Tag Archives: formula-1

July 4, 2025 · 8:03 am

Why Piastri has steered clear of McLaren’s suspension update

Only Lando Norris is using the suspension tweak McLaren introduced in Montreal

One of the more intriguing aspects of the ongoing battle between McLaren Formula 1 team mates Lando Norris is that since Canada they have been driving subtly different cars.

In Montreal Norris ran a front suspension update that Piastri has opted not to use on the basis that it doesn’t bring performance, and that in effect he doesn’t want to mess with a successful recipe.

What it does do in theory is give Norris some of the feel that he felt was missing earlier in the season, although even he admits that he can’t be sure how much difference it makes given that every track has its own quirks.

You could argue that his strong performance in Austria was evidence that it’s boosted his confidence – although one could speculate that there’s something of a Placebo Effect in action.

“It’s even an answer I can’t give to the team that clearly, if you ask me now, is it better or not?,” he said on Thursday.

“I can’t give a definitive answer. It’s something that we believe might shift things in the right direction. That’s how small of a change it was. It wasn’t like, we know this is going to help, it’s going to do a better job.

“It’s also not a performance item. It’s not something that we’ve got and gone, now we’re going to be quicker. It’s something that might change how the feeling is to the steering and to the front suspension.

“But because you go track-to-track, it’s not something you can necessarily just change between sessions. It’s not where I can just go out and give a clean answer to the team.

“It’s one where I’ve just got to have the confidence and belief in the guys and girls who have put it together and thought of it believe it’s in the right direction to give me maybe some more feelings or a better feeling, or more of a contrast in feeling.

“And I’m happy enough that that’s a good enough answer, that they think it’s better, and I’m confident that it’s going to give me that feeling, but it’s not something I can go, ‘I’m feeling a lot more in the car.’

“I certainly felt more in Austria. Canada is a very separate one and the car is always all over the place in Canada, so it’s hard to judge things there.

“But certainly in Canada, I felt like we unlocked a little bit more, but I also don’t feel like I’m still back to the level necessarily that I was at last year with feeling, understanding, and things like that.”

Piastri meanwhile has preferred to stick with the original spec, and he has no interest in trying the new suspension.

“I’ve not used it ever yet,” said the Australian. “I think the thing is for me, it’s not an upgrade, it’s just something that is different. It makes some things potentially a bit better. It makes some things a bit worse.

“If it was just all benefits, I would be putting it on with no questions asked. But for me, I’ve not, not really struggled with that kind of particular feeling.

“The year’s been going pretty well, so I’m keener to just keep the car consistent, and worry about how we get the most out of the setup and the other upgrades we actually have than this change to the suspension.”

As the drivers suggest, it’s a subtle difference, but nevertheless it’s an interesting twist to what will be a very closely fought contest over the second half of the season.

Norris had the upper hand in Austria, although his team mate didn’t get his final Q3 run in due to yellow flags, and thus started only third.

“I think it is a very tight battle,” said Piastri. “I think it will be for the rest of the year. I think Canada I don’t was the best Sunday for me, definitely, in terms of pace, but I think last weekend was probably one of the better ones.

“I think qualifying ultimately, we’ll never know what was possible. But my first lap of Q3 or the only lap of Q3 was not great, even compared to some of my Q2 laps.

“So I think last weekend, I was happy with my pace, especially on Sunday. But I expect it to ebb and flow through the year. I think the weekends where either of us put our absolute best forward, it’s probably enough either of us to win.

“It’s just that doing that and finding 100% of your potential instead of 99 or 99 and a half is very, very difficult.

“So I think that’s been the difference so far this year. I think we’re very, very evenly matched. And on our good days, either of us is very hard to beat.”

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July 4, 2025 · 6:17 am

How Austrian radio debate signalled Hamilton’s desire to do something different

After contesting a strategy call in Austria Hamilton wants to improve comms

Lewis Hamilton’s radio communications with Ferrari engineer Riccardo Adami have been a regular talking point this year, and there was another example in Austria last weekend.

Told to pit Hamilton argued that his tyres felt good and that he wanted to stay out longer. However, despite his initial protests he followed the instruction and came in.

Questioned about that chat after the race he downplayed the incident, and said that the team knew the bigger picture better than he did.

However on Thursday at Silverstone he gave a more detailed insight, and in essence made it clear that he wants to try more ambitious strategies – and if possible do something different relative to his team mate Charles Leclerc.

“Even just probably an hour ago I brought it up,” he said. “I mentioned it after the race, and then we’ve had time to reflect on it.

“And I think the team’s first view was they just wanted to make sure they secured third and fourth, which is totally fine.

“But I said, look, I’m not here to start fourth and finish fourth. I’m racing for every little bit that we can gain. And in a scenario like that, for example, both of us were on the same strategy – they had us exactly on the same strategy.

“I think we both went medium/hard/medium. I said I would have done medium/medium/hard, so at least I was offset at the end. I’d never want to do the same thing as my team mate, ever.

