Tag Archives: McLaren

October 20, 2025 · 2:26 pm

Why Russell believes that Pirelli’s current F1 tyres create “bad racing”

The Mercedes driver highlighted a lack of overtaking in the US GP

George Russell has expressed his frustration with Pirelli’s current Formula 1 tyres after a US GP that saw little overtaking.

While Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc had a spectacular fight for second place – helped by the two drivers being on different strategies – there was little action involving those who were on similar tyres.

Pirelli’s hopes of adding interest to the race with a double step between compounds in Austin didn’t pay off, with those who started on the C1 hard abandoning it early, having signalled to the rest of the pitlane that it was not a good race tyre. Everyone thus went from mediums to softs.

On the first lap Russell dropped from P4 on the grid to P6, and he remained there behind Oscar Piastri for the duration, despite having demonstrated in the Saturday sprint that he had the pace with which to challenge Max Verstappen.

“I made a good start,” said Russell when I asked about his loss of two places. “But when Max covered Lando, I thought the normal thing to do would be for him to go to the outside to protect his position. And in turn, he didn’t.

“He just stayed behind Max. He got overtaken, and it blocked me in, and then I got overtaken. So that was quite frustrating. But I had the feeling before the race, wherever you finish Turn One is where you’re going to finish. And unfortunately, this turned out to be the case.”

Russell made it clear why he couldn’t make progress after losing a couple of spots.

“I think I if I came out of Turn 1 in P4, due to Charles’s strategy, maybe I could have finished P3,” he said. “But the thing is now, when there’s no tyre degradation, there’s no tyre delta between the fastest car and the slowest car in the top six, there’s maybe two-tenths or three-tenths.

“And every track we go to, you need at least half a second to overtake, so that’s why you’re not seeing any overtakes. And I don’t even remember the last two-stop race, to be honest.”

However Russell was reluctant to blame Pirelli, acknowledging how difficult it is for the tyre supplier to tick all the boxes.

“I think Pirelli get a hard time no matter what,” he said. “If there’s lots of tyre degradation people say it’s not real, the drivers can’t push, we have to manage, we don’t like that. Then when there’s no tyre degradation, we say it’s a boring race. They don’t seem to be able to win in any case.

“So realistically, you want a tyre that you can push full gas, but it doesn’t go the whole race. If you could choose for the tyre, it’s a tyre, you go flat out, but after 15 laps, it falls off a cliff, and you have to do a two or three-stop race.

“And ideally, the soft tyre there’s 12 laps, the medium tyre does 15 laps, and the hard tyre does 20 laps, and then it falls off the cliff. But that is a lot easier said than done. As I said, Pirelli get a very hard time. They do their best. They have given us a substantially better tyre. This tyre is very good, but it causes bad racing.”

He added: “All of the races recently been one stops, and even from the sprint race yesterday, the Ferrari couldn’t overtake Carlos. Years ago, that would not have been the case. I don’t really know, but I think it’s just lack of tyre deg.”

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October 8, 2025 · 9:44 am

Why Leclerc feels like a “passenger” as Ferrari form continues to drop away

A poor weekend for the Maranello team in Singapore highlighted how far behind it has fallen

For Charles Leclerc the Singapore GP weekend was one of frustration, and coming on the back of similar disappointment in Baku – another street track where the Ferrari driver arrived with some optimism – it was not easy to take.

Having qualified seventh he had a good start from the favoured odd-numbered side of the grid, passing Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Antonelli to take fifth.

However like his team mate he was dealing with brake issues almost from the start, although they weren’t quite so dire.

Nevertheless in the latter stages of the race he was not able to keep a charging Antonelli behind, and thus he dropped back to a finish sixth.

The 46-second margin to the winning Mercedes of George Russell, and not much less to the Red Bull and McLaren that completed the top three, was as perhaps even more painful that the actual position.

“From lap eight, basically it was all about managing those brakes,” he said when I asked him about his race.

“I think everybody has to manage to a certain extent on a track like this, but I think we were on the worst side of things, and that makes it extremely difficult. I mean, our whole race was very tricky.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have the race car to fight with the guys in front. McLaren always had the same gap on us compared to the beginning of the year. Red Bull did a step from Monza and are the same level of McLaren. Mercedes now is at the same level of McLaren and Red Bull.

“And then there’s us. It’s not easy, obviously, because you want to fight for better positions, but at the moment, it just feels like we are kind of passengers to the car, and we cannot extract much more.”

There’s more than air of resignation about Leclerc at the moment. He’s accepted that the situation won’t change given the lack of developments in the pipeline as like others Maranello focusses all its energies on 2026.

