Charles Leclerc led a Ferrari one-two ahead of title leader Max Verstappen in first practice at the Singapore Grand Prix.
Leclerc assumed top spot at the end of the soft-tire runs in the second half of the afternoon session with fastest times in all three sectors. Sainz was late to set his fastest time on a used set of softs, the Spaniard getting to within 0.078s of his teammate.
Verstappen had something of a rough session, complaining of rough downshifts and excess oversteer. The Dutchman shipped most of his 0.126s deficit to Leclerc in the first sector but became progressively quicker as his lap continued and his tires came up to temperature.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen cruised to a record-breaking 10th consecutive victory after seizing the lead from pole-getter Carlos Sainz after 15 laps.
Verstappen had been confident ahead of the race that his Red Bull Racing car had the better race pace, and by lap 4 of the grand prix he was already noting that the leading Ferrari car was struggling with its tires.
On lap 6, Verstappen was testing Sainz’s defenses with an attempted move around the outside into the first turn, though the Spaniard rebuffed him easily by closing the door through the chicane. But what seemed like only a matter of time suddenly started to appear in doubt. Charles Leclerc, who had held third off the line, closed in on the battling duo and threatened to turn the race into a brawl.
Continue reading on RACERCarlos Sainz put a Ferrari on pole position at the Italian Grand Prix after edging out Max Verstappen for the top spot in a thrilling qualifying hour in Monza.
The Scuderia looked down for the count in the earlier qualifying segments, when revised rules mandated drivers use the hard and medium tires on the way to Q3, but the margins closed to practically nothing once the softs broke cover, and the tight picture was resumed.
Ferrari gave the packed grandstands hope after the first runs, with Sainz leading Charles Leclerc for a provisional front-row lockout with Verstappen in third, but the trio was split by just 0.099s — and Verstappen had had his best lap compromised by running marginally wide and onto the gravel exiting the Roggia chicane.
Continue reading on RACERCarlos Sainz pipped Max Verstappen to top spot of final practice at the Italian Grand Prix to set up an intriguing qualifying session in Monza.
The third practice hour was mostly sedate, with teams preserving what ties they have left under Pirelli’s reduced allocation rules, but the session came alive in the final quarter with a flurry of qualifying simulation laps.
Verstappen rocketed to top spot first, but Sainz usurped him atop the order shortly afterwards with a best time of 1m 20.912s, pipping the Dutchman by only 0.086s.
Continue reading on RACERFerrari’s Carlos Sainz edged McLaren’s Lando Norris to top spot of second practice at the Italian Grand Prix after Sergio Perez crashed out of the session with 10 minutes remaining.
Perez was deep into a long run on medium tires when he understeered through Parabolica and dipped his left wheels into the gravel. The stones sucked the car into the run-off area, where the Mexican lost control and was helpless but to brace for contact with the barrier at the far end of the gravel trap, near the exit of the corner.
He made rear-end contact with the barrier, and the speed of his trip through the gravel will likely have caused floor damage too.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen topped opening practice at the Italian Grand Prix ahead of Carlos Sainz in a closely contested session between Red Bull Racing and Ferrari.
Verstappen undertook three stints on the hard tire on his way to a fastest time of 1m22.657s, pipping Sainz by just 0.045s, the Ferrari driver on a four-stint hard-tire plan.
Sergio Perez and Charles Leclerc followed, the pair respectively 0.177s and 0.309s off the pace, with George Russell completing a top five all exclusively on hards.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen has won his home Dutch Grand Prix on a chaotic mixed-weather afternoon for a record-equaling ninth consecutive race victory.
Verstappen started on pole position and held the lead off the line, but his win was far from assured by the time he got to the final corner, where the heavens had opened to dump heavy rain onto the circuit.
Though rain was on the radar, it hadn’t been forecast to arrive for another half-hour, catching teams and drivers by surprise. Barely a handful of drivers responded by pitting for intermediate tires immediately. Sergio Perez, having started seventh, was the first among those to enter pit lane.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen claimed a comfortable victory from sixth on the grid at the Belgian Grand Prix ahead of Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez.
Perez had started from the front row and snatched the lead from polesitter Charles Leclerc at the end of the Kemmel straight on the first lap control the race early on. But Verstappen was already up to fourth by then, behind Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, and the Dutchman was targeting the top step.
The championship leader bided his time to make his moves. On lap 6 he snatched third from Hamilton at the end of the Kemmel straight, and on three laps later he mugged Leclerc on the brakes to take second place around the outside of Les Combes.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen dominated qualifying on a drying track for the Belgian Grand Prix but will cede pole position to Charles Leclerc thanks to a gearbox penalty.
Despite a Q2 scare that saw him barely scrape through to the pole shootout in 10th, Verstappen mastered the slicks-on-damp conditions of Q3 to take top spot by an imperious 0.82s. But the Dutchman must serve a five-place grid penalty for unsealing his fifth set of gearbox components, one more than allowed for the season, which will drop him to sixth on the grid and promote Leclerc to pole on Sunday.
