Category: F1

Max Verstappen pushed his Red Bull to the limits after being chased by Lewis Hamilton all the way to chequered flag in the scorching heat of Austin.  The Dutchman, cheered on by his fans in Austin, just about managed to keep the fast chasing Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton behind and managed to get himself a crucial win in the bid for the Drivers’ Championship.

The race was largely played out on the strategic thinking of the Red Bull and Mercedes teams ever since the first round of pitstops. Hamilton, who was starting from 2nd on the inside line, had a great getaway in comparison to Verstappen and assumed the lead of the race going into turn 1.  Verstappen managed to keep up with the Englishman for about 10 laps before Red Bull triggered the undercut and got Verstappen into the lead of the race.

The battle of the strategies continued onto the second phase at around lap 30, when Red Bull called Verstappen in early again – perhaps a bit too early in comparison with Hamilton who them went on for 8 more laps, providing himself with a tyre advantage towards the end of the race. Mercedes’ strategy was proving to be the right one as Hamilton kept chipping away Verstappen’s lead but it all came to nothing in the end as the English driver simply could not get past the Red Bull. Verstappen now has a 12-point lead heading into the last five races of the championship and this win might prove to be crucial come the end of the season.

For Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Perez, it was a decent afternoon as he finished on the last place of the podium but the Mexican driver had to put in quite a physical effort as his drink system wasn’t working. Perez however kept his head and finished 3rd, which is a very welcome result for Red Bull in the context of the constructors’ championship.

It was Ferrari vs McLaren that was the other talking point of the race apart from the championship battle. It was intense racing from lights out between both the teams as they had a lot to fight for in the Constructors’ Championship. Charles Leclerc got the Italian team the best result he could after finishing P4 in what was a lonely drive for him; the other Ferrari of Carlos Sainz was involved quite heavily from lap 1 with the McLaren of Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris. The trio of drivers raced hard throughout the Grand Prix but Ricciardo got the better of Sainz by finishing P5, after the Spaniard was also hunted down by the faster Mercedes of Bottas towards the closing stages and only managed a P7, while Bottas ended P6.

Lando Norris in the other McLaren had to settle for P8 in the race but will take joy from the fact that McLaren still hold a very slender 3.5-point lead over Ferrari in the standings. Yuki Tsunoda drove a decent race for AlphaTauri and managed to finish P9, picking up two points for himself in the process. His teammate Pierre Gasly however had no luck as a suspension issue forced the Frenchman to retire his car early in the race on lap 15.

There were other retirements in the race as well and unfortunately for Alpine Racing, it was a double disaster with Ocon retiring on lap 42 due to an unexplained issue while his teammate Alonso retired close to the end of the race on lap 51 with a broken rear wing on his car. The Spaniard did provide a lot of entertainment in the laps that he raced after close battles with Alfa Romeo that saw him going off track multiple times. He came out on top in these battles but it was all undone towards the end because of his retirement.

Sebastian Vettel got the last remaining points place after finishing P10 in his Aston Martin despite starting on the penultimate row of the grid. The German driver made up places early on in the race and drove consistently in a Grand Prix which involved a few scraps with George Russell in the Williams, but the four-time champion did well to make his way through the pack to grab the final point on offer. His teammate Lance Stroll managed a P12 finish after he tangled with the Williams of Nicholas Latifi on the very first lap of the race. The Canadian driver recovered from that over the course of the race and managed a decent finish.

Alfa Romeo, who had endured the wrath of Alonso during the race, did manage to see the chequered flag with Antonio Giovinazzi finishing in P11 just outside the points while Kimi Raikkonen managed a P13 finish. The Finnish driver could not keep his car on the track towards the end of the race and wandered off on to the grass. This cost him a higher place and even a possible points finish with his Alfa Romeo.

Williams finished with George Russell in P14 and Latifi P15 respectively, an afternoon with not much for the British team to cheer. Russell, starting in P20, made up as many as five places on the opening lap but could not make more inroads apart from that. Latifi had to come very early into the pits for a front wing change after he got into a first lap incident with fellow Canadian driver Lance Stroll. Both the Haas cars finished last of the remaining runners with Mick Schumacher in P16 and his team mate in P17.

The main talking point of the race was the battle for the win as Verstappen extended his lead at the top to 12 points going into the next leg of American races in Mexico and Brazil. This lead could come in very handy for the Dutchman as these tracks have favoured Red Bull in the recent years. Hamilton will have his work cut out in the coming races if he is to have that alluring 8th world championship crown to his name.

The COVID pandemic took the US Grand Prix away from us last year, meaning the circus did not roll into either North of South America, as Canada, Brazil and Mexico also missed out on a place on the 2020 calendar.

