Category: Formula 1

• Driver backs Riccardo Adami despite terse exchanges

• ‘There’s a lot of speculation, most of it is BS’

Lewis Hamilton has dismissed speculation about what has been interpreted as a fractious relationship with Riccardo Adami, his race engineer at Ferrari, describing it as “BS” and insisting the pair enjoy a healthy working relationship.

The issue has previously been raised several times this season as Hamilton develops his dynamic with Adami and came to the fore once more because of some testy exchanges at the last round in Monaco, including when Hamilton asked his engineer at the end of the race: “Are you upset with me or something?” To which he appeared to receive no reply.

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Lando Norris closed on his teammate Oscar Piastri in the season standings after an experimental race at the storied Monte Carlo circuit

Oliver Bearman of Haas, who has already taken a 10-place grid penalty, had a cooling contraption still attached to his car when he went to leave the pits just then. A member of the crew came and grabbed it, but Haas may face another penalty.

Grid positions on the official F1 site don’t seem to be updated with Hamilton’s penalty, but anyway, I believe this is how the cars will line up on the grid in about 40 minutes:

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New book shines a light on the women who stole headlines on an F1 support bill 50 years ago, with Beckers going on to star at Le Mans and hold the Guinness World Record

Monaco’s place in Formula One history has long since been established but two little-known races from the principality 51 years ago remain etched in the memory of those who took part, when women blazing a trail in the male-dominated motor racing world took to the track in Monte Carlo.

Christine Beckers competed in the first Grand Prix Monte-Carlo Féminin on 26 May 1974 and now, at 81 is as irrepressibly enthused about racing as she was when she fell in love with the sport as a teenager.

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McLaren’s Lando Norris pipped Charles Leclerc to pole in Monaco. Join John Brewin for reaction

Norris takes it at 1.11 536. Seems like a huge lap already. The bottom five are Gasly, Stroll, Colopinto, Hulkenberg, Hadjar and Lawson.

Stroll has caused am issue with Gasly, cutting across the chicane.

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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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