Yuki Tsunoda said news of Franz Tost’s intention to quit his team principal role at the end of the year surprised him despite long-running rumours of impending changes at AlphaTauri.
AlphaTauri announced this week that Tost would be stepping down at the end of the season and would be replaced by current Ferrari racing and sporting director Laurent Mekies, while ex-FIA secretary general Peter Bayer would take over as team CEO.
Rumours of changes to Red Bull-backed team have been rife since the death of company founder CEO Dietrich Mateschitz late last year, with some speculating the team could be moved to the UK to cut costs or be sold completely. Instead it appears Red Bull is satisfied to have restructured the team’s management for the medium term.
Continue reading on RACERCharles Leclerc has been reassured by Ferrari boss Frederic Vasseur that the team’s recovery is still on track despite racing director Laurent Mekies’s impending departure and rumours linking him to Mercedes.
AlphaTauri announced this week that Mekies would replace Franz Tost as team principal at Faenza from next season. It’s the third significant departure from the team in the last six months.
Former principal Mattia Binotto left at the end of last season and chassis head David Sanchez will defect to McLaren for 2024 after a period of leave. Several other personnel of lesser profiles have also reportedly left the team since the end of last year’s campaign.
Williams rookie Logan Sargeant thinks his recent Formula 2 experience could give him a leg up in Formula 1’s new condensed sprint format.
The F2 weekend format offers far less time for practice than F1’s usual schedule, with drivers allowed only 45 minutes of free running on Friday compared to the three hours ordinarily afforded to their premier-class counterparts across two days.
Qualifying usually follows around two hours later on the same day rather than the next afternoon, with Saturday reserved for the sprint race and Sunday comprising the longer feature race.
Continue reading on RACERFormula 1 is heading back to Baku for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix and the first sprint weekend of the year — with a new rules twist.
Michael and Rob manage to fill 30 minutes of discussion without interviewing a chatbot and have not been sacked.
No self-respecting Formula 1 fan has ever watched or would ever watch a race, so we talk about holograms of the British royal family and 3AW sound effects instead.
Michael and Rob dissect the crooked rigged witch hunt covfefe (no collusion) that is the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix.
Max Verstappen dominates and eventually wins the Australian Grand Prix after three red flags and a safety car finish. Featuring Phil Horton from Autoweek.
We discover an alarming piece of news from the Australian Grand Prix that you might have missed in a brand-new segment.
Max Verstappen eventually wins the Australian Grand Prix after three red flags and some very clumsy driving blows out the race time by an hour.
Max Verstappen claimed victory in the Australian Grand Prix after a farcical late-race red-flag restart generated mass carnage through the field.
Verstappen had been cruising to a dominant second win of the season when Kevin Magnussen lost his rear-right tire after tapping the outside barrier at Turn 2 on lap 53, triggering a brief safety car and then the second red flag of the afternoon.
After a 15-minute delay the cars lined up on the grid for a restart, with Verstappen on pole alongside Lewis Hamilton, for a two-lap dash to the finish.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen gets pole eventually on a scrappy day for Red Bull Racing as Mercedes aims for an unlikely win.
Max Verstappen will start the Australian Grand Prix on pole after a last-gasp flying lap from the Red Bull driver rescued top spot from Mercedes.
Verstappen was sixth after making a mistake at the penultimate corner on his first lap, and though a second push lap on the same set of tires put him on provisional pole, it was with a tenuous margin of only 0.009s over the field.
And with the soft compound struggling to come up to temperature on a cool, overcast day in Melbourne, the Dutchman was on the back foot without the time to complete the two preparation laps the tire needed to be in its optimum window.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen has topped final practice at the Australian Grand Prix as Red Bull Racing teammate Sergio Perez struggled with apparent car issues.
Verstappen saved his soft-tire run until late, setting a best time of 1m17.565s to pip Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso by 0.162s. Esteban Ocon completed the top three for Alpine, a further 0.211s adrift.
Teammate Perez endured a nightmare session with car problems that have left him underdone ahead of qualifying.
Continue reading on RACERA washed-out second practice leaves the competitive order unclear ahead of qualifying in Melbourne, while the relationship between Red Bull Racing’s drivers comes further under the microscope.