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.”
Alonso says eighth in Singapore was the best possible outcome
Fernando Alonso says his eighth place for Aston Martin in the Singapore GP was “better than our best dreams,” while stressing that the Silverstone team has to “raise the level.”
Alonso qualified seventh at the Marina Bay track, helped by problems for Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.
It was inevitable that the two Ferrari drivers would come through in the race, but Alonso also managed to gain a place from Nico Hulkenberg with an earlier stop.
Haas didn’t immediately respond as its focus is on championship rivals RB and Williams, and thus Alonso was able to secure eighth.
The Spaniard agreed that he couldn’t have done any better with the car he had.
“Absolutely, I think behind the top four teams, just in front of Checo,” he said. “So normally it’s ninth and 10th available today.
“Finishing eighth is better than our best dreams. So again, good points, but still one lap behind, and not great pace, a difficult car to drive the whole weekend.
“So we are just lucky we got points, but it was possible to be P15 and have the same feeling.”
He added: “I just tried to follow Nico and tried to undercut him at one point. But the Ferraris should have won this race probably, they were the fastest car this weekend. So it wasn’t my race.”
The Singapore result followed a sixth place in Azerbaijan, and Alonso conceded that while the two venues had been good for Aston Martin the results haven’t disguised the overall lack of pace.
“I think now we need to raise the level,” he said. “We have some new parts coming in the next few races, hopefully they help us to come back to a stronger performance.
“We have to, I think it’s a must. The last two circuits, they were street circuits, we did good qualifyings, and then in the race, it’s difficult to overtake.
“So we consolidate those positions in the race, but this cannot hide the lack of performance that we are seeing now in the last few events.
“The team is aware of that, it’s working flat out. When the car is performing, we are here to score points.
“When the car is struggling, like we are now, we still score points because we are delivering the job, but aware of the situation at the same time.”
With most teams carrying over a lot of this year’s package to 2025 Alonso stressed that it was important to finish the year in a good place with the AMR24.
“Obviously the cars will not I think change too much from the last part of this year to next year. I don’t see any revolution on any of the teams. So we need to make sure that we find the direction.”
Norris made it look easy with a dominant victory in Singapore. But he had a couple of close shaves…
Lando Norris admits that he was “pushing too hard” on his way to a dominant victory for his McLaren Formula 1 team in the Singapore GP.
Norris twice touched the wall, losing some four seconds on the first occasion, as he tried to extend the gap to Max Verstappen in second place.
His advantage peaked at 29.1 seconds, which would have comfortably allowed him to pit and go for fastest lap had he needed to, before he allowed it to drop down again over the closing laps.
Norris is now 52 points behind Verstappen in the World Championship standings.
“I was flat out,” he said. “I was probably pushing a bit too hard. It was definitely not like I was cruising. I was pushing to open up a gap, and at one point I wanted to try and open up a pit window to give myself an opportunity to maybe box at the end of the race for quickest lap if I needed to try and achieve that. Daniel [Ricciardo] stole that away from me at the end of the race.
“So, yeah, a tough one, but it wasn’t easy. The car was not easy to drive, especially on the hard tyres. I struggled a lot more than what I did on the medium.
“And especially just with the traffic and things, it was a bit harder to manage the second half of the stint compared to the first, but I was pushing. Let me tell you, I was definitely pushing.
“Probably too much, hence the mistakes I was making, or the two mistakes I made with the wall, but otherwise things were going well.”
Norris said that the brushes with the wall didn’t affect the performance of his car: “I don’t think so. I mean, the team said that there was something with the front wing, maybe being a little bit off.
“I hit the front wing against the barrier, so it might have tweaked it a touch, but I don’t think probably much to change it, but hard to know.
“On these cars, as soon as you tweak something a tiny bit, it can have quite a big impact, but nothing that I was probably feeling.
“I was pushing, but also it was just as I was catching up to the dirty air from the cars ahead, whether they were 3-4 seconds ahead. It changes from the past 20 laps that I had.
