Bortoleto has agreed an F1 deal – and the consensus is that it’s with McLaren
New FIA F2 champion Leonardo Fornaroli finally agreed a deal with a Formula 1 team prior to securing the title Sunday’s deciding race in Qatar.
Sources have indicated that a contract was signed over the weekend, although there has been no official confirmation of where he is going.
Fornaroli has reached the top rung of the sport without the support of any F1 junior programmes, beating multiple drivers who are associated with GP teams.
He won the 2024 F3 title with Trident despite not winning a single race over his two years in the category.
He moved up to F2 this year with Invicta, and an impressive rookie season has seen him win three sprints and one feature thus far, boosting his reputation after his winless F3 career. He clinched the title with second place in the Qatar feature race on Sunday.
He thus repeated the feat achieved by his friend Gabriel Bortoleto, who won the F3/F2 titles in 2023-’24 – with the same Trident/Invicta combination – and has since enjoyed a strong F1 rookie season with Sauber.
After clinching the title he said: “I have an idea of what’s happening with my future. My focus still remains on the last round of F2 in the meantime. My manager and management are doing an amazing job, and I’m very confident for what’s next. And I hope you will be able to see what will happen in few weeks’ time.”
Multiple sources have linked Fornaroli with McLaren, which would be a logical choice given that the team has cut its links with Alex Dunne and has plenty of capacity to give an F2 graduate FP1 and TPC running, and to have someone permanently on hand as third driver.
He would in effect be a direct replacement for Bortoleto, who was released from his McLaren contract to take up the Sauber opportunity after the team had invested in his development.
While he appears to be set for McLaren the 20-year-old’s name has also been linked with Ferrari, and a deal that would involve TPC running and FP1 sessions, including seat time with Haas.
Adding a proven talent to the Maranello talent pool would be an interesting move given that Oliver Bearman is being lined up to eventually follow Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari, and Fornaroli’s presence would give both teams more future options.
However where it doesn’t quite add up is that F3 star Rafael Camara is regarded as the team’s main long-term prospect, with an F1 development programme being built around the Brazilian alongside his F2 commitments in 2026. The team also has Dino Begonavic in its ranks.
Fornaroli is known to have been in the frame for a third driver role at Audi, and while it’s thought that he has signed a long-term deal elsewhere he has also been mentioned in connection with doing the upcoming Abu Dhabi rookie test with Sauber.
The paddock consensus is that Tsunoda won’t have a race seat – but Honda is still trying
A late intervention from Honda using a TPC car power unit supply as leverage could help to give Yuki Tsunoda a reprieve in the Red Bull camp for 2026.
Next season Isack Hadjar is set to graduate to Red Bull Racing as Tsunoda’s replacement, while F2 star Arvin Lindblad is being lined up for a promotion to Racing Bulls.
That leaves the remaining Racing Bulls seat down to a choice between incumbent Liam Lawson and the demoted Tsunoda.
Both drivers signed contract extensions several weeks ago, moving the latest date for a decision over next season from September 30 to November 30, which explains why Helmut Marko has made it clear that the choice would be made over the Qatar GP weekend.
The consensus in the paddock is that in the wake of Tsunoda’s difficult year alongside Max Verstappen at RBR he will be sidelined, and Lawson will get the nod to stay on.
However RB sources insist that the final decision has not been made, and thus Tsunoda can still earn his place with a strong weekend in Doha.
He did his case no harm by outpacing Verstappen to qualify fifth for the Qatar sprint on a day when Lawson was only 17th fastest.
If it really is still a close call between Lawson and Tsunoda then the latter’s longtime supporter Honda could tip the balance.
It has some leverage as Red Bull needs power units for the TPC cars of its two teams – and that requires a brand new deal given that the Japanese manufacturer’s current commitment effectively ends with the upcoming Abu Dhabi test before it switches its future focus to Aston Martin.
The major rules changes reduce the specific relevance of the older cars relative to the new models.
Nevertheless an extensive TPC programme would be a vital part of Lindblad’s preparations for and development during the 2026 season, and without Honda PUs the only option would be to rent someone else’s car.
Honda is thus in a position to dictate terms, and the Japanese company is understood to be using the situation to encourage Red Bull to give the Racing Bulls race seat to Tsunoda.
It’s understood that talks are going on between the two parties this weekend.
If Tsunoda is left without a race seat he could still transition into a reserve role across the two Red Bull teams, or potentially look for a similar job and a fresh start elsewhere.
Aston Martin is an obvious safety net, although the team recently announced Jak Crawford as its third driver, noting that he will be “reserve at all races.”
I had my first F1 media pass in 1985 – but things didn’t really get going until a decade later
This weekend’s Formula 1 race in Qatar is the 600th Grand Prix that I’ve been lucky enough to attend with a media pass.
Throw in a dozen that I went to as a youthful fan before I kicked off my journalistic career and I can say that I’ve been present at 53.3% of all the events held since the World Championship started in 1950, which is quite a fun stat.
