The German manufacturer has revamped its car for this year in a bid to dial out the obvious weakness that plagued Hamilton and team-mate George Russell throughout 2023. Although early running of the W15 appears to indicate that the Mercedes 2024 challenger has dialled out many of its vices – including the ‘spiteful’ rear end […]
This was a last chance for teams to try new parts and run aerodynamic tests ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix, which begins on Thursday. Mercedes F1 W15 with sensors Photo by: Giorgio Piola The Mercedes W15 fitted with a Kiel probe rake ahead of the rear wheels and rear wing assembly. Red Bull Racing […]
Sainz set the quickest time on the second of the three days of testing, before the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix at the Sakhir circuit on 2 March. However, he set his lap using the C4 Pirelli tyre, which is not available next weekend. His Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc was second quickest overall, setting his best […]
Norris has committed his future to McLaren with what is being described only as a “multi-year” deal, which supersedes an existing contract that expired at the end of 2025. The announcement from McLaren arrived less than a week before the shock news broke of Hamilton having decided to depart Mercedes at the end of the […]
Hamilton drove for the Frenchman’s ASM F3 team in 2005, winning the European title. The following year he graduated to GP2 with Vasseur’s rebranded ART GP outfit, again winning the championship, before moving into F1 with McLaren. Inevitably when Vasseur joined Ferrari at the start of 2023 there was speculation that he might attempt to […]
The Italian said that, thus far, the car has performed as it was expected to and stressed that adding more overall grip remains the priority as the team embarks on a busy development programme. McLaren has enjoyed an encouraging two days of testing in Bahrain so far, although it lost some valuable track time with […]
F1 is officially underway for 2024 with pre-season testing this week at the Bahrain International Circuit. It follows a dominant championship-winning campaign for Max Verstappen, who broke several records in 2023 including most wins in a season (19), most points in a year (575) and biggest title winning margin to second (290 points) in the […]
Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz set the fastest time across the day, but only after team-mate Charles Leclerc dislodged a drain cover which took time to fix. The loss of running, though, allowed for even more time to spy on the new 2024 cars in the pitlane and garages. INSIGHT: What we learned on day two of 2024 […]
Are drainage covers becoming a problem in the Venturi-tunnel ground effect era of Formula 1? Has Red Bull found some mechanical issues with their RB20? And which teams are looking short on form as testing develops? Steph Wentworth chats with Autosport’s Alex Kalinauckas in the Bahrain media centre and Haydn Cobb to answer all these […]
Red Bull’s substantial step for this season has caught rivals by surprise after most of them focussed on trying to work out what made last year’s RB19 so competitive, and inevitably ended up with cars that owe much to the title winner. Red Bull itself has now gone in a different direction, adopting a ‘zeropod’ […]