“You have a little bit less grip, a little bit less downforce. Tyres are going away a little bit. It just caught me out. So it wasn’t like a lack of concentration or anything. It was just a bit of a surprise to me.
“But I think the car was all good, and the car has been mega weekend. So a big thanks to the team.”
Norris says that the MCL38 continues to have the potential to be quick everywhere, having won three of the four races held since the summer break.
“We’ve not changed anything on the car from here to last weekend or the weekend before,” he said.
“It was just that the car’s been mega for a good amount of time. I’ve not been able to come out on top for quite a few of them when I felt like I had the pace, and I had the ability to do so.
“So some of that is down to being my own fault and not executing things well enough. So I’ve paid the price for not doing a good enough job at times. But when I lead after Turn 1, and things are a bit more straightforward, then we can have a day like today.”
The Singapore race proved frustrating for Mercedes
Toto Wolff admits that his Mercedes Formula 1 team “read the race wrong” for Lewis Hamilton on what he called a “painful evening” in Singapore.
Having qualified an encouraging third Hamilton started on the soft tyres, and after the inevitable early stop he slipped down the order to eventually finish sixth.
His team mate George Russell started fourth and finished in the same position, just holding off Charles Leclerc in the closing stages.
A bigger concern to Wolff was just how far Russell was behind winner Lando Norris.
“It was a really painful evening,” said Wolff. “It’s not about when you look at the positions, you’re fourth and sixth, that’s not good, especially when you’re starting second and third.
“We struggle at the moment with tracks that are hot, and are tough on traction. It was here, it was Baku. But this is no excuse.
“I think it’s just at the moment not what we what we expect from ourselves, because if your quickest car is a minute behind the leader, it’s just difficult to accept.”
Hamilton made his frustration at the strategy choice clear on the radio.
“I think we’ve read the race wrong,” said Wolff. “We took a decision based on historic Singapore races, where it’s basically a procession, Monaco-like, and that the soft would give him an opportunity at the start as pretty much the only overtaking opportunity.
“And that was the wrong decision that we all took together jointly. It felt like a good offset, but with the real tyre deg that we had, there was just one way, and that was backwards.
“So I think there was a logic behind it, but obviously was contrary of what we should have decided. But it doesn’t hide away from the fact that when the car is too slow, you’re too slow. Maybe you’re a position ahead or behind, that doesn’t change anything.”
Hamilton and Russell both skipped media activities after the race as they felt unwell.
“They didn’t feel well at the beginning,” said Wolff. “I think there was a borderline heatstroke or something along that. But they’ve been in the in the water, but they wouldn’t have been able to go to the [media] pen.
“There was no bad feeling or annoyance. It was just we had the doctors with them, but they’re all good.”
Max Verstappen has elaborated on his silent protest in the official press conferences in Singapore – and hinted that “silly” punishments and restrictions imposed by the FIA could force him out of Formula 1.
On Thursday Verstappen was called to the stewards after using the word “fucked” in a press conference.
He was found guilty and given an “obligation to accomplish some work of public interest.”
Verstappen was back in the same room for official top three conferences after Saturday’s qualifying session and Sunday’s race.
On both occasions he gave minimal answers and instead agreed to speak to journalists outside the official conference, giving him a chance to explain his views on the FIA.
“For me personally there was absolutely no desire to then give long answers, when you get treated like that,” he said.
“I never really felt like I had a bad relationship with them. Even this year, I did voluntary work with junior stewards. I gave them a half an hour interview, like all set up. So I tried to also help out. I’m not a difficult person to say, no, you know. Okay sure, if that’s what you guys like, I like to help out.
“Then you get treated like that. Well, that’s just not how it works. So for me, it was quite straightforward. Because I know that I have to answer, but it doesn’t say how long you have to answer for.”
Verstappen made it clear that he was frustrated by the restrictions on what people can say.
“I think it’s just the wording, the ruling that the sport is heading into for me personally, with these kinds of things.