“Last year I had more penalties and we could still with the race,” Verstappen said, recalling his drive from 13th to victory. “That’s still the target on Sunday.”
Continue reading on RACERCarlos Sainz topped the sole practice session for the Belgian Grand Prix in heavy rain as Formula 1 contemplates potential alternatives to running qualifying on Friday afternoon.
Rain fell constantly and with varying intensity through the sprint weekend’s only hour of practice, making it impossible to draw meaningful comparisons between the teams and drivers. Only 15 drivers were able to set a lap, but most were unrepresentative, with more than 10 seconds covering the spread.
Five drivers, including championship leader Max Verstappen, failed to set a time, with only a pair of installation laps to his name.
Continue reading on RACERLewis Hamilton says he’s been operating beneath his usual competitive standard despite not having the car to take the fight to the leaders.
The Briton beat Max Verstappen to a shock pole by just 0.003s on Saturday to set up a potentially fascinating battle, but a slow start opened the door to a bold move on the brakes by the Dutchman to assume the lead into the first corner.
Verstappen went on to claim a 33s victory, the largest since Hamilton won the 2021 Russian Grand Prix by almost a minute. Hamilton eventually trailed home fourth, 39s off the lead.
Continue reading on RACERMcLaren boss Andrea Stella is buoyed by McLaren’s second consecutive podium finish but isn’t willing to call his team a permanent front-running fixture without a bigger sample size of circuits.
The team is enjoying a powerful resurgence from the midfield into the leading pack thanks to a major three-part upgrade package, the first phase of which was brought to the car at the Austrian Grand Prix at the start of the month.
Lando Norris qualified and finished fourth at the Red Bull Ring before leading teammate Oscar Piastri to a 2-3 qualification and 2-4 finish at the British Grand Prix on the following weekend.
Continue reading on RACERRed Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner has lauded his team for breaking the 35-year-old record for successive victories previously held by McLaren.
Max Verstappen’s victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix was the 12th in a row for Red Bull Racing, dating back to last year’s season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, taking it one race clear of McLaren’s 1988 record.
The legendary 1988 McLaren MP4/4 won 11 straight grands prix in an almost perfect season in which Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost combined to claim 15 of 16 race victories.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen has won his seventh successive grand prix in a masterclass performance at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
The victory was Red Bull Racing’s 12th in a row, eclipsing the previous record set by McLaren in 1988.
Verstappen started second on the grid alongside pole-getter Lewis Hamilton but wasted no time snatching the lead into the first turn. The Dutchman was daring on the brakes into the hairpin, defying a Hamilton squeeze to emerge from the apex with first place.
Continue reading on RACERDaniel Ricciardo outqualified teammate Yuki Tsunoda at the Hungarian Grand Prix, his first race back in Formula 1, but is keeping expectations in check for what he expects to be a grand prix of difficult lessons.
Ricciardo recorded AlphaTauri’s best qualifying result in five races when he put his car 13th on the grid in Budapest, a result that eclipsed all but one of predecessor Nyck de Vries’s Saturday performances.
It also put him four places ahead of new teammate Tsunoda, who was knocked out of qualifying in Q1, albeit with a time just 0.013s slower than the Australian in a super-tight session.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen thinks his Saturday weakness could be a Sunday strength after missing out on pole by just 0.003s with chronic balance problems.
Since he first got in the car on Friday, Verstappen has looked uncomfortable with the set-up of his upgraded Red Bull Racing machine. He regularly radioed his team during practice to ask if there was a problem with his car to explain its seemingly random handling behavior, notwithstanding the weekend’s blustery conditions.
Budapest fans were subsequently treated to the rare sight of the Dutchman having to set a banker lap in Q2 after having an earlier lap deleted for exceeding track limits. RBR sent him onto the track out of sync with the rest of the field to ensure the lap was clean, an unusually cautious approach for the runaway championship leader.
Continue reading on RACERLewis Hamilton has praised the overnight work of his team to turn the car’s lacklustre Friday pace into a surprise pole-setting performance.
Mercedes ended Friday practice anchored to the bottom of the time sheet, with Hamilton 16th and teammate George Russell last. While the raw times were due to neither driver using the soft tire, Hamilton described the car as being “at its worst” at a track he has historically dominated.
“It’s night and day different today,” he said. “Literally we turned it up on its head. Yesterday the car felt terrible. The balance was all over the place. It was very, very difficult to extract any performance from it.”
Continue reading on RACERLewis Hamilton has set a new record for most poles at one racetrack by pinching the fastest time from Max Verstappen in a thrilling qualifying hour at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
The fight for pole was delicately poised at the end of the first laps of Q3. Verstappen had strung together a lap for provisional pole, but his advantage was a slender 0.126s ahead of Hamilton.
The Dutchman has been unhappy with the balance of his Red Bull machine all weekend, and that discomfort was evident at several moments throughout qualifying.
Continue reading on RACER