“And in that last stint, for example, we were not under pressure from the cars behind.

“So they said, yeah, but you would have got overtaken by Charles towards the end. I said well, there could have been a safety car. And in that point there was no risk in taking the gamble.

“And I said, I don’t want to get to a point where I’m ignoring you. So what we’re doing is working on our communication. And we’re still getting to know each other, how we like to operate, and that’s understood.”

Hamilton also gave further insight into how he’s trying to steer the 2026 car in a direction that suits him, with the help of new Ferrari technical director and former Mercedes colleague Loic Serra.

As noted here earlier this week Hamilton says that Leclerc prefers an oversteering car, and he hasn’t been able to drive with his team mate’s set-up. However in Austria he (somewhat reluctantly) moved closer to it, and made it work.

“This year with this car we have lots of different tools and things, the ways in which we can set the car up,” he said.

“Obviously, Charles has been here for a long time, and he’s been a part of evolving, developing this car. He’s very accustomed to it, and they’ve found, and he’s found, one way in which the car works.

“And I’ve tried all the other directions that should work, but they just don’t, for whatever reasons. And I’ve slowly migrated to the place where Charles does run the car, and last week was the closest, and our pace was the closest it has ever been. So it is still tough.

“It’s a tough balance to drive, and it’s not a comfortable one. It’s not one that I want to have in future.

“So I’m working with Loic and with all the guys at the factory to make sure that the next car will have naturally, some of my DNA in it, and hopefully we’ll be able to get some of the characteristics that I’m hoping to have in it for next year.”

We’ll know in late January how well that works out. In the mean time Hamilton is back at the track where he has enjoyed so much success, and where in 2024 he scored an emotional win – his only success in his last three seasons with Mercedes.

When I asked if he was hoping that help from the weather and a little Silverstone magic might propel him to the podium he agreed that was the case.

“I’m hoping and praying, yes,” he said. “There’s always magic here in Silverstone. So don’t really have to hope for that in the sense of the crowd is incredible. It’s a very, very, very special place, and it always provides a special race, one way or the other.

“But I’m hoping that the weather, all sorts of things can help us, because we’re obviously naturally not as quick as McLaren. If it just stays dry, then they will just walk the race.”

On the plus side the new floor introduced in Austria seemed to be effective.

“I think we did take a step, and I’m really hopeful that that continues. I think we still need to try and extract more from this car.

“There are still a few teething problems that we’re trying to work through, some short term and some long term. So we’re trying to make the best with what we have.”

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July 2, 2025 · 3:39 pm

Can Williams reboot its 2025 F1 season after enduring a nightmare month?

Sainz is adamant that the team has to regroup after recent struggles

For the Williams Racing Formula 1 team the month of June turned into something of a recurring nightmare.

Having logged an impressive 54 points in the first eight races of the 2025 season Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz earned just a single further point between them in the three events held last month since their double score in Monaco in May.

Sometimes luck just seems to go against you, and much as Sauber enjoyed a near perfect run over those same three races while logging 20 points, so Williams has been facing an ongoing scenario of what can go wrong going wrong.

Indeed Albon posted a remarkable three retirements in a row, with accident damage in Spain followed by PU overheating issues in both Canada and Austria.

Meanwhile Sainz failed even to start last weekend after an issue with the brakes, something of a recurrent problem for him in recent weekends.

The frustration is that despite the team struggling to fully optimise the FW47 on qualifying on soft tyres good points have still been on offer.

In Austria Albon appeared to have fortune on his side as he jumped from 12th to seventh at the start, and had he not hit trouble he would have had a good chance of finishing sixth.

It didn’t happen however, and this week the team has faced some soul-searching as it tries to put things right for Silverstone.

For Sainz not even starting at the Red Bull Ring was a painful if familiar experience, given that he’s had similar experiences previously at both McLaren and Ferrari.

This time the rear brakes stuck on, which triggered an aborted start as he was not able to get away on the formation lap. When he did get round to the pits the brakes were cooked, and that was that.

“I don’t know why this happens to me as a driver so often,” he said when I asked him about not getting a chance to race. “It happened a few times that I don’t even get to start the race and yeah, today just a different issue.

“We couldn’t change the brakes [before the race]. We had a pretty big issue yesterday in quali, but we managed to correct it. So laps to the grid, the car was fine. I was ready to race, but then suddenly, on the lap to grid, I found we had another issue.

“The first gear didn’t go in because the rear brakes were stuck. And then I understood, and I power cycled the car and tried to get going, but in the end the issue came back, I got fire, and that was it.”

Sainz was adamant that there was performance in the car, despite his lowly P19 on the grid.

“Again today we I think we would have been quickest midfield car on the race run, but we struggled with soft tyres, for sure. Since I was P1 in Q2 in Imola, I don’t know what has happened, what’s changed in the car, but something in qualifying on soft tyres doesn’t seem to click, so we need to keep working on that.