Looking back at 10-year-old me, watching F1 cars in action for the first time at the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch in March 1976, I find it hard to believe that I managed to translate a childhood passion into a career. It’s a privilege that I never take for granted.
I had my hands on an F1 media pass for the first time at Silverstone in 1985. However over my first decade in this job, including a five-year stint on the staff of Autosport from 1987, it was slow progress in terms of GPs attended – just 15 in 10 seasons.
Instead I covered everything from club racing to WEC via the BTCC, F3, IMSA and NASCAR, attending hundreds of race meetings from Mallory Park to Macau.
That period also included a couple of memorable years covering the racing scene in Japan in 1992-’93, and then one following the Indy Car series in 1994, with Nigel Mansell, Mario Andretti and Emerson Fittipaldi in the field.
With the CART schedule over at the end of that year I went to the Japanese and Australian GPs, and witnessed two memorable F1 races – Damon Hill beating Michael Schumacher in the rain in Suzuka, followed by their infamous collision in Adelaide.
That winter I had a think about what to do next. I enjoyed the USA and would happily have returned and built a life there, but I couldn’t find any work. Meanwhile top level sportscar racing – my mainstay for many years – was basically dead. The only real option left was to try my hand fulltime in F1, something that had always seemed out of reach.
At a time when anyone can now become a bedroom blogger it’s hard to believe how hard it was to break into F1 journalism back in the nineties. There was no internet, only newspapers and magazines. The guys who were doing it had been there for years and were well established, and in effect it was a closed shop. It didn’t seem possible to get a foothold.
Nevertheless I bought a ticket and headed off to the first races of the 1995 season in Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires. I found just enough work to justify my trip, including writing press releases for the new Forti Corse team for a little pocket money – although in the end I didn’t get paid.
From there I went on to Imola, Barcelona, Monaco and Montreal and beyond, and then I carried on into 1996. At the start of that year word was sent to us from Bernie Ecclestone. Any accredited journalists found to be supplying stories for this new thing called “the internet”, something I’d barely heard of, risked losing their passes. The F1 boss regarded it as flouting his broadcasting rules…
The web would soon became a thing that even Bernie couldn’t control. Meanwhile the F1 seasons flew by, and I continued to travel to all the races. It never really occurred to me to skip one.
Thus 31 years after that famous Hill/Schumacher fight in Japan in November 1994 I’ve now attended 585 GPs in a row without missing one. Adding in the aforementioned 15 races I attended earlier in my journalistic career makes for that total of 600.
It also equates to 2400 days at circuits, and while I missed the odd Thursday long before it became the regimented media day it is now, I can counter that by including Monaco Wednesdays from when the race had its own schedule, plus the many days of F1 testing and circuit-based new car launches that I’ve been to over the decades.
The final total means that I’ve spent roughly seven years of my life attending F1 events at circuits. I’ve seen GPs at 44 different circuits in 30 countries, spent endless hours on European motorways, and flown a few million miles. And I’ve missed four flights – and been upgraded from economy once!
Apart from a handful of races when I was on the fulltime staff at Autosport, I’ve done it all at my own expense, which means organising and paying for flights, hotel rooms and hire cars and everything else as soon as I leave my front door. I do it on the proverbial shoestring, but nevertheless the total cost of all that over the decades is a number that I don’t want to calculate…
Inevitably normal life has at times taken a back seat. My wedding was squeezed in between Monaco and Montreal, so the latter served as the honeymoon, while the funerals of both of my parents had to fit into my schedule. The biggest regret was missing the birth of my daughter by three or four hours as I drove across Europe in the early hours of Monday morning after a Monaco GP. Even I have to admit that I haven’t always got the work/life balance right…
The toughest time in terms of physically getting to the races was the Covid-19 era. The cancellation of the 2020 Australian GP on the eve of first practice remains one of the most frustrating events I’ve witnessed (and no, I don’t count it in the 600!).
When the 2020 World Championship was rebooted behind closed doors in Austria after a three month break only 10 journalists were invited, and I have to thank the FIA for giving me the opportunity to keep my attendance record going.
However, we were confined to the media centre and couldn’t speak to anyone in person, and all interaction was done online. We could at least still see and hear the cars.
The year or so that followed was a difficult period, with endless (and costly) Covid tests required both before travel and at the races. The nightmare scenario was getting stuck overseas with a positive result, especially in somewhere like Sochi, potentially with your visa running out two days later. Fortunately I made it through safely.
I’ve been lucky enough to get to know hundreds of drivers over the years, and to spend time with many of them away from the track. I’ve sung karaoke with Michael Schumacher, partied in Kimi Raikkonen’s Tokyo hotel suite, and helped to calm down a random punter who’d just bashed an F1 driver on the nose in a Shanghai bar. I once shared a room with Rene Arnoux, which was a good story even before he brought a lady friend back with him…
When I started the drivers were my age or older – Jean Alesi was the last man born before me to start an F1 race – and now some of them could be my grandkids. However down the generations the most talented have shared the same driven personalities that make them so successful.
