Formula 1

The world champion outfit had launched its W12 earlier this month but been open that it was not fitted with a real version of the floor that it would be running in 2021. With F1’s aero rules having changed this year in a bid to cut back on downforce, teams have been forced to rework the designs they had in this area of the car. In particular, the removal of an area of the floor ahead of the rear tyre, plus a ban on holes and slots, was aimed at robbing teams of around 10 percent of downforce. Teams are well aware that how well they recover the downforce in this area will be key to their fortunes in 2021, so they have devoted a lot of effort to trying to make gains. Mercedes technical director James Allison explained that his squad decided to hold back on showing the floor because it did not want other teams to get a head start in being able to copy its idea. “The bit we’re not showing you is down along the edge of the floor,” he explained at the car launch. “That area is the area that was most affected by the new regulations, where they tried to pull performance away from the car by changing the floor regs. Down there, there’s a bunch of aerodynamic detail that we are not quite ready to release to the world. “Not because it’s not there, but because we don’t want our competitors to see it. We don’t want them starting to try and put similar things in their wind tunnels. It just buys us a couple of weeks extra. “I think we all look very closely at what our competitors do, so we know our competitors will be looking. And we don’t have to show it yet, so we’re not.” Ahead of the start of pre-season testing though, all the 2021 cars were rolled out on to the track for a photo opportunity – forcing teams to finally show off their current designs. The Mercedes floor has an intriguing arrangement with the floor edge rippled as it runs back from the front of the sidepod area.

Haas’ Mick Schumacher heads out on track on the first morning session of Bahrain testing.

Haas Formula 1 team has officially unveiled their 2021 F1 car, the VF-21 that will be driven by rookies Nikita Mazepin and Mick Schumacher. Their official launch comes at a day when the pre-season testing kicks off at the Bahrain International Circuit. Nikita mazepin and Mick Schumacher who was the reigning champion of the 2020 Formula 2 championship were hands on at their Bahrain pit lane showing off their new F1 car ahead of the first day testing. The official launch of the VF-21 comes a day after Nikita Mazepin took out the car for its first ride at the Bahrain International Circuit as the team was not able to fire up the new car until they arrived at Bahrain due to travel restrictions. Haas will be hoping that the VF-21 helps them return to the sharper end of the grid in 2021, following the worst season of their five-year existence last year, when drivers Romain Grosjean, Kevin Magnussen and Pietro Fittipaldi scored a mere three points between them. A big factor in whether Mazepin and Schumacher can challenge for more points for the team this season will be the performance of Ferrari’s new power unit, which will also see action in rivals Alfa Romeo’s C41 – as well as Ferrari’s own SF21 of course – while Haas have already confirmed that they won’t be developing the VF-21 throughout the year, as their design team’s focus switches to 2022. Following the unveiling, Mick Schumacher was set to be the first of the duo on track at pre-season testing in the VF-21, with Mazepin due to take over for the afternoon session.

Alfa Romeo Racing has announced that team boss Frederic Vasseur will not attend pre-season testing in Bahrain this weekend after testing positive for COVID-19. Vasseur is self-isolating at home according to protocols set out by French authorities and is not displaying any symptoms. A second PCR test, performed two days after the first, returned a negative result. “However, in the interests of safety of Mr Vasseur himself, the team, all fellow competitors and the whole community and in respect of French regulations, Mr Vasseur will not travel to Bahrain and will continue operating from home for the next seven days, as required by the local authorities,” said the team in a statement published Thursday evening. “Mr Vasseur will be fully operational and connected to the garage for the duration of the test, and no Deputy Team Principal will be named, with no further impact predicted on our operations this week.”