“Then we are still very quick on Sundays, like we saw in Canada, we saw today, we saw in Monaco even, we can have good race pace. So we have a strong car, strong package. We just need to execute weekends, and stop having issues.”

Any retirement is costly when the midfield battle is so close, especially in an era when a lot of teams are showing bulletproof reliability.

Williams sits in fifth place and still has a decent advantage over the rest of the midfield, but that gap could disappear.

“Clearly, too many issues yesterday, too many issues today,” said Sainz as he reflected on recent form. “We’re having a tough run as a team, very scrappy first half of the season.

“And I must say, even if we are very quick as a team, and I think I’ve adapted quickly to the car, we seem to have too many problems when it counts and when it matters.

“Doesn’t matter if it’s reliability, strategy or weekend execution. So time to regroup. It’s true, we don’t have much time, but Silverstone, it’s our home Grand Prix, and we need to regroup to see what we can do better.”

Expanding on the theme he added: “It just shows we are going through a tough period in a tough time for the team, and we need to understand why, because clearly it’s costing us a lot of points.

“We have a decent car. We haven’t upgraded it much, but we have an upgrade coming soon.

“We just need to get better at executing weekends. People were asking me before if it’s related to focusing on next year, and it’s not, it should be completely unrelated.

“The way you execute a race weekend, and reliability-wise, has nothing to do with putting the focus on next year.

“So we should use these issues we’re having this year, and all of these problems, to learn as a team to execute better weekends.”

Sainz admitted that he and Albon both have to play their part in trying to improve things.

“All of the big leaders of the team, we need to take responsibility and leadership,” he said. “We all need to take also accountability in what we are doing wrong as a team.

“This is one aspect of the team that I fully back, and I fully trust that we are capable of doing that.

“Now we need to test ourselves to see how quick as a team we can respond to these issues, and come back stronger, because I’m sure there’s going to be responsibility and leadership. I’m sure there’s going to be. So it’s just a matter of in testing times, how quick you can recover from all these issues, and it will put us to test.”

For Albon the Austrian retirement was particularly frustrating as he’d taken advantage of the Antonelli/Verstappen clash to jump up the order, and it all seemed to be going his way.

“Obviously a little bit fortunate,” said the Thai/British driver. “The waves parted a little bit, but we were in the right place at the right time, and we had a good car, had a nice overtake on Pierre, and were pulling away from the cars behind.

“I was actually catching George towards the end of my stint. And then we covered off Gasly, I think, and then we ran into the issues.

“Maybe something after the pit stop just picked up. It looks similar to Canada, if anything. Yeah, we need to review it. Obviously, we’ve had three DNFs a row now, so we’re lacking the mileage at the moment.

“I don’t know. It’s the same car as it was at the beginning of the year, and it was a lot more reliable at the beginning of the year. So I’m not sure if it’s temperatures that we’re running at that’s making us struggle.”

Albon noted before the weekend started that after getting too hot the Montreal PU would be tested on Friday, and it seemed to be healthy: “We did long running in traffic as well, just a double check, triple check, and then we come to the race, and it’s still an issue.”

He agrees that the team has to get its act together this weekend, not least because it’s a circuit that should suit the car.

“I’m a little bit worried. I don’t know what we can do. We can’t afford it to happen in Silverstone, because I think that’s a good track for us.

“We’ve missed out on good points today, with all the DNFs happening to the top teams. So yeah, very frustrating. I’m not sure the next track being a home track, if that helps us a bit, just with efficiency in getting things to the car. But we’ll deep dive, and try to find a solution.”

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July 2, 2025 · 9:54 am

Can Lawson really put himself in the frame for an RBR return?

A great run to sixth place in Austria has put Liam Lawson back on the Red Bull map

It’s not been easy for Liam Lawson to bounce back from the blow of being demoted from Red Bull to Racing Bulls just two races into the 2025 Formula 1 season.

However, the subsequent struggle of Yuki Tsunoda to come to terms with the same car has given food for thought not just to the Red Bull camp, but the rest of the world as well.

In Austria the Kiwi was able to further swing opinion in his favour with a superb performance that saw him start and finish sixth as he logged the best result of his career to date.

There have been positive signs before, notably in Monaco, where he started ninth and finished eighth. However for the most part he’s been overshadowed by the less experienced Isack Hadjar, who has been consistently quick.

In Austria it didn’t work out for the Frenchman, who had to contend with an understeering car in Q2, and he was consigned to P13.

Lawson meanwhile was third in Q1 and ninth in Q2 before securing sixth. He was helped by the fact that others (notably Max Verstappen) didn’t get their final laps in due to a yellow flag, but that’s part of the game.

After qualifying Lawson admitted that the strategy choice wasn’t clear. In the end the team opted for a bold one-stop, which was matched only by Fernando Alonso.

It worked out well as they finished sixth and seventh, with Alonso helpfully protecting Lawson from a potential late attack by Gabriel Bortoleto on fresh tyres. Hadjar was in the points at one stage, but he faded after sustaining floor damage, putting even more of a focus on Lawson’s great performance.