“I don’t think there will be anything special,” he said. “The picture we’ve seen this weekend is going to be what the rest of the season looks like for us.”

It looks increasingly like Ferrari will end this year without a win, other than Hamilton’s success in the Shanghai sprint.

Leclerc has been through some tough times, but this one hurts given the optimism heading into the season.

“I wouldn’t describe it as the most difficult,” he said. “I think every time you don’t fight for wins, it’s difficult. But obviously coming from a year like last year, where you are fighting for the constructors’ World Championship, and then you come here with high expectations, you’re below your expectations from the beginning, and you don’t even see a progression throughout the year, it’s not easy.

“It takes a lot of energy, but that doesn’t demotivate me. It motivates me, if anything, much more to try and turn the situation around. But it’s very tough, especially after a race like today, where you are not even fighting for a podium, and you have to manage lots of issues. It’s just not a nice feeling.”

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October 5, 2025 · 6:51 am

Bearman makes up for Baku frustration with Singapore Q3 charge

The Haas driver will start from an encouraging P9 on the Singapore grid

Qualifying in Singapore saw an excellent effort from Oliver Bearman as the Haas Formula 1 team driver secured P9, providing some redemption after disappointment in Azerbaijan.

In Baku the team was very quick throughout practice. Indeed the rookie was an impressive fifth on Friday and eighth in FP3, benefiting from having done the race the previous year.

However things fell apart in qualifying and after tapping the wall in Q1 and again in Q2 he was left stranded in 15th on the grid.

Singapore was always going to be a tricky one as it was a track Bearman didn’t know. He was a solid 12th on Friday, but then things really came together in qualifying as he made Q3 for only the third time this year, having been 10th at Suzuka and eighth at Silverstone until a red flag penalty sent him down the grid.

This time at least he gets to start from his rightful place, and he’s on the clean side.

“Definitely happy,” he said when I asked him about his session. “Yesterday I was not the fastest, but I think I was building up well to this track, which is certainly a tough one. And it’s the first time that I’ve had to learn a street track for a while, because you do all the other ones in F2, but this one you don’t.

“Having slept on it, coming back, I felt like I was a bit more on it. And straight away from the first lap of P3 some corners that I couldn’t quite figure out yesterday were clicking, which is normally the case for myself.

“And then quali just went well. We had a clean session, every lap was improving, the car felt good. When the car feels like that underneath you it’s easy to get lap time out of it, because it’s very predictable.

“It’s a good feeling, considering where we started, at least with my confidence level and stuff, I think we did a good job.”

Bearman certainly deserves a bit of good fortune after facing a few disappointments with grid penalties and the like this year.

“It’s been a long time coming as well,” he said. “In Baku I think we were on for a result very similar to this one, until I got caught out by the wind. So it’s been a few races now that I think we’ve been really up there.

“In Monza, I was a hair away from Q3 as well. So qualifying has been going pretty well recently. I’m glad that we finally have a good result to really show for it, and hopefully we can translate that into a good race.”

He added: “Of course, without the wind, everything is much more stable and consistent. So that makes life much, much easier.

“Every corner feels the same every lap, rather than Baku, which was a question mark. But that was a thing in my head, and probably part of the reason I was a bit slow yesterday, just building up step-by-step.”

He’s already in the top 10 at a race which usually sees some attrition, and now he has to make sure he’s not part of that.

“We’re starting P9, so we don’t have to have such a crazy race,” he said. “Of course, looking forward, but very aware that people can undercut.

“And strategy is quite important here, you can’t really overtake on track, so I think it’s just about covering all of the bases, and hopefully we can have a good one tomorrow.”

If Bearman was happy after qualifying his Haas team mate Esteban Ocon definitely wasn’t. Having been P7 and declared Friday in Singapore his best opening day of the season the Frenchman wasn’t happy with changes for FP3.

He improved the car but a seatbelt issue and then the yellow flag for Pierre Gasly’s stricken car cost him in Q1, and left him a frustrated 19th.

“FP3 was slightly worse than Friday for sure, but we managed to get back to a sensible place at the end of FP3,” he said when I asked about his trouble. “And we were pretty decent.

“In qualifying two issues in two runs, the biggest one being the yellow flag. I tried not to lose too much time, which already is not the thing that you should do on the yellow flag, but I tried to.

“It was a slow corner, so as soon as you release the throttle a little bit, you lose a lot of time, because it’s a lot of time spent there. And I lost three-tenths. The three-tenths was enough to go to Q2 already, and we could have built from there with two more sets of tyres.

“In the first run, an issue that came out of nowhere, that didn’t happen the whole year, the belt, I don’t know, it got clipped somewhere, and I basically couldn’t brake properly on the whole first lap.”

