Max Verstappen has dominated Austria’s sole practice session for Red Bull Racing ahead of qualifying later today.
Verstappen left his fastest lap until the final seconds of the hour-long session, setting a time of 1m05.742s to beat Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz by 0.241s.
The Dutchman set his time on the medium tire, whereas most of the rest of the field, including Sainz, used a set of softs in the closing stages of the session. The gap between the soft and medium compounds was around 0.4s at this circuit last season. If that difference in performance were to be replicated this weekend, it would suggest Verstappen has a formidable 0.6s advantage over the rest of the grid.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen scored a rare grand slam victory at the Spanish Grand Prix, leading every lap from pole and logging the fastest lap of the race on his way to a commanding 24-second victory.
Verstappen’s win was only very briefly in doubt at the start of the race, when a strong launch by front-row starter Carlos Sainz had them running side by side into the braking zone at Turn 1. But the Dutchman had the inside line, which forced the Spaniard to yield and concede the place and consolidate second.
Verstappen was rarely spotted after that, building enough of a buffer to comfortably hold the lead after his two pit stops and stamp his authority all over the race, extending his championship lead to 53 points.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen dominated the fight for pole position at the Spanish Grand Prix after Sergio Perez, Charles Leclerc and George Russell all failed to make it through to Q3.
Verstappen has been peerless all weekend at a circuit that has accentuated his Red Bull Racing car’s strongest qualities. The Dutchman was so good in qualifying that he didn’t bother to complete his final flying lap despite setting a purple middle sector. He still ended the day with a half-second advantage. After the first runs he had been 0.924s ahead of the pack.
“The car was really good,” he said after clocking 1m 12.272s for pole. “The car was on rails and was really enjoyable to drive today.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen completed a clean sweep of Spanish grand prix practice after a rain-affected final practice session in Barcelona.
Dark clouds rolled over the circuit and lightning was striking in the distance as FP3 went green, and drivers were queued at the end of the pit lane on slick tires in a bid to validate overnight set-up changes before the forecast rain arrived.
Verstappen quickly rocketed to the top of the time sheet with a lap of 1m 13.664, and teammate Sergio Perez followed 0.25s further back, but the session was halted after just eight minutes when Logan Sargeant crashed his Williams at the final corner.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen has swept Friday practice with another session-topping time in a close-run FP2 ahead of local favourite Fernando Alonso.
Verstappen lowered the day’s benchmark to 1m 13.907s with his single push lap on the soft-compound tire early in the session, and no-one who followed was able to better it.
Alonso, who had spent first practice earlier in the day evaluating car upgrades, got closest. The Spaniard strung together a lap just 0.17s shy of the Dutchman, including the fastest time in the final split.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen set a sizzling pace to start practice at the Spanish Grand Prix at the top of the time sheet comfortably ahead of Red Bull Racing teammate Sergio Perez.
Verstappen used the soft tire to set a lap of 1m14.606s, besting Perez’s best by 0.768s. The Mexican, however, spent most of the session on the medium compound, whereas the Dutchman enjoyed a long stint in the middle of the hour on softs.
Both drivers were equipped with new power units for the weekend as well as revised floor edges and diffusers.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen edged Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc to pole position at the Austrian Grand Prix after the Dutchman’s Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez failed to make it past Q2.
In a fraught qualifying hour defined as much by who could keep their car within the white lines of the track boundary as by who could go fastest around the circuit, Verstappen emerged supreme, topping every segment of qualifying on his way to pole.
Leclerc ran him close at the end, getting to within 0.048s after a gutsy attack on the track’s final sector, but Verstappen’s time of 1m04.391s couldn’t be beaten. The world champ will line up in pole position on Sunday afternoon following the standalone sprint on Saturday.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen took his second victory at the Monaco Grand Prix with a dominating performance despite a chaotic final 30 laps with the arrival of heavy rain.
Pole-getter Verstappen had beaten second-starting Fernando Alonso off the line easily and was on badly worn medium tires when the showers arrived on lap 50, but he had Fernando Alonso around 10 seconds behind him, depriving him the freedom of immediately responding to weather.
It was a dream scenario for the pursuing Alonso, who had started the race on the hard tire in the hope of running longer than the Dutchman and capitalizing on a late race disruption or the need to switch to intermediates.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen beat Fernando Alonso to pole position with a last-gasp lap at the end of a thrilling and unpredictable qualifying session at the Monaco Grand Prix.
Pole position changed hands five times after the end of the first runs, with Alonso, the Ferrari drivers and even Esteban Ocon rotating through top spot before Verstappen’s final lap.
Track grip was ramping up constantly, and Red Bull hatched a plan to have Verstappen be the last driver on track to take advantage of the conditions.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen and Sergio Perez controlled final practice at the Monaco Grand Prix before a Lewis Hamilton red flag ended the session six minutes early.