“I know, of course you can’t insult people, that’s quite straightforward. I think no one really wants to do that. But, yeah, it’s all a bit too soft really, and to be honest, it’s silly, it’s super silly, what we’re dealing with.
“If you can’t really be yourself to the fullest, then it’s better not to speak at the end of the day. But that’s what no one wants, because then you become a robot, and then it’s not how we should be going about it in this sport.”
He added: “I think you should be able to show emotions in a way. That’s what racing is about. I mean, any sport.
“Everyone walking around on a pitch, if they get tackled or get pushed, or there’s something not happy with something, or there’s a frustrating moment or something that they get asked about, I think it’s quite normal, that there can be a sort of reaction.”
He admitted that such distractions could impact his commitment to staying in the sport.
“Oh, for sure, yeah,” he said. “These kinds of things definitely decide my future as well, when you can’t be yourself, or you have to deal with these kind of silly things. I think now I’m at stage of my career that you don’t want to be dealing with this all the time.
“It’s really tiring, of course, it’s great to have success and win races. But once you have accomplished all that, winning championships and races, and then you want to just have a good time as well.
“Of course, everyone is pushing to the limit. Everyone in this battle, even at the back of the grid. But if you have to deal with all these kinds of silly things, for me, that is not a way of continuing in the sport, that’s for sure.”
Asked what the FIA would make of such a threat he said: “I don’t know how serious they will take that kind of stuff, but for me, of course, at one point when it’s enough, it’s enough, and we’ll see.
“Like I said, racing will go on also without me. It’s not a problem, but, also not a problem for me. It’s how it is.”
Leclerc did well to recover to fifth place but fourth was within reach
Charles Leclerc says he “loved” the second part of a Singapore GP that saw him charge to fifth place from ninth on the grid after his frustrating Q3 session.
However he didn’t enjoy the first part, when he got caught behind Nico Hulkenberg and Fernando Alonso, and lost a lot of time.
After they pitted and he had a clear track Leclerc eventually made a late stop for the hard tyre.
With fresher rubber than those ahead he was able to pass Alonso, Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton, before closing up on George Russell in the final laps. However he couldn’t get past the latter and had to settle for fifth.
“Yeah, I did,” he said when asked by this writer if he’d enjoyed the race. “From the end of the first stint to the last laps, I loved it. The first 25 laps were a nightmare, because I was just a sitting duck behind Fernando and Nico.
“And I was just hoping that they had to box very soon because of [the cars] behind, but it never really happened, and they went very long. And I just had to wait.
“But overall, it’s been a good race from that moment onwards. As soon as they pitted, we maximised our points. We just paid a little bit price of a bad quali yesterday.”
At one point during the race Leclerc mentioned his brakes on the radio: “That was a concern. I mean, not a concern, but that was something we had to manage, and we knew it before the weekend.
“I think everybody on the grid had to manage the brakes, so we weren’t the only ones. This was a little bit tricky, but we did a good job on that.”
Asked if the weekend represented a missed opportunity given Ferrari’s strengths on street tracks Leclerc acknowledged that the opposition was also strong.
“I would say yes, but looking back at the pace of the McLaren, and of Max, I’m not sure how many points have we missed today,” he said.
“George definitely, I think we had the car in order to finish in front. I didn’t check again the pace of everybody, but what I’ve heard about Lando’s pace, I don’t think we quite had that in the car, and I don’t know where the others were behind him.
“So a few points lost. I think it was a good recovery today. But again, we paid the price of price of a bad quali. It will happen that I do mistakes on the Saturday, and I’ll have good qualifying also sometimes. But today I paid a little bit of a bad Saturday.”
Leclerc had complained after Q3 that his tyres were too cold coming out of the pits, but he decided to moderate those comments.
“Actually I would like also to come back on things I said yesterday,” he noted. “I obviously said the tyres were not in the right window, which they weren’t.
“But looking back at it, there’s been plenty of times where you had the tyres a bit out of the window, and you still have to do the job as a driver.