He added: “It was fine on the out lap, and basically, I don’t know what happened on the crotch belt, but on the first braking, when I braked, it completely moved. And I got it exactly in the wrong place… As you can imagine, I couldn’t brake properly.”

After his Azerbaijan weekend fell apart the last thing Ocon needed was more disappointment in Singapore.

“I think Baku was more something that was related to the car in terms of braking, where we struggled, quite a lot of front locking and stuff. I think here was slightly better.

“Even though it wasn’t perfect. I managed to get away with it. We should have been through that’s it, if there was no yellow flag. There’s no rocket science.”

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September 29, 2025 · 3:27 pm

Can Antonelli carry his strong Baku form into Singapore and beyond?

After a tricky spell the Mercedes rookie bounced back with P4 in Azerbaijan

After frustration and costly Friday offs in Zandvoort and Monza and a jarring “underwhelming” review from his boss Kimi Antonelli was in dire need of a troublefree F1 weekend.

With perfect timing he got exactly that in of all places Baku, a tricky venue that caught out many big names over the course of the three days of the Azerbaijan GP.

The Italian qualified a solid fourth, just ahead of unwell Mercedes team mate George Russell, and then logged the same result in the race. Ultimately he lost out to the late-stopping Russell, which was frustrating, but he gained a spot back by passing Liam Lawson just after they had both pitted.

He subsequently pulled away from the Kiwi, who gave him a hand by keeping Yuki Tsunoda, Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton behind. At a venue where it’s so easy to get it wrong overall it was solid performance, even allowing for the fact that he already knew it from F2.

“Not even a discussion, Monza was pretty poor,” said Antonelli when asked to compare Baku with the previous event. “This track is quite a bit more difficult. And there was no margin of error.

“It was very intense, the pace was very high, and driving-wise, I did a couple of mistakes. But also, fair to say, was the first time in Baku with F1.

“And also, we didn’t do any long running practice. So it was a bit of a discovery, of course, for everyone as well. But still a much better race than Monza.

“It’s been a difficult period and European season, and after all the criticism, and difficult moments, we managed to do a good result. And now is the important thing is to do this consistently.”

Had Antonelli been able to get past Carlos Sainz and claim third it would have been a perfect day, but nevertheless it was a good outcome at a track where there’s so little margin for error.

“Well, it’s a little bit disappointing because the podium was so close,” he said when I asked him about the race. “The hard tyre felt very good, quite a bit better than the medium. And the deg on the hard was minimum, and every lap was just getting better and better.

“So it was a bit of a shame, because I ended up being overcut. But still, I think it was decent performance.

“I was hoping for the podium, to be honest, because I almost got into the DRS of Carlos, but then I started to struggle a bit with the dirty air, especially in the second sector, and the tyres started to suffer a little bit.

“But still a decent performance for the team, because we gained quite a few points in the constructors.’ And now we will try to carry this momentum into Singapore as well.”

The pass on Lawson, who ran out of battery at the end of the straight having used it to defend earlier in the lap, was a useful boost.

“Yeah, I could see when he was using the energy and when he wasn’t,” said Antonelli. “I was struggling quite a bit on traction. I was getting close end of sector one and halfway through sector two.

“But then in all those critical traction phases I was struggling, and just couldn’t get the momentum. And only on hard, I had quite a bit of pace advantage, and I could get past.

“But it’s a shame, because I lost quite a bit of time behind him, especially in the first stint, and probably the outcome could have been different.”

The main thing was that he had pleased Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, who was so clearly disappointed following the Italian GP.

“It was a really good rebound after Monza,” said the Austrian. “He had such a difficult spell with the European races. And coming in here with a with a solid P4, running in the front group, that’s something to continue to build on and consolidate and then score more good weekends until the end of the year.”

It was intriguing to learn from Mercedes engineering boss Andrew Shovlin in Baku that due to an issue with the Brackley simulator Antonelli had not been able to conduct his usual preparations for Zandvoort and Monza, which perhaps contributed to his Friday mistakes at both of those venues.

Shovlin also noted that Mercedes has continued to hone Antonelli’s sim programme, and that in turn may have helped to boost his Baku performance.

Can the youngster carry on the good work in Singapore, a track he has yet to sample outside the virtual world, and on to other upcoming venues – most of which he already has some experience of? It will be fascinating to see.

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September 25, 2025 · 10:33 am

Has Lawson’s Baku charge helped to secure his Racing Bulls future?

Fifth place – ahead of Yuki Tsunoda – was the best result of the Kiwi’s career to date

It’s not been an easy season for Liam Lawson, demoted from Red Bull Racing and then largely overshadowed of late by his Racing Bulls team mate Isack Hadjar.