I agree with Andrea Stella’s recent suggestion that the current crop is the best ever in terms of overall quality all the way through the grid, and there’s been a similar improvement in the level of the teams. The days of a Forti Corse stranded at the back of the field are long gone.
As much as I appreciate the sport’s past – and there are always lessons to be drawn from what’s gone before – I’m always keen to focus on the here and now, and while not everything is perfect in modern F1, in many ways it is a golden era.
Indeed, this year’s title battle is one for the ages. Let’s hope that it goes all the way to my 601st GP!
The team tried to address porpoising to protect the plank, but it didn’t work
McLaren Formula 1 team boss Andrea Stella has provided more detail on what led to the Las Vegas GP disqualifications of both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
The Italian reiterated that the unexpected arrival of porpoising in Saturday’s race meant that that the cars were bottoming more than had been anticipated, an argument it used in discussion with the FIA.
He admitted that having realised that porpoising might become an issue for plank wear the team tried unsuccessfully to mitigate it, but failed to prevent the wear from going beyond the prescribed 9mm.
“The specific cause that led to the situation was the unexpected occurrence of extensive porpoising, inducing large vertical oscillations of the car,” Stella said in a Q&A issued by the team on Thursday.
“The level of porpoising was exacerbated by the conditions in which the car operated during the race, and it was not anticipated based on what we had seen in practice and based on the predictions of the car operating window in the race.
“Based on the data we had acquired in practice, we do not believe we took excessive risks in terms of ride height and we also added a safety margin for qualifying and the race, compared to practice, in terms of clearance to the ground.
“However, the safety margin was negated by the unexpected onset of the large vertical oscillations, which caused the car to touch the ground.
“The porpoising condition that the car developed in the race was also a difficult one to mitigate, as even a reduction in speed – an action that, in theory, should increase clearance to the ground – was only effective in some parts of the track but in others was actually counterproductive.”
Stella stressed that the team was keeping a close eye on the situation with the help of sensors that measure load, the standard way that teams monitor potential planl wear issues.
“From the early laps of the race, it was clear from the data that the level of unexpected porpoising would be a concern,” he said.
“We were able to monitor the situation better on Lando’s car using telemetry data, but it was made more difficult on Oscar’s car, after we lost one of the sensors we use to establish the level of grounding.
“We realised relatively soon that this level of porpoising was causing a high level of skid wear energy, and this is the reason why both drivers started to take remedial actions in various parts of the circuit.
“Unfortunately, we also saw that, because of the car operating window and the circuit characteristics, most of these actions were not effective enough in reducing porpoising.”
Stella said that the team understood that there was no alternative but to disqualify the cars.
“We verified together with the technical delegate, that the measurement of the skid thickness was correct. Even if the excessive wear is relatively minor and in only one location, (as it was 0.12 mm for Lando and 0.26mm for Oscar), the regulation is very clear that the rear skids need to be at least 9mm at the end of the race in every location.
“Unlike sporting or financial rules – there is no proportionality in the application of penalties for technical regulation infringements.”
However he suggested that could change in the future: “The FIA itself has admitted that this lack of proportionality should be addressed in the future to ensure that minor and accidental technical infringements, with minimal or no performance benefits, do not lead to disproportionate consequences.
“It should also be remembered that the FIA itself emphasised that the infringement was not intentional, there was no deliberate attempt to circumvent the regulations, and there were also mitigating circumstances, as we explained to the event stewards.”
Stella says that Las Vegas was in effect a one-off, and he doesn’t expect to see a recurrence in the last two races.
“The conditions we experienced last weekend and which led to the onset of porpoising and excess of grounding, compared to what was expected, are very specific to the operating window of the car in Vegas and the circuit characteristics.
“We have a well-established and consolidated way of setting up the car and we are confident that this will lead us to an optimal plan for the coming races, starting from the Lusail International Circuit.
“Nevertheless, we learn from every lesson and the one in Las Vegas has been able to provide some useful information about the operating window of the car and the porpoising regime.”
In a similar vein he was keen to point out that the issue did not occur because the team was pushing the limits of performance with low ride heights, and got caught out.
“What happened in Vegas was due to an anomaly in the behaviour of the car, rather than it being the outcome of an excessive or unreasonable chase of performance,” he said.
“Our way of acting and thinking as a team, with a strong focus on performance, has brought us to where we are today, namely winning two consecutive Constructors’ titles and having two drivers at the top of the championship with two races to go.
“We, as a team, constantly learn from experience and we calibrate our approach all the time and we will certainly use any information gained through the situation experienced in Vegas.”
Gasly twice scored a point in Brazil, but he could not explain Alpine’s form
The Sao Paulo GP weekend saw some unusual swings in form, and perhaps none was more surprising than a return to the points for Pierre Gasly and Alpine for the first time since the Frenchman finished P10 at Spa back in July.
In the seven races that followed Gasly managed only 19th, 17th, 16th, 18th, 19th, 19th and 15th, usually starting from close to the back and running a long opening stint in the hope that a red flag or safety car might help out.