Red Bull had changes made overnight to drastically improve the balance of the RB19, having started the weekend unusually wide of the mark, and Verstappen made great use of his new setup to top the timesheets with a lap of 1m 12.776s.
Perez rotated through top spots during the session but ended up a wafer-thin 0.073s adrift of his teammate.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen edged out Charles Leclerc for top spot in second practice at the Monaco Grand Prix after FP1 leader Carlos Sainz crashed out of the session.
Verstappen set the benchmark late in the soft-tire runs at 1m12.462s, though it was enough to pip Leclerc by only 0.065s. The Red Bull driver’s slender advantage was through the first two sectors, with the Ferrari again the car to beat in the final split.
Sainz was third, 0.107s off the headline time, but crashed shortly after setting his fastest lap. The Spaniard, who was comfortably fastest in the first practice hour, clipped the inside apex exiting the second Swimming Pool chicane and snapped his suspension, which sent him careening into the exit barrier.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen topped the second practice at the Miami Grand Prix ahead of both Ferrari drivers despite Charles Leclerc crashing out of the session.
The Dutchman made easy work of the field with a soft run of 1m 27.930s, which put him 0.385s ahead of Carlos Sainz and 0.468s on Leclerc.
The Monegasque had more time to give, having ruined his flying lap with a lock-up into Turn 17 at the end of the long back straight that cost him valuable time — the smaller of Leclerc’s two major mistakes.
Continue reading on RACERChristian Horner has defended pitting Max Verstappen from the lead just second before a safety car neutralized the race and promoted teammate Sergio Perez into first place and an eventual victory.
Verstappen had been leading the race on lap 10 when Nyck de Vries struck the apex barrier at Turn 5 and broke his front-left suspension, forcing him to park his car halfway onto the Turn 6 run-off area.
Red Bull Racing called Verstappen into the pits that same lap – he was exiting Turn 14 at the time of the crash, and as he dived into the pit entry, the incident was still covered by localised yellow flags.
Continue reading on RACERCharles Leclerc says Red Bull Racing’s RB19 is in another league compared to the rest of the grid after finishing a distant third to a dominant Sergio Perez-Max Verstappen one-two.
Leclerc started from pole position and held off both Verstappen and Perez at launch, but his defence of the lead was destined to be short-lived.
Verstappen breezed past him on lap 4 once DRS had been activated, and Perez wasn’t far behind, demoting Leclerc to third on lap 6 before the Red Bull Racing drivers charged up the road to an eventual 21-second victory over the Ferrari driver.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen wants Formula 1 to scrap sprint weekends and focus instead on finding ways to close the field after the first Saturday of the year run to the tweaked trial format.
F1 introduced the sprint format in 2021 as a trial to address the balance between competitive track time and practice sessions. This year there will be six sprint rounds, the first of which is this weekend in Azerbaijan.
Under the original sprint rules, qualifying was moved to Friday and set the grid for a 30-minute, 62-mile race in the previous qualifying slot in the schedule on Saturday. The results of the sprint would then set the starting order for Sunday’s grand prix.
Continue reading on RACERGeorge Russell says Max Verstappen should have known the risks associated with trying to hold position around the outside of a corner after the two drivers made contact on the first lap of the Azerbaijan sprint.
Verstappen started third alongside Russell, whose third place grid spot gave him the inside line for the first three corners, and the Briton made the most of it by claiming the apex of all three and forcing the Dutchman to try to cling on with a wider line to hold position.
Both got through the first corner cleanly, but Russell’s front-right wheel tagged the left side of Verstappen’s car as they exited Turn 2, tearing a hole in the RB19’s sidepod and causing other minor damage.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen was left ruing a different tire preparation lap before his crucial final Q3 lap that he believes cost him pole position to Charles Leclerc for Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Verstappen and Leclerc were neck and neck after their first laps but the Ferrari driver pulled away with his second attempt to seal top spot by 0.188s. The difference all came from the second sector, in particular from the exit of the castle section at the top of the hill and the long run down to Turn 15, what is effectively the penultimate corner.
It’s the first pole position of the season for a team other than Red Bull Racing, but rather than it signifying a swing in momentum or even a setup error, Verstappen put the loss of top spot down to a misjudgment preparing his tires for his final lap.
Continue reading on RACERMax Verstappen has reiterated a threat to walk away from Formula 1 if it continues to put what he considers to be business priorities ahead of sport.
This weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix is the first of six sprint rounds this season but the first run to an altered format, with the shortened Saturday race getting its own qualifying session and standing alone from the main event on Sunday.
Verstappen stirred controversy at the Australian Grand Prix when asked about the changes, telling Portuguese TV that he “won’t be around for too long” if the sport continues tinkering with its weekend format and increasing the number of events in a season.
Continue reading on RACER