It might be tempting to think Daniel Ricciardo’s unlikely Italian Grand Prix victim was the beneficiary of another boilover crash between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, but the Australian’s drought-breaking victory was on the cards long before the title protagonists banged wheels in the first chicane.
Daniel Ricciardo has won his first Formula 1 victory in more than three years and McLaren’s first in nine after feuding championship rivals Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen took each other out in a heavy crash.
Daniel Ricciardo won a thrilling Italian Grand Prix ahead of McLaren teammate Lando Norris after championship rivals Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton came to blows again in a terrifying airborne crash.
The two title protagonists were kept separated in the first stint by Norris, who bottled Hamilton in fourth and split him from Verstappen’s fight with leader Ricciardo, but a slow stop by the Red Bull Racing mechanics conspired to drop the Dutchman off the lead battle.
Mercedes stopped Hamilton shortly afterwards, and his stop was also slow, dropping him onto the track alongside Verstappen as they entered the chicane, the Briton with the inside line and squeezing the Dutchman onto the apex at Turn 2.
Continue reading on RACERThere’s nothing Timo Scheider won’t try. A karting champion before he was even allowed to race in his native Germany, he’s an endurance-race winner, a Le Mans podium-getter and a two-time DTM champion.
So when Extreme E beckoned as a new challenge, Timo had to be involved, and he’s now a key part of the team responsible for laying out the championship’s challenging courses as well as one of two nominated ‘joker’ drivers on call each weekend.
Timo caught up with James and Michael to explain how he was ‘stupid and crazy’ enough to reinvent himself as a track designer for Extreme E.
And we hear from series scientist Professor Richard Washington, key 2015 Paris Agreement architect Christiana Figueres and UN climate ambassador Lucas di Grassi about the race to zero emissions in the Extreme E workshop Tipping Point.
Max Verstappen will start from a most unlikely pole position in Monza after Mercedes’s expectations for a strong Italian Grand Prix unravelled.
Max Verstappen will start the Italian Grand Prix from pole position after Saturday sprint winner Valtteri Bottas is handed a grid penalty for an engine change.
Valtteri Bottas scored a light-to-flag victory in the season’s second Saturday sprint, but an engine penalty will promote second-placed Max Verstappen to pole for Sunday’s Grand Prix.
Bottas’s 18-lap race was completely untroubled after a clean launch from the line, though the same couldn’t be said for teammate Lewis Hamilton. Starting from the second row, the Briton sunk to fifth behind Verstappen and both McLaren cars with a tardy start that left him crowded into the first chicane.
Pierre Gasly got caught up in the crush. The Frenchman zipped around the fading Hamilton’s outside at Rettifilo but in the process nudged the back of Daniel Ricciardo’s McLaren, breaking his front wing. The AlphaTauri’s wing collapsed and dropped beneath Gasly’s car as he powered through Curva Grande, sending him careening through the gravel and into the wall, causing a two-lap safety car.
Continue reading on RACERLewis Hamilton topped the final practice at the Italian Grand Prix ahead of Saturday’s Sprint, but Carlos Sainz will be lucky to take part in the short race after a high-speed crash.
Sainz lost control of the rear of his Ferrari powering over the left-hand curb entering the Ascari chicane, punching his car into the barrier at speed. The front of his car was wiped off in the collision, and the Spaniard came to rest spun backwards shortly down the road.
“That hurt a bit, but I’m OK,” a winded Sainz radioed back to his pit wall as the session was suspended to clear the wreckage. He was cleared of injury by the medical center, though he will be examined a second time half an hour after the session.
Continue reading on RACERValtteri Bottas will start the Italian Grand Prix sprint race from the head of the grid after beating Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton to the quickest time of qualifying.
Valtteri Bottas will start the Saturday sprint at the Italian Grand Prix from pole position after just edging teammate Lewis Hamilton in qualifying.
The Finn started Q3 with a scruffy initial lap, leaving him fifth and 0.4s off Hamilton’s pace after dipping a wheel on the gravel at the Roggia chicane, but his second attempt was clinical, setting two purple sectors a the first to splits to beat Hamilton by just 0.069s.
Bottas is equipped with a brand-new power unit this weekend after Mercedes made a tactical change to sure up his allocation to the end of the season, which means the Finn will serve the back-of-grid penalty for Sunday’s race, but not before he gets an opportunity to score three points for a sprint victory beforehand.