While the Frenchman appears to have all but guaranteed his graduation to the senior team next season Lawson finds himself in a fight to retain his seat in a three-into-two scenario with Yuki Tsunoda and Arvid Lindblad.

Logic suggests that if the F2 driver is promoted – and not everyone in the camp is convinced that he is ready – then Lawson is the favourite to stay on. That would leave Tsunoda without a race seat, and potentially facing a future as reserve – unless Honda helps him to a third driver role at Aston Martin.

Nothing is fixed however. Thus a strong performance from Lawson in Baku that saw him held off a train of cars led by none other than Tsunoda came with perfect timing, and his fifth place will have done him a lot of good.

A great lap in Q3 saw him briefly second on the grid behind Carlos Sainz before Max Verstappen pipped them both.

Third was still a great outcome, but he knew that holding onto it with the two Mercedes immediately behind, and the two McLarens and two Ferraris further back and potentially able to make progress if the race turned into a safety car fest, was always going to be difficult.

In the end Lawson lost out only to the two Brackley cars as George Russell and Kimi Antonelli pushed him down to fifth. It was a decent result, and the confident way in which he kept a pack of potentially faster cars at bay would have done him a lot of good in the Red Bull camp.

“I don’t think we had the speed today to finish on the podium, as much as I would have loved it,” he said when I asked about his race. “And when you start there, obviously part of you tries to make it possible, or feels like it’s possible, and we tried everything today.

“I think we made the right call on pit stops. Tried to cover Kimi, but we just didn’t have the speed today. Part of it’s frustrating, but I think looking at it as a big picture, it’s a great result to finish fifth, and we’ll take that going forward.”

He initially stayed ahead of Antonelli when he came out the pits a couple of laps about the Mercedes rookie had stopped, but the Italian got by him on the straight at the end of the lap.

“I ran out of energy,” he acknowledged. “So frustrating! You see the bar, and you get to the straight, and you know that halfway down the straight you’re going to have nothing left.

“So it’s something I learned from and I made sure that when the next pack of cars came, it never happened. I made sure through the lap that I always had the energy.

“So yeah, big learning point for me in the race. But I think realistically, he [Antonelli] finished 10 seconds or something in front of me, so I don’t think I would have kept him behind for 30-odd laps. It was hard enough to keep the other group behind me.”

Staying ahead of Tsunoda, who had Lando Norris, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc lined up behind him, was far from easy. The Japanese driver had run the opposite strategy to Lawson, having started on the hard.

“For sure, he’s on a fresh set of tyres, on a medium and a grippier tyre, and honestly, I was preparing for him to end up catching me quicker, and I expected him to be faster. Obviously, looking at Max today, they had a great race, and the car looks good.

“So I think when I saw him come out on a better tyre, I was expecting him to catch me faster. But I think our sector three was strong this weekend, where he needed to be. And as I said, for that mistake with Kimi, I made sure that I never ran out of energy again.”

The fact that of all people it was Tsunoda leading the chase was an intriguing twist, especially after the two of them collided at the previous race in Monza, leaving Yuki with damage that compromised his race.

However Lawson insists that their battle for a 2026 seat was not on his mind.

“It’s probably easier to look in and think like that, but when you’re in the car I know the position I’m in. Actually to be honest, I had no idea what position I was in until we crossed the line! But I knew we were in a decent position because of all the cars that were behind me.

“So naturally, you’re just trying to keep the car behind. It was the same with Leclerc. It was the same with Kimi at the start. And at the end of the race obviously, I’m going to try to take a bit more risk to keep it there. So I don’t really think too much like that.”

Fifth was the best result of Lawson’s career to date, and while Tsunoda also enjoyed his strongest race of 2025 in sixth, the Kiwi is looking like a better long-term prospect to stay in the Red Bull family. Hadjar may have quite rightly stolen the headlines, but Lawson has also been a solid top 10 performer at most races since Monaco.

“It’s extremely positive,” he said. “I think the main thing is our car has been consistently good across the board at all sorts of different tracks. So that’s something that is very positive for us.

“And going forward, obviously we need to try and keep that consistency, and if we can just find a little bit more where we’re fighting for very good results. And I think ultimately, today, we didn’t quite have the speed for Williams, but to finish where we are, if we can consistently do that, it’s very strong for us.”

He added: “It’s a consistent car. I think it’s something that we can definitely be proud of that across the board at all sorts of different tracks it’s consistently fast. Doesn’t mean it’s easy to drive, but the speed is in the car, and that’s been something we’ve been able to utilise across the season so far.”

