Formula 1

Jenson Button has suggested that, on raw talent alone, Max Verstappen edges Lewis Hamilton and it is the seven-time world champion’s extra experience that is giving him the advantage in the title race at the moment. Round four of the Formula 1 season went the Briton’s way at the weekend as a supreme drive coupled with fine tyre strategy from Mercedes eventually ousted Verstappen in his Red Bull in the closing stages of the race. Indeed, Hamilton is now 14 points clear in the Drivers’ standings with both actually enjoying their best-ever starts to a campaign, underlining just how ferocious the title fight is going to be this year. And, for 2009 champion Jenson Button, a man who partnered Lewis Hamilton between 2010 and 2012 at McLaren as his teammate, it’s the extra experience his compatriot has that is helping him keep the naturally more talented Verstappen at arm’s length right now. “Max is immensely talented. If you look at pure ability, Verstappen is probably the most talented of all the drivers,” Button said to Sky Sports F1 in their build-up show to Sunday’s race. “I know a lot of people won’t agree with me, but this is just my opinion. “The most complete driver, if you include experience and the way you approach races, is Hamilton. But if you only look at talent, you end up with Verstappen.” Certainly, it’s a big claim from the former McLaren and Williams driver, but this isn’t to suggest he is saying Hamilton isn’t talented. Clearly, Button feels that Max perhaps has the extra raw speed at the moment, but Hamilton is the complete package and that’s why he’s leading the standings right now – we’ll have to see how far Max’s talent can carry him this season as the fight for the title continues in a fortnight’s time in Monaco.

Red Bull’s new rear wing is perfectly legal, according to team boss Christian Horner. In Barcelona, Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton referred to a new “bendy wing” on the Red Bull that supposedly gave Max Verstappen a straight-line advantage. Red Bull’s Horner suspects the idea might have been planted in the world championship leader’s head by his boss, Toto Wolff. “It’s something that Toto pointed out to me already,” Horner is quoted by the Dutch portal racingnews365. “I doubt it was Lewis’s opinion – it might have been inspired by someone else.” At any rate, Horner insists the allegedly ‘bendy’ wing is in fact fully legal. “The cars are of course subject to various inspections and the flexibility of the wings is also checked,” he said. “There are all kinds of tests that a part like that has to pass. “The FIA is completely satisfied with our car and it has passed all of the various rigorous testing,” he added.

Race director, Michael Masi has admitted that a radio call from a team boss during a race is a rarity, while the broadcasting of the message is a new innovation from F1. Whether he will take to social media to vent his anger and frustration remains to be seen, but on Sunday afternoon Tot Wolff joined that happy band of fans critical of Nikita Mazepin’s every move. Of course, the Austrian had good reason to be frustrated with the Russian, for, as is his wont, the Haas driver was holding up Lewis Hamilton despite repeated blue flags. “Michael, blue flags!” cried Wolff over the radio. “Michael this guy makes us lose the position.” The Russian subsequently moved aside, finishing the race two laps down on the leader. While it is not unusual to hear team bosses over the radio, broadcasting of their calls to race control is. “To be fair, I very rarely hear from Toto on the race control radio,” admitted race director, Michael Masi after the race. Indeed radio calls to race control are not usually broadcast, but this weekend F1 and the FIA have agreed to the innovation in a bid to allow fans even greater access to what is going on. “It actually came about through a discussion at the F1 Commission meeting last year,” explained Masi. “So viewers could hear a part of the broadcast – the communications between the pit wall and the teams – which is the regular part of what we do operationally. “The F1 Group through their broadcasts, has been doing some trials in the background and seeing what that looks like,” he added. “And all the teams were advised, and this weekend’s the first time it’s gone live to air.” Hands up all those who’d like to hear more of Guenther Steiner’s radio calls.