The latter two of those races are still set to take place, but first Formula One will venture over six thousand miles from its last destination of Turkey to Travis County Texas, and the 42^nd Formula One Championship Grand Prix in the United States.

Max Verstappen enters round 17 in the lead of the 2021 standings by six points from Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, whose last win here came in 2017, while the Dutchman is yet to register a win at the 5.4 kilometre Circuit of the Americas, but Red Bull have won here before.

That came back in 2013 with Sebastian Vettel, en route to culminating that season with a record nine wins in a row, and Red Bull, as has been the tale of the season, are breaking the Mercedes hybrid tradition this season. So we should anticipate another strong Red Bull performance here.

Mercedes will be buoyed by the fact that Hamilton came through the tough test of Istanbul two weeks ago in the wet conditions having started 11^th following a grid penalty, and he managed to limit the damage done to his championship challenge by finishing fifth. His team mate Valtteri Bottas also took victory one year on from his horror show at the same race, making for a decent afternoon for the silver arrows. Red Bull, meanwhile, managed a double-podium, with Sergio Perez having a brilliant afternoon, coming home third behind team mate Verstappen.

At a track this weekend though that is notoriously difficult through the first sector, but awash with power-necessitating sections, it will be tight battle between two teams that have been exemplary out front all season long.

McLaren and Ferrari have meanwhile dropped Alpine behind in the battle for third, which Mclaren lead currently by 7.5 points from the Scuderia. Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc are separated by just half a point, and their remarkably consistent form will be a source of positivity particularly heading into the new regulations of 2022. Across at McLaren while Daniel Ricciardo is still trying to make things work at McLaren – his win in Monza covering over what has been a very difficult season for the Australian, often soundly beaten on pace by team mate Lando Norris. However, the pair are currently sitting ahead of Ferrari, which would ultimately make for a good first season at the Woking outfit for Ricciardo if they can stay there.

Williams suffered their first non-points scoring race last time out since the Netherlands, as they seek to remain in front of Alfa Romeo for what be an immensely respectable eighth in the Constructors’ standings.

The last two races here have been won by Finns, while exactly half of the races contested at COTA have been won from pole, in races that have seen titles decided, dominant victors emerge, a sight to savour in Kimi Raikkonen’s final win, and splendid Verstappen drives.

We are not about to crown a new champion this weekend – rest assured this title race is going to the wire – but this could be a race to see who can draw fastest and take a real advantage in Texas.

Liam Lawson, the New Zealander from Hastings – no the 1066 location – this year has been racing on two fronts. He has been racing in the F2 Championship this year which has been split with huge gaps throughout the year to accomodate a new style and the DTM Championship driving a Red Bull sponsored AF Corse Ferrari in between these gaps. In 2019, he became part of their Red Bull junior programme which has allowed him to do this.

Denny Hulme on the other hand was the F1 World Champion in 1967 – often forgotten when you see the name 71 Champions, but he himself beat many Champions in that Season from Jack Brabham, Jim Clark, Graham Hill to Jackie Stewart prior to his Championship wins. He competed until the 1974 season and remains the only New Zealander in the history of the sport to win the F1 World Championship amongst the nine that have competed from the Country, with Bruce McLaren and himself coming third in the years following closest to match it.

Lawson began like most karting before working up the lower formulas; he took the Championship over fellow countryman Marcus Armstrong who is a Ferrari Junior in the Toyota Racing Series and who sits second in the current F2 season. He moved directly through each series until F3, of which spending two seasons in 2019 and 2020 before moving to F2 this year. He currently drives for the Hitech team as he did in the second year of his F3 career with fellow Red Bull junior Juri Vips winning the Season opener in Bahrain sitting eighth in the Standings, whilst in DTM he once again won the Season opener and with a double victory at Red Bull Ring. He looks to be possibly on to winning that Series at his first attempt.

In terms of machinery needed to win as well as the skill required he has Red Bull junior sponsorship, so could get a seat at one of the most powerful seats in modern F1, but of course there is competition for it. Looking ahead a few seasons you have current Alpha Tauri driver Yuki Tsunoda, and Lawson’s current team-mate Yuri Vips. Tsunoda hasn’t set F1 alight yet; Pierre Gasly has outqualified him at every event this year, and the Japanese has scored little compared to his team-mate. With patience not one of Helmut Marko’s strong skills, if it doesn’t improve Lawson’s gap to F1 could open sooner rather than later in that aspect. Yuri Vips is currently 6th compared to Lawson’s 8th in F2, and he was the test driver last year for Red Bull. He has had half a season more due to his age of 21 to Lawson’s 19 in that Formula. In respect to Sergio Perez, at 31 on a rolling one year contract presently at the senior team, could Lawson be the one to take the helm of the second seat and control it on a consistent level? Red Bull haven’t had a 1-2 on the podium since Malaysia in 2016 and Helmut’s desire for domination is insatiable. 

