Formula 1

Daniel Ricciardo has opened up about his main motivations behind his move to McLaren in 2021 after two tricky seasons at Renault. The Australian had made his move to the Enstone outfit in 2019, now known as Alpine, in the hope of building a team around him to challenge for the World Championship. Ricciardo’s move to McLaren caused ructions among the grid when it was announced following Carlos Sainz’s impending switch to Ferrari, meaning his future had already been decided before the 2020 season had got underway. While he did achieve two podiums with Renault in 2020, it showed that the return on investment of his move did not live up to his expectations when he had joined the team. Now in his 11th season in Formula 1, he explained why he has made the move to F1’s second-oldest team. “When I signed the contract, it was really just the step [McLaren] made in 2019,” he told the official Formula 1 YouTube channel. “I think they kind of turned heads in the whole paddock and it felt like they’ve gone through those few darker years of trying to sort themselves out to rebuild the team. “And it felt like in 2019 they really put everything together. It was like okay, they’ve laid everything out all the all the pieces together, it’s now just building and executing for the next few years.” After finishing P3 in the 2020 Constructors’ Championship, McLaren got the new season off to a solid start in Bahrain, earning 18 points with Lando Norris finishing P4 and Ricciardo bringing his damaged MCL35M home in a creditable P7. With the Woking team’s performances in recent years showing that their cars are arguably the most upwardly mobile on the grid, Ricciardo hopes to capitalise on their improvements by challenging for podiums, while talking of his hope to mount a title challenge as early as 2022. “Obviously, I signed at the beginning of 2020, but during 2020 they showed you a further step,” he continued. “I just think they had the most promise out of the rest. I like what I saw and felt like, yeah, everyone feels pretty comfortable at McLaren. “When I say comfortable, don’t mistake that for complacent. We’re ready to get on with it.”

Brad Binder has responded to Valentino Rossi’s words of ‘riders’ like Binder ‘not caring about their rivals in races’. The South African endured another tough day for KTM on the opening practice day ahead of Sunday’s Doha MotoGP Grand Prix. However, speaking after his day on track, one of the discussion points was centered around his race battle last weekend against Rossi, who was not happy with Binder following their second moment on track following contact in Austria last season. Rossi spoke earlier in the week about the incident saying ‘respect’ was missing from certain riders. However, Binder was quick to say that it was a non issue for him as there was no contact during the overtake. “I’ve had two moments with him. One time in Austria we both went completely off the track which is understandable so I think a second time is normal to be upset!,” said Binder. “But to be fair I didn’t touch him at all. Maybe he is a bit sensitive. I don’t feel that I did anything wrong. “I went in next to him. He released the brake and he wanted to close the line, I released the brake too, end of story.” It’s been a tough start to the 2021 season so far for KTM with the bike not suiting the Losail circuit at all. And while the overall position doesn’t look good, Binder is feeling like the bike is more competitive this weekend. The former Moto3 champion said: “It is definitely a bit more positive. All the guys did a good job this week and I feel that my bike is working better. “I feel a lot more confident with some of the changes they have made.” Binder had a few issues pop up late on which affected his attempts to get into the top ten, with debris getting stuck in one of his tyres. “Problems were out of our control in FP2 and it was like riding on ice. My other tyre had a chunk in it! It was very weird. We hope it will be better next time,” added Binder. “I really felt ready to do a good job but those issues were out of our control and that really hurt me, or at least my chances of trying to get into Q2.”

Sir Lewis Hamilton is gunning for a record-breaking eighth World Championship this year – and it has been speculated he might retire at the end of 2021. Former F1 racer Mark Webber is certain that Sir Lewis Hamilton is nearing retirement, with him expecting the seven-time World Champion to remain in Formula One for only another year or two. Hamilton inked a contract extension with Mercedes in February after his previous deal expired at the end of 2020. The fact he only signed a one-year deal raised speculation about his plans to retire at the end of the year. The Brit, for his part, has said he is yet to make up his mind about his future and insisted that whether or not he wins an eighth title this year won’t be the deciding factor. His 2021 campaign got off to a great start at the season-opener in Bahrain last weekend, with him taking victory despite Red Bull’s Max Verstappen appearing to have the edge over Mercedes. Webber said he believes Hamilton still has a few more years left in him, but admitted it would be “brave” to suggest that he will race in Formula One for another three seasons. “He’s definitely on the home straight, there’s no question about that,” Webber said. “You’d be a brave man to say he’s going to race for three more years. Two, maybe. One, yes, and then there’s a high chance, it makes a lot of sense. There’s new rules in 2022. “[I’d say] go long, even Lewis at eight and a half out of 10 is still dangerous. Go a bit longer, you don’t have a great deal to lose in my opinion, when you’re that amazing. “I still think he’s got more in him,” the former Red Bull driver added.