Red Bull Racing have announced a new partnership with Therabody to make the brand the Official Recovery Partner of the Milton Keynes-based team. Red Bull drivers Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez as well as the team’s pit crew, the fastest pit crew in the world, will utilize Therabody’s Bluetooth-enabled percussive therapy devices during their pre-race workouts and in post-race recovery as a result of this new partnership. Their access to a wide range of Therabody devices is designed to help them optimize warm-up and recovery time to ensure that they are in the best possible condition for each race throughout the 2021 season. This partnership will also provide the team with access to Therabody University, the company’s educational division led by founder and Chief Wellness Officer Dr. Jason Wersland and their network of health and fitness experts. Therabody is the creator of the first-ever hand-held percussive therapy device, Theragun, which is used to accelerate recovery and support overall athletic performance. But since the device’s initial launch in 2016, the company has evolved from Theragun into Therabody as a result of the additional devices which have become available. The Theragun device helps to mitigate and relieve muscle soreness that comes as a result of the intense preparation and repetition involved in the sport.Red Bull will have a custom Therabody wall mount that will house their Theragun devices and will live in the Red Bull Racing garage. It will be available for their use during every race weekend. More than 250 professional sports teams and athletes around the world already rely on the unique and industry-leading devices and solutions of the brand, and now that long list includes Formula 1 through this new partnership with Red Bull. Here is what Red Bull team principal Christian Horner had to say about the new partnership. “From the outside, Formula 1 might not seem like an intensely physical sport, especially for the mechanics in the garage. But these guys work incredibly hard to be in the best condition possible and if they weren’t, 1.82-second pit stops wouldn’t be possible. The downside is that the intense preparation and repetition can lead to muscle soreness so teaming up with Therabody will help mitigate that and will help the Team recover faster so that they can perform at their best.” Here is what Dr. Wersland had to add. “The Red Bull Racing Team is globally renowned for its speed. From the drivers to the pit crew, each member works incredibly hard physically and mentally, and effective recovery is critical to the team’s success. Therabody is honored to be supporting the Red Bull Racing Team and developing protocols that will help improve their recovery and maximize their performance.”

Aston Martin. There was plenty to admire about Aston Martin’s launch. We got a good look at the car – supported by a plethora of images – as well as insight from drivers Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel, plus Otmar Szafnauer and Andy Green – and there was even a cameo appearance from Bond himself, Daniel Craig. He was just one part of the star power, which also included the opening sequence and a voiceover from rapper Santan Dave and NFL superstar Tom Brady. While there was a slight lack of smoothness in the script when it came to star presenter Gemma Arterton’s questions, you can forgive some roughness round the edges given the effort made. Overall, this was a positive statement of intent from Aston Martin – even if it was also among the teams that somehow let some images get out before the launch. 2. Mercedes. Efficient, clean, to-the-point and with all the ingredients you’d expect, Mercedes was on the money with its launch. As well as extensive insight from the key players – supported by plenty of other material – there was a good look at the car. And technical director James Allison also had a clear idea of what the team did and did not want to give away. A well-executed reveal, which is just what you’d expect from F1’s dominant force. 3. Mclaren. McLaren probably made the biggest effort in terms of its launch programming, but given a significant chunk of it comprised drivers Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris in a recording studio, it perhaps wasn’t ideal for a big part of F1’s demographic. But there was a decent explainer of the new rules from technical director James Key, as well as interviews with the drivers, Zak Brown and Andreas Seidl. It just needed a little more depth to satiate the appetite – although there were plenty of supporting press conferences that added detail. 4. Alfa Romeo. The Sauber-run Alfa Romeo squad is unique among the 2021 launches in that it went to the trouble of an exotic – by current standards – launch in Warsaw’s Grand Theatre. In the finest tradition of slightly overblown launches, it had an artistic dance element accompanied by music from Chopin and Puccini. There was also a presenting style that felt very Eurovision Song Contest, and while all of this can be distracting from what really matters in an F1 car launch, the fact Alfa Romeo was the only team to go this way counts for a lot. It also had the classic ingredients of a launch: car, drivers, team boss and technical director. And as well as the questions in the presentation, there was a full press conference afterwards. 5. Ferrari. It was a two-part process for Ferrari, with its team launch in February then the unveiling of the car itself yesterday. The first part was simply the appetiser, and offered little more than the key players talking. But come the reveal of the car there was a snappy 10-minute video with insight from the key technical personnel that offered a good feel for what had changed and for the expectations for the season. It’s just a shame we had to put up with the green of Mission Winnow, and that leaked images of the car appeared in advance of the reveal! 6. AlphaTauri. A brief launch video that was more fashion show than car reveal – perhaps not surprising given it was conducted with a 2020 car and the team is named after Red Bull’s fashion brand – lacked substance. But there were plenty of images of the actual 2021 car and some frank technical comments about where tokens had been spent among the significant amount of material put out by the team. A good, solid midfield launch for a good, solid midfield team. 7. Williams. Had the augmented reality app not had to be abandoned as a result of hacks, Williams would have been far higher in this list. That innovative, if ultimately insecure, idea would have been a big hit with fans. Unfortunately, all it did was allow some images to slip out before the reveal. In its place was a conventional launch with a healthy number of images and a press conference with all of the key players. It was a good effort, but frustrating given how close it was to something special that would likely have flooded social media with fan images of the car being projected into homes had the app gone ahead. 8. Alpine. A combination of questionable bandwidth, meaning those watching the launch live were subjected to a very jerky experience, and a high quotient of corporate blather about flags and Alpine’s spirit wasn’t an encouraging start to the rebranded team’s new era. Space was at least left for Esteban Ocon and Marcin Budkowski – and Alpine can’t be blamed for the absence of the recovering Fernando Alonso – but overall this launch marginalised the real stars – the car and its creators – in favour of board-pleasing superficiality. There was at least some ambition underpinning it, with the ‘virtual’ studio and car. It’s just a shame it was undermined by technical weaknesses and the corporate tone. Hopefully that won’t be a metaphor for the season. 9. Haas. As Haas’s launch was simply its new Russian Flag-inspired livery on a 2020 car, there was very little to get excited about by its reveal. But it did have a slow-burn quality to it. Initially, the livery caused controversy given the WADA ban on athletes competing under the Russian flag – while the main theme of the accompanying press conferences was Nikita Mazepin’s off-track conduct. This was followed six days later by the first footage of the car in shakedown, with the full reveal due just before testing gets going tomorrow. It was far from perfect, but considering the lack of material the team had to work with, a solid effort. 10. Red Bull. Two launch images of a car render…

