April Fool’s joke here again!

An unholy alliance between Bernie Ecclestone and Ron Dennis, the newly ousted “great gentlemen” of Formula 1, was the subject of our April Fool’s joke in **2017**. The two would join forces, take over the insolvent Manor team and launch their own racing team together with Honda – under the name “BRoMA” (Bernie Ron Motorsport Association). Our hidden clue: Broma means “joke” in Spanish …
Read the 2017 April Fool’s joke here again!

2016 the April Fool’s joke was a reaction to the doping ban of tennis player Maria Sharapova, which had become known shortly before. Inspired by this, we reported on a “crackdown” against doping in Formula 1 as well. What was true about our story was that Stirling Moss confessed to having doped during his active career. The rest was not true, for example that blood profiles of the drivers were to be stored and that mechanics also had to regularly provide urine samples.
Read the 2016 April Fool’s joke here again!

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The idea that Formula 1 would take cues from the Four Hills Ski Jumping Tournament and especially from tennis was our April Fool’s idea **in 2015**. According to this, five Grands Prix in Europe (Barcelona, Monte Carlo, Spielberg, Silverstone and Monza) were to be given “Grand Slam” status in order to upgrade the traditional races. These races, we wrote, count normally towards the World Championship, but there are also gold, silver and bronze medals for the top 3 – and of course a golden “Bernie Award” for the overall winner. In addition, the top 3 in the overall standings were to be rewarded with five, three and one million US dollars in prize money respectively. Furthermore, the “Grand Slam Europe” was to be enhanced with one guest starter each: Felix Baumgartner in Austria in a Red Bull, Valentino Rossi in Italy in a Ferrari – and so on. A pleasing idea, but one that was not taken up by the Formula 1 officials…
Read the 2015 April Fool’s joke here again!

After the switch to the quiet V6 hybrid engines **in 2014**, many fans were bothered by the sound debate and found the Formula 1 spectacle as a whole not exciting enough. So we published ideas on how to counteract this. For example, we thought of engine mappings that blast unburned gasoline into the exhaust to create spectacular flames. Or strips of magnesium on the underbody for more sparks. In the first test of the spark strips in Austria, magnesium became titanium, but Formula 1 actually adapted our idea! A press spokesman even told us later (when we didn’t let up on who had the idea): “Feel free to claim that for yourselves.” But we still have to send the bill for the consultant’s fee to Bernie Ecclestone…
Read the 2014 April Fool’s joke here again!

Sebastian Vettel’s constantly changing helmet designs inspired our April Fool’s joke **in 2013**. At that time, we spread the news of two alleged FIA directives (73a and 73b) that force drivers to complete the entire season with a single helmet design in order to increase recognition value. In addition, a new regulation was that the helmets of the drivers of a team must not be too similar. This would have affected Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton at the time, who were both out in yellow. But: at the latest when Vettel unpacked his next helmet design, our little fun was exposed. Side note: this April Fool’s idea of ours has actually been anchored in the Formula 1 regulations in the meantime!
Read the 2013 April Fool’s joke here again!

The fact that many teams had to fight for their naked survival because they were under enormous economic pressure was a fact **in 2012** (and still is today). The fact that Bernie Ecclestone sent out one or two “firefighters” to help them – under strict secrecy – as well. And that a mass collapse of Formula 1 teams would have had catastrophic consequences for the planned IPO is obvious. However, it was completely fictional that there was to be a solidarity fund, fed by the big four for the endangered small teams. Because solidarity may exist in the Formula 1 paddock more often than many outsiders believe, but when it comes to money, charity is very limited. By the way: an Austrian free newspaper completely fell for the April Fool’s joke at the time. We are still very surprised today how the colleagues got a matching Ecclestone quote.
Read the 2012 April Fool’s joke here again!

In 2011, one or two readers fell for it and believed our story about new testing opportunities for rookies and young drivers. The idea back then: anyone who puts 25,000 euros on the table will be assigned a third car from one of the teams on the Thursday before the race weekend, so they could theoretically even end up in a Ferrari – and can train outside of the competition. The highlight would have been a show race on Sunday morning. Even though many young drivers would have been happy about it, the report was of course completely far-fetched…
Read the 2011 April Fool’s joke here again!

On April 1, 2010, we reported that the Virgin team in Great Britain wanted to activate all possible resources to be able to perform more work in Nick Wirth’s CFD computers. Fans were supposed to download an alleged program with which Wirth Research can use part of the computing power of a home PC for its own purposes. Although so-called grid computing actually exists, it is of course not in use for the purpose of simulating and calculating Formula 1 components.
Read the 2010 April Fool’s joke here again!

