Valtteri Bottas was fastest again for Mercedes in a hot second practice session for the Tuscan Grand Prix at Mugello. Bottas took the top spot from teammate and championship leader Lewis Hamilton by 0.207s.
Continue reading on RACERLewis Hamilton claimed the inaugural pole of the Tuscan Grand Prix after a yellow flag interrupted the end of qualifying.
Continue reading on RACERValtteri Bottas set the fastest lap at F1’s first official timed session at Autodromo Internazionale del Mugello for the Tuscan Grand Prix.
Continue reading on RACERFormula One rarely serves up races like the Italian Grand Prix, but Pierre Gasly’s win for AlphaTauri ahead of Carlos Sainz and Lance Stroll completely flipped the script.
Before this mad Monza race F1 had gone been 147 races — more than seven years — since anyone other than a Mercedes, Red Bull Racing or Ferrari driver topped the podium.
And in a season dominated by Mercedes, it took some plot twists to take Gasly to the top step.
Often F1 fans and pundits have hypothesised what the sport would look like released from the iron grip of the frontrunning teams. The Italian Grand Prix delivered us the thrilling answer, with Pierre Gasly taking an emotional maiden victory.
For a time it seemed this was a race no-one wanted to win.
Poleman Lewis Hamilton was penalised for making his sole pit stop while pit lane was closed. Valtteri Bottas took himself out of contention with a shocking first lap. Red Bull Racing’s already off-pace weekend was compounded by damage to Alex Albon on the first lap and a power unit problem taking Max Verstappen out of the race.
Pierre Gasly is the first Frenchman to win a Formula 1 race in 24 years after claiming his maiden victory in a thriller at the Italian Grand Prix.
The 24-year-old AlphaTauri driver beat McLaren’s Carlos Sainz and Racing Point’s Lance Stroll to the flag after inheriting the lead from poleman Lewis Hamilton, who served a stop-go penalty for a tyre change while pit lane was closed.
But Hamilton wasn’t the only frontrunner to hit trouble, with a slew of problems creating a perfect storm to deliver the unpredictable podium.
Pierre Gasly has won his maiden Formula 1 victory for AlphaTauri in a chaotic Italian Grand Prix at Monza.
Continue reading on RACERMercedes will have both cars start from the Monza front row for the first time since 2016, and such was the margin poleman Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas dominated qualifying that there’s little reason to believe anyone can challenge in the race.
Qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix took place against the backdrop of a technical directive banning the use of special qualifying modes — or ‘party modes’, as originally coined by Lewis Hamilton — a long-telegraphed change to aid the policing of technical regulations and, just maybe, condense the battle for pole.
Effectively the internal combustion engine has become subject to parc fermé conditions, its settings unable to be changed from the beginning of qualifying until the end of the race.
Lewis Hamilton has defied rule changes in part aimed at slowing his Mercedes to storm to pole at the Italian Grand Prix with an all-time speed record.
Hamilton lapped the 5.793-kilometre Monza circuit in 1 minute 18.887 seconds. At an average speed of 264.362 kilometres per hour, it set the record for fastest lap in Formula 1 history.
It was enough to pip teammate Valtteri Bottas by a slender 0.069s in a Mercedes front-row lockout, though the Finn is optimistic he has better race pace than Hamilton in his mission to slice into his 50-point championship deficit on Sunday.
Lewis Hamilton has taken pole with the fastest ever lap in Formula 1 while home team Ferrari failed to make it into the top-10 shootout for the second week running at the Italian Grand Prix.
Continue reading on RACERValtteri Bottas set the fastest time of the weekend so far to take top spot in final practice at the Italian Grand Prix.
Continue reading on RACERLewis Hamilton turned the tables on Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas to top the time sheet at the end of Friday practice at the Italian Grand Prix.
Continue reading on RACERValtteri Bottas went fastest ahead of Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton in first practice for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, with home team Ferrari stuck outside the top 10.
Continue reading on RACERLewis Hamilton won his fifth race of the season to extend his championship lead to nearly two clear race victories at the Belgian Grand Prix, but the biggest story of this staid Sunday came at the back of the field and well out of the points.
Ferrari, motorsport’s most famous and best-funded team, lumbered home to its worst result in a decade in a hellish weekend at Spa-Francorchamps.
Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc crawled to 13th and 14th, beaten by Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen and only five seconds ahead of Williams rookie Nicholas Latifi in its lowest meritorious double finish since 2010.
The Belgian Grand Prix might’ve fizzles over a poorly timed safety car, but there was no disputing another spotless performance by Lewis Hamilton, who extended his championship lead to almost two clear race wins.
The lap 10 intervention to collects the crashed cars of Antonio Giovinazzi and George Russell came just late enough to prompt almost every driver to make their sole pit stop, but it meant the race devolved into a long single stint of unappealing tyre management largely devoid of action.
But a Mercedes one-two was always on the cards at a circuit that heavily favours engine performance. The Mercedes power unit has comfortably regained its status as the formula’s best, allowing the works team to pile downforce onto the car to protect its tyres through the middle sector without sacrificing straight-line speed to Red Bull Racing, effectively securing the result once the front row of the grid was locked out.
Lewis Hamilton is almost two clear wins atop the F1 championship standiings after breezing to a comfortable victory at the Belgian Grand Prix.
Hamilton was peerless at Spa-Francorchamps, leading every lap of the race from pole to beat teammate Valtteri Bottas by almost nine seconds.
The win was Hamilton’s 89th, just two shy of Michael Schumacher’s record 91 victories.
Lewis Hamilton won his 89th Formula 1 race with a comfortably margin over Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas at the Belgian Grand Prix.
Continue reading on RACERMercedes locked out the front row for the Belgian Grand Prix, but the form guide for the super-fast Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps is precariously set.
The Iconic Spa-Francorchamps presents teams with a compromise quandary. The first and last sectors are all about straight-line speed, comprising only three genuine corners, but the middle sector is slower and twisty, putting a premium on downforce.
More downforce can yield decent gains and better tyre life through that middle sector alone, but the sheer length of the straights here — particularly Kemmel, which in effect runs from La Source, through Eau Rouge and all the way to the braking zone at Les Combes — risks leaving you a sitting duck to the powerful slipstream even to an overall slower car.