Williams F1 driver George Russell expresses confidence that Alexander Albon will be making a return to Formula 1 on a full time basis. Albon, who was driving for Red Bull back in 2020 was under pressure throughout the season as rumours constantly went round regarding his future with the Formula 1 team. As the 2020 season came to an end Albon lost his seat as Red Bull opted to replace him with Sergio Perez for the 2021 season as he remained to be the reserve driver for the team instead. At the age of 25 though, with a number of seats set to become free next year, he has plenty of time to find a way back into the sport permanently, and Russell is sure that he will do so. “I’m in contact with Alex all the time, he is one of my closest mates,” the Williams driver told inews.co.uk. “Alex is a great driver who had a very tough time at Red Bull for a number of reasons. But he’ll be back in F1 I’m sure in the near future.” Alongside being Red Bull’s test and reserve driver, Albon will also be driving in DTM in 2021, partnering Liam Lawson at Italian outfit AF Corse. ADVERTISEMENT Russell thinks that competing in the category will be a huge challenge for him given how different it is to single-seater racing and F1 in particular. That being said, he thinks his friend is good enough to do well in it. “DTM is an incredibly tough championship,” Russell added. “It is very different to Formula One. And those guys are top of their game in what they do so he’s actually got quite a tough challenge on his hands because he’s having to learn a new discipline. “It’s almost like asking Roger Federer to go play badminton or squash. It’s still a racket and a ball, but it’s completely different. I’m sure he’ll do well but he’s got very tough challenge on his hands.” Albon has previously stated that while his first choice is to return to F1 with a seat at Red Bull, he’d also take one at AlphaTauri or even outside the Red Bull family. With Russell in with a chance of joining Mercedes, his seat at Williams could become free and be an option for him.

Haas Formula 1 team picked Mick Schumacher as one of their drivers for 2021 lineup due to his strong performance in Formula 2 and not to secure backing from a sponsor, Haas team boss Guenther Steiner said in a statement. Steiner admitted last year the team was in a difficult financial situation following the disruption caused by the pandemic. Its new drivers for the 2021 F1 season have links to sources of income the team has obtained for the new season. Nikita Mazepin’ father runs Uralkali, the team’s new title sponsor.Negotiations between Haas and another new sponsor, German internet services firm 1&1, were shown in the recent Netflix Drive to Survive documentary. The company was depicted as being keen to position their brand alongside a German driver. However Steiner said Schumacher was chosen for his ability, rather than the income he attracted. “The 1&1 sponsorship is a Haas team sponsorship, it’s not a Mick sponsorship, just to clarify that,” he said. “There is no direct connection between 1&1 and Mick. Obviously 1&1 embraces Mick being at Haas, but this was a parallel development, not a combined development.” Schumacher won the F2 championship last year and is a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy which eased his path into one of the Scuderia’s customer teams, Steiner explained. “For sure it helped us with 1&1 and 1&1 is very happy about having Mick at Haas. But that, it was more like a decision from Ferrari where to send the drivers and we asked if we can have him because he won Formula 2. But it is not a direct negotiation going on between the company and Mick.”

Sebastian Vettel’s debut for the Aston Martin Formula One team didn’t go as planned, but the German driver seems to be having loads of fun with the British outfit. While preparing for the Bahrain Grand Prix, Vettel took the DBX for a snowy spin somewhere in Scandinavia. The two-minute video shows Vettel driving the DBX while talking about his new career at Aston Martin, but it’s also a marketing stunt for the SUV. A skilled driver, Vettel does plenty of sliding and drifting in the snow, likely to showcase that the DBX is not your regular family hauler. The scenery is downright epic. The driving takes place somewhere in Scandinavia. There’s snow, forests, frozen lakes, and northern lights across the night sky. One thing becomes obvious after this video. Even if things don’t go well in Formula One this year, Aston Martin now has a great ambassador for its cars. The DBX is Aston Martin’s first-ever SUV. In production since July 2020, the DBX draws juice from the same twin-turbo, 4.0-liter V8 that also motivates the DB11 and the Vantage. The AMG-sourced engine cranks out 550 PS and 700 Nm of torque (542 horsepower and 516 pound-feet), enabling the SUV to hit 62 mph (100 kph) in 4.5 seconds. The Aston Martin DBX is the official Formula One medical car for the 2021 season, alongside a Mercedes-AMG C 63 S Estate. Vettel joined Aston Martin from Ferrari, where he spent no fewer than six seasons. Before that, Vettel raced for Red Bull Racing for six years, winning four championships in the process. At Ferrari, Vettel didn’t manage to win titles, but he scored second-place finishes in the drivers’ standings in 2017 and 2018. The German driver debuted for Aston Martin F1 at the Bahrain Grand Prix on March 28. Vettel qualified 18th but started last following a five-place penalty for failing to respect yellow flags. He finished the race 15th for his most disappointing debut for a new team in a very long time. Lance Stroll, his team-mate, finished 10th.

