No added pressure from one year deal – Perez
Sergio Perez says there is no added pressure for him to continue to perform at Red Bull because he only got a one-year contract extension. The Mexican had a roller-coaster first season with the team, as his teammate Max Verstappen challenges Lewis Hamilton for this year’s championship.
While his highlight was the victory in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, he has also endured his fair share of frustrations as he has had difficulties adapting to the unique handling characteristics of the RB16B. With him only being retained for a season, its clear that Pierre Gasly is targeting a return to the main team, after being demoted to Alpha Tauri.
This means that Perez will need to continue to perform at his best to try and stop Gasly from getting a second chance with Red Bull, he is clear that he has never let contractual matters impact the job he is doing on track.
He told Motorsport.com about having just a one-year deal, “It doesn’t make any difference to me. Even if we are on longer contracts, we are still racing drivers and want to deliver weekend after weekend. To be honest, it is not something I think about at all.”
“The only thing I think about is the next race weekend. The same goes the other way around. I’m not thinking ‘oh, I have a contract for next year now, so I can be more relaxed’. No, not at all. If I would be thinking that way, I would never be here anyway.”
After Perez’s contract was confirmed in the last few weeks, it emerged that he had been told by Red Bull weeks before it was publicly announced. He says that a few races before he was told by Helmut Marko and Christian Horner not to look else where as they were happy to continue.
The Mexican added, “For me, it was the same really, so it was pretty clear. We have developed a good amount of trust during this short period of time, which is important. If Christian and Helmut tell me something, I fully believe them and as a result of that I wasn’t worried of anything else.”
With eight races still to go, and Perez needing to play a strong supporting role to Verstappen, he knows that the biggest gain he needs to make is with his single lap pace.
While he has shown great race pace this season that hasn’t managed to be translated into qualifying, meaning he has often not been able to support Verstappen in the race. Perez accepts this saying, “I just have to close the gap on Saturdays as well, so I can be there from the beginning.”
Williams “on the up” key for Albon
Alex Albon says that Williams is “on the up” was one of the key reasons why he signed for them rather than Alfa Romeo. Once his friend George Russell was confirmed by Mercedes, Albon was the leading candidate to join the team, and will partner Nicolas Latifi next
Albon was also linked to a drive with Alfa Romeo before securing the Williams seat, but reckons the British team’s recent progress made it the better option. Following its worst ever season in 2019, the last two seasons have seen signs of recovery and the team are currently eighth in the constructors.
He told Motorsport.com, “Firstly, I would say that they’re both great teams. Looking at Williams, I would say that the first thing is, they look like they’re on the up. They’ve obviously got the investment coming in, but also I had the chance to visit the team and they all seemed very positive, optimistic.”
“They were very keen to talk to me and get involved and to make things happen. It seemed like a great choice to get back onto the grid.”
Although Albon was seen as the outsider option for the seat, things moved quickly for the Red Bull reserve and he believes the media was the main driving force behind his F1 comeback.
While focusing on the Williams seat, he says that he was still keeping things open, the things moved quickly once Valtteri Bottas move to Alfa Romeo was confirmed. Sparking the dominoes of Russell’s move to Mercedes, and the final discussions between Red Bull and Williams.
Although Red Bull team principal Christian Horner suggested Mercedes F1 CEO Toto Wolff tried to interfere with Williams’ driver choice, Albon dismissed suggestions that concluding the deal was difficult.
Adding “Not really. I don’t want to go into detail about that too much, to be honest. I think obviously, it’s inevitable that things are gonna happen. But, just great that you know everything worked out.”
Gap between Williams drivers overstated – Capito
Williams CEO Jost Capito says the performance gap between George Russell and Nicholas Latifi is not as big as people following Formula One believe. The Englishman has emerged as the team leader since joining in 2019, always out-qualifying his teammate.
Next season, Russell will leave the team having being promoted to Mercedes prompting suggestions that Williams might not be as strong. The Englishman will be replaced by his friend and fellow English-Thai driver Alex Albon who will partner Latifi.
Asked by Motorsport.com, how much weaker will Williams be without Russell, Capito said: “It’s difficult to say. I think when you see [at Monza] in qualifying Nicky was missing four-hundredths of a second in qualifying.”