In Brazil, where he finished third behind team mate Esteban Ocon in the previous year’s wet race, things suddenly clicked, and neither he nor the team could explain quite why.
He scored a point in the sprint and then another in the main race – not much in the grand scheme of things, but a useful boost for a team that has tumbled to last in the pecking order and which has long been focussed on 2026.
Whether those points turn out to be the last ever logged in F1 by a Renault power unit remains to be seen over the final three weekends of this season.
From 13th on the grid for the Interlagos sprint Gasly moved up to P8, helped by some attrition ahead and by a crucial move on Lance Stroll in the closing laps.
“I’m gutted they didn’t show it on the TV, because it was two nice launches into Turn 1,” he said when I asked him about his progress. “And I knew the points were right in front of me, and I would have not slept tonight if I would have not tried something.
“So my first one, my first move, was quite optimistic, and he managed to actually get it back on the exit. But I wasn’t going to let him go away with that point!”
On Saturday afternoon Gasly ran through the first two qualifying sessions in P2 and P6, before earning P9 in a closely bunched middle order in Q3.
“We were on the wrong side of the pack, let’s say,” he noted. “I think seven-hundredths gets us to P5. It is what it is. At the end of the day, I look at where we were last week, the week before, last month, two months ago.
“I think we can be extremely happy to be seven-hundredths from P5 and four-tenths from pole position. If someone would have told me that coming into the weekend, I would have taken it.”
This was Gasly’s first appearance in Q3 since Silverstone, and he was as surprised as anyone by the surge in form.
“Much bigger things to understand,” he said. “At the moment, we’ve just got to dig, because it’s not like the car is very different than it has been. From the first lap, it just felt like a completely different car, more similar to what I’ve had when the car was at best this year in Bahrain, or this type of track.
“So bigger picture, a lot to understand. I must say on my side at the moment I’m more enjoying session after session and actually feeling like I’ve got a car that I can race with and drive more the way I want to drive.”
He had no explanation as to why things had clicked: “There are few ideas. But the reality is we don’t fully know. I don’t want to say anything which might not be true. I know the guys are looking very deeply into it, and it’s quite complicated, but we need some answers. At the moment, we have a lot of questions, not many answers.
“Hopefully we will have some more in the coming weeks. I think track characteristic plays quite a big factor. But I cannot believe it’s only down to that. So we’ve got to understand it.”
Starting P9 boded well for Sunday’s GP. In the end he gained a spot from the retirement of Charles Leclerc, while losing out to Max Verstappen and Nico Hulkenberg, on the way to 10th place.
“Very happy, because last time we scored points on a Sunday was in Spa before the summer break,” he said. “And it’s been a very long walk in the middle of nowhere for three months. A strong weekend, Q3, one point in the sprint, one point today.”
Nevertheless he admitted that he wanted more from the race: “If I’ve got to be honest, I’m a little disappointed with today. I took a great start, managed to pass Bearman, managed to pass Russell. Both occasions, I’m losing the position in the straights, which would have put us in a much better track position for the rest of the race.
“I managed to dive twice in the inside of Hadjar, but every time in the straight to Turn 4, he got past me very easily. I feel like I had quite a lot more pace, I was just not really able to fully like show it.
“At the end, it’s one point, and I’m definitely not going to complain about it, because I would have taken it every single day since three months. I’m sure we’ll have a look if we could have done any anything different. But I do feel we had some more pace than we were able to show.”
He took an aggressive approach as one of the eight drivers to use the soft initially, in contrast to recent races where he has started on a hard tyre and run as long as possible,
“This is what you do when you’re far off the pace and trying to bank on a red flag or safety car at some point. Today I just wanted to use the pace, which unfortunately is not what I was able to do. I think I struggled more on the soft.
“We fitted the new medium on the second stint, hoping to go a bit longer. But unfortunately, we got pushed to box quite early. So I did a short stint on the new tyre, and a longer one on the used.”
Despite some frustration Gasly was happy to have a car that he could push to the limit, which hasn’t been the case of late.
“I was able to drive in a way that I want. The car was responding to what I expect the car to do, and we had a lot more potential. In quali yesterday, to be less than five-tenths from the McLaren knowing the package we have, it just showed there was something like we’re actually very competitive in the corners, and I was pleased the car was responding to my input, and there was nothing really very strange.
“So it’s what I expect from a race car. One point is not going to change my life, nor the life of the team. But I think it’s just important in the bigger picture to understand where that entire potential came from, and where it was the last few weekends.
“Everything’s got to be analysed. It’s rarely down to one single factor. It’s probably a lot of small things added together which make a bigger difference. And it was night and day was what I felt since three months.”
We now head to Las Vegas, another quirky track where last year Gasly followed up his Interlagos podium by qualifying third, only to retire with an early engine failure.
“We have no idea why we’re fast here, and we have no idea why we were so slow in Mexico,” he said. “We do have small ideas, but not enough to say that’s going to be fine. Last year I qualified third in Vegas.
“I will not put money on third from me in Vegas this year, but Max was nowhere yesterday, today he was third. Usually we’re nowhere, and we were strong the whole weekend. So it’s quite a few things to work on.”