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September 21, 2025 · 5:19 am

Frustrated Leclerc hopes to “turn situation around” after crash ends Baku pole run

The Ferrari driver ended his qualifying session in the barriers and will start P10

Charles Leclerc has a special relationship with Baku, as his run of four pole positions for Ferrari at the street track attests.

This time around he couldn’t find that magic recipe, and while he was second fastest to team mate Lewis Hamilton on what looked like a promising Friday for the Italian team, he wasn’t entirely happy.

The following day his qualifying session ended with a heavy shunt early in Q3, consigning him to P10 on the grid.

With Hamilton two places behind a weekend that started with a sniff of victory has turned sour for the Maranello camp.

“Obviously frustrated, because it’s a track that I normally enjoy, and where things flow quite naturally,” said Leclerc when I asked him about the session.

“But it’s been the complete opposite the whole weekend, and I’ve just been struggling a lot to find the limits of the car and to find the feeling with the car.

“So I knew going into qualifying that it was a bit of an uphill work, and I’ve changed quite a lot the car going into qualifying, and I felt a lot better. And Q1 and all the laps on the soft felt much better. And then we went on a medium, which we had kept because we thought it was the best tyre.

“And today, with these temperatures, it was just impossible for me to switch them on. And difficult conditions or not, I don’t think that this is the reason. I think we were just lacking a lot of pace on the medium.

“I was probably seven or eight tenths off before the mistake, and I was pushing like crazy. So something felt off there, and we’ll look into it. But yeah, it was difficult.”

Although there were spots of rain in the air much like Oscar Piastri – who crashed a little later – Leclerc didn’t want to blame the conditions, noting that Carlos Sainz did a lap that was ultimately good enough for the front row.

“When you look at Carlos’s lap at that time, when you look at others right around me, I don’t think so. There were some spits of rain, but I don’t think it was actually wetting the track. So I don’t think that this is an excuse or whatsoever.

“I tried to judge the grip I would have, even though it was very difficult to judge because I had very little grip from the beginning of the lap with these tyres again, but misjudged it.”

Leclerc’s disappointment with the medium tyre was intriguing given that Hamilton was frustrated that he hadn’t had a chance to use it when he didn’t get a quick enough lap in on the softs in Q2.

“I had the same point of view as Lewis,” Leclerc noted. “I thought I had an advantage going into quali with the mediums, and then I put them on, and I kind of regretted thinking I had an advantage, because it was extremely tricky.

“So we’ll look at what did change on track in order for it to be so difficult, you look Q2 first run with my medium, I nearly didn’t make it through Q2, I went long quite a few times. It was just extremely digital, the grip, and with a soft I didn’t have quite that feeling.”

If Sunday’s race is anything like qualifying safety cars or even red flags could create strategic opportunities, and even from P10 Leclerc could yet earn a decent result.

“I know that obviously we can still have a great race from where we start,” he said. “And yeah, my target will be to look forward tomorrow, and do a great race. We’ve normally had very good Saturdays and very bad Sundays here, I hope to turn the situation around this weekend.”

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September 18, 2025 · 2:21 pm

Why nothing has changed at McLaren despite fuss over Monza place swap

Why nothing has changed at McLaren despite fuss over Monza place swap

The place swap between McLaren team mates Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris at Monza created something of a storm on social media, and while the former wasn’t happy at the time, it was pretty clear that there was some logic to the move.

The problem was that there was too much focus on the poor pit stop – which as Piastri related on the radio should be seen as part of racing – and less on the fact that the Australian had been given the more favourable first stop in essence to protect him from a potential undercut by Charles Leclerc.

That plus the fact that Norris had given his blessing to the change of pitstop priority on the basis that he didn’t lose his position meant that there were a lot of factors at play.

Indeed after internal discussions to clarify why it was done there has been no dramatic change of policy or suggestion that it won’t happen again, should the same (unlikely) circumstances arise.

On Thursday in Baku Norris was adamant that it was business as usual in the Woking camp.

“All exactly as it was,” he said. “I mean, some things had to be clarified. There was some things at that point that I didn’t know about – the undercut from Leclerc, things I didn’t know in my post-race interviews at the time that also played a part in the reasoning of the decision that the team made.

“And the fact it was not just a pit stop which made that decision, it was more so the other things. So I mean clarification, but nothing from the fact that we both agreed with it after, and accepted as that’s what we agree as a team.”

Norris was keen to downplay the role of the team in intervening to keep things fair in the battle between the two drivers.

“Honestly, I think there’s a lot less than you think. This was one of the first things in quite a long time, and like I just said, it wasn’t the fact I had a slow pit stop which was the reasoning.