Red Bull did not have any strategic options to win the Spanish Grand Prix because they weren’t quick enough, Max Verstappen believes. Despite taking the lead of yesterday’s race at the start, and heading the field for 54 laps, Verstappen said it was inevitable Lewis Hamilton would find a way past him to win as they were “too slow”.“That’s how you sum it up,” he said in yesterday’s FIA press conference following the race. “There’s not much else to really discuss. “I tried everything to manage it as good as I could, looking after tyres and stuff, but it’s just not enough when behind you they are just pushing you at [that] rate. You see there’s clearly a bit more pace.” Verstappen came under pressure from Hamilton at the end of the first stint. The Red Bull driver pre-empted Mercedes’ pit call for Hamilton by coming in himself without alerting his team. However Hamilton made his second pit stop before Verstappen, and was able to catch and pass him to win. “You try to keep up with it and do the best possible strategy you can, but even if I think we had gone, let’s say, for that earlier second stop, I don’t think I would have caught Lewis up after that,” said Verstappen. “On the mediums I think I was just a bit slower. For Lewis to be that close on a track like this, all the time within a second, sometimes having DRS, it just shows that there was not much I could do out there to make a difference. “Of course you always want more. I think that always needs to be the aim. I think that we shouldn’t be happy with a second place at the moment, but nevertheless, we tried everything.”Red Bull began the season promisingly in Bahrain where Verstappen beat the Mercedes pair to pole position. Since then he says it’s become clear their rivals have a stronger package on race day. “It looks good when you are leading for so long in the race but you have to also look to all the things that are happening throughout the race. And I think, overall, we were just lacking a little bit of pace in the race. “It has been like this a little bit so far this season where it seems like qualifying, we are quite competitive and in the race struggling a little bit more.”

Lewis Hamilton says he wants to seal a new contract with Mercedes before Formula’s 1 summer break. The 36-year-old left it until last winter to sign his current one-year deal with the world champions. He said after winning Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix: “We don’t want to rush anything but I think we have to be sensible and start conversations. “They’re very complex, so hopefully soon we can start, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the actual job.” The delay in his contract talks last year was not planned. He and team boss Toto Wolff wanted to wait until after Hamilton had clinched a record-equalling seventh title. But when they scheduled talks over the final three races in the Middle East, Hamilton contracted coronavirus. The season ended only two weeks before Christmas, and then Wolff himself caught Covid-19 in the new year. Hamilton said the lateness of the talks had been difficult for both of them. “We never want to be in the position that we were in in January, in February,” he said. “It ruined my whole winter and I’m sure it wasn’t helpful for Toto’s, in terms of being out to be off and relaxed, so it felt like we didn’t really have much of a break.” Hamilton’s win in Spain was his third in four races this year and gave him a 14-point championship lead over his main rival, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. Hamilton emphasised that he did not want talks to detract from his campaign for a record eighth championship. “We still have 19 races to do,” he said, “but it would be great to get something in place before the break so then we could, again, be in that break and have a clear picture of the future.” F1 has three weeks off between the Hungarian Grand Prix on 1 August and the Belgian Grand Prix at the end of that month. The season then has an intense second part, with 12 races scheduled to be crammed in between the last weekend in August and mid-December, although some are in doubt because of the pandemic. A week ago at the Portuguese Grand Prix, Wolff also indicated he wanted to get on with sorting a new contract with Hamilton. “We learned our lessons that we wouldn’t leave it to the Christmas holidays,” Wolff said. “We are in a very good place and our relationship is growing stronger every year and it’s about time to really give it a little nudge and start to speak and this is what we are going to do soon.” Assuming Hamilton stays at Mercedes, Wolff has to choose between his current team-mate Valtteri Bottas and Williams driver George Russell for the second seat. Russell is a strong candidate after outperforming Bottas when he stood in for Hamilton at the Sakhir Grand Prix last December, but it remains to be seen whether Wolff wants to risk upheaval given the harmonious relationship between Hamilton and Bottas. Alpine’s Esteban Ocon is a long-time Mercedes protege and is also out of contract at the end of the year, but the Frenchman is considered an outside bet for the seat.

