Autosport 6/2/2022

Being Max Verstappen’s team-mate is no easy task – just ask Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon. Just a week after Sergio Perez had to move aside for his Red Bull leader in Spain, the Mexican put in one of the finest drives of his 220-race Formula 1 career to win the Monaco Grand Prix. Perez’s third world championship race victory was well-deserved. Yes, it took some strategy errors and bad luck for Ferrari, as Alex Kalinauckas shows in our in-depth report (page 14), but Perez was strong all weekend. He outqualified Verstappen, didn’t make a serious mistake in tricky conditions, and withstood pressure from Carlos Sainz in the closing stages (surely the Spaniard will win soon…). No wonder he was re-signed until the end of 2024 as Autosport closed for press. The…

FORMULA 1 Formula 1 looks set for a row over the budget cap, with a number of teams pushing for an increase because they cannot stay under the $140million maximum for 2022. A dramatic rise in inflation and freight costs this year has put team budgets under pressure. Red Bull team boss Christian Horner suggested that the scale of the problem was serious enough for teams to have to potentially miss races if they did not want to risk a breach. “I think we need the FIA to address the inflationary issue,” said Horner. “Probably about seven of the teams need to miss the last four races to come within the cap this year, from the consensus that there has been up and down the paddock. “It’s not just about the big teams now,…

FORMULA 1 Charles Leclerc avoided a potential penalty that could have jeopardised his Monaco Grand Prix pole position for missing the weighbridge thanks to the quick reactions of his Ferrari team. The Monegasque had been called in for a weight check towards the end of Q2, but did not see the signal and pushed on down the pitlane. Had he gone to his Ferrari garage and the mechanics worked on the car, that would have been enough to earn him a penalty for breaching the rules. Ferrari quickly spotted that Leclerc had missed the signal and instantly ordered him to stop. The mechanics then ran up the pitlane to push him back for the checks, which were passed without problem. Leclerc confessed that the letoff had been totally down to his Ferrari team because…

FORMULA 1 McLaren Formula 1 boss Zak Brown has admitted that Daniel Ricciardo’s contract with the team does not bind him to the end of its current length. Ricciardo has scored points in just one out of seven races so far this season, leading to growing speculation about his future with McLaren, particularly after Brown said in an interview last week that the Australian had not met the team’s expectations so far this year. Ricciardo is in the second year of a three-season deal with McLaren, but Brown revealed that there are “mechanisms in which we’re committed to each other and mechanisms in which we’re not. I spoke with Daniel about it. We’re not getting the results that we both hoped for, but we’re both going to continue to push.” Ricciardo has repeatedly said…

LE MANS HYPERCAR Toyota is evaluating building a replacement for its current Le Mans Hypercar. It is looking to take advantage of regulations that allow it to homologate an all-new car within the lifecycle of the current ruleset. Sources have revealed that the Japanese manufacturer is already well advanced with a successor to the GR010 HYBRID introduced last year. What is not known is whether it is eyeing an introduction of the new car in 2023 or 2024. Toyota is refusing to comment on its plans, as usual. It always plays its cards close to its chest when it comes to technical developments: it refused to confirm that it was switching tyre sizes on the GR010 for 2022 until February this year. “We will release details of our 2023 programme, including technical details…

FORMULA 1 Formula 1 is planning to group more races by region in 2023 in an effort to improve its sustainability credentials by reducing freight movements and personnel travel. While F1 has talked in the past about consolidating the calendar by region, it has now decided to actively press ahead with the move. As part of the plan, it is understood that the Azerbaijan Grand Prix could be grouped in a run of races with the Japanese and Chinese events, although the Shanghai round’s status remains unclear due to the country’s COVID-19 situation. Another option could be to pair Miami with Montreal, which will mean that one or the other will have to move from its 2022 date by around a month. Monaco’s traditional end-of-May slot reduces F1’s flexibility at that time of…