“It was more the fact of the changing of positions, the sequencing of things, which was the same as – I know a very different time – but the same as Hungary last year.

“That was actually the more the reasoning of it, combined with the pit stop, which then made the decision. So there’s not been many things apart from that.

“Of course, they try and keep things fair between us, but it’s not been many things where they’ve had to actually get involved and do anything to help one or the other.”

Norris insisted that in essence he and his title rival are still free to race, despite the Monza intervention leading some folk to believe otherwise.

“Of course, how things then look because of something that happened last weekend gives everyone a very different opinion or oversight on things.

“But if you make it as simple as and kind of how we done it is as simple as what happened in Hungary last year, was a very similar thing, that the driver in the lead has priority in a pit stop sequence. That’s exactly what we were entering last weekend, that things don’t change.

“But the fact is, as soon as we just re-established the position, Oscar could race me freely, still had the advantage of starting basically on my gearbox and trying to race me. So he still gained overall.

“But otherwise, we’ve been free every time to race. It’s just like one lap of a pit sequence is when the lead driver always has priority, and that’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it will continue to be. But otherwise we’re free to race.”

With eight races to go and deficit of 31 points Norris faces a massive challenge in the coming weeks unless Piastri has a non-finish or some kind of disaster.

If Norris beats in a one-two finish in the next four races (and the Austin sprint) he can in theory close the gap to just two points over those four weekends – but clearly doing that will be nigh on impossible given the way form has swing back and forth between the two of them.

However he remains confident that there are tracks coming up where he could have the advantage.

“I mean there’s a couple, when I just look at my results from last year,” he said when I asked where he though he might be ahead. “Singapore was one of my best last season, and others. But Oscar has also improved this season, so even if I had the biggest advantage last year, in some ways, I put it behind me, and I have to reset and just look ahead to another season, another weekend.

“There’s certainly some I feel better at than others. At the same time, the car has changed this year, and certainly some of my feelings that I had last year and my confidence level that I had at tracks last year is, is not the same as what I had this year. So that’s taken into account too.

“But there’s not been either one of us dominating at any kind of weekend this season. So I don’t expect any greatness. I just expect close battles, and therefore every little thing is important at the minute, and that’s also what I need, just to keep working hard.”

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September 12, 2025 · 12:20 pm

Why Wolff believes that underwhelming Antonelli has to get rid of “ballast”

The Italian’s rookie season has seen more lows than highs so far

For Kimi Antonelli the Zandvoort/Monza Formula 1 double header could hardly have gone any worse.

At both venues the teenager lost a practice session to a mistake, and then in both of the races he picked up a time penalty following an incident with a rival.

While team mate George Russell logged a fourth and a fifth place across the two weekends Antonelli’s only contribution to the Mercedes total in what is a closely-contested constructors’ battle was a ninth in the Dutch event.

Indeed since his solid third place and maiden podium in Canada back in June he’s scored just three points in six events, leaving his total at 66 compared to the 194 of Russell.

Obviously he’s a rookie, and as such there’s some leeway and a honeymoon period. Mistakes are inevitable, and part of the learning process. However Miami qualifying aside there arguably have been few signs of the sort of stellar performances that the true future greats typically show in their very early days.

Meanwhile fellow rookies Isack Hadjar and Gabriel Bortoleto have both done an eye-catching job of late, and both men appear to be making progress each week, maximising their potential and making few errors.

It’s true that it’s easier to shine in an underdog team when you don’t face the sort of intense spotlight that Antonelli is under. Nevertheless both have shown the world what a newcomer can do with a 2025 car.

Monza was particularly poignant in that it came a year after Antonelli’s infamous FP1 gaffe at Parabolica in his first public appearance with Mercedes, which was followed the next day by confirmation of his race seat for 2025.

Going off in FP2 on the anniversary – just a week after a similar mistake in FP1 at Zandvoort – put him on the back foot. It didn’t impress team boss Toto Wolff, who gave a remarkably candid summary after the flag.

“Underwhelming this weekend,” said the Austrian. “You can’t put the car in the gravel bed and then expect to be [up] there. And all of the race was underwhelming.

“It doesn’t change anything in my support and confidence in his future, because I believe it’s going to be very, very good. But today, he was underwhelming.”

Losing a practice session is always tough for a rookie. Precious mileage cannot be reclaimed, and it means that the programme for the rest of the weekend is compromised.

Antonelli still qualified a decent P7 at Monza, just behind Russell, and it looked like he would make amends.

He gained a further spot from Hamilton’s penalty, but a bad start dropped him to P10 on the first lap. His tentative progress thereafter hinted at him trying to be super careful not get into any more scrapes after his clumsy contact with Charles Leclerc in Zandvoort.