has admitted he deliberately defied team orders after being told not to hold up Sir Lewis Hamilton in the Spanish Grand Prix. On lap 53, Bottas was told over the team radio to let Hamilton pass him seamlessly for second place as the seven-time World Champion chased down race leader Max Verstappen. Hamilton had made a second pit-stop 11 laps earlier to give himself fresher tyres for an attack on the Red Bull towards the end of the race, having been unable to overtake Verstappen when they were on the same strategy. But rather than pulling off the racing line to allow his Mercedes team-mate through without hindrance, the Finn made the move difficult for Hamilton who, in the end, had to execute what looked to be a proper overtaking manoeuvre to get by. Having said at the start of the season that he would be more single-minded this year, putting his own interests as a driver first, Bottas was sticking to that mindset when interviewed afterwards – and it remains to be seen how it influences his future in the team. Asked if he had let Hamilton pass at the first opportunity, Bottas, who went on to make it a hat-trick of third-place finishes in four races this year, told Sky F1: “No, I definitely could have let him by earlier. “But I was doing my own race, so there is always a moment to calculate things and I was trying to get Charles [Leclerc] out of the pit window so I could stop again and try and go for an extra point [with the fastest lap of the race]. “So the main thing in my mind was my own race. “There wasn’t that much [talk over the team radio]. They told me not to hold him up too much but, like I said, I was also doing my race. I’m not here to let people by…I’m here to race.” Bottas was never in the fight with Hamilton, who eventually passed Verstappen for the win on lap 60, after being overtaken in the opening exchanges by Leclerc’s Ferrari – which he says “compromised” his race thereafter. “What made it more tricky was I lost a place to Charles at lap one. He chose a better line through Turn 3,” said the 31-year-old. “That compromised the race a bit. It’s a bit of a shame but I’m pleased to make it to the podium.”