“And eventually I didn’t do the job as a driver yesterday. So I think the blame was more on my side yesterday in quali to not put a lap in, and today I paid the price of that.”
Praying for a safety car on Sunday? Perez tries to cool off in Singapore…
Red Bull Racing’s Sergio Perez was left stranded in 13th place on the grid for the Singapore GP after suffering with tyres and brake issues in Q2.
Meanwhile his team mate Ma Verstappen overcame a tricky RB20 to be second fastest in all three qualifying sessions.
On the back of a good performance in Azerbaijan prior to his crash Perez was hoping for more at another street track, especially at a time when there is much speculation about driver changes within the Red Bull camp.
There are strong suggestions that his RBR seat for is not fully secure for 2025, and that thanks to performance clauses the team still has the option to replace him with Liam Lawson as part of a shake-up that could see F2 star Isack Hadjar promoted to RB, and Daniel Ricciardo left on the sidelines.
Lawson is expected to race for RB for the remainder of 2024, and that stint can perhaps be seen as an extended audition for a future seat with the senior team.
Having both Lawson and Hadjar in race seats in 2025 would ensure that Red Bull has two young stars on hand should it need to find a successor to Max Verstappen in the coming years, although Christian Horner has also made it clear to Sky F1 that the company would look outside its pool, even naming George Russell as a potential target.
Perez was a respectable fifth in Q1 despite making a mistake, but he fell away in the second session as he struggled to find tyre temperature.
“Q1 was looking really nice and smooth,” he said. “I actually had a mistake on my lap into Turn 13, where I lost around two or three tenths.
“But I just went slower in Q2. I started sliding a lot more. I couldn’t get the tyre up the temperature. It was just a very, very tricky afternoon.
“In Q2 I had issues with the brakes and with the tyres. I think the brakes were running too hot, and I was lacking a lot of bite from them, and just the tyres were absolutely nowhere in that Q2. The two laps I did I had just no grip at all, and it was super tricky.”
Perez conceded that set-up adjustments for Saturday had not worked out: “We changed quite a bit the car. I think we probably went in the wrong direction.
“It’s not so clear at the moment, but we certainly were on a nicer window yesterday, and we just lost a lot of competitiveness.”
He added: “I think he’s just the tyres have been so peaky around here, the grip, the ride, and the track changing lap by lap. It is just a very tricky place.”
Perez is relying on strategy to get him up the order in Sunday’s race.
“It’s going to be a very difficult race,” he said. “Hopefully we can do some magic with the strategy and come through. That will be the key for us.”
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.”
Russell will start the Singapore race from fourth, right behind his team mate
George Russell has praised his Mercedes Formula 1 team for recovering from what he called our “worst Friday in probably three years.”
Russell and team mate Lewis Hamilton both struggled on the first day of running in Singapore, with the latter admitting that the team was lost, and suggesting that Q3 would be a struggle.
However overnight work both in Singapore and back at the Brackley factory produced set-up changes that worked in FP3, a session that saw Russell as high as second.
In qualifying Hamilton earned third spot, with Russell right behind him in fourth, with only Lando Norris and Max Verstappen up ahead.
Mercedes posted a picture of reserve driver Frederik Vesti and members of the Brackley sim team, thanking them for their “huge shift.”
Russell made it clear that the changes that they tried had worked on the real cars.
“Absolutely, an incredible turnaround from yesterday,” he said when asked by this writer if it was one of the best recoveries that the team has made.
“It was without doubt our worst Friday in probably three years. And this morning I was second, comfortably ahead of everyone bar Lando and the car was, night and day difference. So credit to all the team for the work we did.”
Regarding the contribution of Vesti and his colleagues he said: “Immense, immense. It’s not only the people on the sim, but it’s the people going through the data, all through the night. The engineers even here, through the night, literally as well. So, yeah, great turnaround.