“With today’s temperatures, I was quite concerned, honestly,” he said when I asked about the one-stop.

“But the team knew, and I’m just very proud of their efforts. Not just this weekend, but the last few races, the car has been very quick, and we haven’t been able to convert. So to do that this weekend is pretty cool.”

Lawson found keeping his tyres in good shape over two long stints easier than expected: “Honestly, not too bad. It’s been a weird one this year with tyres, trying to get on top of them sometimes.

“On paper we came here this weekend pretty certain it was going to be a clear two-stop. And I think most people thought that as well.

“And after our numbers on Friday, we looked at the temperature today, and I was pretty concerned, honestly, with a one-stop, but the team knew, I don’t know how, but very happy that they did.”

He was also grateful to have Alonso riding shotgun and keeping Bortoleto out of range.

“Gabriel was there with fresh tyres,” he noted. “Basically I could keep Fernando there just, but with somebody coming on quick on new tyres, I was quite concerned. So got a bit lucky that they finished a lap behind when I got a clean final lap to just cruise around.”

Luck doesn’t begin to describe his escape at Turn 3 on the first lap. Kimi Antonelli lost control while trying to avoid running into Lawson, and then missed him after hitting Verstappen.

Pictures show that the VCARB snuck through by the slenderest of margins – it really was a weekend when what could go wrong for Lawson went right instead.

“Obviously he was trying to avoid us all slowing down. But lap one at a hairpin like that everyone backs up a lot, and I know obviously it wasn’t on purpose. So we were very lucky to survive.

“I thought I got hit, to be honest. I thought we were probably going to have damage, and the car was fine. So yeah, got lucky.”

Lawson certainly deserves a bit of good fortune. At a time when rumours are swirling about Verstappen’s future and with Tsunoda struggling it’s a good time for him to be getting attention, with an opportunity to return to RBR potentially opening up – something that seemed unlikely just a couple of months ago.

Logic suggests that if he no longer fits at Mercedes then George Russell will go to Red Bull, but if Tsunoda is out and a second seat is available, Christian Horner and Helmut Marko will look to Racing Bulls.

It’s now up to Lawson to show what he can do against Hadjar, who clearly has momentum on his side.

We are currently going through a run of tracks where neither driver has raced an F1 car before, and in theory Lawson should have an advantage from Zandvoort onwards, as he has sampled every venue except Azerbaijan. He really needs to make that count, and it’s in his hands.

“It’s been an incredibly tough year, a very tough year with a lot of potential,” he noted. “I came into F1 last year and had a few races, and most of them converted very well.

“And sometimes you can have all the confidence and speed in the world, and they don’t, and it’s felt like that this year. So to finally have a result is amazing, but we need to obviously keep doing this as well.”

“I think Canada, we had really good speed in practice. Barcelona had good speed in practice, Monaco as well, and the result didn’t convert.

“We’ve been pushing a lot with the car, and especially with our side of the garage, they’ve been doing a lot of work to make me comfortable, and we made some changes this weekend, and they’ve worked really, really well.

“We need to obviously keep pushing. But it’s sometimes like that in F1, sometimes the speed and everything can be there, but there’s a lot of variables in the sport, and they’ve worked for us this weekend.”

The good news is that the VCARB 02 has been pretty competitive everywhere while rivals have shown rollercoaster form, and thus it should be in the mix at Silverstone.

“It’s another high-speed circuit,” he said. “And to be honest, it’s felt pretty good this weekend, but it’s just very close at the moment in F1.

“And you can start the weekend quite good, and within one session, other people make a small step, and you’ve lost your edge.

“So it’s really about basically pushing every session and trying to improve the car, because half a tenth makes such a difference sometimes.”

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July 1, 2025 · 2:14 pm

What went wrong for Russell and Mercedes in Austrian “perfect storm”

A combination of factors cost Russell performance in Austria – however he still finished fifth

After qualifying in P5 in Austria George Russell admitted that his best hope for the race was simply to hang on to his grid position.

Helped by an instant retirement for Max Verstappen – who would probably have had the pace to get in front and stay ahead – Russell achieved his modest target.

Fifth wasn’t much for a guy who won last time out, but nevertheless 10 points was another useful score in a season that has seen Russell consistently at the sharp end.

He’s also now only nine points shy of third placed Verstappen, and beating the Dutchman over the balance of the season is a challenge worth pursuing.

Nevertheless Austria was not a weekend that Russell or Mercedes could be happy with, as high temperatures, the nature of the track and a setup call that backfired conspired to cost him performance.

“I was expecting a bad race, and it was worse than I even could imagine,” he said when I asked him about his afternoon. “The problem was so clear, coming off the back of Canada with the win – with no tyre overheating, we’re the quickest.

“But as soon as you get to a track where there’s a bit of overheating, we drop off so much. The team has been working so hard for six months now to try and solve this issue. We’ve got ideas, but we’re not really making major headway right now.”