F1 rookie Nikita Mazepin made his first appearance behind the wheel of Haas 2021 car, the VF-21 giving it its shakedown in Bahrain’s Sakhir International Circuit. Haas unveiled its 2021-spec car, complete with a revised livery, last week and on Wednesday the VF-21 was fired up for the first time. The fire-up had not been able to take place previously owing to ongoing travel restrictions that are in place between the United Kingdom and Italy. Mazepin, who has previously tested Formula 1 machinery with Force India and Mercedes, carried out mileage on Thursday in Bahrain, officially as part of a filming day. Ferrari also gave its SF21 its track debut for a filming day while Aston Martin was in action for the second of its two allocated days. Mazepin’s Haas team-mate Mick Schumacher is due to sample the VF-21 for the first time when pre-season testing begins on Friday.

Ferrari has revealed its SF21 Formula 1 car, boasting a two-tone livery and green Mission Winnow logo on its engine cover but not everyone is a fan.Team president John Elkann declared Ferrari have “learned the lessons” of the Italian Formula One stable’s worst season in 40 years with a new car to power new success. The new colour scheme though, which goes from red to burgundy at the rear and green on the top, has divided fans on social media. The controversial colour scheme won’t mean much though if Ferrari can produce better results. At the launch in Maranello Elkann said that “2020 is behind us but won’t be forgotten and will have made us stronger”. Racing director Laurent Mekies agreed that “2021 is about the lessons learned in an incredibly difficult 2020 campaign. “The last season has put us to the test both on track and at the factory. “We have tried to learn from our mistakes and to improve in the areas where we were simply not strong enough. “Of course, in context of frozen technical regulations and new financial regulations, there is a limit to how fast we can turn things around but nevertheless, we are trying to reconstruct our way back to the more competitive side of the grid.”