Lewis Hamilton has won the Spanish Grand Prix, on the weekend in which he claimed his 100th pole position in Formula 1. He also joins Ayrton Senna in the history books, becoming the second driver ever to win five consecutive races at the same Grand Prix. The Brit secured his third win of the season ahead of Max Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas, who joined him on the podium. The Mercedes driver extends his and the team’s lead in the 2021 F1 World Championship titles over Red Bull. The Mercedes duo of Hamilton and Bottas were, once again, a dominant force in Spain this whole weekend. Winners of FP1 and FP2, along with the pole position and third place in qualifying, shows the strength Mercedes still have at the front of the grid. posterThe win in Catalonia was Hamilton’s 98th career Grand Prix victory, as he continues to edge closer to a century of Formula 1 wins. The 36-year-old has repeated his success from last season when he claimed victory in August. The battle between Verstappen and Hamilton was in full force throughout the whole race and after both drivers pitted, Hamilton was within a second of Verstappen for a large period of laps. Hamilton’s two-stop strategy caught Red Bull out and the Mercedes driver caught and overtook the Dutchman on Lap 60. A tight midfield battle between a number of drivers ended with Charles Leclerc besting the rest. Sergio Perez and Daniel Ricciardo were duelling throughout the race until the Mexican got the better of the Australian on Lap 47 and moved into fifth, with both drivers finishing in fifth and sixth come the chequered flag. Carlos Sainz split the McLaren drivers with Lando Norris finishing eighth. Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly rounded off the points-places. Verstappen took the lead from Hamilton on Turn 1, a superb start from lights out gave the Dutchman enough room to dart up the inside past the Mercedes driver. Leclerc was also able to utilise his start as he overtook Valtteri Bottas up into third place. Ricciardo and Perez were both able to move up two places, forcing Esteban Ocon and Carlos Sainz down the grid. Mick Schumacher was able to get ahead of both Yuki Tsunoda and George Russell up to 16th place. Pierre Gasly was investigated by race control four laps into the race, as the Frenchman was found to start out of place at the start and was given a five-second penalty. Yellow flags were shown on Lap 8 turn due to an engine stop for Yuki Tsunoda on Turn 10. The AlphaTauri car was sat on Turn 10, resulting in the Safety Car being deployed and it came in two laps later at the end of Lap 10. Antonio Giovinazzi chose to pit under the safety car on Lap 9. The Alfa Romeo driver was sat in the pits for over 30 seconds as the front left tyre had a puncture and the mechanics needed to find a new tyre for the Italian driver. Williams double-stacked as both Russell and Nicholas Latifi pitted for new sets under the Safety Car. Gasly switched to medium tyres on Lap 18 but had to have the five-second penalty enforced from the start incident. Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel both pitted for medium tyres on Lap 21, Alpine’s stop was 1.5 seconds faster compared to Aston Martin’s. Sainz and Lance Stroll pitted next lap, but Stroll’s stop was 1.7 seconds faster than Vettel’s the lap before. Valtteri Bottas was the first driver at the front to pit, a 2.7 second stop for Mercedes meant that the Finnish driver came out only two positions behind. Verstappen pitted on Lap 24 and a slow 4.2-second pit-stop forced the then-race leader to come out in fifth. Hamilton pitted on Lap 29 and a 2.7 stop put Hamilton only 5.3 seconds behind Verstappen but the Mercedes driver was on fresher tyres. Leclerc pitted at the same time as Hamilton. Kimi Raikkonen was the only driver to start on medium tyres and pitted for the first time on Lap 38. Hamilton and Mercedes’ two-stop strategy caught Red Bull and Verstappen out on Lap 42 with a 2.3 second stop. The Brit dropped down to third. Perez pitted on Lap 57 for soft tyres and lost no positions to those behind him. Verstappen pitted on Lap 60 for soft tyres and came out ahead of Bottas. Pos Driver Team Gap Stops 1 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 66 laps – 1:33:07.680s 2 2 Max Verstappen Red Bull + 15.841s 2 3 Valtteri Bottas Mercedes + 26.610s 2 4 Charles Leclerc Ferrari + 54.616s 2 5 Sergio Pérez Red Bull + 63.671s 2 6 Daniel Ricciardo McLaren + 73.768s 2 7 Carlos Sainz Ferrari + 74.670s 2 8 Lando Norris McLaren + 1 lap 2 9 Esteban Ocon Alpine + 1 lap 1 10 Pierre Gasly AlphaTauri + 1 lap 2 11 Lance Stroll Aston Martin + 1 lap 2 12 Kimi Räikkönen Alfa Romeo + 1 lap 1 13 Sebastian Vettel Aston Martin + 1 lap 2 14 George Russell Williams + 1 lap 2 15 Antonio Giovinazzi Alfa Romeo + 1 lap 2 16 Nicholas Latifi Williams + 1 lap 3 17 Fernando Alonso Alpine + 1 lap 2 18 Mick Schumacher Haas + 2 laps 2 19 Nikita Mazepin Haas + 2 laps 2 20 Yuki Tsunoda AlphaTauri DNF 0

Alfa Romeo provided some remarkable images during the Safety Car. Antonio Giovinazzi came in for a pitstop, but one of the Pirelli tyres turned out to be flat. It makes for some remarkable images. Because of a Safety Car for Yuki Tsunoda, Alfa Romeo wanted to take a gamble and bring Giovinazzi in. A smart strategy, because Giovianzzi didn’t have to come in. However, things went seriously wrong at the pitstop, because one tyre turned out to be flat. Changing one tyre is not possible, so the team had to change the whole set. Because of that Giovinazzi lost around 35 seconds.

Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen have explained why nobody used the medium tyre in Q2 for the Spanish Grand Prix. Whilst it is common for Mercedes and Red Bull to utilise the medium during qualifying, both teams moved away from the usual tactics and decided to use the softs on this occasion. Hamilton – who took the 100th pole position of his career – has given insight into the reasons behind this. “It’s 600m down to Turn One, so six metres difference between the tyres,” the Briton told RacingNews365.com and other select media. “So, it’s less… there’s no advantage, especially if you do happen to get the medium in position and the car behind is on a soft, for example, and they box, they pull you in anyway, so you don’t have the benefit and you’ve just given up extra opportunities, so that’s generally why.” Second-placed Verstappen also commented on the change of tactics. “I think we could have easily qualified on it but I don’t think it was necessary to do so,” the Red Bull driver said of the medium tyre. Meanwhile Hamilton’s teammate Valtteri Bottas – who will start the race from third on the grid – explained that the lack of overtaking opportunities at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya was an additional influencing factor in the tyre choice. “I think here the track position is pretty important so just don’t want to lose any ground at the race start. I think that’s the main thing,” the Finn said. Hamilton also explained why he opted to run a set of scrubbed soft tyres in Q2, meaning these will be the tyres that he starts the race on. “There’s no real logic to it. It’s simply that I didn’t do a good enough job in Q1 on the medium tyre,” the seven-times world champion admitted. “They said that I was on the edge, so I had to go out on the soft tyre which I wasn’t planning to do. “I think we did an out lap and came in and then we started on a new tyre for the first run and then went onto the one lap scrubbed second tyre and it was quicker, so I just finished the lap and that’s the tyre I was on. “So it’s basically got a lap more than everyone else.”

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has stated that over 600 individuals have applied to join the Austrian brand’s latest venture after looking at a simple advert. With Red Bull procuring Honda’s IP, the four-time world champions can now start manufacturing their own engines. This has led to the Milton Keynes based squad seeking talented individuals to join their new company, with the team poaching a few members from Mercedes. Horner though says he encouraged by the response the team recieved for their advert. “We put a basic advert out a month or so ago, just to cast the net out and see who’s out there,” Horner told The-Race.com. “It’s had to date over 600 responses, and pretty much all from people within the industry. That’s been incredibly encouraging.” Horner also weighed in on the new Mercedes saying they were some of the best individuals in the industry. “Mercedes HPP have done such a strong job over the last 15, 20 years, they’ve been an obvious place and a UK base for us to attract talent from,” Horner explained. “I’ve been absolutely chuffed with the take-up we’ve had. We’ve got some real talents, these guys probably aren’t familiar names to you but they’re the top of their game from within the industry.” The Red Bull boss finally described what it was like building what is essentially a brand new company from the ground up. “When you’re starting from scratch with a clean sheet of paper you want to bring in as much talent as you can,” Horner explained. “We’re looking across a broad spectrum of disciplines, the most important thing for us has been to get that senior level together. Of course, then we’ll be developing young talent, just as we do on the chassis side.That’s also really exciting, working with universities and developing young talent. “It’s probably the most exciting engineering business being built in the UK at the moment so of course you can imagine there’s been no shortage of interest.”