Russell agreed that it could have been a lot worse as he once again logged the best result achievable on the day.

“For sure, damage limitation,” he said. “I still take pride in the fact that almost every race this year, we’re maximising the result.

“Today, we definitely could not have achieved anything higher than P5, the same way as last week, the win was the potential, and we got the win. So fingers crossed, it stays cloudy for the rest of the season…

“This was a bit of a perfect storm. The tarmac is one of the roughest of the season, obviously, high-speed circuit, you’re going around the track many times, the most number of laps in the season, and then 50 degrees track temperature. So it was sort of that perfect storm.

“Silverstone is a higher-speed circuit, but the tarmac is actually quite new, which is good news. If the track temperature is the same like last year, it was like 20 degrees, I think last year, it was quite cool, we were on pole. But two weeks ago, it was 31 degrees in England. So if it’s 31 degrees, we won’t be on pole this year.”

The good news for him is that lower temperatures are indeed predicted for the coming weekend, and that could give the W16 a boost.

Mercedes will certainly try to learn lessons from the Red Bull Ring, as team principal Toto Wolff acknowledged.

“When you look at our performance, last year we won the race here, and we were, I don’t remember, 10-15 seconds behind the leaders,” the Austrian said of his home race.

“It was a very solid performance. And this year we are minute behind the leaders. So that is clearly out of the ordinary. What happened today? We do experiment at the moment a little bit how to put the car on track, where we put the balance.

“And clearly, this one we got wrong, and we know that. So I think it’s not only down to those factors, asphalt, long corners and heat. Clearly, that’s not our sweet spot, but it doesn’t explain the gap, and I think we know why. But in hindsight you always know.”

Wolff admitted that the team had taken a setup route that while successful in Canada hadn’t worked out in Austria.

“We need to understand what creates those oscillations, and now is the moment,” he said. “We are not racing for the championship. P2/P3 whatever it is, at the end, only the winning counts.

“And the only positive I take from this race weekend is that we tried something extreme, which was good in Montreal, and it was a complete shot in the knee here.

“Because we could have gone to the setup that we had last year, and that would have put us, I don’t know, on the podium, maybe. But that is not what we tried.”

He continued: “In a way I’m getting fed up with my own explanations of we learn and then next time we understand better. That has been the constant Groundhog Day. But there was something which we tried to take from Barcelona and from Montreal in terms of how we set the car up and where we put the aero and mechanical balance.

“And that was that was clearly wrong. Now we have ticked this box. It would be dramatic if we were racing for a victory, if we were racing for a championship, which we do not. So analyse, dig deep, what was it? And go to Silverstone.”

Asked to expand on that setup choice He added: “We felt that there’s a certain direction we wanted to pursue, which is perfectly logical for Canada, and a bit counter intuitive for Austria.

“And our long runs looked very good. So we thought Kimi’s long run was maybe, second, third, fastest was really good. We can stick to that. And then obviously the temperatures got hotter, the grip ramped up.

“And then we kind of come to the conclusion that we should have maybe stuck to what we knew from last year here.”

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July 1, 2025 · 7:58 am

Hamilton puts focus on race pace as he chases Leclerc’s oversteering set-up

Austria saw a step forward for Ferrari – however Hamilton admits that he has work to do

After a frustrating weekend in Canada the Austrian GP was a more positive experience for Lewis Hamilton – and one that he needed ahead of Silverstone and the biggest weekend of his season.

Hamilton and Ferrari team mate Charles Leclerc have both been calling for upgrades for several weeks, and the first step finally arrived in the form of a new floor.

It wasn’t flagged internally as being worth a significant chunk of time, but it appeared to improve the SF-25. Hamilton was certainly happier after qualifying fourth, while knowing that a small snap had cost him a shot at second.

The start of the race saw him have a brief but enjoyable tussle with former team mate George Russell, and having won that battle he settled in fourth and stayed there for the duration.

It was a decent performance, and he left Russell far behind. However he wasn’t happy with a 9.2 second gap to Leclerc – and his priority now is a search for better race pace.

“Great start, and a great battle with George from Turn 1 to 3 all the way to Turn 6,” he said when I asked about his race. “And I managed to hold on to it on the outside, which is pretty awesome.

“And after that, the car didn’t feel too bad. I was able to hold on [to Leclerc] for a second, but then I was really struggling with the balance, and we have brake issues, so having to manage these brakes from really early on, which was losing definitely some time.

“That’s something I’m really pushing to get fixed, because that’s not great. And then with balance, I was really struggling just through balance.”

Hamilton conceded that the new floor had been a better boost than anticipated as Ferrari nudged ahead of Mercedes by a single point into second in the World Championship.

“Well, I think we’ve moved forwards,” he said. “I think the upgrade was quite small, so we didn’t really know. They didn’t even mention any time, because it was that small, but I think perhaps it was a bigger result from putting the floor on. And so that’s a real positive.

