Tag Archives: Ferrari

Red Bull boss Christian Horner says that the Singapore GP indicated signs of “real progress” with the tricky RB20 – despite Max Verstappen finishing 20 seconds behind dominant race winner Lando Norris.

Red Bull had a floor revision in Baku that worked well on Sergio Perez’s car, but was less obvious on Verstappen’s due to a set-up mistake prior to qualifying.

Verstappen was happier with the car in Singapore, starting second and beating everyone else bar Norris in the race itself.

Horner noted that the Dutchman was particularly quick on the harder tyre in the second part of the race.

“First of all, you have to congratulate Lando and McLaren,” he said. “They had a very strong car this weekend, and particularly on the first stint, they were very quick. I think on the hard tyre, we looked in better shape.

“But of course, the gap is way too big by then, at a track where anyway it’s very hard to overtake.

“So I think if you roll back the clock to Friday, on Friday night I think if you’d have said we would qualify on the front row and take second place, a significant amount ahead of the rest of the field, I think we would have certainly taken that.

“But obviously, the gap to Lando was significant in the first part of the race, and we’ve now got the best part of a month to work hard and try and bring some performance to the car in Austin.”

He added: “I think Lando was a step ahead, particularly on the medium tyre. On the hard it didn’t show as much, but on the medium tyre, he was he was very, very quick today.

“But the rest of the field, I didn’t see a car that was quicker than Max. I thought Piastri had good duration to his stint on that medium tyre, but then on a hard tyre, it was an 18-second gap, and it seemed to be static for a long period.”

Horner admitted that Red Bull knew it was beaten during Norris’s first stint, which saw McLaren telling its driver to increase an already impressive gap.

“With the pace he had in hand on that tyre at that point we’ve conceded the race on pace,” he said. “He touched the wall for the first time, then he touched it for the second time. But obviously they’ve got it got away with it.

“I actually think Max drove a very strong race today, and that was what we had. Which when you consider where we were a couple of weeks ago, I think we have made some real progress. And obviously we’ve got a lot of work to do before Austin.”

Horner said the team had made a good recovery for qualifying in Baku after going the wrong way on setup in Friday practice.

“I think we wanted to avoid a repeat of last year,” he said. “And I think perhaps we overcompensated.

“But I think the way the team reacted, the effort that went into that reaction, we were able to give Max a much better car [on Saturday]. And obviously in the race we couldn’t compete with Lando today, but we had the rest of the field covered.”

Regarding Perez’s drive to 10^th place he said: “Checo had a good first lap. He qualified out of position, and then he just really struggled to overtake.

“He was struggling a little for traction in the areas where you want the traction, out of Turn 3, and onto the back straight. But that was what he could manage today.”

An already strong McLaren has had another boost…

Red Bull Racing has suffered another key loss as its head of strategy Will Courtenay is joining McLaren in the role of sporting director.

That job largely involves dealing with the FIA on regulations and so on, and is currently being done at the Woking ream by racing director Randeep Singh, to whom Courtenay will now report.

Red Bull is already losing its own current sporting director Jonathan Wheatley, who joins Sauber/Audi in 2025.

McLaren says that Courtenay’s “role will help grow the team’s sporting operations as the team continues its pursuit of success in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship.”

Cambridge University engineering graduate Courtenay joined Red Bull in 2003 as a systems engineer, when the team was still known as Jaguar.

Later he was a strategy engineer and a senior analyst, before becoming head of strategy in 2010, a role he’s held ever since.

“We are delighted to welcome Will to McLaren,” said Andrea Stella. “His experience, professionalism and passion for motorsport make him the ideal candidate to lead our F1 sporting function.

“We are now entering a key phase in our journey as a team, and we are confident that he will be a great addition to our strong leadership team as we strive to continue challenging for wins and championships.”

No starting date has been given for Courtenay.

Stella says other teams focussing on the McLaren rear wing is a positive

McLaren Formula 1 team boss Andrea Stella says that the MCL38’s rear wing is a “red herring” and that rivals being distracted by it is “good news” for the Woking team.

McLaren’s flexing low-downforce rear wing became a major focus in the wake of the Baku race after video footage emerged.

The team agreed with the FIA to make what it calls minor adjustments before it is used again in Las Vegas, another high-speed track.

Stella sees the fuss around the wing a positive because it distracts other teams as they focus on one facet of the pace-setting McLaren.

“The legality of the wing is incontrovertible and it’s a fact,” said Stella. “Personally, as team principal of McLaren, I find that so much attention in our rear wing is just good news, because it means that opponents are not focussing on themselves, and F1 is such a marginal game, it’s so complicated.

