Red Bull Tag

By FIA Fernando Alonso posted the only timed lap of the day as snow and then heavy rain turned day three of Formula 1 testing in Barcelona into a wash-out. Overnight snow and freezing temperatures led to a long delay in the morning but the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya was eventually declared fit for running at midday. However, persistent rain throughout the afternoon meant that few teams ventured out on track. Alonso completed the most laps, with 11, and the McLaren driver claimed the timesheet honours for the day with theRead More

By FIA Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel set the quickest time of day two of the first pre-season Formula 1 test in Barcelona, outpacing Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas by three tenths of a second. McLaren’s Stoffel Vandoorne finished third on the timesheet a further three tenths back. The day began in muted fashion as overnight snow and rain meant conditions were tricky early on and many teams avoided significant running before the halfway point of running. One of those was Red Bull Racing, with the Milton Keynes team being restricted to the garageRead More

By Adam Tate, Associate Editor The 2018 Formula One season is finally upon us. After the long winter break, all 10 teams hit the track this morning at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain. While the full picture of who is competitive, who has got it right, and who has got it wrong won’t fully form till the end of testing next week, there are meaningful things we can gleam just from breaking down the first day’s running. The biggest caveat in doing so are two variables that made today’s runningRead More

By Adam Tate, Associate Editor McLaren debuted their new 2018 Formula One car today, the MCL33, which represents a fresh start for the brand with Renault power after three seasons of misery with Honda power unit failures. To symbolize this new beginning the car makes a bold return to McLaren’s classic papaya orange color, a nod to company founder Bruce McLaren, who proudly painted his cars in the standout color during the team’s early years of the 1960s. The car is a clear evolution of the MCL32 that came before it,Read More

By Adam Tate, Associate Editor IndyCar has increased the minimum weight for both the super speedway and road course/short oval trims for the universal aerokit equipped cars in 2018, according to RACER.com. The weights, which exclude driver, fuel, drinking bottle and ballast have gone up by 10 pounds in each trim and are now 1,620 pounds for the road course/short oval trim, and 1,590 pounds for super speedway trim. The move is due to the new safety measures introduced for the coming season, specifically more robust zylon anti-intrusion panels for theRead More

By Adam Tate, Associate Editor Formula One’s bigger, wider cars of 2017 produced the most downforce the sport has ever seen. That, coupled with the wider, more durable Pirelli tires lead to a massive decrease in overtaking which plummeted 47% compared to 2016 according to Pirelli. The excessive turbulent air of the high downforce cars is well known and Ross Brawn is working on a solution with the 2021 regulations, but it along with the rather dull season finale in Abu Dhabi have lead to an increased focus on the circuitsRead More

By Adam Tate, Associate Editor Kimi Raikkonen topped the time sheets for Ferrari on the first day of Pirelli’s Abu Dhabi tire test, where all 10 Formula One teams are evaluating the prospective 2018 tire compounds. The Finn clocked an impressive 1:37.768 on Pirelli’s new hypersoft compound, just three tenths ahead of Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull, and nearly a second ahead of World Champion Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton, who qualified and finished second behind team mate Valtteri Bottas on Sunday, hailed Pirelli’s hypersoft tires as the best tire Pirelli has made sinceRead More

By Adam Tate, Associate Editor The most obvious stat from the Mexican Grand Prix is that Lewis Hamilton is now a four time World Champion. In doing so he has equaled his rival Sebastian Vettel, and Alain Prost. The only drivers with more titles remain Juan Manuel Fangio with five and Michael Schumacher with seven. The way Hamilton clinched the title was somewhat anticlimactic and his ninth place finish is the lowest finishing position any driver has ever held to clinch a championship, though Schumacher came close with an eighth placeRead More

Lewis Hamilton claimed his fourth FIA Formula One World Drivers’ Championship title with a ninth-placed finish in a Mexican Grand Prix won by Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen. Mercedes driver Hamilton had to battle from the back of the field after an opening lap collision with title rival Sebastian Vettel dropped both drivers to the back of the field. Vettel, whose slim title chances rested on securing victory at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, managed to claw his way back to fourth place but with Hamilton slowly progressing to ninth placeRead More

Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo set the quickest time of second practice for the Mexican Grand Prix, edging championship leader Lewis Hamilton by just over a tenth of a second. In a tight session in which just 1.021 seconds separated first place from 10th, Ricciardo ran quickest early on, using soft tyres to top the order ahead of team-mate Max Verstappen. The two Red Bull drivers dropped down the order when Hamilton and Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas bolted on ultrasofts after half an hour but Ricciardo was soon back onRead More