“Really great to see the team bringing the upgrade and us moving forward. Being the second fastest this weekend, and getting third and fourth is a real positive. So there’s lots of good things to take from a weekend, and there’s lots of areas to focus on.

“I think qualifying was better. We found a problem that I had through my qualifying lap, which lost me a tenth due to some issue on the car. So that’s again, a positive, but I would have gone backwards if I started second anyways. So I’ve got to find race pace. That’s key for me.

“I’m still losing massive ground, to lose eight seconds, nine seconds to Charles is not good enough.”

Intriguingly after qualifying Hamilton noted that he was able to move closer to Leclerc’s set-up. When I asked why that wasn’t possible before he said: “Just struggling with the balance. I mean, he drives a massively oversteering car and somehow slides the rears and doesn’t have degradation. When I slide the rears, I get massive degradation.

“So it’s definitely something I think you have to… I suppose it took Carlos a couple years to get used to. So I don’t want to do that. I think I’m improving. As I said, I’ve got closer in quali, didn’t have the race pace.”

Hamilton remains hopeful that the next Ferrari upgrade, the last for the 2025 car, will provide some benefit – and at least enough to ensure that the team can fight Mercedes for second in the World Championship.

“Well, compared to McLaren, I don’t think anyone’s catching them,” he said. “But never say never. Hopefully with our next upgrade that works the way we hope it works, and maybe that’ll bring us a little bit closer. But we’re not a minute down this weekend, which is great.

“We should be fully focused in terms of development onto next year’s car soon, or ASAP. I’m sure all the teams are doing that already. I know Mercedes is already focused on next year.

“The key is going to be developing that engine, making sure that [we come up with] the right philosophy for next year, suspension wise-and everything.

“And I’m trying to work on with the engineers to make sure we rectify some of the issues with this car, because there’s a few problems that need fixing.”

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June 30, 2025 · 2:53 pm

How a lap one brake balance error gave Antonelli a tough lesson

Antonelli was quick to admit that he got it wrong in Austria

Any Formula 1 rookie can expect to face a rollercoaster first season, and for Kimi Antonelli the last two races have certainly seen him encounter two extremes.

In Canada he qualified a solid fourth and went on to log his first podium finish with third place.

The Italian saw result that as a springboard to pushing harder earlier in the weekend, and thus being better prepared for qualifying.

However in Austria poor Mercedes form and not getting a final Q3 lap in consigned him to P9 on the grid.

Worse was to come on the first lap on Sunday when he lost control under braking for Turn 3 and took out World Champion Max Verstappen.

After the pain of clipping the chicane barrier early in Monaco qualifying this was undoubtedly Antonelli’s lowest low of a season that has seen a lot of highs.

To his credit he immediately apologised to Verstappen and to his team for his error.

He wasn’t making an ambitious lunge – something the FIA stewards acknowledged when giving him a three-place grid penalty for Silverstone – and in essence the mistake was a result of not adjusting his brake balance after the first corner.

“It was very unfortunate,” he said when I asked him about the incident. “Probably I should have just changed the brake setting going into T3, because I had the normal start, and I was just trying to maintain position. And when I went to hit the brake, I locked the rear completely, and I just lost the car.

“And when I lost the car, then I was about to hit Lawson, because obviously I lost a lot of deceleration. And then I had to avoid Lawson, and then when I reapplied the brake, I locked the front left, and just couldn’t stop the car.

“It’s a definitely the first mistake I do in the race start, and definitely it’s a big lesson, especially I just should have changed the brake setting, and none of this would have happened. So I think is a lesson for next time, and I’ll try to come back stronger in Silverstone.”

Expanding on where he’d gone wrong he noted: “Obviously, for a race start, we have the brake balance set to avoid locking fronts. But obviously T3 starts to be a strong braking, even in lap one.

“And definitely the brake balance for that corner was too rearward, and that caused the rear locking. And so I just should have changed the brake balance and put it a bit more forward, and none of that would have happened.”

Antonelli is smart enough and well trained enough to know that there were going to be mistakes in 2025. The trick is to learn from them, and he’d proven to be pretty good at that thus far.

“Obviously you can expect that in the first season you can have big highs and also big lows,” he said. “Of course, the thing I want is to minimise are these lows, and I want to be more consistent as possible.

“This is a mistake from my side, and same as the one I did in Monaco. So I just need to reset, and try not to repeat the same mistake. Obviously, this was first time that happened to me, something like this. And definitely for next time, I will know better how to react.”

“In the constructors’, it’s very important to bring points. And today I just threw points away, and especially because such a close fight with Ferrari.

“So it’s important to really reset and come back stronger in Silverstone. I did it already after the triple header. So definitely, that’s the goal, and there’s no reason why I wouldn’t come back stronger for next weekend.”