Haas has moved up from P9 to P8 and has bigger ambitions over the last four races
For the Haas Formula 1 team the Mexican GP saw a dream result, with Ollie Bearman’s fourth place and ninth for Esteban Ocon allowing it to jump Sauber for eighth in the World Championship.
The focus is now firmly ahead, with Aston Martin and Racing Bulls both within a 10 point range.
Mexico was just reward for a well-executed weekend, with Bearman obviously doing a brilliant job in the cockpit and the team making a smart strategy call that ultimately paid off.
It also came in the wake of the decision to introduce an upgrade package at the US GP that only has a life of six race weekends in order to provide a late season boost in the constructors’ battle. That already paid off on its debut in Austin with a ninth place for Bearman, and Mexico brought more vindication.
“We’re definitely happy,” team boss Ayao Komatsu told this writer. “Without the upgrade, I don’t think we could have had the Austin result, I don’t think we could have had this result.
“So it’s already proven that regardless of championship position, because like I keep saying, a result is a result, you cannot 100% control that. Let’s face it, we moved up one position, but they [Sauber] are only two points behind. It’s nothing, absolutely nothing.
“All I’m trying to say is we’ve just got to try the get the best out of the car and drive and execute every single race weekend. If we do that, I’m sure we can move up. But there’s just no point counting the points.”
The team now has its sights set on getting ahead of both Aston Martin and Racing Bulls over the course of these last four race weekends.
“Even before I said P6 is possible,” said Komatsu. “But again, it’s just no point thinking like that. A 22 points gap with six races remaining – of course, it was possible, but there’s no point thinking, how are we going to get 23 points? It may not happen. But that’s out of our control, right?
“That we suddenly got 14 points, great, it’s now 10 points to P6. But again, it’s not about how are we going to get 10 points? It’s more about how are we going to start Brazil FP1? Make sure we get the sprint quali right.
“If we do everything right, we can score points in the sprint. And then that puts us another step ahead for main quali and race. So I think it’s very important for us to focus what’s in front of us, and that mindset, honestly, is the one let us make the right decision for the second pit stop [in Mexico].
“Imagine if we were too hung up on the podium?. I’m sure we would have lost the podium with Max coming through. I’m not sure if we could have hung on to P4 with Piastri coming through with the new tyre. So yeah, I think the mindset is very important.”
That strategy call was a difficult one to make, but it was the right one, and it showed signs of clear thought and a good process.
Bearman was running in an unexpected P3, and he had the option to stay out, run to the flag, and try to hold on.
However when cars behind pitted they not only gave themselves fresh tyres with which to fight, but also helped Max Verstappen to have a clearer run at the Haas. The team decided that a solid shot at P4 was better than risking all trying to hold on to third and potentially tumbling down the order in the closing laps. The collective head ruled the heart.
“At that point we were going for the one stop,” Komatsu explained. “So if nobody pitted, we’d have just stayed out and done the one-stop, because I think Max would have got stuck in the DRS train. He wouldn’t have been able to overtake.
“But the minute those two cars behind made a pit stop, that means Max had George [Russell] to go through, then us to go through, pick us off one by one. He would have done that. Then we already made 70% decision to box after those two cars pitted, but as soon as we heard that George is boxing as well, there was no doubt.”
Giving up P3 was the logical move: “We’d only lose position to Max, and he was going to overtake us anyway. So that wasn’t about covering for undercut, it was just about those guys are already converted, and Max was going to come through, so we had nothing to lose.
“Max has got tyre delta. That’s probably why those two guys decided we’re not going to be able to defend. So as soon as we lost that buffer of cars, it’s not going to happen. And you saw how close Max finished with Leclerc, then you saw how much behind we were compared to Leclerc.
“So imagine Max had completely taken us easily, and then how far we’re going to drop back against those cars who made a second stop? So for me, at that point, it’s what’s in front of us? What’s our objective? We’ve got to make sure we get P4.”
Bearman had put his car in a podium position with an early charge that saw him fighting with drivers in the top teams.
“That was good racing, right?,” said Komatsu. “That was amazing, out of Turn 6. That was great racing. And then first stint we had Max behind. Second stint, we had a Mercedes behind. Third stint we had a Mercedes and McLaren behind. I mean, what a privilege to be racing against those top guys.”
Bearman has had something of a messy first full season, getting into scrapes and earning a few penalties, and a good result was just what he needed.
“We’ve been working with Ollie, of course, continuously,” Komatsu noted. “And like I said so many times, his potential is no question. It’s about harnessing that, managing to build up the weekend, nurturing that talent.
“Singapore was very good. Austin was again, very good, but a couple of things, in the sprint, and then the race, incidents. In Mexico missing FP1, jumping in for FP2, bang. And then such a tight qualifying.”
“And then essentially the entire race he was fighting against three top teams, Red Bull, Mercedes, McLaren – teams we shouldn’t be fighting. So that is amazing. Track position, free air so much more important. It’s important everywhere. But here with all the temperature restrictions, it’s so important.”
