Max Verstappen has blown open his championship lead with a comfortable victory in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix after both Ferrari drivers retired with mechanical failures.

The race was bubbling into a strategic thriller, with pole-getter Charles Leclerc having made an early pit stop during a virtual safety car on lap 9. The track-wide caution was triggered by Carlos Sainz, whose power unit suffered a hydraulic failure that forced him to park up in the run-off area at Turn 4.

Sergio Perez, having jumped Leclerc for the lead on the first lap, stayed out ahead of teammate Verstappen for a more conventional one-stop strategy that would have squeezed the Monegasque at the end of the race. But the tactics never had a chance to play out, with Leclerc’s power unit popping in the final sector after just 20 laps, forcing him into a costly retirement, his second in three races after the Spanish Grand Prix.

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World champion Max Verstappen has hit out against the idea of a cap on Formula 1 driver salaries, arguing it would limit their ability to capitalize on the sport’s growing popularity and booming income.

F1 introduced a general cost cap last season for the first time in its history, but it excludes the three highest paid members of staff — typically the drivers and team principal.

Expanding expenditure controls to the drivers has long been mooted, with $30 million to cover a roster of two drivers informally proposed in 2020. The sport has yet to pursue it vigorously, with the question of how to deal with drivers already signed up on hefty salaries proving a tricky one to tackle, but the dramatic rise in inflation and ensuing spending squeeze has resharpened focus on its introduction in recent weeks.

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Max Verstappen dominated final practice at the British Grand Prix ahead of Red Bull Racing teammate Sergio Perez.

Verstappen had only two stints on track on the soft tire but blitzed the field easily with his second set of the red-walled rubber to set a time of 1m27.901s, which was 0.41s quicker than Perez in a strong rebound for Red Bull Racing after a difficult Friday setting up its upgraded car.

Ferrari was the next-best team, but Charles Leclerc was 0.447s off the pace, almost all of which was lost along the straights, with the red car otherwise a match through the corners.

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Max Verstappen has taken the lead of the Formula 1 world championship by six points with victory at the Spanish Grand Prix after Charles Leclerc retired with a power unit problem.

Polesitter Leclerc was cruising with a comfortable 13-second lead when an “unidentified PU issue” forced him to limp back to the pits for his first DNF since last year’s Hungarian Grand Prix.

But it was George Russell, not Verstappen, who inherited the lead when Leclerc abandoned the field.

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Max Verstappen won the inaugural Miami Grand Prix after surviving a late-race battle with Charles Leclerc to slash his championship deficit again.

Leclerc started from pole and held first off the line but Verstappen launched to second around the outside of Carlos Sainz, boxing in the Spaniard behind the lead Ferrari, forcing him to concede and instead focus on holding back Sergio Perez from fourth.

The Red Bull Racing car’s straight-line speed then became decisive. Verstappen latched onto the back of Leclerc on lap eight and dragged him through the final sector. The benefit of DRS made for an easy move into Turn 1 at the start of the following lap.

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Max Verstappen led a dominant Red Bull one-two at a wet-dry Emilia Romagna Grand Prix after Ferrari imploded on home soil.

Leclerc was running third entering the final 11 laps of the race when Ferrari rolled the dice on a late pit stop to try to apply pressure to leaders Verstappen and Sergio Perez, who had controlled the race from the first lap.

Perez and then Verstappen followed him into the pits on the following two laps, but with an extra lap of temperature in his tires, the Monegasque was suddenly on Perez’s gearbox and attempting to find a way through. But the title leader over-committed through Variante Alta, clambering over the first set of curbs and spinning backwards and into the barriers on exit, damaging his front wing.

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Max Verstappen won the first sprint race of the season after passing Charles Leclerc for the lead with two laps to go.

The reigning champion started from pole but launched poorly, gifting Leclerc the lead and allowing him to control much of the race.

But the 21-lap sprint was at the upper range of endurance for the soft-compound tire, and the Ferrari struggled more than the Red Bull machine in the final five laps.

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Max Verstappen snatched pole position for the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix from Charles Leclerc in a chaotic qualifying session that featured five red flags and several bands of rain.