“It was just we were totally in the wrong window with the setup. We were trying some things yesterday, maybe not the right place to do it. And, yeah, clearly we turned around.”
Russel had a couple of escape road moments as he pushed the limits in FP3.
“I had good confidence,” he said. “I was just seeing if there was anything more in the tank. There wasn’t. Before the session, I was hoping for a bit more, but after Q1 and Q2 very happy to salvage a P4.”
Russell will start Sunday’s race immediately ahead of Oscar Piastri: “He’s going be the main threat from behind. I hope that Lewis and I can take a fight to Max. But realistically, if Lando is leading after lap one, he’ll win the race comfortably.”
Sainz had a heavy impact with the barrier at the end of Q3
Ferrari start Carlos Sainz admits that his “strange accident” in Q3 at the Singapore GP was caused by his tyres being colder than anticipated.
The Spaniard spun off after as he started his first lap, stranding himself in 10th on the grid after failing to log a time.
He’d had to move over on his out lap to let others past – notably Oscar Piastri, just seconds before the crash – and that contributed to his tyres being too cool.
However after the restart and later in the session Ferrari team mate Charles Leclerc ran wide at Turn 2 after also finding his tyres colder than anticipated. He lost his fourth place time to track limits, and will start ninth.
“A bit of a strange accident there,” said Sainz. “Had to let a lot of cars through there, opening my lap, and my tyres were just a lot colder than I thought they would be. I misjudged the grip going on the bump on Turn 17, and it completely snapped on me.
“Driver mistake. I underestimated the grip I would get. Launching the lap, I was already under pressure with another car coming.
“And I knew that launching the lap, I was already going to be slower because of them approaching the last corner so slow, so it meant that I tried to do something that was not enough grip to do.”
Sainz admitted that it’s been difficult to fully understand the tyres in Singapore.
“It’s been a big struggle for me this weekend,” he said. “Very strange how it can change from one year to another, but like we’ve seen many times this year, to get the tyres in the right window, over one lap with our car, it’s quite tricky.
“I had a couple of decent laps over the weekend, but in general, very inconsistent. I had issues with the brakes yesterday, which didn’t help my build-up to the weekend.
“Here it’s all about gaining confidence, executing from FP1 to Q3 perfect laps, and I didn’t have that this weekend. I was just struggling.
“Yesterday, I didn’t get into a rhythm, and today, to get the tyres and the brakes into a window was just a very tricky thing to do.”
Sainz remains hopeful that he can have a strong race from 10th on Sunday, assuming that he doesn’t have any further setbacks such as a gearbox penalty.
“The car looks quite damaged, and I don’t know what we will do,” he said. “I just hope that I can have a normal race tomorrow, get into a rhythm like I got in the rhythm in Baku, and then we can show good pace.
“And I think this year, once I get into a rhythm in the race, we should be okay. It’s just over one lap with the black magic of the tyres to get everything working – I mean, you saw the mistake I did is not common, and not typical.
“And it shows that there must be something, honestly, a very, very fine line between getting them to grip and not to grip. And this weekend has been that way. So tomorrow, as soon as I get into a rhythm, we will be there.”
He added: “Let’s get into the rhythm first, and then see how’s the pace, see what the strategy allows us to do, and hopefully we can move forward. Extra DRS, I’m still optimistic.
“But I need a good night’s sleep to feel optimistic also, because today was a big blow for me, and I didn’t enjoy it at all.”
Sainz admitted he was surprised by a “weird” transition for McLaren from Friday to Saturday.
“I don’t like considering Friday too much, because you don’t know what the others are doing, and I never tried to take too many conclusions from that,” he said.
“You can already see in FP3, Lando went a second quicker than FP2, that shows that there was something that they were sandbagging with. And even in Q3 they did only went one-tenth quicker than FP3, which is quite weird.
“So there’s something strange going on, probably with the tyre preparation and how much you can extract this weekend with the tyres, because it’s not normal that is only one-tenth between FP3 fastest lap and Q3 lap.”
Adam Cooper F1 