There are fine margins in the midfield these days, and just missing out on Q3 consigned Ocon to a much more difficult race, hampered by traffic. The Frenchman also didn’t feel well during the weekend.
“Austin, the high speed stability, he still struggled, whereas Ollie got the most out of it,” said Komatsu. “This circuit he got everything out of it. He’s not being well this weekend, all the way through, he had a massive headache.
“You look at Esteban’s quali performance. He lost Q3 by three hundredths. He was five-hundredths behind Ollie. They’re basically the same pace all the way through this weekend.
“And then during the race, what obviously made Esteban’s race more difficult was he was stuck behind Tsunoda. During the first stint, he was very happy with the car. He was clearly quicker than Tsunoda. He had a very similar pace to Piastri, so he had the same pace as Ollie. What kills you is the traffic.”
So what then of the last four races – can Bearman and Ocon find enough points to move the team to P7 or P6?
“Honestly, I’ll be least looking forward to Vegas, because it’s a long straight again,” said Komatsu. “In low downforce we are not as competitive, but most of the circuits, like Brazil, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, should be OK. Honestly, because margins are so small, there’s no point looking too far ahead.”
Bearman stole the headlines but Ocon scored useful points in his wake
He may have been overshadowed by the superb fourth place in Mexico for Ollie Bearman, but Esteban Ocon gave his Haas team a further boost with P9, contributing to a two-point advantage over rivals Sauber.
The Frenchman was quicker than Bearman in FP2 and FP3 – admittedly the rookie had lost track time by missing FP1 – and was then an encouraging P5 in Q1, providing further proof that the Austin upgrade package had paid off.
Alas in Q2 he was wrongfooted by the presence of Yuki Tsunoda and Charles Leclerc, and ended up in a frustrated 12th on the grid.
Hit by Fernando Alonso on the first lap, he was then held up by Tsunoda, complaining of a “dangerous defence” by the Red Bull driver.
Along the way Ocon helped Bearman by briefly keeping Oscar Piastri behind, before ultimately moving up three spots from where he started.
“As a whole it’s fantastic for the team, and really shows that we had a great car pace this weekend,” he said when I asked about his race.
“I really tried to maximise the pace we had. We got unlucky with quite a lot of things. The start, I got touched, I got stuck behind Yuki who was defending like I’ve never seen!
“I defended on Oscar, trying to protect Ollie. I made him lose quite a few seconds with that fight, between four to six, so that was quite good.
“Overall, the car was working super well. I’m happy with our performance this weekend and our learning. Obviously, it didn’t smile to us, the luck, every session. But I think we can be pleased with what we did.”
The Tsunoda defence came a race after the Japanese driver upset Bearman in Austin.
“He moved under braking, that was the point,” said Ocon. “And unfortunately, he was the one also giving me a shit quali, which was not his fault, to be fair. So yeah, I always seem to catch him in the wrong place, the wrong time.
“And basically, that damaged our race, because we must have lost eight or nine seconds stuck behind him in that first stint, and I couldn’t get by. And once we cleared him, then we could stretch our legs. And it was much better. But it was too late.”
There may have been some personal frustration at his unrepresentative grid position, but Ocon was pleased with the team’s overall result.
He’s hoping that fortune goes his way in Brazil, where he made the podium last year with Alpine.
“It’s a big day, obviously,” he said. “We didn’t get the full rewards with the updates that we should have had. I think the pace for us this weekend was very good. We didn’t show everything that there was, so there was some left on the table.
“But it definitely feels good to have that behind us. And I hope it’s not only track related. We are going to see at Interlagos how it is. It’s a track that I look forward to. Good memories from last year. Obviously, I want some rain. That would be nice!”
Albon is on a difficult run just as Sainz is finding his feet at the Grove team
Mexico City has been a case of mixed fortunes for the Williams F1 team thus far, with one driver struggling and the other in a good place – but stymied by a penalty of his own making.
Alex Albon’s recent struggles continued as he encountered brake issues for much of the weekend, and come qualifying he couldn’t better a lowly 17th.
In contrast Carlos Sainz breezed through the first two sessions in P11 and P5, and then took P7 in Q3 – ahead of Oscar Piastri – before his five-place hit from the US GP clash with Kimi Antonelli dropped him down.
For Albon this was just the latest in a run of seven painful weekends that have seen him start 13th or lower.
“We’ve been chasing a lot, never feeling that comfortable with the car,” he said when I asked about his Mexican troubles. “And then the qualifying was even one of the most painful ones.
“So I can’t tell you what it was. Sliding around from Turn 1 to Turn 16, and brakes were an issue. But you should still be getting through to Q2 without the brake issue. So I can’t put my finger on it, but yeah, it was a strange, strange session.
Albon has had a run of tricky qualifying sessions of late that have seen him fail to make it out of Q1 several times.
“It feels like I’ve just dropped into a bit of a bit of a tricky spot with the car, so I need to kind of get on top of it. But it’s not been that easy.