Formula 1 designers and engineers will be expecting to be busy after the pre-season testing when rival teams will be putting their new 2021 F1 cars on the track while others will try to copy them. However, regulations require that the 2021 F1 cars should be a modification of last year’s cars, but there are also new changes which include new floors and bargeboards as every team was given development tokens to upgrade their cars. Mercedes, who unveiled their 2021 contender last week admitted they didn’t display all the upgrades on their new car as they wanted to keep them a secret. “Of course we have hidden a new super trick there, otherwise we would have shown it. You will all be amazed when you see it. If we show everything now, we give the competition extra options,” Mercedes boss, Toto Wolff said. “They can then look at things, evaluate them and maybe even calculate them with CFD models. This would allow them to come onto the track at the first, second or maybe third race with a similar update.” But with the period between testing which will be on March 12 and the season opener which will kick off on March 26, teams may tend to copy one another. “The secrecy that people are showing at the moment [is] the area around the side of the floor, in front of the tyre, the brake ducts, how people reacted to all that area,” Alpine technical director Pat Fry told RaceFans.net. “I think it’s the things that people will be trying to keep their powder dry on. “In reality, I could see something on someone’s car and if it’s a different fence in that area or a different shape of floor in that area, I could be testing that in the [wind] tunnel in two days and have it on the car in a week. “So a large rule change has happened – OK, a very limited part of the car – but it would be quite easy to react and see if someone has got something that’s working better than everyone else. “It’s just the nature of Formula 1, isn’t it? We all think we’re clever and we all try and hide what we’re doing and then you find out how quick you are come the Bahrain race.”

Formula 1 will be returning to the track this month for the 2021 season. This means the new 2021 F1 cars will for the first time hit the track as a group for the pre-season testing which will happen over the weekend although things have slightly changed as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The pre-testing session will take place in Bahrain at the Sakhir International Stadium and not at Catalunya Circuit in Barcelona as it was the tradition. All these changes were made to ensure easier movement of people because the season opener will also happen in Bahrain a month later. The Australian round which normally is the season opener was postponed due to the pandemic. The 2021 pre-season will only be one which will comprise of three testing days; Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The time frame has also been set for the three days; the first session will be from 10:00-14:00 while the second will start from 15:00-19:00 local time giving only one hour for lunch break. Testing would normally start from 0800hrs to 1700hrs but this time round there will be an opportunity to run for a night-time run as the sunset falls around 1745hrs. With such little running, the teams will be very keen to make the most out of the track to test the minor modifications they have added to their new cars. Full-time drivers will get the bulk of the limited test runs with only Williams confirming that they will run one of their test drivers, Roy Nissany for the Friday session but George Russell and Nicholas Latifi will take over Saturday and Sunday. Some teams have opted to split running on more than one day, with drivers swapping after the lunch break. So far only a handful of teams have confirmed their plans. 2021 F1 Testing Driver Line-Up Team Friday Saturday Sunday Mercedes TBC TBC TBC Red Bull M. Verstappen (AM) S. Perez S. Perez (AM)M. Verstappen (PM) McLaren D. Ricciardo (AM)L. Norris (PM) TBC TBC Aston Martin TBC TBC TBC Alpine TBC TBC TBC Ferrari TBC TBC TBC AlphaTauri TBC TBC TBC Alfa Romeo K. Raikkonen (AM)A. Giovinazzi (PM) A. Giovinazzi K. Raikkonen Haas M. Schumacher (AM)N. Mazepin (PM) N. Mazepin (AM)M. Schumacher (PM) M. Schumacher (AM)N. Mazepin (PM) Williams R. Nissany N. Latifi G. Russell

Haas has become the final team to fire up its 2021 Formula 1 car ahead of pre-season testing in Bahrain. Haas built up its VF-21 at its Banbury base but could not fire up the car owing to Italy-based Ferrari power unit personnel not travelling to the United Kingdom. The personnel would have needed to quarantine for up to two weeks in the United Kingdom prior to undertaking the same period of isolation upon return to Italy, owing to ongoing Covid-19 travel restrictions. But on Wednesday at the Bahrain International Circuit the personnel were able to gather for the VF-21 to be fired up in the garage. Haas’ VF-21 is due to run for the first time when testing begins on Friday at the venue. Speaking at the launch of Haas’ 2021 car last week team boss Guenther Steiner said: “This year we were lucky as a lot of parts were carried over. “You can do that [not firing up until testing]; with a complete new car you could never do this, you couldn’t take the risk.” Haas will be the only team on the grid with an all-rookie pairing. Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin will split running in the VF-21 across the three days of pre-season testing. “I think that is one of the difficult things this year that these guys don’t get a lot of driving before going into the first race weekend but it is what it is and you cannot change it,” said Steiner. “The only thing that we try to do to make sure that we do as much running without issues. “You always try to do that anyway, try to go there without issues but a little more emphasis on that one because every minute counts now.”