Haas Formula 1 driver Nikita Mazepin has received a three-place grid penalty and a penalty point on his licence for “clearly impeding” Lando Norris in Spanish Grand Prix qualifying. The grid penalty is meaningless given Mazepin was already due to start the race last, but the penalty point is Mazepin’s second on his licence, after he’d been adjudged to have ignored blue flags and impeded Sergio Perez in last weekend’s Portuguese GP. Norris had come upon a gaggle of slower cars in the final sector on his flying lap in Q1 and ended up compromised by Mazepin as the Russian rookie elected to pick up the pace rather than wait for Norris to get past. And it was that decision that was ultimately key to the stewards’ decision to penalise Mazepin. Speaking in the immediate aftermath of qualifying, Norris lamented the Q1 incident as it had led to him having one set fewer of fresh softs in Q3 than he’d hoped for. “It kind of cost me quali today,” he said, having qualified a below-expectations ninth. But Norris’ rhetoric softened a bit when speaking to the written press later. “It was to be honest a difficult situation for Nikita, because two other cars [Kimi Raikkonen and Yuki Tsunoda] overtook him into the last corner so late and were both on their in-laps, they’d already completed their time so it didn’t give Nikita that much time to really figure out what to do,” Norris conceded. “But he could have stayed for like a couple more seconds off the racing line and allowed me to come past before starting his lap. “He was in a tricky situation, to be honest, because two cars passed him and then just kind of held him up so there wasn’t a lot that he could do, but sometimes in Formula 1 it’s like that. “And especially in qualifying you can’t impede someone and it held me up quite a bit. “He would have just had to do a little bit more to make sure he got out of the way but not all the blame was on him. “But he definitely could have done just a little bit more. It was just a tough situation for him and then just unlucky for us.” The stewards agreed that Mazepin was indeed in a “difficult situation” – but, having spoken to both Norris and Mazepin, decided the Haas rookie did deserve sanction. “As he approached Turns 10 and 11, Mazepin was informed that Norris was closing on a fast lap behind him and was informed of the closing gap all the way through the incident,” their verdict read. “Mazepin then slowed to maintain the gap to [Mick] Schumacher ahead of him. Between Turn 13 and 14, Raikkonen and Tsunoda, who were coming into the pits, jumped ahead of Mazepin. Both cars had also been informed of the fast-closing Norris, and it is clear that they did this to get out of Norris’ way. However, this created a difficult situation for Mazepin. “The stewards determined that having been clearly informed of Norris’ whereabouts, Mazepin’s decision to pull out and repass Raikkonen and Tsunoda clearly impeded Norris, who lost significant time. “The stewards recognise that this sequence of corners creates a special challenge to the drivers in qualifying and that Mazepin was faced with a difficult situation. This was also pointed out by Norris in the hearing. “However, had Mazepin waited for Norris to pass, he could have pulled out and followed Norris and the stewards determined this opportunity was available to him without significantly compromising his next lap. “The stewards therefore order the usual penalty for ‘unnecessary impeding’ of a three grid place drop and a single penalty point.”

For the 100th time in his Formula 1 career, Lewis Hamilton will start from the front of the grid. The British driver secured pole position for the Spanish Grand Prix by just 0.036 seconds. Verstappen starts from P2, with Bottas in P3. In Q3 Perez spun on turn 13 but yellow flags didn’t hamper his teammate or his rivals. The Mexican put himself under pressure for the last five minutes. Hamilton got ahead of Verstappen by just 0.036 seconds after run one in the final session of qualifying. In the second run, neither Hamilton or Verstappen managed to improve on their times. Over the last two seasons, Hamilton has been rewriting the record books. So much so, that virtually only milestone numbers remain targets for the man who is attempting to become the first driver with eight world titles to his name. In perhaps what is going to be his most challenging season in recent memory, Hamilton continues to reach these milestone numbers. Hamilton achieved his first pole position in the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix in just his sixth weekend in F1. Through his 15 seasons in the sport, Hamilton has gone on to get pole position every year. Performing the feat on 30 different circuits around the world. Hamilton has four of the last five pole positions in Spain. Q1The start of qualifying had a 10-minute delay because a barrier at turn nine needed repair work following a crash in the support race. Even on the first run, traffic at the final chicane on the circuit caused problems for Lando Norris. An incident that the stewards want to investigate after the session. Following the first run, Lance Stroll found himself in the danger zone alongside Nicholas Latifi and the two Haas drivers. Norris dipped down into the elimination zone, but a 1:17.821 pushed him to the top of the timesheets. Stroll also jumped up to P8. This pushed Yuki Tsunoda and Kimi Raikkonen down who didn’t improve enough second time around. OUT – P16 – Tsunoda, P17 – Raikkonen, P18 – Schumacher, P19 – Latifi, P20 – Mazepin Q2For the first in 2021, medium tyres were not used in Q2 by Mercedes and Verstappen. The Red Bull driver went half-a-second clear of Bottas at the top of the timesheets, with Hamilton a further 0.200 seconds down in P3. The British driver was only 0.300 seconds in front of the drop zone with the midfield being so tight. Meanwhile, Perez found himself down in the elimination zone. The Mexican was joined by Esteban Ocon, Sebastian Vettel, Antonio Giovinazzi and George Russell who waited in the garage for a quiet circuit. Russell couldn’t make this advantage pay. Perez found improvements and lifted up to P5. Hamilton also improved to close the gap to 0.244 seconds between his rival. Perhaps crucially, Hamilton ran the second lap on used tyres meaning his soft tyres will be more worn than Verstappen’s. OUT – P11 – Stroll, P12 – Gasly, P13 – Vettel, P14 – Giovinazzi, P15 – Russell

