Category: Formula 1

The big names are getting younger at the same time the infantilisation of sport grows apace

A 14-year-old has been taking the Indian Premier League by storm. A 17-year-old may win this year’s Ballon d’Or. Last month another 17-year-old became the youngest winner of a Formula Two race. In darts the last world champion was 17, a 14-year-old just became the youngest winner of a World Darts Federation event and this week the promoter Barry Hearn described watching a prodigy who “had a 106 average and checked out 140 and 154”. He was only 10. The 14‑year‑old Polish snooker player Michal Szubarczyk is about to become the sport’s youngest ever professional. In this context it is a little hard to complain about the infantilisation of sport. And yet.

For all its recent Netflix-promoted virality, motor racing has always seemed an unusually grown-up pastime. For 75 years Formula One has given us strength, skill, drama and occasional scandal, heroes and villains, bravery and tragedy. A global survey in 2021 found the average age of the sport’s fanbase was 32, but in 2022 84% of the people who watched the British Grand Prix on Channel 4 (and 68% of those watching on Sky) were aged 35 or over. Which made it only more jarring when its administrators started to obsess over schoolyard distractions such as swearing and underpants.

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• Briatore to return 17 years after Crashgate scandal
• Driver Doohan replaced by Colapinto for next five races

The Alpine team principal, Oliver Oakes, has resigned from the team with Flavio Briatore, the Italian who was once given a lifetime ban from Formula One, set to step up to assume team principal duties.

Oakes was appointed only nine months ago and the 37-year-old’s resignation, which a statement from Alpine read they had accepted with “immediate effect”, comes as the team replace their driver Jack Doohan with Franco Colapinto for the next five F1 races.

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Racing driver who won many endurance races, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans, but only one grand prix, at Barcelona in 1975

The German racing driver Jochen Mass, who has died aged 78, won only one of the 104 grands prix in which he competed between 1974 and 1982, but he was known as a talented and reliable competitor, a useful number two to such champions as Emerson Fittipaldi and James Hunt, as well as being a winner of many endurance races in sports cars, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

His sole victory in a world championship Formula 1 race came in tragic circumstances. In 1975, after joining the McLaren team for his second season in the top tier, he had taken the lead of the Spanish Grand Prix on the fast and spectacular Montjuïc Park circuit in Barcelona when the race was halted after an accident.

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Max Verstappen produced a stunning flying lap to secure his second consecutive pole at the Miami GP

There was rain a bit earlier, which doesn’t sound very Miami, but there it is. This being a street circuit there is of course a fair chance of red flags during qualifying if anyone comes a cropper on a hot lap.

Those helpful explanatory words courtesy of the official F1 website, just if anyone wanted to know how qualifying actually works. Which, I am not going to lie to you here, I did.

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• Mohammed ben Sulayem suggests rule ‘improvements’
• F1 drivers raised concerns over fines and free speech

The standoff between drivers and the president of Formula One’s governing body over the contentious issue of swearing may have taken a step towards resolution.

Ahead of this week’s Miami Grand Prix, the FIA’s Mohammed ben Sulayem posted on Instagram that after “constructive feedback” from drivers across the world of motorsport he is considering making “improvements” to the document which lays out the punishments for a range of offences ranging from physical violence to political statements and swearing.

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The world champion went from one masterclass on the track to another off it with his discontent at recent FIA rule changes

In the aftermath of a superb drive at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Max Verstappen went on to give something of another masterclass, in putting across an opinion while ostensibly declining to say anything at all.

It was an arch display of discontent and dissatisfaction, delivered with a disarming smile, and aimed at the FIA; the latest expression of a cumulative wave of disquiet with the governing body.

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• McLaren driver aims even higher after winning Saudi Arabian GP
• ‘I want to be leading it after round 24, not round five,’ he says

Oscar Piastri put Australia on top of the Formula One world championship for the first time since 2010 on Sunday but the McLaren driver said he was still a long way from where he wanted to be despite his Saudi Arabian Grand Prix victory.

After the barrage of celebration fireworks had subsided over the Red Sea and the business of packing up had begun in the paddock, he said there was a lot more winning to do.

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• Champion second to Piastri after five-second censure
• ‘I cannot share my opinion, it might get me in trouble’

Max Verstappen has implied it is all but impossible to express an opinion for risk of censure by Formula One’s governing body the FIA, when he refused to air his clear displeasure at the penalty he was given during the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

After the race Verstappen declined to discuss the race after the top three drivers climbed from their cars in parc ferme. He was fined by the FIA for swearing in a press conference at the Singapore GP last year and this season has been far more guarded and short in answering questions and speaking to the media in Jeddah suggested he felt constrained by the rulebook.

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• McLaren man’s win catapults him 10pts clear in title race
• Max Verstappen pays price for first-lap penalty

Maintaining a focus and equilibrium under pressure has always been one of the hallmarks of Formula One’s greatest proponents and Oscar Piastri is demonstrating it with striking assurance for one so young.

His victory at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, beating the world champion Max Verstappen, was an object lesson in the 24-year-old’s calm and confidence and his potential to take the title in only his third season.

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• Championship leader will start race from 10th on grid
• Oscar Piastri qualfies second with George Russell third

His confidence in the car already wavering, the world ­championship leader, Lando Norris, now has to cope with another serious blow to his title ­ambitions after ­crashing out in ­qualifying for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, while his Red Bull rival Max Verstappen claimed pole ­position, only one-hundredth of a second clear of Norris’s teammate Oscar Piastri.

Norris is notoriously self-critical and his costly error at the Jeddah circuit might well cause him to once more deliver a brutal self-examination. His own summation in the moments after the crash summed it up as he bluntly described himself as a “fucking idiot” over team radio.

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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.

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• 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.

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• 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.”

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• Australian leads from pole to flag to pick up second win of season
• ‘It was relatively straightforward,’ says McLaren driver

Australian Oscar Piastri hailed an “incredible weekend” after earning another pole-to-flag Formula One triumph at the Bahrain Grand Prix. The McLaren driver made his 50th grand prix start on Sunday and moved into second place in the drivers’ standings with the victory, which left him breathing down the neck of his low-on-confidence teammate Lando Norris.

After he held off a challenge on the first corner from Mercedes’ George Russell at the floodlit Sakhir circuit, Piastri then utterly dominated, even after a mid-race restart under the safety car. The man from Melbourne, the first driver to win two grand prix this season after his Chinese GP victory, ended up outpacing Russell by 15-and-a-half seconds – the biggest margin of victory by any winner this year – with championship leader Norris third.

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• 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.

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