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June 30, 2025 · 1:13 pm

Why Antonelli shunt was so quickly “case closed” for chilled Verstappen

The World Champion was quick to shrug off any disappointment in Austria

The Austrian GP is the biggest race of the year for Red Bull and a massive one for the tens of thousands of Max Verstappen fans who travel south from the Netherlands.

In that context a Turn 3 retirement for the World Champion was a total disaster. And yet to his credit the man himself shrugged it off and was very generous to Kimi Antonelli after he was taken out by the Italian teenager.

He may have let himself down with the road rage incident with George Russell in Barcelona, but his measured reaction to the Austrian disappointment was an indication that – for the most part – Verstappen is growing into the role of F1 elder statesman, able to deal with the ebb and flow of fortune.

He knows too that he’s had his own moments, especially in his early days, and it helped that Antonelli was quick to apologise.

His calm demeanour may also have been confirmation that he really doesn’t believe that he’s still in with a shot of the title, despite Montreal showing that McLaren can be vulnerable.

He might have stolen sixth place in Austria, but that was probably all that was on offer anyway, so in that sense wasn’t such a big deal.

On top of that the ultra cynical view is that no points for Red Bull could be quite handy if there’s a top three constructors’ championship performance element that could make it easier for Verstappen to walk away from his 2026 and beyond contract in the coming weeks.

You really couldn’t make up the fact that he was taken out by a car from the team he might want to join…

“Of course, it’s not what you want,” said Verstappen when I asked about the disappointment of an early retirement in front of his fans. “At the end of the day, probably I’m the most disappointed about it, but at the end that’s racing as well.

“We’ve had a lot of great moments here, so probably we got a little bit spoiled with that as well at the same time. So sometimes that’s the case.”

He added: “Every year for me is different, because cars change, tyres change as well. So you can’t say that ‘Oh, because we were good the last few years at this track, it should be no problem, it will be good.’ There are always so many factors that come into play that you have to nail to be competitive. And clearly, this weekend, we were not.”

Verstappen admitted that initially he didn’t know who had hit him.

“We had a really good start,” he said. “So that was I think already a nice improvement from I think the last two races where I was not particularly happy with the start. Then in Turn 3, the race was over. Of course at that point, I didn’t know what happened.

“We had quite a bit of damage, the car nearly turned off. I guess unlucky a little bit yesterday in qualifying [with yellow flags], and unlucky today in the race.

“But of course, if you look at the weekend, we were not where we wanted to be, I guess, in terms of pace. And we have to try and analyse that, and hopefully have a little bit of a more positive weekend next week.”

Antonelli, who kept his helmet on, admitted that he couldn’t hear the other side of their subsequent conversation.

“I just asked what happened,” said Verstappen. “Because he was the only car that was there with me with his wheel hanging off. So I was like, I’m pretty sure that he hit me. And then of course I saw the footage once I came back.

“It happens, I mean every driver has made a mistake like that in their careers. And also Kimi is a very big talent, so he learns from that, and that’s all fine.”

Pressed on Antonelli he said: “I spoke to him already. But for me it was already case closed anyway, I saw what happened. And no one does these things on purpose. It can happen.”

As we approach the mid-point of the season at Silverstone Verstappen is 61 points behind World Championship leader Oscar Piastri, and thus the slim hopes that he could keep in touch with the McLaren drivers taking points off each other are fading.

“I was never thinking about that anyway,” he insisted, “So we just take it race-by-race, and we try to just find more performance with the car, try to learn from all the things that we are doing, and then we’ll see what happens.

“The McLaren pace, I don’t think about at the moment. I just think that for sure there is more in it, but we’ll see if we can find it.”

Updates are on the way, but he admits that it’s impossible to judge their potential impact.

“Is it enough to challenge McLaren? I’m not sure. Probably not. But I also don’t want to sound depressed, or whatever.

“I know that everyone in the team always gives it 100%, and we keep pushing, keep learning, keep trying to bring more performance to the car, and that’s the only thing that we can do.”

McLaren was utterly dominant in Austria, but Verstappen hasn’t given up hope of making the Woking team’s life difficult on occasion.

“It’s a bit hit and miss, right? Because if you say to me that question in Montreal, it’s a bit different. So some tracks probably work a bit better for certain cars, and then other tracks, it’s a bit closer. In general they’re definitely the benchmark.”

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June 29, 2025 · 7:15 am

Why P11 on Austrian grid is damage limitation for frustrated Alonso

The AMR25 has been difficult in Austria but Alonso still only just missed Q3

With his 44th birthday just a month away Fernando Alonso continues give his all with the difficult Aston Martin AMR25.

The Spaniard struggled all weekend in Austria with a car has that had balance issues and didn’t respond to changes – a characteristic it has demonstrated all season – and yet he managed to get to 11th on the grid.

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When I asked if that outcome represented damage limitation given the issues he’d had in practice he agreed it was.

“Absolutely,” he said. “I think the whole weekend has been so-so for me, I was not happy with the car.

“We had a very unbalanced car since FP1, very understeering at high-speed, very oversteering in the slow-speed. So it’s difficult when you deal with two problems that separated and that big in different parts of the circuit.

