Lance Stroll has claimed his maiden Formula One pole position for the Racing Point team in a thrilling wet-weather qualifying session at the Turkish Grand Prix in Istanbul.
The 22-year-old Canadian staked his claim in enthralling fashion. Heavy rain stretched the session to more than two hours, and even as the weather cleared the standing water combined with the oily bitumen of the freshly laid Istanbul Park circuit to make the track extremely slippery and hard to judge from the cockpit.
Stroll is the first non-Mercedes driver to start from pole this season, with championship leader Lewis Hamilton and title contender Valtteri Bottas starting sixth and ninth respectively in a car that struggled in the conditions.
Lance Stroll will be the first non-Mercedes driver to start from pole this season after a perfectly judged performance in an extraordinary two-hour qualifying marathon for the Turkish Grand Prix.
In treacherously wet and slippery conditions the Canadian was flawless under pressure to beat Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen by 0.29s.
Mercedes teammates Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas qualified sixth and ninth respectively.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen completed a practice clean sweep at the Turkish Grand Prix in a soaking wet FP3 in Istanbul.
The Red Bull Racing driver’s best effort was a 1m48.48s, enough to be 0.945s quicker than Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and 1.5s ahead of teammate Alex Albon, but times meant little at the end of the barely representative hour of running that featured precious few flying laps.
Drizzle had set in at Istanbul Park 40 minutes before the start of final practice and intensified as the session progressed, turning conditions treacherous.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen consolidated his place at the top of the time sheet in a greasy afternoon practice session at the Turkish Grand Prix.
The Dutchman topped FP1 earlier in the day when the freshly laid tarmac was treacherously slippery, but with more rubber laid into the Istanbul Park circuit he was able to lower the bar to a more representative 1m28.330s.
He was 0.4s quicker than Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and almost 0.6s quicker than Mercedes’s Valtteri Bottas, the last title challenger still in contention to overhaul championship leader Lewis Hamilton, who was a further 0.3s adrift in fourth.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen was quickest in Formula 1’s return to Turkey in a shockingly slippery first practice at Istanbul Park.
The Dutchman took his Red Bull Racing car to the top of the time sheet in the final minutes of the morning session, his 1m35.077s a quarter of a second faster than teammate Alex Albon and 0.4s quicker than Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
Lewis Hamilton, aiming to seal his seventh title this weekend, finished in 15th after completing only three laps, while his only title challenger, teammate Valtteri Bottas, finished ninth with four tours.
Continue reading on RACERThe Vietnamese Grand Prix is off the F1 calendar, but the sport still hopes to return to normality with its 2021 schedule.
No team has reigned over Formula One for as long as Mercedes, but all empires come to an end eventually.
Lewis Hamilton led a Mercedes one-two to earn his team a seventh consecutive drivers championship and put himself on the cusp of his own septuple of titles, but he needed a considerable slice of luck to get the job done.
Championship leader Hamilton was arguably the less impressive Mercedes driver this weekend. Bottas had not only got pole, but the Finn’s perfect getaway ensured he was best place to lead what was a largely processional race to the flag at his own pace. Hamilton, on the other hand, dropped to third off the line behind Verstappen and struggled early in the race to make an impression on the Dutchman.
But from lap two the Bottas’s race began unravelling. Running over some debris on track that damaged his floor and became lodged among his bargeboards, the race momentum shifted dramatically in Hamilton’s favour, who needed no second asking to assemble the broken pieces of Bottas’s race into a ninth victory of his own.
Mercedes has won a record-breaking seventh consecutive constructors championship with a Lewis Hamilton-led one-two finish in Imola at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix.
The German marque’s undefeated run since 2014 beats Ferrari’s previous record of six straight titles between 1999 and 2004.
Mercedes is also guaranteed a seventh straight drivers title, with only Valtteri Bottas in mathematical contention to catch points leader Hamilton with four rounds remaining.
Mercedes has won an unprecedented seventh consecutive constructors championship with a Lewis Hamilton-led one-two victory at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in Imola.
Continue reading on RACERFormula One’s first two-day weekend takes place at one motor racing’s great venues: Imola, the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari, where an interesting race awaits.
The format change to expunge Friday practice from the schedule fulfils two aims. The first is to reduce the logistical burden of road travel between Portugal and Italy for back-to-back weekends, particularly with the background of COVID-19 restrictions.
The second reason has potentially far-reach consequences — the evaluation of the viability of a shortened format to ease the burden of individual races in exchange for cramming more events into a season.
Valtteri Bottas will start from pole position ahead of Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton in F1’s first race in Imola in 14 years.
Bottas trailed Hamilton by 0.031 seconds after their first laps of the top-10 shootout, but a 0.2-second improvement with his second lap turned that into a 0.097-second advantage at the flag, delivering him his fourth pole of the season.
“I knew in the last lap I had to risk it and go hard and the car responded,” he said. “It’s a great feeling to get pole. I had the shakes afterwards!”
Valtteri Bottas snatched a fourth 2020 pole position from teammate Lewis Hamilton to lead a Mercedes front-row lockout at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix.
Continue reading on RACERLewis Hamilton positioned himself for pole at Imola for the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix after topping the weekend’s only practice session.
Continue reading on RACERHamilton’s record 92nd victory was won in emphatic fashion, but his wasn’t the only example of individual brilliance at the Portuguese Grand Prix.
This was Lewis Hamilton’s biggest victory margin of the season, but you wouldn’t have predicted it at the end of the first lap, when he’d dropped to third from pole and was struggling to get his tyres fired up in the blustery, drizzly conditions.
F1 first competitive visit to Portimão for the Portuguese Grand Prix provided yet another interesting challenge for drivers and teams. Not only was Algarve in full swing of an autumnal transition, but recent resurfacing work left the circuit extremely slippery.
Though that combination lost Hamilton places off the line, those tricky conditions also put an emphasis on the driver to carefully and precisely manage the race from the cockpit. The Briton rose spectacularly to that challenge to not simply resume the lead from teammate Valtteri Bottas but turn in his biggest win of the year.
Lewis Hamilton is the most successful driver in Formula One history after claiming a record-breaking 92nd victory at the Portuguese Grand Prix in Portimão.
Hamilton started from pole but in drizzly conditions slipped to third at the end of the first lap behind teammate Valtteri Bottas and the fast-starting McLaren of Carlos Sainz.
But the blip lasted only until Hamilton managed to get some heat into his tyres in the overcast and blustery weather. He and Bottas resumed their place at the front of the pack by lap seven, and by lap 20 the Briton had built enough momentum to pass the Finn to take back the lead.
Lewis Hamilton scored a record 92nd Formula 1 victory at a canter at the Portuguese Grand Prix. The Briton took the checkered flag a comfortable 25s ahead of teammate Valtteri Bottas to break Michael Schumacher’s record of 91 wins.
Continue reading on RACER