“So you can’t say that we have a huge gap between George and Nicky in qualifying, in the racing as well when you look at Hungary at the race, Nicky did a fantastic job [there]. I don’t think the gap is as big as everybody believes or it looks.”
“He had a couple of issues in qualifying in this season, Nicky, that were not caused by him. And he would have been in a position to be nearly at the speed or even at the speed of George.” Capito says he is sure that Albon can establish himself in the team as very fast and deliver his best for the team.
Latifi enjoyed one of his strongest weekends to date in the Italian Grand Prix, running in the point-scoring position until his race was hindered by the safety car period triggered by the accident between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen.
Speaking about the result for his teammate, Russell added, “He deserved to be in the points. He’s really getting stronger and stronger week in week out, finding a lot of confidence.”
“He’s really doing a good job and he retained his seat on absolute merit this year. So I’ve got a lot of respect and thought [I think he says here] for how he’s working, how he’s going about his business, how he’s trying to improve.”
Monaco to move to traditional format
F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali has announced the Monaco Grand Prix will run to a traditional three-day race weekend format from 2022. The race has historically been spread over four days with FP1 and FP2 taking place on Thursday, instead of Friday.
The tradition dated back to the race’s original scheduling on a bank holiday weekend but was maintained to allow traffic to flow through the area and assists businesses in preparing for the weekend.
However, a leaked draft calendar currently being circulated online shows the Miami Grand Prix to the schedule in May will force Spain and Monaco to go back-to-back. While this has been achieved in the past with a four-day Monaco weekend, the switch to the normal three-day format will ease some logistical pressures.
Domenicali said in an interview with CNN, “Monaco will be in three days, straightaway. So [it will be] Friday, Saturday and Sunday instead of Thursday, a hole, then Saturday and Sunday. Yes, that is the change we’re going to introduce next year.”
During the interview, Domenicali confirmed that the plan was to stage a 23-race calendar again next year after initially targeting the figure in 2021, only for the ongoing pressures of the pandemic to drop this figure to 22.
He also stated that the French Grand Prix would be returning, and that the plan would be to end the season earlier than in 2021, when the final race is scheduled for 12 December in Abu Dhabi. The final draft will be approved by the WMSC on the 15th of October.
Meanwhile, an announcement around the TBC race due to held 19 – 21 November this year, expected to be Qatar, will be made in the coming weeks.
‘New world’ opens brighter future – Brawn
F1 motorsport managing director Ross Brawn says that ‘new world’ thinking has opened the door for a much brighter future. Since Liberty Media brought the sport in 2016 a revolution has taken place, with the opening up of social media channels and embracing concepts like the Netflix Drive to Survive series.
But there has been differences between the rights holder and teams in the way the sport is run, largely though Liberty has managed to achieve wanted to achieve. It has managed to get through a technical overhaul due to be introduced next year, and trial concepts such as print qualifying format before committing them to the long haul.
Brawn says that the willingness of the sport to embrace new things is encouraging – and should pave the way for it to try bigger and better things in the long haul. It is in contrast to recent history where attempts to push through any changes met resistance amid fears from teams that it could hurt any competitive advantage they had.
Brawn was part of an attempted breakaway series in 2009, when Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone tried to introduce a similar budget cap. A decade on, all the teams are now operating under a budget cap.
Brawn told Motorsport.com about the sprint race experiment having got approval, “What I like is the fact that F1 does seem to be changing. It is more open-minded, and people within the sport are looking at more of the whole overall good of the sport, not just in their own personal positions.”
“I don’t know if this format particularly helps or doesn’t help any team or driver, so that probably helps. I think when you introduce an initiative, some team may see if it is in their interest or not in their interest, and then it gets difficult. But I think that’s been really encouraging.”
He says the new world the sport want is having an impact in all kinds of way, like social media which was very small five years ago and they had an opportunity to develop that with the promoter. Saying that Hanoi not happening means that the first demonstration of the direction they want to take the sport in.
Brawn thinks that one of the advantages F1’s bosses have now in seeking change with teams is that there is a lot more data and simulation tools available to map out benefits and consequences. In the past, many proposed rule changes were based more on personal whims and desires rather than robust analysis.
