If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Red Bull Racing must be absolutely blushing for the number of compliments it’s getting this year.
Last year’s championship-winning team appears to have penned the defining aerodynamic package of this rules era, with most teams gravitating towards its approach over the off-season.
Learning, copying — whatever you want to call it — is the natural way of things in Formula 1.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSIf you were designing an all-new racing car with barely a few days of testing and with plenty of reliability niggles still to be ironed out, you’d choose a nice, smooth, wide-open permanent circuit with lots of run off and few obstacles as your first cautious outing.
You would never in 100 years choose Newcastle as your first race. But that’s where we’re going this weekend.
The Gen3 Supercars machine has had a difficult gestation. In part that’s an echo of the COVID pandemic, which disrupted development. But it’s also just how all-new rules tend to go.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSWe often talk about the truism of motor racing that the first person every driver must beat is their teammate.
Less talked about is the constructor-equivalent maxim: never be beaten by your customer teams.
It’s the golden rule of running a race team, and Mercedes broke it in Bahrain, where it was trounced by Aston Martin.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSThere aren’t many Formula 1-MotoGP crossover opportunities out there, but Lance Stroll found one in Spain as he faced the prospect of sitting out months of the season with broken bones.
The connection was Dr Xavier Mir, the renowned trauma surgeon famous in part for his work on the constantly troubled forearms and wrists of motorcycle riders.
Stroll put his banged-up hands in Mir’s golden ones, and lo and behold he found his way to sixth in the first race of the season — and, in what will come as no surprise to any MotoGP fan, he did so months ahead of when conventional medical wisdom assumed he’d be back.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSThere’s a cruel irony to the fact that Oscar Piastri has sacrificed and grafted for nine years to earn a Formula 1 debut that lasted just 13 laps.
It’s safe to say it wasn’t the maiden outing as a Formula 1 driver the 21-year-old was hoping for.
The tone of a career is rarely set by the first race, certainly not for drivers of Piastri’s calibre, but the character of season sometimes is, and for the second year running McLaren, one of the greatest teams in Formula 1 history, embarrassed itself at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSMax Verstappen has dominated the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix ahead of Red Bull Racing teammate Sergio Perez, but Fernando Alonso stole the show with a thrilling third for the newly competitive Aston Martin team.
If you thought Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing were vulnerable at the start of the new season, think again.
There was no moment on Sunday at the Bahrain Grand Prix that the reigning champion was in anything other than complete control of the race. The extent of his dominion was so great that it was difficult not to see it extending all the way from here to the end of the season.
There were challengers, but none came close. Ferrari succumbed to old foibles, including yet another alarming power unit failure. Mercedes is still well off the pace after an off-season looked back upon as increasingly dissatisfying.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSMax Verstappen dominated the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix in a foreboding Red Bull Racing one-two, while a superbly on form Fernando Alonso completed the podium for Aston Martin.
Verstappen aced his launch and never looked back, building an almost second-per-lap advantage early in the race that ensured he never meaningfully lost the lead of the race on his way to a cruisy 12-second victory and a 38-second advantage over the closest non-Red Bull Racing driver.
“It was a very, very good first stint where I basically made my gap,” he said. “From there it was all about looking after the tires.
“I think we have a good race package. Of course it will depend a bit race to race, but we can definitely fight with this.”
Continue reading on RACERAfter all the hype and bluster of preseason testing and practice, at the end of qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix reigning champion Max Verstappen led the Red Bull Racing front-row lockout the F1 paddock was expecting deep down.
That’s not to say it was straightforward for last year’s title-winning team.
This was one of the tightest qualifying sessions the sport has seen in a very long time, and with several teams clearly having held back a great deal of pace in the lead-up to the pole shootout, no-one was sure exactly how the chips would fall.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSMax Verstappen has led a Red Bull Racing front-row lockout ahead of teammate Sergio Perez for the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.
Max Verstappen took the first pole position of the season at the Bahrain Grand Prix after Charles Leclerc abandoned his shot at a final lap.
