McLaren surpassed even its own pre-season expectations in 2024, taking its first Formula 1 constructors’ championship title for 26 years.Whilst the team clearly had a couple of major waypoints in its development cycle that improved the general operating envelope of the MCL38, a standout feature of its campaign was how it honed its car to the varying circuit characteristics.These updates …Keep reading
Alpine Formula 1 team boss Oliver Oakes says the team improving its fortunes over the second half of the 2024 season has shown that streamlining its Enstone operation was the right way to go.Hitech junior team chief Oakes was brought in alongside advisor Flavio Briatore by Renault boss Luca de Meo to help steady the ship at Alpine after a rocky first half of its 2024 campaign.As part of De …Keep reading
While Formula 1 continues to make good gains in improving its sustainability, one of the most obvious areas of wastage clearly still needs addressing.With the quest to reduce environmental impact being all about marginal gains rather than delivering a silver bullet solution, it is quite remarkable that F1 finds itself left with so many unused tyres over the course of a season.The reality …Keep reading
Valtteri Bottas has been re-signed by Mercedes to be its reserve driver for the 2025 Formula 1 season, after he missed out on keeping his seat at Sauber.The Finnish racer scored 10 grand prix wins for the Silver Arrows squad in a 100-race stint between 2017 and 2021 when he was partnered with Lewis Hamilton.He was dropped from the team ahead of 2022 as team boss Toto Wolff opted to promote …Keep reading
On the face of it, Esteban Ocon’s second-place finish in the Brazilian Grand Prix might be doing a lot of heavy lifting here, but it’s easy to overlook a handful of other impressive moments in a difficult final season with Alpine.Ocon led a decent portion of that Interlagos race, and this performance was supplemented with 10th in Miami – with a still-awful car – and ninth at the …Keep reading
George Russell has implored FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem to “express what his goal is” with motorsport’s governing body, amid the ongoing tension between the Emirati former rally driver and Formula 1 racers. The 2024 F1 season finished with the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association still awaiting a formal response to its request for its members to be treated as “adults” in a …Keep reading
Despite continuing to be overlooked by Red Bull’s lead Formula 1 team, Yuki Tsunoda showed great maturity over 2024, with three seventh places the highlights of his year in Australia, Miami and Brazil.He also managed his best F1 qualifying result to date with third on the grid in slippery conditions at Interlagos, and over the season outscored both Daniel Ricciardo and Liam Lawson to assert …Keep reading
Let’s recap the saga of Red Bull’s second seat alongside Max Verstappen, shall we? It’s a saga that, by all accounts, is gratuitously long and ends in a resolution that would be entirely predictable for a team with a ‘normal’ approach to the driver market.Carlos Sainz became unexpectedly available for 2025 when his Ferrari seat went to Lewis Hamilton. The Verstappens did not want Sainz in the …Keep reading
It’s somewhat explainable how Red Bull ended up here. You don’t necessarily have to agree that Christian Horner and Helmut Marko have made all the right decisions regarding their team’s driver line-up over the past year and a half, but you can still find some logic in how they came to the point where they had to replace Sergio Perez with Liam Lawson.It’s fairly easy to say now that it was a …Keep reading
Liam Lawson will step up to Red Bull as Max Verstappen’s team-mate in Formula 1 next year, it was announced on Thursday.Just a day after the Milton Keynes-based squad revealed that a deal had been reached to part ways with Sergio Perez, it confirmed that it had elected to promote RB youngster Lawson.Read Also: Formula 1The 10 F1 2024 moments that cost Perez his Red Bull …Keep reading