Author: Giles Richards

The dismissal of the New Zealander and his replacement by the more experienced Yuki Tsunoda illustrates fundamental problems with the RB21

Red Bull’s dismissal of Liam Lawson after only two races was a ruthless decision, brutal even by their standards. Yet while it was neither unexpected nor particularly surprising, there is more to it than simple dissatisfaction with an underperforming driver. Replacing him with Yuki Tsunoda was a U-turn that indicates fundamental problems the team are facing, ones to which they are unlikely to find a quick fix, and that Max Verstappen is unhappy at their performance and indeed their prospects for the new season.

Lawson, who had already looked shell-shocked by the close of the second race in China last weekend, was left entreating the team to give him just a little more time. Red Bull were not forthcoming. On Thursday morning they announced he would be replaced by Tsunoda from their sister team, RB, the Japanese driver having originally been passed over for the seat in Lawson’s favour at the end of last season.

Continue reading...

• Champion likes post describing change as ‘panic move’
• Rookie Lawson will go back to sister team RB for season

Max Verstappen has indicated disquiet and dismay with his Red Bull team after they confirmed they will replace their driver Liam Lawson with Yuki Tsunoda from sister team RB.

Lawson has been dropped for the season before next weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix after the New Zealander completed only two races for the team, while Verstappen remains dissatisfied with the team’s performance and their failure to bring a competitive car to the new season.

Continue reading...

Embarrassing disqualification of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc raises difficult questions for Scuderia

Before the Formula One season began Lewis Hamilton had taken his motorhome to Ferrari’s Maranello factory, living alongside his new colleagues in order to bond with them and better learn their methodologies in an effort to make his transition into the Scuderia as seamless as possible. After he and his teammate, Charles Leclerc, were disqualified from the Chinese Grand Prix on Sunday, he may have to consider taking up residence again, as a rocked Ferrari deal with a disheartening opening to the season.

Ferrari have never endured a double disqualification before in the 75 years they have participated in F1, an embarrassment for which they held up their hands. They conceded that the skid block on the floor of Hamilton’s car had been worn 0.5mm below the limit, while Leclerc’s ride was 1kg below the minimum weight requirement. The F1 governing body, the FIA, said Ferrari acknowledged a “genuine error” and the team said it was a “mistake” they would endeavour not to repeat.

Continue reading...

• Team say they will learn from mistakes at Chinese GP
• Hamilton’s sixth place undone in second race for Ferrari

Ferrari have admitted they were at fault for the mistakes that led to the disqualification of both their drivers, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, from the Chinese Grand Prix on Sunday, in what was a disastrous close to the weekend for the Scuderia and a hugely disappointing outcome for Hamilton in only his second race for the team.

Leclerc and Hamilton had finished fifth and sixth respectively in the race, which was won by McLaren’s Oscar Piastri. However three hours after the flag, and in the wake of the usual post‑race inspection of the cars to ensure they are in compliance with regulations, Ferrari were found wanting over two clearly defined rules.

Continue reading...

• Australian first, with McLaren teammate Norris second
• Ferrari’s Hamilton and Leclerc disqualified after race

Now 18 years into his career and hoping to see it out with a flourish, it will not have gone unnoticed by Lewis Hamilton that while McLaren – with whom he started in Formula One all those years ago – are enjoying a breathless, heady run of form, his opening with Ferrari has been an altogether more frustrating affair. The teams’ fates in the Chinese Grand Prix could not have been in greater contrast and it is doubtful that it would give Hamilton occasion for so much as a wry smile.

In a processional race at Shanghai, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri won with a commanding drive from pole and with his teammate Lando Norris behind him they secured McLaren’s 50th one-two finish and the team’s first of the season. On this form, it will not be the last.

Continue reading...

• ‘People underestimated steep climb of joining new team’
• Piastri takes first pole ahead of Russell and Norris

Feisty, confident and feeling vindicated, Lewis Hamilton will, to an extent, be at ease with how he fares in Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix. After his victory in the sprint race on Saturday, the seven-time champion was energised and assured he is on the right path with Ferrari and even a tough day in Shanghai will not detract from the sense he has seized the reins.

A long road lies ahead, but his condemnation of the “yapping” of criticism after a striking victory was the fighting talk of a man who feels he is just beginning to land some blows.

Continue reading...

Muttering in pit lane over how F1 team have found such a sweet spot between aerodynamics and tyre wear

One race into the new Formula One season and the sport has been transfixed by how smartly McLaren have emerged from the blocks. A quick car is a surprise to no one but what fascinated about Lando Norris’s and Oscar Piastri’s ride is that their single greatest advantage apparently lay not in the science of aerodynamics but rather in the tyres and the dark art of mechanical grip. In which algorithms and alchemy, McLaren appear to have struck gold.

Norris’s win at the season opener in Australia caught the eye, not only with how much pace they showed but in how they achieved it, and it has the other teams worried.

Continue reading...

Grand prix fans thronged into the heaving Albert Park with renewed zeal, abuzz at the prospects of local hero and title contender Oscar Piastri

As Formula One prepares to open a season the sport hopes will be a spectacular battle royale, it surely could not ask for a finer venue than Melbourne’s Albert Park to see things off in a suitably splendid fashion.

