Max Verstappen levelled the victory tally with Lewis Hamilton at one race apiece, but the Briton didn’t take his loss lying down in his charge to second.
Max Verstappen survived deluge and debris to claim his first win of the season in his championship battle with Lewis Hamilton.
Max Verstappen won a manic wet race in Imola in which pole winner Lewis Hamilton recovered from a lap down to finish on the podium, while Valtteri Bottas and George Russell emerged unscathed from a high-speed crash at Tamburello.
The Dutchman was close to flawless in depriving Hamilton of the lead on the first lap and controlling the race thereafter, dominating the field to claim a comfortable 22-second victory.
Hamilton, on the other hand, lost touch with the lead through a rare clumsy mistake in the damp on slick tires, running through the gravel and plummeting down the order, but a trademark charge through the field in the second half of the race brought the Briton back up to a commendable second place.
Continue reading on RACERIf qualifying at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix were further evidence of the fight between Mercedes and Red Bull Racing being posied on a knife edge, seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton proved that he could be the difference between success and failure.
Lewis Hamilton squeaked to pole position by less than half a tenth ahead of Red Bull Racing’s Sergio Perez at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
The Briton took his 99th pole despite failing to improve his first banker lap with his second attempt, leaving him vulnerable to Max Verstappen, who then was trailing by only 0.091s.
But the Dutchman found only 0.004s on his own second attempt. Instead Perez was the biggest gainer, finding almost a quarter of a second to come within a minuscule 0.035s of Hamilton’s still-standing benchmark.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen reasserted Red Bull Racing’s qualifying credentials with a dominant one-lap display in Saturday morning practice for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
Verstappen had several laps deleted for exceeding track limits before setting a flying lap on fresh soft tires late in the hour and logging an unbeatable time of 1m14.982s, almost half a second quicker than anyone else.
But the competitive picture ahead of qualifying remains uncertain, with Lewis Hamilton the quickest Mercedes in third and 0.557s off the pace, the front-running pair separated unexpectedly by McLaren’s Lando Norris after a late flier of his own.
Continue reading on RACERLewis Hamilton has snatched his 99th F1 pole position from Sergio Perez in a nailbiting qualifying hour at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
Valtteri Bottas completed a Friday clean sweep by topping second practice at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix after Max Verstappen retired from the session with a drive problem.
The Finn set his quickest time of 1m15.551s on the medium compound early in the session, and though he undertook a subsequent three-lap qualifying simulation with the grippiest soft tire, he was unable to improve.
He was followed closely by teammate Lewis Hamilton, who was able to fractionally improve on his medium-tire time with the softs, though only enough to close to within 0.01s.
Continue reading on RACERValtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton topped the time sheet for Mercedes in a crash-strewn first practice session for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in Imola.
Just 0.041s separated the teammates, with Max Verstappen just 0.017s further back in third, at the end of the one-hour session, which was disrupted by two red-flag suspensions to clean up three crashed cars.
The first came at the 38-minute mark when Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon came together entering the Villeneuve chicane.
Continue reading on RACERA close fight at the front of the Formula 1 field is great for everyone — except Valtteri Bottas.
Wheel-to-wheel racing, pit wall tactics and an unexpected winner — the Bahrain Grand Prix had it all, and it teased what’s shaping up to be a thrilling season of grand prix racing.
Lewis Hamilton held off Max Verstappen for victory by just 0.745s after a titanic duel at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.
Hamilton and Verstappen ran different strategies that saw the lead change three times in the pit lane, but brought the pair together for a wheel-to-wheel battle for the final six laps.
The Red Bull Racing car was sporting tires 10 laps fresher than the Mercedes, and Verstappen seemed sure to turn that pace advantage into the win that had seemed certain when he took pole by 0.4s on Saturday night.
Continue reading on RACERLewis Hamilton has snatched victory from polesitter Max Verstappen by less than a second in a classic Bahrain Grand Prix to open the Formula 1 season.
For the first time in the turbo-hybrid era a non-Mercedes driver will line up from pole position for a season-opening grand prix, but can Max Verstappen beat Lewis Hamilton to the first victory of the campaign?
Max Verstappen has broken reigning champion Lewis Hamilton in the fight for pole position at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.
Max Verstappen confirmed Red Bull Racing’s ascendancy with a comfortable pole position over Lewis Hamilton at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.
The Dutchman held a slender 0.023s advantage over the Mercedes after the pair’s first laps of the top-10 shootout but radioed his team that he wasn’t happy with his lap, hinting at more pace to be squeezed from his RB16B. He duly delivered with a second blistering lap of 1m 28.997s, dismissing Hamilton by 0.388s.
It’s the first time Mercedes hasn’t taken the first pole position of the season since the 2013 Australian Grand Prix, also the scene of Red Bull Racing’s last season-opening pole.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen kept Red Bull Racing on top in the only night-time practice session at the Bahrain Grand Prix, while McLaren’s Lando Norris was his closest pursuer.
The Dutchman’s lap of 1m30.847s was enough to continue his control of the time sheet after also leading first practice in the heat of the late afternoon sun. Friday evening practice is the only session of the Bahrain Grand Prix representative of the after-dark qualifying and race conditions and is therefore considered a more accurate measure of relative performance.
Norris was the surprise next-quickest driver, only 0.095s adrift. His Mercedes-powered McLaren team suggested the Briton’s soft-shod lap was the car’s first performance run after eschewing low-fuel running during pre-season testing. Lewis Hamilton followed in third as the fastest Mercedes driver, but the Briton was 0.235s off Verstappen’s pace.
Continue reading on RACER