The Dutchman had just snatched to spot in Q3 with a time of 1m27.999s when the penultimate of those red flags was thrown, for Valtteri Bottas’s stopped Alfa Romeo car at Variante Alta with just under three minutes remaining.

The suspension proved decisive. Drivers had been needing multiple push laps to generate tire temperature on a track that was struggling to reach 60 degrees F, and a new band of rain arrived just minutes before Q3 was set to resume.

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Max Verstappen pinched victory from Charles Leclerc in a tense conclusion to the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

The Dutchman launched his bid for victory late, with Leclerc having controlled most of the race until the final 10 laps.

Leclerc inherited the lead from poleman and erstwhile leader Sergio Perez, who had been managing the pace until his first pit stop, on lap 15.

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Max Verstappen topped final practice for the Bahrain Grand Prix ahead of Charles Leclerc in a difficult-to-read session.

The Dutchman was just 0.096s quicker than Leclerc, though both drivers dropped time on their final soft-tire runs. Verstappen locked up at the first turn and opted to abandon the lap for a second attempt, while Leclerc said he was missing performance in the final sector.

Leclerc appeared to be closer to the limit in his Ferrari generally, having spun off the track at turn 11 as he tried to power over the curbs. The gravel trap saved him from a crash with the barriers by feet.

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Max Verstappen has lit up second practice at the Bahrain Grand Prix, putting Red Bull Racing at the top of the time sheet ahead of both Ferraris.

Verstappen, who was quickest at this track at the end of preseason testing, lowered the benchmark from earlier in the day to 1m31:936s. But he was pursued closely by Charles Leclerc, whose Ferrari was just 0.087s slower.

Leclerc’s best time was set on five-lap old tires and the fifth lap of a qualifying simulation run, suggesting that the C3 compound is holding its own in Bahrain this season. Indeed, the majority of the field completed competitive long-run simulations on the red-walled rubber in the second half of the session, with Verstappen’s race pace in particular looking strong.

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Max Verstappen enjoyed a well-deserved break as the new world champion during the off-season, but there’s clearly been no such rest for his lawyers.

Before a wheel had been turned in anger in 2022, Red Bull Racing and its new world champion announced they’re extending terms until 2028.

Reports from the Netherlands place the value of the deal at around $A75 million per year — Lewis Hamilton-tier cash for a driver almost 13 years the Briton’s junior.

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Lewis Hamilton and new world champion Max Verstappen will resume hostilities in a new season of Formula 1 later this month, but the blows from their brutal 2021 showdown are still reverberating.

Last December motorsport fans were treated to the closest finish in Formula 1 history: Hamilton and Verstappen, tied on points, in a final-lap duel to win the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and the world championship.

A late-braking lunge on fresh tyres catapulted Verstappen down Hamilton’s inside at turn five. Shod with older rubber courtesy of a late-race safety car, the Briton was powerless to fight back, and the Dutchman became the first driver to beat Hamilton to the crown in five years.

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Max Verstappen is a Formula 1 champion at last, and though the circumstances of his triumph over Lewis Hamilton were controversial, his place in the pantheon of motorsport greats is secure.

Max Verstappen is the 2021 world champion after a chaotic and controversial single-lap dash with Lewis Hamilton to win the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Max Verstappen has beaten Lewis Hamilton to the 2021 world championship in the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, but Mercedes is protesting the outcome after a last-lap safety car restart turned the race on its head.

Max Verstappen passed Lewis Hamilton on the final lap to win the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and sensationally claim the 2021 Formula 1 world championship.

The Dutchman had been on course for a sound defeat to Hamilton, who jumped Verstappen off the line and controlled the race, until five laps from the finish, when a safety car was deployed to clean up Nicholas Latifi’s wrecked Williams, which had come to a crashed end in the barriers at Turn 14.

Hamilton didn’t have the margin on Verstappen to make a safety stop, gifting the Dutchman a free switch to a set of softs to combat the Briton’s badly worn hard rubber.

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Max Verstappen raises a first in celebration

Max Verstappen has snatched the all-important pole position from championship rival Lewis Hamilton in qualifying for the title-deciding Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.