F1 needs to learn lessons from Zhou’s crash
George Russell says Formula One needs to learn lessons from the crash that vaulted Guanyu Zhou into the barrier on the opening of the British Grand Prix. The Alfa Romeo driver was stuck in the car for some time after the accident as rescue crews struggled to reach him in such an unusual position.
Zhou came to rest behind the barrier and resting on its side following the collision between Russell and Alpha Tauri’s Pierre Gasly, which tipped the Mercedes into a spin and into the Alfa Romeo at close to 200mph. Zhou’s car flipped and skidded through the gravel trap upside down, before being thrown into the air by the impact-absorbing barrier and flopping down on its far side.
Russell called the crash “an incredibly scary incident” and added “it was horrible” for the fans close by.
He told BBC News, “We need think to avoid a car being stuck in such a fine gap. The space between the barriers and the metal fence and he was just stuck in there, nowhere to go. Yeah, something to learn,” said Russell, who is a director of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association.”
The Chinese driver was taken to the medical centre but later released having been declared uninjured, said he believed he had become the latest in a series of drivers to be saved by the halo head-protection device, which has been fitted to F1 cars since 2018.
In a statement, he said “It was a big crash and I’m glad I’m OK. The marshals and the medical team at the track were fantastic with their quick response, and I also owe my thanks to the FIA and Formula 1 for all the work they have done, and they keep doing, to improve the safety of our cars. The halo saved me, and it goes to show that every step we take in improving our cars has real, valuable results.”
The FIA has started its own inquiry, as it does with all incidents of this nature, in an attempt to learn lessons and will ot comment until this process was complete.
Williams driver Alex Albon also received medical attention after a separate accident at the first corner, in which he was catapulted into the pit wall after being rammed by Sebastian Vettel’s Aston Martin. The British-Thai driver was helicoptered to Coventry hospital but released later on Sunday evening.
Albon said: “I’m very glad that everyone else involved in the first-lap incident is OK. Thank you to the medical staff at the track and Coventry hospital. It’s a shame the race ended before it began today but we are already fully focused on Austria [this coming weekend]. Bring on the next one.”
Leclerc insists he has not lost confidence in Ferrari
Charles Leclerc insists he has not lost confidence in his Ferrari team after he lost victory in the British Grand Prix because of a questionable strategy call. Leclerc’s misfortune handed a maiden victory to his teammate Carlos Sainz, who took victory o his hundred and fiftieth start.
asked by BBC News, how concerning it was for his championship hopes that the team keeps making mistakes, he said: “It’s not good. I have to say that I feel like I’m showing that every race it’s not affecting me too much. But I would rather not have these problems.”
Leclerc’s misfortune at Silverstone handed victory to Sainz, a popular, likeable, thoughtful and top-drawer driver who took a long-overdue maiden victory. Leclerc and Sainz genuinely get on, and Ferrari’s leading driver said it was “an important point” that his partner had finally broken his duck at the 150th attempt.
He said while he was disappointed for himself, that shouldn’t be the headline following Sainz’s maiden victory. saying “Whenever you are a child, you dream of this moment, and especially with Ferrari. He needs to enjoy, it’s his day, and hopefully next time it will be my day.”
It was a magnanimous response that said a lot about both the sort of man Leclerc is, and the collective team spirit at Ferrari. Ferrari as well made some unexpected and maybe some unimaginable if Red Bull had been in the same position, many people were asking themselves whether Ferrari had their priorities straight.
Their main rival, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, had a rare difficult race, his car disabled by damage caused after running over debris. But Leclerc gained only six points on his rival, a figure that could and arguably should have been nineteen. So instead of reducing the gap to Verstappen to thirty points, not much more than one clear victory, it is forty-three, or almost two race wins.
On Thursday, Leclerc arrived at Silverstone saying he needed a “perfect weekend” and a run of four good results to take him and Ferrari into the summer break. This followed two engine failures in Barcelona and Baku leading to a grid penalty in Montreal, a strategy error in Monaco which cost him victory, a spin from Leclerc at Imola that dropped him from third to sixth.
In the race, though, Ferrari was gifted a golden opportunity. Verstappen had just taken the lead from Sainz and was looking to take control of yet another race when he ran over a piece of debris left by a collision between the two cars of the sister Alpha Tauri team. It tore a hole in his car’s floor and took him out of contention.
That left Sainz in the lead, with Leclerc right behind, clearly faster, despite a front wing missing an endplate, costing him downforce, after a first-lap battle with the second Red Bull of Sergio Perez.
Mercedes says its opened its true potential
Mercedes says it’s no longer “fighting to survive” with its current W13 car, as its British Grand Prix updates appear to have opened up its true potential. The German manufacturer introduced a raft of updates at Silverstone to build on the progress it made with its first development push in Barcelona.