The rivalry between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton seems to be building all the time. In Imola the two drivers hit each other on the opening lap and in Portimao they were constantly close to each other in the opening stages. Not only during the race they put pressure on each other, but also during practice they are in each other’s way. In the final free practice session, Verstappen was on a slow lap and the first car behind him was Hamilton, judging by Verstappen’s reaction it wasn’t the first time the seven-time world champion wanted the slipstream from the Dutchman. “Yeah, is it him again behind? It’s unbelievable this guy in the last sector.” The times of Verstappen and Hamilton do not seem to be far apart and so the two rivals will battle for pole position for the Spanish Grand Prix in qualifying.

Max Verstappen removed the sandbags and hit the front in FP3, with Red Bull driver calling Lewis Hamilton “unbelievable” – not for a good reason. The light went green for final practice but it took five minutes before Spain’s Fernando Alonso decided to break the silence. The Alpine driver clocked a 1:21.020 as the session’s first time. 10 minutes later he was down in third place as Sergio Perez hit the front with a 1:20.388, Daniel Ricciardo up second. They were the only three times on the board. Ferrari joined the party on the soft tyres with Charles Leclerc hitting the front, Carlos Sainz P4 with the two Alfa Romeos, also on the red Pirellis, second and third. Ricciardo brought out the yellows as he got it wrong at Turn 13 and went off the track. Valtteri Bottas, Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton were the last three drivers to make their mark, the Mercedes team-mates on the softs, Verstappen on the mediums. Bottas P1, Verstappen P2 and then Hamilton went P1 with a 1:18.304, 0.119s up on his team-mate. Hamilton upped his pace to a 1:18.117. Verstappen was not happy with Hamilton for getting in his way at the exit of Turn 10. “Is it him again behind? Unbelievable this guy in the last sector.” AlphaTauri rookie Yuki Tsunoda wasn’t a happy driver, complaining about late radio messages. AT’s response: “Calm down Yuki.” Raikkonen, having jumped up to seventh, returned to the pits with a deflating right rear tyre, a big cut in the rubber. While he made his way back to the garage, Lando Norris was spinning into the gravel at Turn 10 after losing the rear of his McLaren. Red Bull returned to the action having swapped their mediums for soft tyres. Verstappen went on a flier but did make a small mistake, crossing the line with a 1:17.835. That put him 0.235s up on Hamilton with Leclerc third fastest, a further 0.24s down. Sainz was fourth ahead of Bottas and Norris. Pierre Gasly, Ricciardo, Raikkonen and Perez completed the top ten. At the bottom of the timesheet was the two Haas drivers with Mick Schumacher once again having an advantage over Nikita Mazepin. Times1 Max Verstappen Red Bull 1:17.835 11 laps soft tyres2 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 0.235s 14 laps soft tyres3 Charles Leclerc Ferrari 0.473s 17 laps soft tyres4 Carlos Sainz Ferrari 0.575s 18 laps soft tyres5 Valtteri Bottas Mercedes 0.588s 15 laps soft tyres6 Lando Norris McLaren 0.659s 14 laps soft tyres7 Pierre Gasly AlphaTauri 0.700s 17 laps soft tyres8 Daniel Ricciardo McLaren 0.747s 21 laps soft tyres9 Kimi Raikkonen Alfa Romeo Racing 0.762s 17 laps soft tyres10 Sergio Perez Red Bull 0.771s 16 laps soft tyres11 Fernando Alonso Alpine 0.827s 18 laps soft tyres12 Yuki Tsunoda AlphaTauri 0.838s 21 laps soft tyres13 Esteban Ocon Alpine 0.865s 15 laps soft tyres14 Lance Stroll Aston Martin 1.042s 18 laps soft tyres15 George Russell Williams 1.170s 16 laps soft tyres16 Antonio Giovinazzi Alfa Romeo Racing 1.379s 18 laps soft tyres17 Sebastian Vettel Aston Martin 1.528s 18 laps soft tyres18 Nicholas Latifi Williams 1.557s 16 laps soft tyres19 Mick Schumacher Haas 2.164s 17 laps soft tyres 20 Nikita Mazepin Haas 2.402s 15 laps soft tyres