Continue reading on RACERLewis Hamilton set the quickest time in first practice at the Italian Grand Prix before qualifying later today for Saturday’s sprint. The Mercedes driver’s best time of 1m20.926s was 0.452s better than title rival Max Verstappen’s fastest time despite the Briton using the medium tire to the Dutchman’s softs.
Teammate Valtteri Bottas ended the practice hour third and another half-second behind Verstappen’s Red Bull, also on the medium compound.
Mercedes was the only team not to use at least two different compounds through the hour, with each of the Black Arrows burning through two sets of mediums across more than 26 laps.
Continue reading on RACERThe Dutch Grand Prix couldn’t have gone any better for Max Verstappen and his legion home fans on a weekend Mercedes began the painful process of renewing its driver line-up.
Michael Lamonato joined Matt Grubelich on Sports Drive to review all the action from the Dutch Grand Prix.
Alfa Romeo Racing driver Antonio Giovinazzi reflects on his unusual career path to F1®, remembers his last-minute debut for Sauber in Australia in 2017 and talks about his relationship with teammate Kimi Raikkonen, while we wrap up Max Verstappen’s win in the first Dutch GP for 36 years held at Zandvoort last Sunday.
Do not make toilet in the car, Nico. Featuring Dutch folk duo DJ Bingo and the Banking.
Max Verstappen beats Lewis Hamilton to a very popular home win at Zandvoort, leaving Mercedes to count its losses from a lack of strategy aggression. Featuring Luke Smith, Autosport F1 reporter.
Part motor race, part beach festival, Max Verstappen was the headline act of the Dutch Grand Prix, and the Red Bull Racing driver delivered with a dominant drive from pole to victory to send the already rapturous crowd into delirium.
Max Verstappen has beaten Lewis Hamilton to victory at the first Dutch Grand Prix in 26 years to regain the title lead.
The Dutchman had a blistering start from pole position while the two Mercedes drivers briefly sparred into the first turn. By the end of the first lap his lead was up to 1.7 seconds over Hamilton, and he added an extra two seconds to that by lap 20.
Mercedes, sensing its window of opportunity closing, brought Hamilton into the pits for the undercut, but Verstappen stopped the following lap to maintain his advantage, albeit reduced by two seconds.
But Mercedes’s potential ace was Valtteri Bottas, who had been left on track to inherit the lead. The team hoped he could sandwich Verstappen between himself and the tailing Hamilton to generate an opportunity for the Briton to pass on a circuit that otherwise made overtaking difficult.
Verstappen closed on the Finn on lap 29, but the battle didn’t last long. Bottas’s worn tyres forced him into a mistake on lap 30, allowing the Dutchman and Hamilton to sail through out of the last corner of that lap.
Hamilton had one final card to play, making his second stop aggressively early and onto the medium-compound tyre when Verstappen had only the slower hards remaining, but the stop was badly timed. Hamilton rejoined the circuit among lapped traffic, squandering any first-mover advantage, and Verstappen’s car turned out to have strong pace on the hard tyre anyway,
Strategic options exhausted, Mercedes waited until Hamilton’s tyres expired late in the race before bringing him back to the pits for the qualifying tyre to allow him to score a consolation point for fastest lap.
Verstappen had seen off Mercedes’s full armoury without breaking a sweat, and he took the flag to thunderous applause from the 70,000-strong Dutch crowd.
“As you can hear already, it’s just incredible,” he said. “Of course the expectations were very high going into the weekend, and it’s never easy to fulfil that, but I’m of course so happy to win here and take the lead as well in the championship.
“It’s just an amazing day. The whole crowd — incredible.”
Hamilton tried to cling to Verstappen, keeping the Red Bull Racing car just in his sights for much of the race, but he never had the pace to close, and the Briton admitted Mercedes simply lacked performance to take the fight to the leader.
“Max did a great job,” he said. “I gave it absolutely everything today — flat out.
“I pushed as hard as I could, but they were just too quick for us.”
Bottas was an anonymous third, fading from the lead fight after being passed by Verstappen and Hamilton early, and his day was compounded by a late safety stop and instruction not to try to set the fastest lap to ensure his teammate could add the point to his championship campaign.
“Unfortunately for me it was pretty uneventful,” he said. “We tried, but we didn’t quite have the pace today.” … Continue reading