Charles Pic, F1 driver

But what happened next only heightened his suspicions that rival team Benetton was using some form of illegal traction or launch control on its car.Senna took pole position – the 64th of his career – thanks to his time in Friday qualifying. This was fortunate for two reasons: on Saturday, the track was much slower and he’d spun at Revolver corner, leaving him 24th fastest in that ...

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China last hosted an F1 race in 2019 until the COVID-19 pandemic derailed its grand prix.F1 now returns to the demanding Shanghai International Circuit after four seasons away, with teams facing several unknowns on how this generation of cars will perform there.On top of that, the circuit has since been resurfaced, meaning very little existing data is valid at the 5.4km track outside Shanghai and ...

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Liberty, which has owned F1’s commercial rights since 2017, announced at the start of April that it had acquired an 86% ownership stake of Dorna Sports and MotoGP in a deal valued at €4.2 billion.Following this, MotoGP Dorna sporting director Carlos Ezpeleta said his organisation was “not ruling out” the possibly of subsequent future shared race weekends with F1.At the recent Japanese ...

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Alonso was handed a post-event drive-through, which became a 20-second time penalty, for the way he slowed up Russell as they battled for sixth place.The FIA race stewards deemed that Alonso had driven in a “potentially” dangerous manner by slowing 100-metres earlier than normal, which they think contributed to Russell losing control behind him and crashing his Mercedes out of the race.While ...

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The subject came to the fore over the Bahrain test, with McLaren CEO Zak Brown leading the questioning of how closely the two teams work together and the personnel movement between them.Asked if he thought such comments were an attempt to destabilise Red Bull – already in the spotlight in the wake of the ongoing Christian Horner investigation – Verstappen suggested that it was a familiar ...

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Rival teams have been offering up their own renditions of the underbite inlet and undercut solution that Red Bull has developed over the last two seasons.But Red Bull has ditched the underbite on the RB20 and has an overbite arrangement instead, with that high panel now forming an extension for the sidepod’s upper surface, while the inlet finds its home down below, married to a very generous ...

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The Milton Keynes-based team is officially launching its 2024 challenger at an event at its factory on Thursday, and had hoped to keep the design secret until then, despite some early running.But despite world champion Max Verstappen’s first laps in the car on Tuesday being a strictly behind closed doors event, video footage taken by a spectator – most likely from the hotel opposite ...

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Verstappen and Red Bull crushed the competition by respectively winning 19 and 21 of the season's 22 races, meaning the Dutchman has plenty of standout wins to choose from as he sat down with Motorsport.com to pick his best and worst race weekends of the year.After careful consideration, the triple world champion replied: "I think Spa was still a very strong weekend again. Probably Japan was very ...

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A lacklustre sprint race at the United States Grand Prix has prompted discussions about what F1 needs to do to ramp up the entertainment factor with the Saturday events. As Motorsport.com revealed, F1 chiefs are believed to be now considering a raft of radical ideas – including reverse grids and a standalone championship – as part of an effort to change things for the future. While calls for ...

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The McLaren driver thinks it is “silly” that a lack of harshness from the FIA in dealing with such rule breaches means it can be better for drivers to get a five-second penalty for illegally jumping a slower rival they can easily pull clear of, than lose time by getting stuck behind them.Norris’s comments come in the wake of his team-mate Oscar Piastri losing a position to George Russell in ...

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So, it was little wonder that Red Bull team boss Christian Horner, whose team has been dominant in F1 2023 up until now, found himself having to repeatedly dismiss any suggestions that his squad’s struggles were related to new FIA stipulations over the wings.Backing up his argument is the fact that, with a flexi-wing estimated to be only worth about one-tenth of a second around Singapore, the ...

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The Dane qualified 19th for this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix while team-mate Nico Hulkenberg continued his strong one-lap form by running to 10th place in Budapest.Magnussen blamed a 0.511s gap in Q1, when both cars were running with hard tyres under the experimental Alternative Tyre Allocation, on his discomfort aboard the VF-23.He says that as the Haas car has evolved, he has struggled to ...