That didn’t work out as he picked up a penalty for leaning a little too hard on Alex Albon. In the end it only cost him one place, and he dropped from eighth to ninth in the final classification.

“Apparently, I pushed him off track,” he said of Albon. “So I don’t know, to be honest, I need to look at it. But yeah, it’s a shame. But I think the race was compromised with the start. I got wheelspin straight away and just lost a lot of places.

“I’m happier about quali pace, which was strong, just a shame with the start that I did a mistake and lost a lot of places. So just need to work on that, and try to do better in Baku.”

He admitted that the FP2 error had been costly: “As I said, quali pace was better, which was good. That was much closer as well to George, but in the race… I didn’t do long runs in FP2 because of my mistake, so I wasn’t really prepared for the race.

“When you miss a full practice, especially in FP2, which is usually is quite important, because it’s where, also the track is the closest in terms of time and temperature to qualifying.

“FP1, yeah you do long runs, but the track usually is quite green, so the deg is a bit different, while FP2 is more representative. And just didn’t do the long run in the most important session.

“And I did a long run, FP3, but it was with soft tyres, which was quite irrelevant. So yeah, that was penalising, mostly for the race.”

“Looking to the next few races, it’s going to be important to have a clean weekend from FP1 all the way to FP3, and in order to be ready for quali and then races.”

Wolff agrees that that is just what Antonelli needs, although both upcoming tracks in Baku and Singapore are far from easy.

At the moment the problem seems to be that he’s overdriving, trying so hard not to make mistakes that inevitably they happen anyway.

“I think a clean weekend also means almost not to carry too much trauma, previous mistakes, into the next session, into the next weekend,” said Wolff. “Because that is luggage.

“You’re not going attack the corner hard if you’ve been off there before and finished your session, or maybe you’re not attacking a driver that you know should not be in your way. Like Gasly, Kimi shouldn’t even lose even a second to Gasly.”

So what’s the answer?

“I think just freeing him up,” said Wolff. “He’s a great driver. He has this unbelievable ability and natural talent. He’s a racer, it’s all there. But we need to get rid of the ballast.”

He still has eight races and a third of the season to go. He’s raced in Baku and Doha in F2, and tested current or TPC F1 cars at several of the remaining venues, but there are others that will be new to him – although ironically some of his best weekends this year have been at places he didn’t know. It’s now in his hands to show the sort of spark that Wolff and Mercedes expect.

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September 10, 2025 · 2:55 pm

How Alonso was left frustrated after Aston issue cost priceless points at Monza

A decent top 10 finish was on the cards when Alonso retired at Monza

The battle between the six F1 teams behind the regular top four frontrunners is incredibly tight this year, and the rewards for getting it right are substantial.

Thus any retirement that costs priceless points is inevitably frustrating, and that was certainly the case for Fernando Alonso at Monza.

Having surprised himself and the team by making Q3 and starting eighth (helped by Lewis Hamilton’s penalty) the Spaniard had a solid run in the first part of the race.

He was running eighth when he jumped protégé Gabriel Bortoleto in the pits, but shortly afterwards he slowed and headed to the pits after a spectacular suspension failure on the exit kerbs at Ascari.

Such retirements are rare, especially 16 races into the season when cars have gone through a lot of punishment and usually any fragility would have been exposed. And like everyone else Alonso had clattered over the same kerbs many times over the course of the weekend.

It was particularly galling for the former World Champion in that it happened while a decent score was on the cards, and it wasn’t the first time in 2025 that points have gone astray for him, following a PU issue in Monaco, while he also had brake problems early in the Chinese GP.

“We’re using that kerb every lap, basically,” said Alonso when I asked him about the Monza stoppage. “Only in our car we had the suspension problem. And always these things happen when we have a scoring race.

“We had some races that we were dead last and nothing happened, like Spa that we are running one lap behind the leaders.

“Monaco, I think I was P6 retired with an engine problem. Today, I was P7 and I retired with a suspension problem. So yeah, there are dozens of points that the luck probably was not with us.”

He added: “It’s frustrating that I should have maybe 20-30 points more than what I have not down to me. But yes, it’s the way it is, unfortunately. I’m getting used to it.”

That total might have been a little exaggerated, but he made his point. He also didn’t really see the strong performance prior to his retirement as an upside.

“I don’t need to have good performance,” he said. “I need the points, and the performances are always good, and I don’t remember having a very bad performance, on the team or on my side in 22 seasons. So it’s not really important.”

As of Sunday night the team had no explanation for the failure, with the relevant parts obviously being rush back to Silverstone for proper analysis.