“Generally, the pace is also not there, so we need to figure out what’s going on. But it’s not been comfortable.”
Sainz meanwhile has begun to have the upper hand on a regular basis, and in Mexico he was keen to overlook the costly grid penalty.
“Today I’m going to focus on the positives,” he said. “Because it was one of my best qualifyings of the year, if not my best Q3 lap, probably of the year. I’m honestly very happy, feeling more and more at home with the car every session that I do, knowing where to go with setup, with tyres.
“Just put there a really solid lap to fight it out with the McLaren and the Mercedes for the top seven. And we managed to get it there. So very happy with that.”
He’s not been without a few problems of his own: “In FP3 I was struggling with some issues, but we changed a couple of things in the car, and it seemed to be solved. I think we were also struggling a bit with tyres when the track temp was dropping now, but I could get my way around it.”
Sainz clearly has some good momentum at the moment.
“I think experience, in the end, is just helping me, going through all that pain in the middle of the season with tyres, feel like I’ve learned a lot of lessons that I need to apply with this car.
“And today, we were very reactive. We struggled a bit in Q1 but then we got it, everything going in in Q2 and Q3 and we managed to maximise the pace of the car.”
He added: “Very happy, very proud of the team, because we’re making huge progress through the year, and even if the pace was there at the beginning, now putting things together just shows what we can do.”
Giving up five places on Sunday will be painful, but he remains optimistic.
“Just get a good start, see what the cooling of the car allows me to do,” he said. “I’m going to be quick, like expected, probably fastest midfield car, like I’ve been all the last few races in race pace.
“But here I’ll probably be a bit more limited by the track layout, by the cooling of the car, and see what we can do to recover. I’ll do my best. And if the engine or the brakes are running too hot, I’ll just back off and have to bring it home. But I’ll push.”
Usually the hard tyre is a good race option, but it didn’t work in Austin
The US GP brought an intriguing twist on the tyre front as the C1 hard proved to be ineffective in the race, and was quickly abandoned by the three drivers who started on it.
Austin saw Pirelli introduce a double step between compounds, with the C1, C3 and C4 in play, in an attempt to mix up strategies.
Typically the hard is the starting choice of drivers down the field, especially those who are a little out of position after bad qualifying sessions. The general idea is to use its durability to run as far as possible into the race, and hope that a safety car or even a red flag creates a strategic advantage.
That didn’t happen on Sunday, as the tyre simply didn’t switch on properly. Alex Albon abandoned his hards after just seven laps, with Esteban Ocon following on lap 24, and Isack Hadjar on lap 28.
When you consider that Lance Stroll was also able to run as far as lap 28 with his softs – three steps away on the compound scale – it’s a good indication that the hard wasn’t working.
In effect Albon, Ocon and Hadjar served as a litmus test for the rest of the field. Their form plus the unexpectedly strong opening stint from Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc on the C4 convinced rivals to go to the softs from the mediums on which they had started.
Prior to the race that decision had not been clear cut, with medium/hard cited by Pirelli as the most likely option for the race.
“We were not even sure that a medium/soft could have been a feasible one-stop,” said McLaren boss Andrea Stella. “So we just discovered through the race what the strategy should have been.
“We saw very early that the hard tyre wasn’t a good tyre, because people were coming off the hard tyre, and before it looked like the medium/soft was a possibility. So in this sense, I think Ferrari had done a good job of anticipating that starting on the soft was a good idea.”
For Albon it was particularly galling as he abandoned the hards so early that he was obliged to switch to a two-stop strategy.
“A hot track, hard tyre, normally that’s a recipe for a good race,” he said when I asked him about it. “The hards worked well last year, and long runs in FP1 looked good as well. So we were kind of licking our lips a little bit when I was told there were not many cars on the hard tyre in front of us. And then at the start of the formation lap, I thought that’s a lot less grip than I expected it to be!”
A first lap clash with Gabreil Bortoleto didn’t help: “We had an incident on lap one anyway, that being said, it didn’t really change much to the race. I don’t think it was my fault or that it was Gabriel’s fault either. Then effectively we just decided to get rid of the tyre, and by doing so, almost started a pit stop back basically in our race.”
This season Esteban Ocon has made often used long opening stints to project himself into the points, and the Haas driver was hoping for more of the same in Austin. Alas this time he was left frustrated.
“I think we just gave the info – myself, Alex and Isaac – for the whole field, really, in not using that hard,” he said. “I think it was the tyre that was not working for this track. I had a good start, gained three or four positions. It was pretty good after Turn 1. But unfortunately, I lost it all after three laps. I had no pace, was sliding a lot. It was extremely difficult out there, and when we boxed into the medium, the pace was decent. It was the same as most people that were fighting ahead, but I couldn’t recover after what we lost. So we didn’t get it right this race.”
Given that Hadjar was starting in P20 after his costly Q1 crash Racing Bulls had to try something, but it didn’t pay off as he followed Ocon home in P16.