Although the team does not yet quite have the pace to fight Red Bull and Ferrari on equal terms, and clearly still has issues on tight and bumpy street circuits, there is growing optimism within it that the corner has been turned on its woes. Their focus in the early part of the season has been on dialling out the porpoising which has effected it badly, but now they are beginning shift their focus on finding more performance
Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin told Motorsport.com, “n the first few races, we were literally just sort of fighting to survive. And the drivers were fighting to survive with a car that was incredibly difficult to work with. But we did a decent job of scoring points, actually, and picking up on the opportunities when others were unreliable.”
“Barcelona was useful for us because we had something that wasn’t bouncing around on every circuit that we went to. But clearly a recent run of three street tracks highlighted another weakness and, to be honest, we’re just going through it: looking for the problems, and then we’ll try and apply our engineering skills to solving them.”
“But I would say that the route that we want to take now is becoming increasingly clear. And that’s encouraging from a development point of view.” Shovlin says the Silverstone update is the first one along the direction they started to go down in Barcelona.
While much of the focus about Mercedes’ development and progress has focused on its zero-sidepod concept, the team has been resolute that its upper bodywork shape has had little role to play in the early-season problems. A key factor in the progress they have made is the way they manage the airflow underneath and around the floor. And in those terms, its approach was overhauled significantly at the Spanish Grand Prix – even though the tweaks it made were not so visibly obvious.
Shovlin says they have changed the car a lot since they first ran it in February, with it behaving very differently saying the concept in Barcelona was designed to tackle the bouncing.
While accepting Mercedes were not the best he says they are a long way from being the worst.
Teams set to challenge FIA on porpoising metric
The teams are set to challenge the FIA’s plan to enforce a porpoising metric and clamp down on flexi floor tricks at this week’s commission meeting. Ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring, F1 teams , Formula One Management and the FIA will meet to discuss several burning topics that are being put forward for action.
These discussions are set to involve the impact of inflation on the budget cap the latest on the 2026 engine regulations, but a topic which almost certainly will be discussed will be the FIA’s intervention on porpoising will be brought up.
It is understood that several teams are not happy about the approach of the governing body on the matter, with two Technical Directives having been sent out on the matter. Several teams argue that there is no need for the governing body to step in on cars bouncing. Furthermore, some squads are unhappy that there is scope for the FIA to influence how teams set up their cars when the sport has always been about maximum performance.
As one team boss said: “What will be next? A wet track metric that forces us to change from slicks to inters when a certain amount of rain has fallen?”
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner thinks it important that the whole situation regarding the FIA’s intervention is talked about in a transparent manner. He told Motorsport.com, “I think the process is the thing to discuss.”
“TDs shouldn’t be regulatory changes, there is a governance and a process for that. So I think we just need to talk through exactly why [they have been issued]. It didn’t look like there was a lot of porpoising in this race [the British GP]. So teams are sorting it out. I don’t feel it needs the intervention of a TD.”
Even Mercedes who has been one of the teams were affected by porpoising would have broken the metric if it was in place in Baku. trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said: “It wouldn’t be a very good metric if we weren’t over it in Baku and I think we were probably the one case that they could use it to sort of calibrate. In Montreal, we were in a sensible place.”
One of the knock on effects of the FIA’s analysis on porpoising is a move to clamp down on tricks that some teams are believed to have done with flexible floors.
Six people charged with track invasion
Six people have been charged in connection with the track invasion by protesters at the beginning of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Following the red flag on the opening lap of the race, several protesters got onto the track along the Wellington Straight and sitting down on the track as cars headed for the pits.
The protesters were dragged away by marshals as drivers sped by, with Northamptonshire Police later on Sunday confirming seven arrests had been made before the race resumed after over a 50-minute delay.
David Baldwin, 46, of Stonesfield, Witney, Emily Brocklebank, 24, of, Yeadon, Leeds, Alasdair Gibson, 21, of no fixed abode, Louis McKechnie, 21, of London, Bethany Mogie, 40, of St Albans, Hertfordshire, and Joshua Smith, 28, of Manchester, have all been charged with conspiracy to cause public nuisance.
All six appeared at Northampton Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday morning. A 43-year-old man who was also arrested in connection with the incident has been released under investigation pending further inquiries. The incident has been described as “totally irresponsible”.
F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali told Sky Sports after the race. “People can protest something by voice, but running the risk on a track, jeopardising and having the really serious stuff for the drivers and themselves is totally stupid. This is not acceptable, you can protest whatever you want, there is freedom to speak, but this is really ridiculous.”
He added in a statement “Everyone has the right to speak out on issues, but no one has the right to put lives in danger. The actions of a small group of people today were completely irresponsible and dangerous.”
