Racetrackmasters

Toto Wolff has named two drivers who may be in the running to succeed either Lewis Hamilton or Valtteri Bottas in 2022. At the same time, the Mercedes team boss played down the fact that seven time world champion Hamilton has only signed a less-than-one-year contract extension for this season. “The reason was simply a lack of time,” Wolff told Speed Week. “We only started negotiating just before Christmas. “A multi-year contract is more complex than one for one season, so we said we’ll sign this for a year and see about it later. Everything is currently open on both sides after 2021,” Wolff added. He named two Mercedes-linked drivers who are currently loaned to rival teams as potential candidates for 2022. “Esteban (Ocon) is in the second year of a two-year contract with Renault and Alpine F1, and George (Russell) is with Williams this year,” said Wolff. “So we have some options for 2022, but until then our full support goes to Valtteri and Lewis. We will evaluate in the middle of the year whether there will be a change in 2022. “It is definitely too early now to talk about scenarios for 2022.”

Romain Grosjean, who saw his F1 career end in a fireball, can’t wait to get back into racing. Next season he will do so in the IndyCar for Dale Coyne Racing. However, he is still not fully recovered from the injuries sustained in his accident in Bahrain. “When I wake up in the morning, it is not easy to move my hands,” he says in conversation with SRF. “I move my fingers 3,000 times a day because that’s the only way I get full movement back. It feels terrible when I try to move my fingers.” He is able to function fully in a race car, but for the time being he will have to endure the pain. This is mainly because he recently came off the painkillers. “I had enough, I didn’t want to take it anymore. To not be dependent on the medication anymore, that was a big psychological step for me.” Grosjean also says he has an increasingly extensive memory of the accident. Two weeks after the accident he suddenly heard the sound of the fire again and recently he also had the smell of burning carbon fibre in his nose again. In the first place it is important to know what is going on in your life and what is going on in your head. Some memories he had even repressed completely. “I had told everyone that there was no fire in the cockpit. Then I saw the images from the on-board camera, which have not yet been made public. The fire is everywhere. Just everywhere.”

Lawrence Stroll is solidifying his control of Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings as Kuwaiti investors reduce their interest in the auto manufacturer.Arabian News reports that the Canadian billionaire has solidified his control of Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings as Kuwaiti investors Adeem, once the largest shareholder, shrink their stake. The company confirmed in filings on Friday that the investment fund’s director Amr Ali Abdallah Abou El Seoud stepped down after the group’s shares in the automaker fell below seven percent. The report adds that this is the second reshuffle at Aston; last month three board members stepped down to be replaced by five new directors allied to Stroll. Also, last year, out the door went CEO Andy Palmer and in came Tobias Moers, former boss of AMG that runs the motorsport division for Mercedes, including their prime asset: their immensely successful F1 team. What might have begun as a vanity project to ensure his son Lance Stroll has a shot in Formula 1, is now a motoring history-making enterprise. Apart from rescuing the beleaguered car brand, Stroll is set on making it relevant again by staking his reputation on the line while convincing industries heavy hitters to believe in his vision. Notably and smartly, Daimler is firmly on board. Stroll’s increased shareholding pours cold water on (malicious?) reports last month, claiming the Canadian was planning to bail-out of the venture he began when he saved Force India from Vijay Mallya’s self-destruct button.

Nikita Mazepin was in the news rather negatively at the end of last year because he posted a video on social media in which he grabbed a young woman by the breasts. He did this seemingly uninvited and the criticism was severe. Haas now states that this was a good lesson for the young Mazepin. Team boss Guenther Steiner told RACER.com that the incident was discussed internally. Mazepin has apologised and Steiner believes he can use the lessons learned from this chastisement in his future Formula One career. Team owner Gene Haas also says they acted tough internally, but found the criticism from the outside to be quite extreme at times. “Our response to it was I think Guenther told him that he was an idiot and you can’t do things like that and it was totally unacceptable.” The intense criticism from both the team and beyond must have been intense for a 21-year-old, according to Haas. He believes the driver has learned his lesson. That is all for now. “The social media response from all kind of groups was extremely strong, wanting us to execute him for what he did, but that didn’t feel like the right course either.”

Formula 1 and Netflix have today revealed that the third season of the Drive to Survive docuseries will be released on 19 March. “Intense battles, fierce rivalries, unexpected podiums and Lewis Hamilton’s incredible seventh world title will ensure the series is one of the most action packed yet,” Formula One said in a statement announcing season three’s release date. The first two seasons of Netflix’s Drive to Survive docuseries attracted millions of new fans to Formula One. The docuseries provides fans with behind-the-scenes access to the most important and dramatic moments of Formula One, and all 10 teams will feature in season three, which looks back at last year’s action. Season one covered the 2018 season and was immediately a big hit, with it attracting many new fans, particularly from the US, to Formula One. The full trailer for the new season will be released in the coming weeks, and Netflix has already released a preview to give fans a glimpse of what to expect. While Drive to Survive has proved to be popular among many F1 fans, some drivers, such as Max Verstappen and motorsport purists, have criticised the docuseries for being “fake” and taking things out of context for dramatic effect.

