Category: Formula 1

• Australian ends 2025 season third in driver standings

• McLaren driver determined to learn lessons from low points

Just as calm and measured amid his obvious disappointment as he’s been level-headed during the highest points of a remarkable season, Oscar Piastri is confident of rediscovering that giddy feeling of being “unstoppable” behind the wheel of his McLaren.

Taking his title disappointment on the chin on Sunday after finishing runner-up in Abu Dhabi and third in the championship race, the Australian said he was ready to use any sense of anti-climax to fuel a push to become a world champion of the future.

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• Hadjar replaces Yuki Tsunoda after impressive 2025

• British teenager Arvid Lindblad to join Racing Bulls

Red Bull have announced they are to sign Isack Hadjar to drive alongside Max Verstappen at the team next year. The 20-year-old Frenchman is being promoted from sister squad Racing Bulls after only one season in F1 to replace Yuki Tsunoda in 2026, while the 18-year-old British driver Arvid Lindblad is to join Racing Bulls to make his F1 debut.

Hadjar has been impressive in his rookie year in the sport, taking his debut podium at the Dutch GP and a series of points finishes that have moved him up to 10th in the drivers’ championship. He has demonstrated confidence and assurance, outscoring and repeatedly out qualifying the New Zealander Liam Lawson who will continue at Racing Bulls.

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• Norris passed Mercedes driver near finish of Qatar GP

• Red Bull had initially hinted at foul play in title fight

The Mercedes teenage driver Kimi Antonelli has been subjected to death threats after Red Bull suggested he deliberately moved out of Lando Norris’s way in the closing stages of the Qatar Grand Prix.

Norris was elevated to fourth after Antonelli ran wide on the penultimate lap of Sunday’s race. Norris gained two points from Antonelli’s mistake which means he now can finish third, rather than runner-up at this weekend’s season finale in Abu Dhabi, to be assured of beating Red Bull’s Max Verstappen to the title.

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A tactical howler by McLaren handed Max Verstappen and Red Bull victory and set up a title showdown in Abu Dhabi

John Brewin has West Ham v Liverpool here, by the way:

If Norris outscores his teammate Piastri by four points, he’s the champ.

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• Newey: ‘I have seen great talent within our team’

• Current chief Andy Cowell to become strategy officer

Adrian Newey, regarded as one of the best engineers in Formula One history, will become Aston Martin team principal next season,

Newey committed his long-term future to Aston Martin in September 2024 after his departure from Red Bull sparked a bidding war for the Brtion’s services.

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• F1, FIA and Bernie Ecclestone are defending the claims

• Brazilian former driver says he is rightful 2008 winner

Felipe Massa’s £64m claim against Formula One, its governing body the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone over Lewis Hamilton’s first F1 world championship in 2008 can go to trial, a high court judge has ruled.

Massa claims he is the rightful champion after the Brazilian lost by a single point when Nelson Piquet Jr deliberately crashed at the Singapore Grand Prix. Ecclestone, who was F1’s impresario for four decades before he was deposed in 2017, suggested in 2023 that the sport’s executives were aware of the cover-up – which became known as Crashgate – before the 2008 campaign concluded. The 95-year-old Ecclestone, the FIA and Formula One Management are defending the claims.

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• Grill’d apologises for jinxing 24-year-old with promotion

• Piastri’s manager Mark Webber backs McLaren driver to rebound from Formula One woes
  

As Oscar Piastri desperately works to rebound from his recent Formula One woes, an Australian restaurant chain is doing its part to keep his title hopes alive.

After offering free burgers for every time the Australian made the podium, Grill’d burger chain has apologised for putting a “curse” on the McLaren driver.

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Head of F1 Academy explains how close she came to a grand prix debut, her quest to produce female drivers and a frightening knock on her hotel room door by a powerful man in the sport

“There was a deep loneliness to karting, and then definitely in single-seaters, because no one else was going through the same thing as me,” says Susie Wolff as she remembers her long struggle in motorsport, from racing as a teenager against Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg to her determined, but unfulfilled, quest to become a Formula One driver.

“After the whole #MeToo movement, we forget what it was like before. But the way I heard boys talking about girls in the paddock made me think I never want to be spoken about in that way. I realised I’d have to be whiter than white to get through it unscathed.”

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• John Elkann has say after Hamilton’s ‘nightmare’ verdict

• Lando Norris plays down title talk after victory in Brazil

Lewis Hamilton has been told to “focus on driving and talk less” in a rebuke from the Ferrari president, John Elkann, which was almost certainly a reaction to Hamilton’s outspoken description of his first season with the team as a “nightmare”.

Hamilton has endured a difficult debut year with Ferrari, with the team underperforming and the seven‑time champion having a trying time adapting to a new environment and practices.

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• Briton forced to retire on lap 37 of São Paulo GP

• Hamilton yet to make podium with Scuderia

Lewis Hamilton has branded his first season at Ferrari as a “nightmare” after he endured another trying weekend, forced to retire from the São Paulo Grand Prix in a year when he has been frustrated and disappointed as he attempts to adapt to his new team.

“It’s a nightmare,” Hamilton said. “I’ve been living it for a while. The flip between the dream of driving for this amazing team and then the nightmare of the results that we’ve had. We are just really having to fight through those hardships at the moment.

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• McLaren driver opens 24-point lead over Oscar Piastri

• Kimi Antonelli second, Verstappen powers through field

Max Verstappen had declared disconsolately that his world championship hopes should be forgotten as he went into the São Paulo Grand Prix. Yet after another masterclass in Brazil he defied the odds in taking third from a 19th-place start in the pit lane. It was an extraordinary drive, even as Lando Norris delivered a perfect weekend with a win at Interlagos and in so doing staked a claim to having one hand on the title.

Norris’s victory was without doubt that of a champion in waiting as he managed a tense and high‑pressure victory from pole position to extend his world championship lead over his McLaren teammate, Oscar Piastri, who finished fifth. Norris gave a performance of precision and control exactly when it was required to put real daylight on his two title rivals.

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• Oscar Piastri fourth as teammate Lando Norris excels

• Verstappen’s title hopes hit as he is 16th and out in Q1

Lando Norris claimed pole position for the São Paulo Grand Prix, his championship ambitions backed with a real statement of intent having already secured victory in the sprint race earlier on Saturday.

His success was given added impetus as both his title rivals, Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen, suffered disappointment in Brazil. Piastri’s championship hopes took yet another blow as he crashed out of the sprint and qualified only in fourth, while Verstappen could manage only 16th on the grid.

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Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen battle for the title, just as Juan Manuel Fangio, Nino Farina and Luigi Fagioli did 75 years ago

With no little pleasing symmetry, 75 years on from a three-way fight for the inaugural Formula One title, the championship is entering its decisive phase once more with three protagonists in the running and the promise of an enthralling denouement of the kind that has graced some of the sport’s greatest seasons.

Heading into this weekend’s São Paulo Grand Prix, McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen all remain in the hunt. Norris leads Piastri by one point, with the defending champion, Verstappen, 36 points back, after a late-season resurgence.

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• McLaren driver leads overall standings by one point

• Piastri and Verstappen still in hunt with four races to go

Lando Norris has acknowledged that he needs to be at the very top of his game to try to secure his first world championship, as the British driver heads into this weekend’s São Paulo Grand Prix with a narrow one-point lead over his McLaren teammate, Oscar Piastri.

Norris had trailed Piastri by 34 points after the Dutch GP but with a series of strong results including a dominant win from pole to flag at the last round in Mexico, Norris has edged ahead in the title race for the first time since the Saudi Arabian GP in April.

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