“So we tried multiple setups between the two cars, just to try to help each other and try to get to a conclusion faster.

“And we could not move the character of the car from that, and we still ended up in qualifying with exactly the same balance problem that we had in FP1.

“So that was the frustrating thing throughout the weekend. But on the other side, as you said, position-wise it’s not too bad, P11, only one place away from the points. So let’s take the good part of the qualifying, and hopefully be a little bit stronger tomorrow.”

With the cars diverging Lance Stroll was as high as P4 on Friday, and Alonso took note.

“Yesterday in FP2 he was a little bit different in setup,” he said. “And I tried it this morning, it was a little bit better, but still, this morning, I was not in a happy place with the car.

“And just now in qualifying, I put a good lap in Q1 at the end, and a good lap now in Q2, and thanks to that, I’m P11, but I’m aware that tomorrow is going to be a tricky race. It been a challenging weekend, so I don’t expect tomorrow by luck I will become fast…”

He added: “I was struggling. I was changing the car upside down with setup, and the car felt the same going into qualifying, the car felt the same, and I thought it was a difficult afternoon.

“So we managed to be P11, which is a good result, but I’m concerned for tomorrow, no doubt.”

Alonso has scored points in the last two races, and with a Sauber and an Alpine ahead of him on the grid he does at least have a chance to fight for the top 10.

“Yeah, absolutely,” he said. “Let’s see. Especially the Alpine, they’ve been up and down, sometimes they are fast, sometimes not. I think in FP2 long run, I was behind Gasly and I was a little bit faster. So maybe our race pace is a little bit better than Alpine.

“But you never know. I think the moment we need to be clever on the strategy. Tomorrow is going to be very tight.

“A lot of DRS trains in the race, and you need to choose if you want to be in that DRS train and kill the tyres a little, but keep the pace, or you want to separate a little bit and breathe some clean air. So that will be the decision we need to make tomorrow.”

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June 29, 2025 · 6:07 am

Bortoleto’s Q3 debut shows that he’s learning fast at Sauber

The Brazilian will start the Austrian GP from an encouraging P8

While his fellow 2025 Formula 1 rookies Kimi Antonelli and Isack Hadjar have been in the spotlight Gabriel Bortoleto has been making quiet progress at Sauber.

He’s been overshadowed of late by strong race performances from team mate Nico Hulkenberg, but he has outqualified the German on several occasions, and he did so again in Austria.

Helped by another round of updates the Brazilian was quick from the start of the weekend at a track where he’d been successful in the junior categories.

Eighth in FP2 and 10th in FP3 suggested that he had a real shot at his first Q3 appearance, and he duly went through the three qualifying sessions in P8, P5 and P8.

On a day when Hulkenberg made a mistake and ended Q1 in 20th and last position it was a standout performance from the F3/F2 champion.

“I feel like the track is very special for me,” he said when I asked what had clicked for him. “But for sure I’m getting more and more experience with the car and the team and the series.

“It’s just the beginning. Is not even half of the season. I’ve been working very hard on understanding what I need from my side, from the car, and I feel like I’m getting more and more comfortable with it, and that I know what I need before even the weekend starts.

“And I feel like it’s the first weekend that I am that comfortable since FP1. And it feels like things are clicking for me, and I’m going in the right direction.”

What impressed was the way he was strong over all three qualifying sessions, rather than fading to P10 having made Q3.

“Well, it’s very promising, and hopefully we can achieve this type of qualifying every single time,” he said. “Obviously, it’s not easy.

“I feel like it’s a track that has been positive for the car and for me, but yeah, there’s a lot of to work still, and it’s not that we are comfortable in Q3 it has been a very tight quality and I’ve been putting some good laps together.

“The car was spot-on as well. And let’s see, let’s see how we go on to the end of the season.

“I feel like I’m getting more confident with the car, but not only from the upgrades, but also myself on understanding. At the beginning of the season, when you jump in the car, it’s basically a different feeling.

“It’s like every single FP1 is, you don’t know how the car is going to behave. But then when you get used to the car, more and more, you start putting it in the limits earlier in the weekend, and you work on more in yourself, on the driving and the setup. And I feel like we have been going in this direction this weekend.”

The target now has to be his points of the season. He’s got Ma Verstappen in front of him, and Kimi Antonelli in a potentially quicker Mercedes behind, so he’s going to have to pick his fights.

“It doesn’t change so much my approach in the start. I’m going to try to do the best start possible gain some positions. If I cannot gain, I’m going to try to keep there, and try to make the best race pace I can score points tomorrow.

“Obviously, it makes no sense fighting with people you cannot stay ahead of. But for sure, I’m a racer, I’m going to try to gain the positions early in the race and see what happens.

“But I’m not going to be focusing on overtaking people that I know probably have better pace than me, like Verstappen, because you probably just destroy your tyres doing this. So we need to focus racing with people that we actually know we can.”

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