The first race of the Uralkali Haas F1 Team’s ‘new era’ didn’t exactly go to plan, with two rookies in an already underdeveloped, tail happy car there are bound to be mistakes with both Nikita Mazepin and Mick Schumacher taking trips off the track, Mazepin’s ending his race on the first lap. However, both drivers have shown visible signs of improving over pre-season testing and their first Formula 1 Grand Prix weekend, the team will be hoping that all of these learning experiences will put both drivers and the team in a more advantageous position for the 2022 regulation changes. Nikita Mazepin doesn’t believe that his first lap crash was down to anything else except personal error, the Russian got a good start so much so that he was trying to avoid hitting his team-mate Schumacher who had a inferior start to the Russian and he lost the car – the combination of cold tyres and the kerb combining to cause his spin. “It was very simple – I made a mistake. It was just one of those things. My start had been good, I got into turn one taking the outside line. I was then going through turn two and I was really trying to avoid Mick (Schumacher) as he was close and got too much on power – the tires didn’t take it” Mazepin is very apologetic to the whole team as they deserved much better than the performance he gave after working so hard all weekend, despite this there will always be positives that the Russian can take away from the weekend and use this experience going forward into future Grand Prix’s. “I’m very sorry for the team as they deserved to do much better than that. Obviously, there’s always positives you can take – the learning experience is obviously there.”

Sebastian Vettel is still struggling with pressure, according to his first Formula 1 team boss Gerhard Berger. The quadruple world champion was ousted by Ferrari but switched to Aston Martin for 2021 and beyond – and had a dire pre-season test and first race in Bahrain. “At Ferrari it was the same thing,” F1 legend Berger told the official Australian GP podcast. “I just feel he is not free, not relaxed,” said the former Toro Rosso co-owner. “He maybe wants to prove things, but at this moment it is not possible because the car is not good enough, or his own form is not good enough.” Berger said Vettel remains one of F1’s “outstanding drivers”, but thinks he struggles when the pressure ramps up. “He never reacts very well under pressure,” he said. “Remember when Daniel (Ricciardo) came to Red Bull and was very strong, he put pressure onto Sebastian.” Vettel is only 33, but Berger thinks the German is clearly “at the end of his career”. “When you have done so many races, there comes a point where you’re not in the situation anymore where you’d like to take all the risks, where you fight like you would fight before you won any races,” he said. “In some ways, it just hasn’t worked out well for him. He starts to do mistakes, people then start to question him. Step by step there’s more and more pressure, and he doesn’t like pressure.”

Nikita Mazepin had a disastrous start to life as an F1 driver, with him qualifying at the back of the grid (though he started in P19 due to Sebastian Vettel getting a penalty) and only navigating a couple of corners before crashing his car on Sunday. The incident, which was entirely self-inflicted and didn’t involve another driver, forced Mazepin to retire from his debut race in the pinnacle of motorsport just a matter of seconds after it had got underway. Speaking after the race, Haas team principal Guenther Steiner said Mazepin “was pretty beat up” but is looking forward to what he’s hoping to be a better weekend in Imola. “He was pretty beat up. I just said to him to keep his head up and keep on going,” Steiner said. “For sure, it is not ideal what happened but it happened so he beats himself up pretty badly. “He is ready to go again so we pushed him up again but otherwise Mick did a good job. At least we got half of it achieved. 50 percent there,” he added. Steiner was asked if Mazepin’s mistakes earlier in the weekend led to the young Russian being over-motivated and pushing too hard at the start to make up ground. “He pushed a little bit harder but I think that’s his character more than anything else, just to try to find the limit and sometimes you go over it,” Steiner replied. “I’m not really surprised about that because he tries to do the best he can and obviously, our car is not easy to drive. “I think he is one of these guys where he just tries very hard.”