In my eyes it is possible Liam Lawson could indeed be the Denny Hulme of the current era beating some Champions to the title, with the right machinery. The difference in circumstance in 1967 was that there were so few races. It maybe the case we will have 23/24 races when Lawson gets the chance; he has the skill and indeed the machinery available. It looks as though with Liam he has a plan to fall back on – his first Season in the German Touring Car Masters (DTM), he is currently 18 points clear of Kelvin van der Linde going into the final round at the Norisring, so if open wheeled Formula doesn’t work in the short term, he could return to DTM. He has got the control of these V8 monsters, and if even fancies a return to home, there are the V8 Supercars back in Australasia. He may even try Le Mans like Denny Hulme.

In 2020, Formula One returned to Istanbul Park in Turkey for the first time in nine years, and it turned out to be a thriller of a weekend.

Rain in qualifying saw Lance Stroll take his first pole in F1, as Racing Point took their first ever front-row lock out, and their second in the sport following Giancarlo Fisichella’s pole under their previous Force India guise in Belgium in 2009. An equally soggy Grand Prix was a humdinger, with chaos ensuing from start to finish. At the end of it all, Lewis Hamilton took a stunning victory, and his seventh world title in the process.

Unlike Stroll and Racing Point, this was not a first. This was a driver who had been consistently incredible for many years, and had achieved something only one driver had previously in the history of Formula One – that being Michael Schumacher.

This year though, the picture is all a little different. Hamilton may lead the championship, but unlike the 85-point lead going into the final four races of last year, Hamilton heads into the final seven rounds of 2021 just two-point ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.

And this is almost the perfect crescendo for the two drivers following a race in Russia two weeks ago in which both of our protagonists were able to showcase some of their greatest on-track qualities. Hamilton’s guile, experience and prowess in dramatically changing conditions allowed him to take victory from a heartbroken Lando Norris. Verstappen, meanwhile, displayed courageous overtaking, invariable pace in the wet, and a never-say-die attitude to recover from twentieth on the grid.

This weekend sees us arrive at a technical circuit where pace is down to skill and bravery, and mistakes are quickly punished on the 5.3 kilometre tour.

The weather, at least at the beginning of the week, does not look as though it is going to play a massive factor, but the same can be said on many F1 weekends; and you never know when the rain might hit, as evidenced last time out in Sochi.

We also saw last time how closely matched Ferrari and McLaren are pace-wise, and with 17.5 points between them, the run-in is going to be hugely contested in the final few races. A podium for Carlos Sainz a fortnight back emphasised what has been a remarkably impressive first season in red for the Spaniard. And that bodes well ahead of a race in which the Scuderia finished third and fourth last year after a dramatic late battle between Sebastian Vettel, Charles Leclerc, and Sergio Perez.

Perez is a driver who has had a tough run-in recently, and although he has a contract for next year, Helmut Marko will be breathing down his neck for results in light of a rejuvenated Pierre Gasly since his return – an impressive one at that – to Alpha Tauri in 2019. George Russell’s performance in Russia meanwhile, reinforced Mercedes’ recruitment of him over Valtteri Bottas, who had to endure another difficult day in Russia.

The title fight is going down to the wire, and at a venue that will have many happy connotations for Lewis Hamilton, from GP2 all the way to the seventh title, he seeks to extend his championship lead, while a hungry Max Verstappen has no intention of easing off his charge just yet.

Before the Russian Grand Prix weekend, many Formula One fans would have sighed at the prospect of a Lewis Hamilton-Max Verstappen 1-2 in Sochi. In the end though, we had by far the best Russian race since it’s debut in 2014, and one which was a microcosm of the season so far.

As soon as Max Verstappen opted for new power unit components after FP1 on Friday, his weekend was always going to be about damage limitation, whereas Lewis Hamilton knew he wouldn’t have a better chance to retake the championship lead with his main rival out of the picture. This looked like a straightforward task right up until the final moment s of qualifying, when old intermediates on a drying pitlane led to the smallest of mistakes from the seven-time champion. Fixing the front wing meant Hamilton (and Valtteri Bottas, who was held behind the Brit) only got one lap on slick tyres, leaving Lewis starting fourth behind Lando Norris, Carlos Sainz, and his future teammate George Russell.

Still, many would have expected the Mercedes man to take an easy victory on Sunday, but this looked a lot less likely by the time the field reached the braking zone for turn two. Just like in the Monza sprint race, Hamilton was slow away, and he dropped to seventh before re-passing Fernando Alonso.

