Author: Giles Richards

Briton in cautious mood before Saudi Arabian GP but maintains Scuderia are ‘greatest team in F1 history’

Weathering the choppy waves of his new career with Ferrari it is still clear that every time Lewis Hamilton climbs into the car the seven-time Formula One champion believes he is taking a step forward, regardless of how it seems to others. He remains unfazed by the process of adapting, having long considered it would be an evolution, even given the weight of all the expectation and scrutiny.

This weekend at the fifth round of the season in Saudi Arabia, Ferrari and Hamilton are optimistic they will be making another stride in bridging the gap to the dominant McLaren.

• F1 world champion finished sixth in last race in Bahrain
• ‘I’m happy, I’m just not very happy with our car’

Max Verstappen played down concerns that he may leave Red Bull after the world champion was left frustrated and disappointed at the last round in Bahrain but reiterated that he was unhappy with the car and that as things stand it will be hard to defend his title this season.

Verstappen finished sixth in ­Bahrain, unable to make any impression against the frontrunners McLaren, Mercedes and ­Ferrari. The car struggles with balance problems and is proving a handful to drive, with the team identifying a disconnect between their data from the wind tunnel and its real-world performance.

• Dutchman finished sixth at Sakhir circuit
• Horner says team need to react ‘very quickly’

Senior figures at Red Bull held crisis talks after the Bahrain Grand Prix finished with a deeply dissatisfied Max Verstappen languishing in sixth place. But the team principal, ­Christian Horner, admitted there will be no quick fix.

Horner conceded the team have problems that need to be addressed as soon as possible, but he said: “This race has exposed some pitfalls that are obviously very clear that we need to get on top of very quickly. Ultimately you can mask it a little through setup and we were able to achieve that last weekend in Suzuka. We understand where the issues are, it’s introducing the solutions that obviously take a little more time.”

• Briton third behind teammate Piastri and Russell
• Norris: ‘I’m nowhere near the capability I have’

Lando Norris has insisted he remains confident in his abilities, even as he admitted he has no answer as to what he can do to work better with his McLaren car after a difficult weekend. The British driver, soundly beaten at he Bahrain Grand Prix by his teammate Oscar Piastri, said he is hurt by the frustration he feels.

Norris finished third at the Sakhir circuit, behind Piastri who took the flag a full 15 seconds up the road from Mercedes’ George Russell in second. After qualifying poorly in sixth, a performance he admitted left him “clueless”, an exasperated Norris felt he was no closer to getting to grips with the car after the race.

• George Russell finishes second; Lando Norris third
• Ferrari’s Leclerc and Hamilton take fourth and fifth

Flawless was the assessment of Oscar Piastri’s race engineer after the Australian delivered a consummate victory at the Bahrain Grand Prix. Calm and controlled throughout, this was a champion’s drive from Piastri that has made it abundantly clear he is in contention to return the championship this season.

Tom Stallard, a 2008 Olympic rowing silver medallist for Great Britain, is Piastri’s engineer but the Australian, unflappable, barely needed so much as a gentle nudge from him all race, such was the ease with which he drove from pole to flag to take McLaren’s first victory at the Sakhir circuit.

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have a chance to dominate in the desert as Max Verstappen scrambles to stay in touch

Three races into the new Formula One season and this weekend’s ­Bahrain Grand Prix represents something of a litmus test as to what may ­follow for the title protagonists. Everything points to a chance for McLaren to dominate at the Sakhir circuit but there may also be some indication if Red Bull are making real steps ­forward with their car.

For McLaren, Bahrain is a chance to throw off their hoodoo at the track where they have never won and at which, in recent years, they have struggled for form. This season in testing at the circuit they gave their first evidence that they had a much improved package; one swiftly ­reinforced with dominant victories for Lando Norris in Australia and then his teammate, Oscar Piastri, in China.

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.

• 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.

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.

• 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.

• 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.

• ‘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.

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.

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.