“No, we didn’t see anything,” said Mike Krack. “It would have been easy to say he went wide or something, but we didn’t see anything unusual. And that is why I think it’s important to do this kind of analysis properly.

“It’s easy to point at the driver, it’s easy to point any kind of incident. You need to stay factual in such situations.

“What we had to do is tell Lance to be careful in that area. And that is all you can do in such a situation, make sure that the sister car goes a little bit careful, even if it’s not related. But that is something that you have to do. And then you have to do the analysis properly afterwards.”

Krack conceded that there have been issues that didn’t necessarily reach the public domain related to the loadings that current cars go through.

“With this generation of cars, we have seen issues that we have never had,” he said. “A lot is also because the cars are touching a lot more with the floor.

“So we have seen in other areas failures that we have never had before, not that they have led to DNF, but where we never had anything like that, because the cars are running so stiff and so low, so there is a different loading on the car.”

Alonso might not have been too excited about the performance but until his retirement it had been a well-executed race for driver and team, and while he might have lost seventh to late stopper Alex Albon he should have been at least eighth.

Those points would have provided an extra cushion over the likes of Racing Bulls and Sauber, both of those chasing teams having also gained from the Aston stopping.

“I think the strategy went really well, because everything went to plan, more or less,” said Krack.

“We know Gabriel in front was very fast on the straight, so we could take his DRS. We were dreaming a bit to replicate the Austria race, where we were in the DRS of Liam [Lawson] all the time. And it worked out pretty well.

“I think we called at the right moment to box, managed to pass Gabriel, and it would have been quite a strong finish, I think. We had a little bit the upper hand in the beginning on the hard.

“I don’t know how we would have gone obviously later on in the race. Albon was fast, I think it would have been difficult [to beat him], but I think we could have finished in the points.”

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September 8, 2025 · 8:49 am

Why every race is still a Groundhog Day for Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari

He had a good run at Monza but Hamilton admits that each track still requires a reset

Monza was always going to be a difficult weekend for Lewis Hamilton given the five-place grid penalty he picked up in Zandvoort, and dropping back from a decent fifth in qualifying to P10 on the grid was incredibly frustrating.

He gained spots from Kimi Antonelli and Yuki Tsunoda at the start and soon worked his way up to P6, and while George Russell was in his sights, that would be as good as it would get.

It was a solid first Monza weekend in Ferrari colours – blue rather than red for marketing reasons as it turned out – and it appeared that the progress seen at the previous race is continuing.

“I had a really good start, and I had to lift just after the start, because it was such a good start,” he said when I asked about his race. “And then I got kind of squeezed in between two cars.

“Other than that, I positioned the car really nicely, and I think made my way forwards. And I think I could have got fifth today. I think I was 1.5 seconds behind George. We should have tried to undercut them, but when we missed that opportunity, I was miles behind.”

Hamilton made it clear that he is making progress, and that the SF-25 is feeling less alien to him.

“I think this weekend built a lot on my confidence with the car,” he said. “Definitely, I’m still not 100% comfortable in the car. And I think ultimately that’s driving kind of an alien driving style with a car that I’m not 100% comfortable with.

“But I think overall, our performance was fairly decent. I think we obviously don’t have the pace of the cars much further ahead. So competing for top three is off the cards for a while, but we keep pushing, trying to extract more.”

The challenge he faces is that 16 races into the season every weekend still represents a kind of Groundhog Day reset as he had to adapt to the behaviour of the car at each venue, and forget the muscle memory that he built up over his years at Mercedes.

“I know I’ve been driving this car all year long, but in my previous years, I was a part of a car that you’re evolving over time, and you were comfortable with it,” he said.

“You know the driving style, inside and out. And I think this year, I’m arriving at the track and having to apply this new driving style that that is still alien to me. It doesn’t feel natural to a car. That’s how it likes to work.

“So through the race, I’m just getting better and better and faster and faster, and I’m unlocking in that and gaining confidence bit by bit, but that’s not there early on in the weekend to really be able to really harness it.

“If we were to do qualifying now, I think I would have been quite a bit quicker, but that’s all part of it. So hopefully next year it’s not a driving style that’s alien to me. Hopefully can go back a little bit towards what I was used to.”

With its low downforce and big braking areas Monza is a track where drivers needs that confidence, and the next venue in Baku – where there’s so little margin for error – is even more so. Hamilton agrees that it’ll be back to square one again on the Friday.

“I’m going to go there again starting at a track where I raced a different car for many years. I think the car feels better here, for example, it’s better in low speed.

“And I think the next race will be quite similar. I’ll start kind of on that back foot and build up through the weekend. I’m sure Sunday, last lap, the last race, will still be the most comfortable.”

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