As his rivals pitted, this is where Hamilton’s mastery came to the fore. ‘Bono my tyres are gone’ has become the most feared message in Formula One, as it’s normally followed by purple sectors across the board for Car #44. For a man who was initially known as being hard on his tyres, Lewis seems to be able to eek out performance when the rubber is far from fresh, and this – combined with a less than ideal stop for McLaren’s Ricciardo – helped him jump up the order.

Once on fresh hards, Hamilton looked unstoppable. Sainz was dispatched with consummate ease, and the gap to Norris started rapidly reducing. Dirty air started having an effect though, and Lewis couldn’t quite get within that all important one second window.

Up until Spa, the prospect of wet-weather led to excitement rather than trepidation from Formula One fans. And Sochi proved that you don’t need monsoon-like conditions to cause drama; just a small shower can create panic and problems. As the heavens opened over the Black Sea coast, Norris initially extended his lead, and it looked like we were going to get a second debut winner of the season. Both drivers stayed out when the majority were pitting, before a decisive move from the McLaren driver proved to be costly. Whereas the Woking team were more advisory about Lando pitting, Mercedes were insistent: The slicks would soon be skidding, and intermediates were the only option. Straight away Hamilton gained time, and within one and a half laps he was well on the way to his hundredth victory – a simply staggering achievement.

Of course, the irony in this is that the rain hindered Hamilton’s chances of taking a record-breaking eighth title. Max Verstappen was in seventh, struggling to make up ground before the downpour, and he came in at just the right time to shoot up the order, finishing in second, and an astonishing eighteen places higher than he started. A twelve point swing had been reduced to seven, and he is now just two points behind with seven races still remaining.

For Lando, his time will come. And with an extra engine in the bag, Max may well be slight favourite for the championship despite trailing in the standings, thanks to a drive which again showed why many expect him to be the man to pick up the baton from Hamilton. But yesterday was Lewis’ day. Even the young karter from Stevenage could have barely imagined getting one hundred race victories, and there’s no reason why more won’t be added to the tally. The greatest of all time? That’s a bold statement. The greatest of his time? Unquestionably. The future is bright for Formula One, with Max, Lando, George and Charles Leclerc all looking like world championship material. But you’d be a brave individual to bet on any of them to surpass the achievements of Sir Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton.

It has perhaps been massively overblown, but the fact of the matter is that in each of the last two races that Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen have gone side-by-side, they have not only made contact – but produced two frightful crashes.

It has, unfortunately, begged the question as to whether these two elite racing drivers are actually able to go side-by-side cleanly, and it has frankly been a frustrating plot to an otherwise sublime title story. The events of Monza two weeks ago gave us a first McLaren one-two finish in over 11 years, with Daniel Ricciardo leading Lando Norris to the finish and putting a tremendously positive spin on a difficult opening campaign with the Woking-based team for the Australian.

It is no less than McLaren deserve following years of development having fallen behind since their switch to Honda engines in 2015. Even before that in 2013, Jenson Button and Sergio Perez experienced an almost insufferable car, but nobody imagined it would take this long to climb back into a winning position.

What it certainly has done is display that, when the chips are down for the front-runners, they are the midfield team that will step up and take advantage. Ferrari and Charles Leclerc had a similar opportunity in Silverstone, albeit Lewis Hamilton was still in the race following his crash with Verstappen. Hamilton of course went on to win on that occasion.

Almost mercifully, this weekend veers back away from the sprint format, which has seen the two collisions between our protagonists, but the format is not so important as the technical prowess of the cars and drivers.

The 5.8 kilometre Sochi Autodrom is a notoriously tough track to race at, so qualifying will be vital, and strategy will be crucial. This does not mean to say there can be no racing in Krasnodar – Lando Norris, George Russell and Alex Albon can testify to that.

Further to their entertaining wheel-to-wheel racing last season, is the story emerging through Mercedes’ Finnish departure Valtteri Bottas. He made an excellent recovery to third in Monza after his grid penalty, and there is still the odd chuckle at his defiance of team orders – setting the fastest lap again Mercedes’ wishes. This is a track that Bottas has always done ever so well at, and the seemingly new-found shackles off attitude to the nine-time race winner would lead one believe we will not be seeing the same passivity as 2018 if he ends up in a similar position this weekend. he did of course win this race last year.

His compatriot Kimi Raikkonen will also return, having missed the last two races by virtue of contracting COVID-19.

But the focus will sadly be on Verstappen and Hamilton, whose close shaves have now come to a head twice, and let’s hope they can keep it clean if they end up side by side in Russia this weekend. Either way, this is now set to be a thrilling final run-in to what has been an enticing 2021 for Formula One so far.