Ferrari has unveiled its new 2021 contender, the SF21, which it hopes will put the Italian outfit back on the right track this season. The Scuderia’s latest design features an all-new livery that includes a color scheme that fades from red to retro burgundy, and a green Mission Winnow logo. But the cosmetic change isn’t the only striking difference with the Sf21’s predecessor, with the car also featuring a new nose and cape design. A down-on-power engine and excessive aerodynamic drag weighed heavily on the performance of Ferrari’s SF1000 last year, a deficit that led to one of the worst seasons in the Italian outfit’s modern history. The House of Maranello’s engineers residing in both its chassis and engine departments have worked hard in the past few months to significantly improve the performance of the Scuderia’s 2021 challenger which is obviously based on last season’s car as teams carried over their basic 2020 designs. Ferrari’s new charger integrates this year’s regulation changes which have led to modifications to the car’s floor, bargeboards and brake ducts, while the SF21 will be powered by a heavily updated power unit which has shown promising results during dyno testing according to Scuderia boss Mattia Binotto. To extract the most of its 2021 contender, Ferrari will rely once again on the talented Charles Leclerc and new recruit Carlos Sainz who has replaced Sebastian Vettel alongside the Monegasque.

Lewis Hamilton is heading into the 2021 season feeling “a bit grumpy”, according to respected F1 commentator and former driver Martin Brundle. Brundle, who works for Britain’s Sky, said he has just finished filming some television features with the seven time world champion. “He was very generous but a bit grumpy actually, I thought generally,” he told The Sun. “It’s interesting that his right-hand man, Marc Hynes, is no longer working with him. I sensed he possibly wasn’t super happy with the way the negotiations have worked out at Mercedes.” Indeed, 36-year-old Hamilton has only agreed a one-year contract extension for 2021, with fellow Briton Lando Norris suspecting the Mercedes driver’s career is now winding down. “He’s a guy who likes to do a lot of other stuff outside of F1,” said the McLaren driver. “He knows what he wants to do. He wants to go and enjoy life outside of F1. He doesn’t spend his whole life driving in circles.”

On Wednesday, Ferrari will be the last team to unveil the new 2021 livery. Where we have seen an impressive new livery with many teams, we should of course not expect anything crazy from Ferrari. The SF21 will appear in red again, the difference will be in the details.Still, that doesn’t make Ferrari’s presentation boring in advance, because Ferrari has some work to do. That actually dates back to 2019, when Ferrari fooled the competition with their (illegal) engine, but also themselves. The competition and the FIA discovered Ferrari’s trick and so the engine had to be scaled back. Ferrari clearly did not take this scenario into account in 2019, because the SF1000 was designed to add even more downforce and thus drag. However, with less power than expected, it hurt the team and its customers a lot. Ferrari fell to sixth place among the constructors and did not win a single race in 2020. The SF21 must quickly move on. With a brand new engine and the possibility to make some changes to the car with two tokens, Ferrari has to take another step up. It is therefore very interesting to see what Ferrari has changed about the car, although we will only see in Bahrain how they compare to the competition.

Ferrari and Mercedes have taken up Bahrain’s vaccination offer ahead of the 2021 season opener. We reported last week that despite the Kingdom of Bahrain offering Formula 1’s entire travelling circus the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the sport turned it down. F1 explained that it has “no plans to be vaccinated as a travelling group ahead of the already established rollout of vaccines through the health system in the UK”. La Gazzetta dello Sport, however, claims that Ferrari has in fact answered ‘yes’ to Bahrain’s vaccine offer. “This means that, strictly on a voluntary basis, the staff of the team that is already in Bahrain for the pre-season test will have time to receive the double dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine,” correspondents Luigi Perna and Giusto Ferronato wrote. “Ferrari first contacted the health authorities of Emilia Romagna and in the absence of any objection a total of about 100 team members have already been vaccinated,” the Italian newspaper added. “Mercedes has also offered the same opportunity to its staff.”

Daniel Ricciardo has introduced his own wine range called the DR3. The seven-time Grand Prix winner has partnered iconic wine brand St Hugo. In a funny social media video, Ricciardo was the star of St Hugo’s advert which launched the new brand on Tuesday.