Hello, welcome to This Week, as we return to Europe briefly there remains pressure after two retirements in three races for Red Bull is Ferrari on the road to its first titles since 2007/2008? Melbourne was a dominant win for Ferrari even before Red Bull’s retirement. This Easter weekend early in the 2022 season after over a decade without a championship are we looking at a revival of Ferrari.
Mercedes
George Russell moved into second place in the driver’s championship as “crazy” after finishing third in Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix. As has been the case in the opening three races, Mercedes was being effectively in ‘no man’s land’ fighting for fifth and sixth, before Max Verstappen’s retirement.
The Englishman believes that Mercedes are not only behind Red Bull and Ferrari on pure performance, but McLaren and Alpine. Russell warned that if they wanted to stay in third they need to find more performance in the car. The question I think is how long can they rely on luck before resolving the issues and finding performance?
Lewis Hamilton says he is “honoured” to have received the offer of honorary citizenship in Brazil and claims footballer Neymar “invites me every year” to spend more time in the country. bill to make Hamilton an honorary citizen was proposed by congressman Andre Figueiredo after Hamilton won last year’s Brazilian GP, where he unfurled the Brazilian flag as fans chanted his and Senna’s names.
Hamilton, hero as we know was Ayrton Senna who was killed at Imola in 1994 and throughout most of his carer, the Englishman has worn a yellow helmet in tribute to Senna while it was the Brazilian’s records that the Englishman always had his sights on.
Red Bull
Max Verstappen believes there is “no reason to believe” in the title at the moment after suffering two retirements in the first three races of the season. The Red Bull driver was forced to retire from second following a fuel system issue in the closing stages, like in Bahrain.
Although a similar issue played out in Sakhir, Red Bull believe the cause was slightly different. Verstappen’s hopes of defending his title may have already been dented, he is now forty-six points behind Leclerc in the championship. Red Bull needs to get on top of these issues soon to mount a challenge.
However teammate Sergio Perez says those reliability struggles are “certainly a concern”, remember he picked up the peace following Verstappen’s retirement. He added, “We’ve lost a lot of points already in these first three races that in the end can make a huge difference in the championship. So we are obviously aware of it. All the team back home in Milton Keynes and here, are working flat out to try to come up with solutions.”
The trouble that Red Bull has had in these opening races mean it’s already losing ground in the constructors. Perez says he thought that Australia was “the first weekend [Ferrari] are a step ahead” after both he and Verstappen struggled to get the balance right on their Red Bull RB18 cars.
Ferrari
Ferrari says they will not bring upgrades for the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix at Imola because of complications caused by it being a sprint race weekend. The risks of damage by the extra race is a concern as well as only an hour of practice before qualifying.
Asked by Motorsport.com about its upgrade plan for Imola as it was a sprint weekend, Binotto said: “I think it will be a difficult weekend in respect of bringing updates and trying to evaluate them in the Friday practice because you need obviously to focus yourself on the quali of the afternoon.”
Charles Leclerc has also warned Ferrari shouldn’t allow the increased spotlight on the team to cause extra pressure now it is leading both drivers and constructors championships by a decent margin. Leclerc says “Obviously, it’s good to be in the lead of the championship. Thirty-four points is always good to take wherever you are in the calendar but I don’t want to focus too much on the championship for now.”
Ferrari I think are trying to be cautious which is a change, we know how over the last decade their title challenges have fallen apart, can Leclerc and Ferrari hold the challenge together?
On that theme, Carlos Sainz says that his miserable race in Melbourne has shown that he needs to be perfect as well as the team, if they are going to fight for wins. Sainz’s whole weekend was a nightmare from qualifying until he spun out on the second lap. He could not hide his disappointment about what happened but says it has simply highlighted how he and his team need to get everything right.
Said Sainz, “Charles is driving very well. As he says, he has understood this car very well and he’s doing great things with it. Of course, it’s a great car, but I also believe he’s putting together some very strong races, and some very strong performances. So I was excited about quali and the race, just to see how much progress I had made.”