Valtteri Bottas’ post-race debrief would have been an interesting watch based on a little interaction between him and Toto Wolff in the Bahrain pit lane. The Finn could only play a very minor role in the season opener as team-mate Sir Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull rival Max Verstappen stole the show in their tense battle for the win. While Bottas was off the pace all weekend, he was not helped by a rare slow stop by his pit crew and was particularly irked by the race strategy that was given to him. Bottas, who did say earlier this year that he was going to be more demanding and selfish in his quest for World Championship glory, said in the Bahrain paddock that the race plan was “too defensive” and “too passive”. And, it appears, he was wasting little time in questioning it with his team boss, who cut the conversation off during the Mercedes celebrations in front of the garage. Wolff, meanwhile, has defended Bottas’ race strategy, saying there was very little option to go down an alternative route with him. “I think there wasn’t any strategy on the table,” said Wolff. “Because we tried to undercut also with Valtteri that I think would change race for him or make his race not. “The outcome we wouldn’t wish for was that he lost a position at the start of the race and he kind of couldn’t recover the gap to the two guys in front. “The pit stop was there to undercut Max, and I think we would probably have been successful, but we had a problem with the right front wheel gun. “And then I don’t know what other strategy we could have run. The one stop was clearly not possible. “The medium wouldn’t have made it to the end, the hard in the middle stage was running out of performance. There was no other option available. “I totally understand the frustration in the car when you have limited information and say ‘I think we could have done something else.’” Bottas’ frustration was also picked up on by the Sky Sports F1 presenting team, with ex-driver Paul Di Resta saying the Finn’s open criticism will put “pressure” on Mercedes.

AlphaTauri boss Franz Tost believes that their rivals Aston Martin do not have a good car on their hands in the AMR21. Pre-season testing gave Aston Martin reason for concern as the iconic brand made its return to Formula 1. The team completed the second-lowest number of laps, while new recruit Sebastian Vettel spent a chunk of time in the garage thanks to several reliability issues. The RP20 of 2020 was controversially based very closely on the 2019 Mercedes, but for this season that philosophy seems to be hurting them. The works Mercedes team appear to have been impacted quite severely by the new aerodynamic regulations, and the AMR21 also looked quite the handful at the Bahrain season-opener. Vettel said he “did not feel at home” in the car as he suffered Q1 elimination in Bahrain and later shunted Esteban Ocon in the race. The four-time World Champion was also forced to start from the back of the grid after not observing double yellow flags in Q1. And from his observations, Tost, Vettel’s former boss at Toro Rosso, was not impressed with the Aston Martin car. “Theory is one thing, reality is another,” Tost told Sport1’s AvD Motor und Sport Magazin. “In reality, the car is not that good, it is very unstable at the rear end.” But on a more positive note, Tost thinks Aston Martin have a driver in Vettel who is very capable of taking the team forward. “With his experience, he can bring a team forward. He knows how to win races and world championships,” he explained.

Formula 1 and the FIA have confirmed there were 12 positive cases of Covid-19 from testing across the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend. In order to return to racing last year, F1 introduced a strict Covid testing regime, with all personnel attending a grand prix event required to return a negative test before being granted admission into the paddock. In a change from 2020, when figures released also included offsite results, now only the results of those tested onsite are included in the latest numbers. This is due to the way testing has changed across Europe with lateral flows and private testing. A statement said: “The FIA and Formula 1 can today confirm that at the 2021 FIA Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix, between Monday 22nd March and Sunday 28th March, 8,150 tests for Covid-19 were performed on drivers, teams and personnel. “Of these, 12 people tested positive. The FIA and Formula 1 are providing this aggregated information from each grand prix for the purposes of competition integrity and transparency.”

Emanuele Pirro, who was the race steward for the season-opening F1 2021 race in Bahrain discusses how he would have penalized Max Verstappen had the Dutchman not given the position back to Lewis Hamilton. During the final few laps, Red Bull’s Verstappen managed to overtake Mercedes’ Hamilton around the outside of turn 4 for the race lead. Unfortunately, the Dutchman had all four wheels of his Red Bull RB16B off the race track prompting the race officials to inform him to give the position back. “He would have got a maximum 5-second penalty,” Pirro told Corriere dello Sport. “You cannot overtake where you go over the track limits. Vertappen did so, although he did not do it on purpose, he simply went a bit straight/wide. At that moment Masi warned Red Bull and advised Verstappen to give back his position. “A race official will never force anything, because he may not do that he may only suggest it. Verstappen gave back his position and we did not have to deal with the case specifically. Pirro also discusses how the race director Michael Masi, also warned Hamilton and Mercedes regarding the Englishman’s exit at turn 4 during the race. “Hamilton went over the track limits a little too often, creating a repeated advantage,” Pirro explained. “So Masi, the only one with the authority to talk to the teams, called Mercedes to warn them that if Hamilton did it more often he would get the white black flag. That could end up giving him a penalty. “He stopped immediately and that was that as far as Hamilton was concerned.” Pirro also explained that the teams and drivers were warned about their approach to the turn with several drivers having their lap times deleted over the course of the weekend. “It was clear both in practice and in qualifying that whoever went off track in Turn 4 would lose his lap time. This also happened several times to several drivers,” Pirro continued. “Masi warned the teams that if one went over the track limits several times or benefited from it, the commissioners would assess the situation.”

