Bankrupt f1 teams

After similar festivals in London, Shanghai, Marseilles and Milan, this time the fast-paced entertainment was presented to fans in Miami, and according to Formula 1 figures, 80,000 people flocked to Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami on Saturday to enjoy the free entertainment program. The focus was on show runs by Formula 1 cars from different eras. Renault test driver Jack Aitken drove a Renault-liveried Lotus E20 from the 2012 season. Patrick Friesacher steered a Red Bull RB7 from the 2011 season. And while these two Formula 1 cars with V8 engines thrilled the fans especially thanks to their noise, there was much more to admire and listen to. IndyCar driver Takuma Sato, the 2017 Indianapolis 500 winner, drove a 50-year-old Honda RA301 as piloted by John Surtees in the 1968 Formula 1 season. "Back in 1968, there's no seat belt!" Sato said in an interview with Motorsport.tv, and then waxed lyrical about the car’s V12, commenting: "The engine is simply beautiful – a … [Read more...] about Miami F1 Festival thrills 80,000 fans

McLaren finished 2018 – its first season with Renault engines – only sixth in the F1 constructors’ championship, and with barely more than half the number of points of the works Renault team. Yet in 2019, new signings Carlos Sainz and rookie Lando Norris have regularly qualified and raced in the top 10, McLaren lies fourth in the constructors’ table, it already has 20 more points than last year despite being just 12 races into a 21-race championship, and it has accrued more than double the number of points of the Renault team. Brown said that without such a turnaround, he probably wouldn’t have considered approaching the McLaren board members or commercial partners about joining forces with the Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports team and returning to IndyCar racing full-time in 2020. “We’ve definitely made progress but we’ve a long way to go,” he said. “Number 1 on the checklist when deciding when or if we go IndyCar racing is that it cannot be a distraction from … [Read more...] about McLaren’s F1 progress crucial to IndyCar expansion

Albon was dropped by the senior Red Bull outfit over the winter for failing to consistently match teammate Max Verstappen over the course of the 2020 season, with ex-Racing Point driver Sergio Perez hired as his replacement. Unlike his predecessors Daniil Kvyat and Pierre Gasly, who were placed at the then-Toro Rosso team following their demotions from Red Bull Racing, Albon hasn’t yet been given a second opportunity in F1 at what is now AlphaTauri. Instead, the Thai driver will contest selected rounds of the new-look DTM series in an AF Corse-run Ferrari 488 GT3 in 2021 while remaining in F1 as a reserve/test driver for both the Red Bull and AlphaTauri teams. The 25-year-old got his first proper taste of a GT3 car earlier this month at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, before getting more running under his belt in the official pre-season test at Hockenheim this week. While success in the DTM would boost his profile, Albon insists the primary objective of his programme is … [Read more...] about Albon: Reserve duties will play bigger role than DTM in F1 return

After a difficult 2020 campaign where Ferrari finished sixth overall, the team has appeared to make some good progress in to this season with both Sainz and Leclerc finishing in the points in the Bahrain Grand Prix. Leclerc has already made reference to Ferrari shaking off the ‘strange’ atmosphere that dogged it at the start of last year, but he now reveals how Sainz has helped change things too. With the Spaniard having embraced his switch from McLaren, Leclerc says everyone at Ferrari has been boosted by his enthusiasm to do well. Speaking in an exclusive interview with Motorsport.com’s Italian site , Leclerc felt Sainz had brought some benefits with him. "In recent years he has been in several teams, and I think it is always interesting to get an idea of ​​how the opponents work,” he said. "I’ve immediately noticed his great motivation too. He is in his first year in Ferrari and you can see that he immediately wants to do very well. “This euphoria is … [Read more...] about Sainz’s Ferrari euphoria “contagious” for team, says Leclerc

Normally when the leader of a Grand Prix has a problem on the power unit that costs him 160hp, over two seconds a lap of pure performance, the pursuing drivers will find a way past. Had Daniel Ricciardo’s problem occurred anywhere other than Monaco, they would have done. And had it occurred before the only round of pit stops in the race, then he might have been vulnerable to a strategy move, like an undercut, from Sebastian Vettel or Lewis Hamilton. But Ricciardo had made his only stop of the afternoon before his MGU-K failed. Although he had to play with the controls of the car, shifting the brake bias forward, for example, to help the rear brake temperatures, his car’s gentler treatment of the softest tyres in the Pirelli range was superior to Ferrari and Mercedes. And that proved to be enough to keep him in position on this most difficult of tracks on which to overtake. Because it’s Monaco; track position is everything, as Lewis Hamilton learned to his cost in 2015 … [Read more...] about Strategy Report: Why Ricciardo’s pursuers played it ‘ultra’ safe