I think it’s always going to be difficult when your teammate is performing your always going to be questions, and how you respond to that is key as it can spiral out of control.
Alpine
Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi says the role of test and reserve driver Oscar Piastri will have a unique intensity to it as the team prepares him for F1. After winning last years F2 title left Piastri with nowhere to go, as Alpine had already filled its seats with Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso. That prompted the team to instead put Piastri in its test and reserve driver role
We know that Rossi has spoken about wanting not to hamper Piastri’s rapid development, with the team effectively re-designing the role. Can he do an Ocon though with a year out, if Alpine can find him a seat. Rossi “It’s going to be an extensive testing programme, a lot of test days, a lot of kilometres, a lot of simulator. Usually we don’t have the same drivers doing all of the test days or the simulator, only because it helps having different points of view.”
Meanwhile, team principal Otmar Szafnauer says that the team is planning a “significant” aero upgrade for Imola. This is a very different strategy from Ferrari and with the sprint is surprising, but Szafnauer says that his team is sticking to the traditional schedule of using the first European race to introduce new parts.
He hinted that the changes will focus on one area, which is believed to be the floor: “It’s the bit that makes the biggest difference. That’s the bit that’s changing. It’s not a bit of everything. And it should be significant.”
He believes that Alpine’s good form in Saudi Arabia and Australia, where Fernando Alonso was in the fight for pole before his engine issue, bodes well for Imola.
Aston Martin
Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack admits that the team’s nightmare weekend in Melbourne could compromise plans to get new developments onto the AMR2. Both Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll had a number of crashes in Melbourne which means the team is running out of spares.
The team’s resources will thus have to be focused on replacing damaged parts rather than on readying new spec items for Imola, although the team hopes to still get some of the planned updates to the car.
Williams
Team principal Jost Capito says Alex Albon’s tenth place in Melbourne came as a relief after a difficult start to the 2022 season. The team has admitted it hadn’t made the expected step with the FW44, and then progress wasn’t helped by two heavy accidents in Saudi Arabia for Nicholas Latifi that led to a huge effort to ready his car for Melbourne. Latifi was then involved with a collision with Lance Stroll in Q1 in Australia.
Williams I think are still in the early phases of this new era, maybe the stronger 2021 has cost them making them gains this year with the regulation changes? Melbourne was encouraging given we are still in the early phase of this season, Capito said “To get a point early in the season is quite encouraging. We had a very difficult start. And also this weekend was difficult after Saturday. But that’s a good thing in racing, that things can change on a Sunday. And it’s not over before it’s over.”
Haas
Haas has rejected a claim from former title sponsor Uralkali to refund $13 million already paid, and demanded a further $8.6m compensation for ‘loss of profits.’ Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the US-owned team terminated its Uralkali sponsorship deal because of the links the company’s owner Dmitry Mazepin had with the country’s president Vladimir Putin.
But the fertilizer firm requested the refund of the sponsorship as it accused the team of failing to perform its obligations to Uralkali for this year’s season. The war in Ukraine has created a big problem for those doing business, Swift is the banking system where most of the international banking system is used for makes it almost impossible to do business in Russia.
In the letter from the Haas team to the Russian company, a copy of which has been seen by Motorsport.com, the American-owned outfit team insists that it had a right to end the deal because of a clause in the sponsorship agreement which stated that Uralkali does not ‘injure, bring into dispute, ridicule, or lessen the public reputation, goodwill of favourable image of Haas’.
Haas’s stance is understood to have left Uralkali astonished, with sources saying they are in ‘disbelief’ about the withholding of monies, the 2021 car and the demand for an extra payment.
One source said: “Everyone understands the world is in a difficult situation, but it is patently ridiculous to argue that Haas is entitled to keep money paid from a contract it exited unilaterally, without rendering any of the agreed upon services.
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