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Formula Regional driver van 't Hoff was killed on Saturday on the final lap of the race after spinning on the Kemmel straight in heavy rain and being hit by a following car as he was unsighted due to severe spray.
Read Also:

18-year-old Dilano van 't Hoff dies in Spa Formula Regional crash
Stroll: F1 "playing with fire" if Spa is not changed after van 't Hoff's death


The ...

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The idea was logical that if there was less disturbed air thrown up by cars then this should allow some closer racing. 
The subsequent simplification of car's upper surfaces, with more reliance on the underfloor to generate downforce, certainly seemed to achieve some of these goals initially.  
But, as the teams now have a more sound understanding of the fundamentals, they are ...

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Until his 2023 appointment at the helm of Williams, Vowles served two decades at Brackley, rising to the ranks of Mercedes chief strategist and latterly its motorsport strategy director.
Beyond influencing in-race strategy, Vowles co-managed the Mercedes' junior driver roster in his former position and steered the manufacturer's presence in other categories.
He was considered a contender to ...

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Hamilton has the sixth-highest start count in F1 history and is poised to leapfrog Michael Schumacher and Jenson Button for fourth come the end of the 2022 campaign.
Ahead of his landmark race at Paul Ricard on Sunday, Hamilton has singled out current Alpine pilot Alonso as his toughest opponent - the Briton having made his F1 debut at McLaren in 2007 alongside Alonso, with the defending ...

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While sprint qualifying races have divided opinion among those in the paddock, F1 says that feedback from fans is hugely positive.
F1 is looking to expand the number of sprint events to six in 2023, but those plans have currently been put on hold awaiting approval from FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem.
However, a lack of excitement at the Red Bull Ring last weekend ? with the top ...

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The Monegasque driver had been completing a demonstration run in the ex-Niki Lauda 1974 Ferrari F1 car on Sunday, when he spun at Rascasse.
After suffering unexpected brake failure during his third lap on track, Leclerc was pitched in to a spin and struck the barriers backwards, dislodging the rear wing.
Although he was able to get going again, Leclerc eventually pulled up on the main ...

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Made with the support of the Williams family, King Richard tells the story of how Richard Williams groomed his daughters to be tennis stars also while allowing them to grow up with a rounded education.
The film was produced by Smith, who has already won a best actor BAFTA, and is a favourite to score another success in Sunday?s Academy Awards.
Hamilton, who is a friend of both ...

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This week?s final pre-season test has been another good one for Sainz?s Ferrari team, which has maintained the momentum from a strong showing at Barcelona last month.
And with Mercedes appearing to struggle to get fully on top of the handling quirks of the W13, the German car manufacturer has singled out Ferrari as the team to beat heading in to the 2022 season.
Lewis Hamilton suggested ...

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At the opening test of the season in Barcelona it was evident that teams could potentially benefit from having flexible edges to the floors of their cars.
When running at speed, the floor could in effect seal the gap to the road and act like the skirts on the original ground effect cars of the late seventies.
At the same time some teams ? notably Mercedes ? have explored ways of making ...

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Mercedes and Red Bull continue to provoke one another both on and off the track this season, with the intensity turned up another notch at the Qatar Grand Prix, as Christian Horner threatened to protest his rival's car.
Red Bull has announced its dissatisfaction about the legality of the rear wing on the Mercedes on several occasions now, with the team convinced its bitter rival is gaining an ...

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The team announced Valtteri Bottas for next year on Monday and, with the announcements of George Russell at Mercedes and Alex Albon's move to Williams following that, the second Alfa seat remains the biggest question mark of the silly season.
Vasseur is no longer contractually committed to take a Ferrari Driver Academy member and, while incumbent Antonio Giovinazzi could still retain the seat ...

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What should have been a normal pitstop for Benetton driver Jos Verstappen turned into near disaster when petrol sprayed out of the refuelling hose and was ignited on a still hot car.
Captured live on television at the time, the drama of the moment has been further sealed by what is now a world-famous photograph of then Benetton pit crew member Paul Seaby captured in the middle of flames as he ...

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Alonso was the star of Saturday's sprint qualifying event at Silverstone, starting on the soft tyre and jumping from 11th to fifth, before eventually falling back to seventh.
The former world champion agrees that the new format creates action on all three days, but he believes that Friday could be made more interesting with a restriction on tyre usage and the number of qualifying runs that ...

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