The true form for the year ahead has yet to be discerned from the opening day of practice in Australia. But with the cars fizzing with intent round the glorious circuit in the parkland in the heart of the city, it was a pleasure to welcome Australia back as the opening race of the season for the first time since the Covid pandemic brought proceedings to a desultory close here on the Friday before the race in 2020.

Continue reading...

Verstappen is under pressure from a revitalised Hamilton at Ferrari with McLaren’s Norris set to challenge from the off

Car MCL39 Engine Mercedes Principal Andrea Stella Debut Monaco 1966 GPs 970 Titles 9 Last season 1st. In position to build on securing the constructors’ championship in 2024, McLaren will be quick out of the blocks. The car was the standout in testing and confidence is high. Lessons were learned through questionable execution last year and they have two outstanding drivers who are both hungrily eyeing the team’s first drivers’ title since 2008. How they manage them may be key from the off.

Continue reading...

‘There’s magic here,’ says the F1 veteran whose mission at Scuderia is under threat from McLaren and Verstappen

In the maelstrom of the buildup to the new Formula One season, which opens in Melbourne next week, one figure stands at its heart, preternaturally calm as the crescendo builds around him. Lewis Hamilton, the sport’s most successful driver, now in a Ferrari, the sport’s most successful team, promises to make F1 in 2025 unmissable, his grand, romantic challenge playing out to the backdrop of what may be the most closely fought season in more than a decade.

Hamilton, now 40 years old and with seven titles, has nothing to prove but is set on securing the greatest achievement in his career. To return a record-breaking eighth title with Ferrari, who have not won the drivers’ title since 2007, would be a feat to rank among the greatest of them all. Watching him try will be as gripping as McLaren trying to steal his thunder.

Continue reading...

• Seven-time champion says winning is his ‘No 1 priority’
• Eddie Jordan and Bernie Ecclestone scornful of signing

Lewis Hamilton has delivered a stinging rebuke to criticism of his move from Mercedes to Ferrari, dismissing it as an irrelevance from what he describes as older, white men and insisting he “welcomes” the negativity.

Hamilton is making his debut with Ferrari this year and is currently taking part in pre-season testing in Bahrain, where he was quickest in the morning session. This will be the 40-year-old’s 19th season in F1 and comes after 12 years at Mercedes with whom he won six of his seven titles. Speaking in an interview for Time magazine he addressed criticism he has received from the former F1 team chief Eddie Jordan and the sport’s former chief executive Bernie Ecclestone.

Continue reading...

• Hamilton sets sights on record eighth world title
• ‘The passion here is like nothing you have ever seen’

Lewis Hamilton is convinced Ferrari will give him the chance to win his eighth world championship, describing his “magic” new team as having everything in place to compete.

Hamilton has been reinvigorated by his switch from Mercedes and he and his teammate Charles Leclerc drove their new challenger, the SF-25, for the first time in a shakedown run at the team’s test track at Fiorano on Wednesday. Afterwards the seven-time champion gave an unequivocal “yes” when asked if he believed he could secure a record eighth world title with the Scuderia.

Continue reading...

• British driver to debut with Scuderia this year
• ‘It will all depend on how well he can adapt’

Ferrari are in a strong position to enable Lewis Hamilton to fight for his eighth Formula One world championship, according to their former driver Carlos Sainz, who was replaced by the Briton for this season.

Sainz has joined Williams for 2025 after three years with Ferrari, including last season when the team finished with a very competitive car and claimed second place in the constructors’ championship.

Continue reading...

The Red Bull driver overcame an ‘undriveable monster', McLaren delivered and Lewis Hamilton ended win drought

With a fourth consecutive world championship, Max Verstappen deserves to be recognised as one of the greats, a place he has earned not least with this year’s title, his most hard-fought yet. After opening in a dominant Red Bull, he executed clinically to take four of the opening five races, keeping his head even as the controversy surrounding the team principal, Christian Horner, consumed Red Bull. However, McLaren’s upgrades at Miami launched a fightback from Lando Norris and after the Spanish GP with the McLaren a quicker ride, Verstappen had to buckle down and make the best of an unbalanced car that he described as an ‘undriveable monster’. He did so with the commitment and determination of an Alain Prost or Michael Schumacher. Repeatedly grinding out decent points between Spain and Brazil was vital and ultimately enough to ensure he closed it out, a champion’s performance. It was, however, one marked by an aggressive, uncompromising attitude on track that did him a disservice and for which he was penalised. That side of his character was not enhanced by his ill-tempered late-season spat with George Russell, nor the absurd dive he made on Oscar Piastri at the season finale in Abu Dhabi that meant nothing to him but could have affected McLaren’s championship challenge.

Continue reading...

• Mercedes team principal hails historic partnership
• Verstappen learns punishment for swearing in Singapore

Toto Wolff has bid Lewis Hamilton a heartfelt final farewell with what the Mercedes team principal called the most important message he has ever sent, as Hamilton prepares to join Ferrari next season.

Hamilton delivered a superb comeback drive at the season finale in Abu Dhabi on Sunday, after which he admitted his last race for Mercedes had been an emotional affair. The team are continuing to hold a week of celebrations for their driver and he will attend their bases in Brackley and Brixworth this week to say goodbye in person as they part ways after 12 years of unprecedented success.

Continue reading...