Verstappen led Leclerc by 0.103s after their first laps, but Ferrari opted to save Leclerc’s set of soft tires for the race rather than burn them in a pole attempt, handing the Dutchman an open goal.
The reigning champion didn’t need to be asked twice, improving his time to cement top spot for the first pole of the year ahead of teammate Sergio Perez.
Continue reading on RACERFernando Alonso beat Max Verstappen to top spot in final practice at the Bahrain Grand Prix to set up an intriguing qualifying hour.
Alonso and Verstappen traded fastest sectors in the final 10 minutes of the session, with both unwrapping a new set of soft tires at roughly the same time, facilitating a direct comparison.
Verstappen had the upper hand in the first two sectors, but a snap of oversteer in the final corner ceded the advantage to Alonso, who snatched top spot by just 0.005s.
Continue reading on RACERThe Aston Martin hype train is gathering an alarming amount of speed just one day into the season proper.
The speculation began during the off-season with whispers of powerful numbers emanating from the wind tunnel.
Fernando Alonso’s performance during pre-season testing got the paddock’s attention with some remarkable long-run demonstrations.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSFernando Alonso beat the Red Bull Racing drivers to the top spot in second practice at the Bahrain Grand Prix in another tantalizing glimpse of Aston Martin’s potential. The Spaniard hustled his AMR22 to a best time of 1m 30.907s, pipping Max Verstappen by 0.169s. Sergio Perez was a further 0.002s back in third.
Alonso and Verstappen also looked closely matched on long-run pace, which dominated the only practice session of the weekend run in representative night-time conditions — although most teams burned through their stocks of the soft tire to keep their two sets of the more durable hard rubber for Sunday’s race.
As much as it was good news for Aston Martin, Red Bull Racing didn’t look as settled as it did at last weekend’s test.
Continue reading on RACERRed Bull’s Sergio Perez set a sizzling pace ahead of the Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso at the opening practice session of the season in Bahrain.
Perez deployed the soft tire to set a session-best time of 1m 32.758s, almost half a second faster than the rest of the field and more than 0.6s quicker than teammate Max Verstappen in third.
Alonso’s second-place time caused the most interest, though, thanks to Aston Martin’s impressive pre-season showing and forecasts among the leading drivers that the green team could be set to join the front-runners. The two-time champion was 0.438s slower than Perez after his soft-tire run and 0.179s quicker than Verstappen.
Continue reading on RACERMartin Brundle says Max Verstappen could be the greatest driver in Formula 1 history and has likened the Dutchman to Brazilian icon Ayrton Senna.
Verstappen is preparing for his second world title defence, and claiming category honours again this season would see him draw level with Senna on three championships.
And at just 25 years old — barely older than Senna was in his first grand prix in 1984 — but in his eighth campaign, Verstappen’s powers are continuing to grow along with the improving form of his Red Bull Racing team.
Ferrari boss under the blowtorch; Norris warned over ‘red hot’ rookie: Five stories to watch in 2023
There’s a lot to look out for in Formula 1’s longest ever season. With 23 races ahead of us running all the way to the end of November, the pressure on teams and drivers to maintain a high level of performance will be immense.
And it’ll be doubly hard when new challenges emerge. Will Aston Martin upset the equilibrium between the top three teams, and how might Mercedes handle falling into the midfield? How much influence can Fernando Alonso have on the podium make-up?
Lando Norris is dealing with his third teammate in four years, but for the first time in his career he’ll be the senior driver, not the up-and-coming young gun. Will that throw him off his game or make him only more ferocious?
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSThe only way for Daniel Ricciardo to get back onto the Formula 1 grid in 2024 is to hope Sergio Perez falls on his sword, according to Sky Sports F1 commentator David Croft.
Ricciardo was ousted from McLaren last season and has sought refuge at old team Red Bull Racing as a third driver for 2023 while he decides whether he has the enthusiasm to continue in F1.
The eight-time race winner had options to race in the bottom half of the field this year but said he doesn’t want to stay in the sport just to make up the numbers.
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