While several drivers expressed sympathy with the cause, they condemned the actions of the protesters who they accused of putting themselves in danger.
Carlos Sainz said, “I just don’t believe jumping onto an F1 track is the right way to do it. Yes, I support the cause, but I don’t think that’s the right way to protest. You could generate an accident.”
Perez added: “It’s great to see people fighting for their cause. But we don’t want to see people at risk. I’m sure Formula 1 can do more.”
Tsunoda accepts responsibility for crash
Yuki Tsunoda accepted blame for his collision with Alpha Tauri teammate Pierre Gasly in the British Grand Prix but says he didn’t expect the Frenchman to turn in on him. The two were running in seventh and eighth at the time off the accident, which lead to Gasly’s eventual retirement and Tsunoda to finish fourteenth.
Onboard footage revealed that their battle first began to heat up at Stowe on lap ten, with Gasly’s graining soft tyres having allowed his teammate to close up. Tsunoda went down the inside and Gasly ran wide off the circuit but still managed to get back in front before Vale. He then stayed close to the sister car, trying another move at Village, where they made contact and both spun off.
Asked by his engineer how his car was, the Japanese driver replied: “My car is okay, but fu***ng hell!” Tsunoda received a five-second penalty and two penalty points for causing a collision, while Gasly was eventually called in to retire with wing damage. He insisted that he believed he had enough space.
He told Motorsport.com, “Well, from my side, my speed it was easy to make the corner. But at the same time, I didn’t expect that he’d close the door. I mean, he didn’t close the door fully, but it was not enough space, I would say, to turn.”
“Obviously, if we drive battling each other, we want to give the minimum room as much as much as possible, because you don’t want to let the car pass so easily. So I can understand Pierre. Of course, definitely I can wait for a different opportunity. I would say the main thing is I’m sorry for the team.”
Expanding on the contact, he said: “There was no overspeed. I will say it was still possible to keep me in the white line in the exit, because I obviously I tried to overtake before the corner, not in the middle of the corner.”
“I didn’t expect he’d try to still fight against me in a corner, but that was my mistake. You know, my expectation management was not good enough. So this is the thing I can learn. This is the thing I have to avoid next time.”
While Gasly wouldn’t criticise his teammate in public, but he made his frustration clear. the Frenchman said “I’m extremely disappointed because we were in such a good position after the restart, both in the points on a track where we struggled massively. So something which needs to be discussed internally, and I’m not going to start talking here, but I’m extremely disappointed to lose an opportunity like this.”
He also said that they couldn’t miss this kind of opportunity because of the difficult season they are having.
technical director Jody Egginton stressed that the team was not happy with Tsunoda’s move. He said, “It’s very frustrating to have thrown away a likely points finish on a weekend where the team and drivers have worked so hard to extract the maximum from the package and get the cars into a position to fight for points.”
“Contact between teammates is never good, but in this instance with both cars suffering extensive damage, one of which we had to retire, there was really no way back.”
Schumacher says Haas “did the right things at the right time”
Mick Schumacher says that his Haas team “did the right things at the right time” for him to clinch his first-ever F1 points from nineteenth at the British Grand Prix. After struggling in qualifying with Schumacher and teammate Kevin Magnussen being knocked out in Q1, the multi-car crash which took out several midfield rivals.
From fourteenth and sixteenth on the restart both Haas drivers moved up the order, Schumacher’s side, in particular, making the right strategy calls by pitting under a late safety car for fresh soft tyres. That allowed the German to move up from tenth at the final restart to finish eighth after almost snatching seventh away from an ailing Max Verstappen.
Nevertheless, taking eighth meant Schumacher finally scored his first points in thirty-one starts for Haas, with Magnussen completing a double points finish in tenth. The German says the team executed a perfect race by doing “the right things at the right time” but thought he could have done even better without the safety car intervention by carrying on until the finish on the hard C1 compound.
He told Motorsport.com, “We were driving two different compounds, I think we weren’t quite sure if the C1 was going to work or not so we kind of gambled and obviously we hadn’t driven it before. It kind of dropped and then it came back, so I think I wouldn’t have had a problem at all if the safety car hadn’t come out at the end there.
“I think we would have probably been clear of Max ahead, but I think that overall, we did the right things at the right time. [The safety car] I think was another opportunity.” Schumacher will be hoping that this lifts pressure off his shoulders after a difficult start to the season, where he has struggled to keep up with Magnussen.
Along with several accidents, this has started to raise questions about Schumacher’s future, he has so far struggled to keep up with his experienced new teammate Kevin Magnussen, which led to a spate of costly accidents for Haas and question marks on his future at the team.
Schumacher said “it feels great” to finally get his first points finish out of the way and hopes he can kick on from here.