“I keep repeating to my team, focus on yourself. So for me, when I see that there’s so much attention from other teams, it means that they will be doing work, they will be doing analysis, they will be talking to the FIA and there’s limited time and limited energy. They’re using this time and energy to chase something that I think is a red herring.

“So for me, as McLaren, that’s just good news. We try to stay focused on ourselves, we want to come with technical solutions that may be challenging, but totally sound from a legality point of view.

“If others want to get destructive, keep doing that. Because for us, it’s just good news.”

On the subject why the team agreed with the FIA to make changes he made it clear that they won’t have a major impact on performance.

“Well, we want to proactively have conversation with the FIA, because it looks like this story is becoming big for us,” he said. “Making changes is pretty much transparent, so we may as well do it.

“It won’t be a big consequence from a performance point of view. This also gave us the opportunity to remind the FIA that, we also do some due diligence in terms of studying other people.

“We don’t want to spend so much energy and time with journalists and trying to create big stories.

“We just told the FIA what we think is happening, and we trust, and we are confident that they will talk to the other teams, and make sure. that they fix their own issues, which may be less visible, but definitely they do exist.”

Asked by this write to elaborate on the team’s own interest in rivals Stella insisted that it the team’s approach was more low-key than that of others.

“I think when I say about focussing on yourself, this is not that you don’t look at the competitors,” he said.

“This is how big a story it is that you create around competitors. And I don’t want my people at McLaren to go racing and think, ‘Oh, of course they won, because they have this solution.’

“It’s just such a distraction from a mindset point of view. When you go racing, you think and you focus on yourself.

“This doesn’t mean that you don’t look at the competitors, and you don’t study how the formation happens on competitors, and you don’t go to the FIA and say, have you looked at that? That’s technical due diligence, that’s tough competition that we do have at McLaren.

“Having done that, now we focus on ourselves. And everyone go racing, thinking about maximising what we have.

“Not creating and pumping these kind of stories which become such a distraction for your own team, because they will be thinking, ‘Oh, McLaren, they are fast because they have that.’

“We are in Singapore. Personally, I haven’t seen a lot of a slot gap opening. Have you? We are today a pole position. That’s where I want people to focus.

“In this sense, I think this is a distraction, and it’s good news, not in the sense that we don’t look and study competitors, because this is part of total competition in F1.”

Alonso is hoping for a miracle in Singapore…

Fernando Alonso says that scoring points in the Singapore GP “will be a miracle” for his Aston Martin Formula 1 team.

Alonso still believes that the Silverstone outfit has only the seventh fastest car at the moment, with Haas and Williams having joined the top four in front.

Despite that he managed to finish sixth in Baku last weekend, having been running in eighth until the late Sainz/Perez crash.

Alonso says that the Azerbaijan result gave the team some motivation after a difficult season.

“I hope so, why not?,” he said when asked by this writer if Baku was a guide to this weekend’s form.

“I think the tracks are very different, but in a way both street circuits, no room to make a mistake, again the walls will be the limitation here.

“It’s probably the most demanding race physically of the championship. So to keep the level of focus very high throughout the race, and to start the weekend on the right foot, is quite important to start on Friday with a car that gives you the confidence to attack, and you can accumulate laps.

“It will just be beneficial for Saturday and Sunday. I’m quite optimistic after Baku. I think it was a boost of motivation for everyone. So I’m looking forward to jump in the car.”

However he cautioned that it won’t be easy to make Q3 or finish in the points.

“Well, as I said, we are seventh team, so our natural position is 13th, 14th, 15^th,” he said. “If we were eighth in Baku, it was a miracle, if we were 10th in Monza, it was a miracle. If we are here in the points, it will be a miracle.

“I don’t think that the car at the moment is at the place where we want to have it. That’s why we keep working on the setup on Fridays, even though it’s not a setup issue, and we are waiting for new parts when they come.

“So we are not giving up. We are doing our best on the weekends. But every weekend, we cannot be with unrealistic hope, just because of the circuit, just because it may rain, just because… We need to be realistic and accept our position.”

Aston experimented with floor options in practice in Baku, before settling on an older version.

Asked if he wanted to carry on with what worked last weekend Alonso said the team would continue to try different things.

“Yes and no,” he said. £I think at the same time, you still want to experiment a little bit in FP1 in terms of setups, even if we were happier with the car in Baku than the last few events, we still want more. And Baku was not enough.

“The result was good, but we are still with our calculations the seventh team in terms of performance. And we are not happy there. So we still need to find more pace. And I know the team has more ideas for Friday FP1, and yeah, I’m willing to test those.”