“The race I anticipated, to be honest,” said the Frenchman. “The race was obviously not amazing today, it was average. And strategy, we wanted to go long and something to happen. But it wasn’t the case. I didn’t want to start on the hard today. I knew soft/medium were just enough to make the whole race, but obviously starting P20, you want to try things that don’t really make sense. So we tried.”
Hadjar stressed that it wasn’t his choice: “If it was down to me, I would have started on another tyre. But I understand that point of view. We had to try something. We had to understand. So I wasn’t against their decision, so that was fine. At least we learned something.”
In Mexico City weekend Pirelli is once again running a two-step compound gap, this time with the C2, C4 and C5 in play. In theory it should be business as usual with the harder tyre a viable race option – it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
His lead may have shrunk but the Australian remains confident that he can come out on top
Max Verstappen has taken a whopping 64 points out of his World Championship lead over recent races, but Oscar Piastri remains confident that the balance of power will turn in his favour over the remaining races.
He may have endured a run of misfortune, but as he notes a 40-point advantage is a useful cushion, and Verstappen still has a lot of work to do.
F1 seasons tend to see an ebb of flow of both form and sheer good or bad fortune, and a campaign of total dominance like that of Verstappen in 2023 is rare – especially given how hard it is to get everything right over what is now 24 events, and with sprints included, 30 races.
A couple of clean weekends could give Piastri back the title winning momentum, and the challenge now is to join the dots rediscover the recipe that worked so well just a few weeks ago.
Austin was tricky for the Australian, and a frustrating qualifying session that saw him lacking a little pace and only P6 left him with a difficult Sunday afternoon.
He gained a spot from George Russell at the start, but thereafter there was nothing he could to improve on fifth .
“I was certainly trying my best to get any more spots if I could, but just didn’t have the pace to do anything,” he said when I asked if his race was about damage limitation. “It was trying a lot of different things, and trying to find some pace. But it was either the same pace or slower when I tried different things. So some things to try and understand.
“The balance was quite different to what I expected at the beginning of the race. And I think naturally, as the rears went away, it kind of came back to me a little bit, but the pace never really came with the balance change.”
Austin was clearly a difficult weekend for Piastri and the timing in terms of the title battle was unfortunate.
However at the sharp end of the grid it’s not easy to get it right every time, and just a few events ago it was Verstappen who was regularly left frustrated at he tried to optimise his car.
“I’ve not felt particularly comfortable the whole weekend,” said Piastri. “So definitely some things to try and understand. But I feel like with the pace I had this weekend, I did the most that I could. Qualifying was clean at least, and the race was clean, and I made up a spot. So with the pace I’ve had, that’s ultimately, all I can really ask for the moment.”
Why Austin in particular was so tricky is what Piastri now has to dig into with his team, and ensure that lessons are learned for upcoming tracks. One possibility is that McLaren’s strength on medium-speed corners was less useful at COTA.
“I don’t have any great ideas at the moment,” he said. “Qualifying was clean from my side, just the pace wasn’t there. And honestly, a pretty similar story in the race. I think this layout is quite interesting, in there’s a lot of very high-speed corners with a lot of ride content. There’s a lot of very low-speed corners. So you need to be good at both ends of the spectrum.
“And actually, there’s not a whole lot in that medium speed range. There’s a few, but there’s more outside of that range. I think also for me, it’s not been a particularly happy hunting ground my whole F1 career. In some ways, I can’t say I’m shocked that this has been a tough weekend.”
Inevitably Piastri now faces questions on how much pressure Verstappen is putting on him, but he’s quick to downplay that suggestion.
“He’s obviously there, and he’s quick,” he said. “But I think for me, the biggest focus is just trying to work out why this weekend was tough, and try and get back on the form we’ve had earlier in the season. So that’s my biggest focus. And if we can find that again, then the results will take care of themselves.”
Regarding the bigger picture of the title battle with both the Dutchman and his own team mate he said: “I’d still rather be where I am than the other two! But obviously this weekend has not been what I wanted, or what I expected. This weekend has been quite different to the previous couple.
“Baku was obviously a bit of a disaster for very different reasons, and Singapore was what it was. So I think this weekend has been kind of the odd one out compared to others. Definitely Max and Red Bull have found a lot of pace since the summer break as well. And we saw flashes of it at the start of the year, but it’s been consistent since Zandvoort.
“He’s obviously had a good run in the last few races. But ultimately, if we can find our way again, find our pace, and certainly for me, find the pace again, then I don’t have any major concerns.
“Still a long way to go in the championship. He’s obviously chased it down pretty quick, but it’s not exactly a small gap with five rounds to go. So I think if we can find our pace again then things take care of themselves.”
He remains confident that it will all come together in his favour,
“I’ve been in fights that were as close, or at this point, even closer than what they are now,” he said. “So I’ve got the evidence for myself that things can still turn out well, and I still fully believe that I can win the championship.
“This weekend has obviously been tough, and the gap has come down a little bit in the last few weekends. But again, performance is what’s going to win you a championship, not just looking at points and seeing if you can increase it or decrease it. The faster you go, the more points you’re going to score.”
Adam Cooper F1 