In 2009, we reported that Friday at the Malaysian Grand Prix would be cancelled because cargo containers caught fire during the temporary storage of Formula 1 material at Kuala Lumpur airport after a short circuit in a battery pack of a KERS system. Since the teams affected have to fly in replacement material from Europe and the other material has not yet been released by the police because of the search for clues, training on Friday could not take place. A colleague from Austrian television has not been on good terms with us since then: it cost him hours of research to expose the report as an April Fool’s joke.
Read the 2009 April Fool’s joke here again!

In the 2008 season, we reported that the first Formula 1 race under floodlights had to be cancelled and the Singapore Grand Prix had to take place in daylight. The background was the fact that the world automobile association FIA could not sufficiently guarantee the safety of everyone involved because two drivers suffer from night blindness. The diagnosis of “hemeralopia” was just as fictional as the fact that the FIA was forced to take this clinical picture into account when awarding super licenses to drivers in the future. We would like to apologize once again to the marketer who subsequently cancelled his flight to Singapore…
Read the 2008 April Fool’s joke here again!

In 2007, you read on our site that Formula 1 would follow a technology plan from the 2010 season, at the end of which there would be a “zero CO2 Formula 1” from the 2030 season, thanks to racing vehicles powered by electric motors. In the 20 years in between, Formula 1 is to approach this goal step by step, first through an annually tightened fuel limit, then through standard engines in combination with a hybrid drive. In hindsight: almost prophetic, isn’t it?
Read the 2007 April Fool’s joke here again!

In 2006, some readers and a surprising number of media representatives fell for it, buying the “report” about a ban on the chrome livery of McLaren-Mercedes. A private broadcaster included the “news” in its teletext, a TV commentator brought the “news” to his listeners several times and the phone at the Mercedes PR department was ringing off the hook. Allegedly, the FIA had to intervene because the car “hardly stands out from the wet race track because of the highly reflective surface when the sun is at an unfavorable angle”.
Read the 2006 April Fool’s joke here again!

In 2005, we reported that Formula 1 was finally doing something for its fans, who are otherwise quite neglected compared to many other racing series. Allegedly, Endemol, Europe’s largest producer of television entertainment, together with Renault team boss Flavio Briatore, had developed a concept that is unique. For example, in December, some Formula 1 drivers were to be locked up “Big Brother”-style on Briatore’s farm in Kenya and observed around the clock with cameras. There was to be a broadcast every day, with highlights of the last 24 hours and various competitions held live.
Read the 2005 April Fool’s joke here again!

In 2004, we fooled our readers with the report that Sheikh Fawaz Bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, Managing Director of the Bahrain International Circuit, was planning a camel race for the hours before the race, in which the team bosses or other team members would compete against each other. The Sheikh, we claimed, would pay a $10,000 entry fee per animal and even $50,000 if the team boss personally got on the camel. The money was to go to a charitable cause.
Read the 2004 April Fool’s joke here again!

In 2003, we reported that the Jordan team had signed a 16-year-old student from England to solve the team’s electronics problems. Lionel Michael, who goes by the nickname “Mike Byte”, was said to be a big Jordan fan and was allegedly annoyed by the team’s starting problems in the 2001 season and wrote to team boss Eddie Jordan about it. Incidentally, a well-known German TV station contacted our editorial office a few days later because they wanted to invite the boy as a talk show guest.
Read the 2003 April Fool’s joke here again!

Our report on April 1, **2002**, caused a lot of stir. On the evening of March 31, at the Brazilian Grand Prix, Juan Pablo Montoya had (actually) driven into the back of Michael Schumacher and lost his front wing. A few hours later, we announced the alleged decision of the race management: if the Colombian were to lose a front wing again in a similar situation in one of the following four races, he would have to change the front wing himself in the pits. Numerous media fell for the joke, especially a leading national daily newspaper, which headlined across the full width of the first sports page: “Montoya as a mechanic”!
Read the 2002 April Fool’s joke here again!

The April Fool’s joke of the **2001** season was also partially believed – it appeared, among other things, in the teletext of some TV stations. For example, we reported that from the 2002 season, Ferrari would no longer start with red cars, but in the traditional color yellow, in order to avoid confusion with the new Toyota team. We quoted the imaginary Ferrari marketing manager Paolo Facorra as saying: “Through our Formula 1 involvement, people have long forgotten that Ferrari’s traditional color is not red, but yellow.” The name was of course fictional, even though yellow and not red is actually Ferrari’s company color.

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