Formula 1 fans were treated to a great, down-to-the-wire race in Bahrain this weekend. But for Spain’s most successful F1 driver, it ended all too early. Fernando Alonso, celebrating his return to the sport after a two year hiatus, had to retire following a mechanical issue that was caused by a very unlikely source. “After the second stop, a sandwich wrap paper got stuck inside the rear brake duct of Fernando’s car,” Marcin Budkowski, Alpine’s executive director, told Motorsport. “This led to high temperatures and caused some damage to the brake system, so we retired him for safety reasons. It was a very unlucky first race for Fernando considering how strong he looked.” Indeed, after a strong qualifying performance in which the two-time world champion finished ninth, seven places ahead of his teammate, Esteban Ocon, the early end to Alonso’s race was a disappointment. With better luck, Alonso might have earned some points in his first race back to the series. But he was positive about his return to the sport. “Firstly, it was great to be back racing in Formula 1,” said the Spaniard. “The start was fun, we gained some places and I had some enjoyable battles with old colleagues. However, it was disappointing to not see the chequered flag in the end.” Ocon, meanwhile, ended up in 13th, failing to earn any points. His race, though, was hurt after he was crashed into by Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel. Alonso will look to score his first points of the season at the second race in Italy at the legendary Imola Circuit on April 18.

Max Verstappen has outlined the list of failings that his Red Bull team made in Bahrain and issued a warning that the team must “try to do better” as it bids to win the title this year. Verstappen went into the season-opener wearing the favourite tag but ended up second best to reigning champion Lewis Hamilton. The Dutch driver started from pole but spent the early laps complaining of a differential issue and ended the day admitting the team must work harder on its strategy, flexibility and tyre planning. “Last year we would have been super-happy with this result and now we are disappointed,” he said. “There are a lot of positives but also things we have to improve. “I don’t know what was going on [early in the race] but I had more wheel-slip on one side, on the rear, so that’s of course not what you want. I managed to drive around the issue a bit but we’ll have to look into that. “Strategy-wise, we’ll have to analyse what we could have done better. But also we didn’t have the tyres like they had, so we didn’t really have a lot of flexibility in the strategy. We could have done better in choosing our tyres during practice.” Verstappen led the early stages but stayed out longer than Hamilton in his first stint then dropped behind the Mercedes after his first stop and had to play catch-up for the rest of the race. He added: “With these cars, I think the last three years, it is very important to have track position and we gave that up today. Of course, it is still a very long season. So… yeah… we just have to get on with it and try to do better.”

Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton began his quest to win a record-breaking eighth Formula 1 world title in perfect fashion after beating Max Verstappen to a thrilling victory at the Bahrain Grand Prix. The seven-time world champion had trailed Verstappen by almost 0.4s in qualifying but was able to overturn the deficit into a 96th career win partly thanks to an ingenious strategy call from his Mercedes team. Hamilton kept Verstappen honest throughout the first stint and was able to leapfrog the Dutchman in the first stint when Mercedes pulled off a successful undercut on Lap 13 by pitting Hamilton early and moving him on to a two-stopper. The Briton led until Lap 28 when he pitted for a second time to take on another new set of Hards, before Red Bull responded by stopping Verstappen for a second time on Lap 39, pulling off a stunning sub-two-second pit stop. From there, Verstappen was able to capitalise on his fresher tyres as he relentlessly hunted down Hamilton, who made what looked to be a critical error when he locked up and ran wide at Turn 10 with just four laps to go, allowing Verstappen to get within DRS range. Verstappen thought he had made the race-winning move on the next lap when he brilliantly swept around the outside of the Mercedes driver at Turn 4, only to run wide off the track. Facing the prospect of penalty, Verstappen was forced to give the position back to Hamilton on the run to Turn 11, with the reigning world champion remarkably holding on despite being on tyres that were 10 laps older than the Red Bull driver to take a sensational win by just 0.745s. Behind the duelling leaders, Valtteri Bottas was a distant third to complete the podium after switching to a three-stop strategy when a slow second stop ruined his chances of a victory that never looked likely.