The Canadian Grand Prix has been replaced by a weekend in Istanbul, Turkey, but there is a chance that the GP will not take place there either. The government of the United Kingdom has put the country on the red travel list which means that travellers from Turkey have to spend ten days in quarantine when they return home. In fact, there is already a negative travel advice in place. The British transport minister Grant Schapps said Friday that countries on the red list ‘should not be visited except in the most extreme circumstances’. Corona infections have risen sharply in Turkey in the past week. Formula 1 is aware of the decision and is reviewing its options. A Formula One spokesman said in a statement, “We are aware of the UK government’s announcement regarding travel restrictions for Turkey and are assessing the situation and will provide more details in the coming days.” So for now, it’s just a case of wait and see. The weekend in Turkey will take place from 11-13 June. This will be followed by a week of rest before travelling to France and Austria respectively for a double-header. With an obligatory quarantine that is almost impossible, especially considering the fact that all cargo from Turkey has to be shipped back to Western Europe.

Toto Wolff has claimed that Red Bull tried to sign around 100 staff from Mercedes’ High Performance Powertrains division to join its new Formula 1 engine project. Red Bull’s recruitment drive for its new Red Bull Powertrains arm that will take over Honda’s F1 power unit at the end of the year and build the team’s first in-house engine for 2025 is in full flow. The Milton Keynes squad has already announced a total of six signings – all of whom have had previous experience at Mercedes – including Ben Hodgkinson, who has been poached from HPP to lead Red Bull’s division. Following the news of the latest five appointments on Thursday ahead of this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix, Mercedes CEO Wolff said he was not surprised by Red Bull’s strategy. “It’s pretty obvious that if you want to set up an engine factory in the UK, there is only one, and that is us,” Wolff told Sky Sports F1. “We have 900 or so employees there, and if we are fishing out 15 of these or so, that’s pretty normal. “But they went mainly after manufacturing staff, so it’s not really performance. I guess they want to build up the company. “But credit to the project, it’s a Mount Everest to climb. I’d like to have a fight with Red Bull power units.” Wolff went on to add that Red Bull had “approached 100 people or so, and they got 15 maybe.” In response to Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko’s claim that Mercedes had offered to double the salaries of its staff in a bid to keep them, Wolff suggested that Red Bull went even further. “Doubling the salaries is one thing, but if you triple them, at a certain stage, you’re not going to compete any more, even for loyal people,” he said. “But it is what it is. I respect everybody that wants to defend his business or build his business, and the retaliation time has not yet come.” Also speaking to Sky earlier on Friday, Red Bull F1 boss Christian Horner said it was an “inevitability” that the team would be looking to sign staff from Mercedes. “I think there is an inevitability that obviously we’re based in the UK, we’re only 30 miles up the road from Brixworth where Mercedes have chosen to build their engines in the UK,” he explained. “And they’ve done that for a reason because the talent is within the UK. I think for us bringing the engines on site within the campus, fully integrating it with the chassis is tremendously appealing. “We’ve been very flattered by the amount of approaches that we’ve had. Of course, we’re starting with a clean sheet of paper and it’s important to get the right people in the right positions. “Obviously, we’ve had quite a bit of success in attracting some fantastic talent on top of the talent that we will inherit from Honda when they depart at the end of the year.”