Pirelli have released the available tyre compounds for the full 2021 calendar, a season set to comprise of a record 23 races. The Italian company, who hold exclusive rights as the tyre supplier of Formula 1, have five specifications of slick tyres in their range, starting from C1s up to C5s, with the compounds getting softer as the number increases. There are then also the intermediate and full wet tyres. And Pirelli have already released their tyre choices for the full 23-race calendar in 2021, confirming that teams will once again receive a standard allocation of the compounds, rather than the old system where each team had a choice on how many sets of each tyres they wanted for a race weekend. Pirelli state that there will be a “fixed allocation for each driver of two hard sets, three medium sets, and eight soft sets at each race.” Regulation changes for 2021 have removed the need to confirm tyre choices 14 weeks in advance for long-haul events and eight weeks in advance for European events, allowing for the choices to be fixed for the full season. This comes as a result of the ongoing global pandemic and the potential logistical issues that it may cause during the season. In a Pirelli press release, their motorsport boss Mario Isola said: “Announcing all the selections for the year right now will help the teams and the drivers with their planning, also allowing for maximum flexibility just in case the calendar has to change due to Covid-19 restrictions, as we saw last year. “The selections themselves are on the whole similar to last year (or 2019, in the case of races not run in 2020), which means that teams should have plenty of data to fall back on – but we have two races where the nominations are softer. “The first is Azerbaijan, where our C2 hard tyre wasn’t used last time, so we are now going with the softest selection of all: C3, C4 and C5. “Then we have Brazil, where we will take the C2, C3 and C4 this year, as the C1 that was selected as the hardest choice last time didn’t show a particularly big advantage in terms of wear over the medium. “In both cases, the softer nomination could lead to a greater variety of race strategies.”

AlphaTauri have taken the wraps off their car for the 2021 Formula 1 season, the AT02, and outlined their targets to take on big-name midfield rivals. Unveiled by drivers Pierre Gasly and new signing Yuki Tsunoda in a pre-recorded digital video, the car features changes to its nose and suspension while the livery has been slightly reworked from last season with blue now the predominant colour. Entering the second year under the name of Red Bull’s fashion label, the former Toro Rosso team are aiming to build on a strong 2020 when they won a race for the first time in 12 years. Although a seventh-place championship finish was actually one spot lower than 2019, the team scored more points from fewer races and won for just the second time in their history on home soil at Monza with Gasly in September. They are now aiming to improve their consistency and finished ahead of a number of the sport’s bigger teams in a midfield battle that was fiercely competitive last year. “In 2020 Scuderia AlphaTauri was a midfield team, we were fighting successfully against the other teams like McLaren, Renault and Racing Point but our target for this year is to consistently be at the top of this midfield pack and to improve further,” said team boss Franz Tost. “To achieve this, we have to avoid reliability issues and finish all races in the points. This can only happen if we do not make any mistakes, so we have to be 100 per cent concentrated on our job, race after race, on and off the track, because our competitors are hard to fight.” Gasly has rebuilt his reputation back at Red Bull’s sister team since an ill-fated brief stint at their main squad in early 2019 and said he is “ready to take on the role of team leader” after the departure of the more experienced Daniil Kvyat. The 25-year-old Frenchman is joined by 20-year-old Tsunoda from Japan, who impressed the Red Bull hierarchy with a race-winning single season of F2 when he finished third in the standings behind the more experienced Mick Schumacher and Callum Ilott.

It is Williams, not Haas, that has leapt into pole position to turn pink in 2021. Kolner Express newspaper claimed this week that with Aston Martin switching to a green livery for this season, the pink-coloured Austrian water treatment company BWT had turned its attention towards a move to Haas. But the German broadcaster RTL said those reports were “incorrect”. “According to our information, BWT will not sponsor the American racing team Haas,” RTL reported. Italy’s La Gazzetta dello Sport claims that BWT expressed interest in linking up with the Alpine team for 2021, but the talks broke down. In fact, correspondent Lorenzo Pastuglia says BWT is now “very close to an agreement with Williams”. “The negotiations are at an advanced stage and close to the end,” the famous Italian sports daily added. Pastuglia claims the Alpine talks broke down because BWT wanted its corporate colour pink to feature strongly on the 2021 livery, as it did at Racing Point.

Ferrari and Shell will continue to work together in Formula 1 in the coming years. The two unique companies have announced a multi-year deal in which sustainability is central. Ferrari and Shell have been partners for many years. 70 years to be precise, but this anniversary is far from the end of this successful collaboration. Ferrari announced on Thursday that a new multi-year agreement has been signed, and the main focus will be on sustainability. However, Ferrari and Shell will also be hoping to add more titles to the total of ten drivers’ titles and twelve constructors’ titles. ‘We share many common values, not least excellence, passion for racing and teamwork, which have made this partnership unique in the history of motor sport. As our Innovation Partner we will continue to work with Shell on the transfer of racing technology to mobility as well as the ambitious challenges that lie ahead in particular the aim of Formula 1 to reach a net-zero emissions level by 2030,” Mattia Binotto revealed in the statement. ‘Our partnership with Ferrari has bred truly remarkable innovations – innovations that Shell regularly relies upon when developing new fuels and lubricants for our customers. We’re now entering a very exciting time in our history together as we leverage this partnership to not only strive for success on the track, but also to develop cleaner fuels and lubricants for our customers,” concludes Istvan Kapitany, Shell’s chief executive officer.