Year: 2021

29 May 2021

Bagnaia on record pace in FP3, Vinales crashes into Q1

Pleasant conditions for the start of FP3 meant combined timesheet improvements were had almost instantly, with KTM’s Miguel Oliveira – armed with the RC16’s new chassis and fuel – jumping up to fourth overall and top in the session with a 1m46.331s early doors. Pramac’s Johann Zarco fired in a 1m46.201s moments later to take […]

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29 May 2021

Giovinazzi no longer needs Raikkonen as F1 reference – Vasseur

Giovinazzi is in his third full season with Alfa Romeo, scoring the Swiss team’s first point of 2021 with a 10th place in Monaco. After a difficult debut campaign with the team in 2019, Giovinazzi got on par with Raikkonen as the pair finished 2020 with four points each, while Giovinazzi narrowly outqualified the 2007 […]

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29 May 2021

MotoGP Italian Grand Prix qualifying

The Italian’s late FP2 lap of 1m46.147s saw him set the fastest time on Friday by just 0.071 seconds, having narrowly edged out Suzuki’s Alex Rins at the top of the timesheet. Franco Morbidelli impressed on the older-spec Yamaha M1 to take third place for Petronas SRT and push former team-mate and MotoGP world championship […]

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29 May 2021

Wolff ‘should look at his front wings’ amid F1 protest warnings

F1 teams have been engaged in debate over the stability of rear wings since the Spanish Grand Prix, when Lewis Hamilton passed comment about Red Bull running a “bendy wing”. The FIA has since moved to clamp down on the flexi-wings by introducing new rigidity tests that will come into force from the French Grand […]

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29 May 2021

Marc Marquez’s recovery “stuck” since his MotoGP return

The six-time MotoGP world champion served a nine-month injury layoff beginning last July when he badly broke his right humerus in a crash during the season-opening GP. Following three operations, Marquez finally returned to action in April in Portugal and the bone consolidation in his arm has improved significantly. However, his main issue on the […]

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29 May 2021

F1 keen to ensure sprint races aren’t “a blur” for fans

F1 announced in April that it would be holding ‘sprint qualifying’ at three events this year, running a 100km race on Saturday afternoons to set the grid for the grand prix on Sunday. Silverstone will stage F1’s first sprint race in July at the British Grand Prix, rejigging its weekend schedule by running qualifying on […]

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29 May 2021

The tech secrets boosting three MotoGP bikes at Mugello

The biggest tech battleground in MotoGP in recent times has come in the form of the holeshot start device first introduced by Ducati in the latter stages of 2018. Starting off as simply a device which lowered the rear of the bike for the start to improve acceleration by keeping the front wheel down, it […]

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29 May 2021

How Bottas’ Monaco F1 pitstop ended up being 43 hours long

F1 teams regularly churn out stops in around two seconds, so it was quite a shock to find that Mercedes had to wait until the car was back in the factory on Tuesday morning to get the wheel off. That was more than 43 hours after the pitstop began. So, what went wrong for Mercedes […]

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28 May 2021

Can a shade of blue end MotoGP’s red reign at Mugello?

Much like Peter Gabriel in 1986, Mugello has bathed in red rain in MotoGP’s last three Italian Grands Prix at the stunning ribbon of tarmac nestled in Tuscany’s gorgeous green hills. Andrea Dovizioso battled through illness to win his first-ever dry MotoGP race in 2017 on the Desmosedici, while Jorge Lorenzo finally dragged a victory […]

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