Tomáš Enge, F1 driver

At last week's Spanish Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell scored a double podium after the Brackley team's comprehensive upgrade package delivered a solid step forward.
While Hamilton still finished 24 seconds behind dominant winner Max Verstappen, Mercedes' W14 was the second-strongest car on the high-downforce circuit, providing the team with a solid baseline to continue its ...

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Earlier this year, the FIA opened up the tender process for F1's official supply contract from 2025 to 2027, with the possibility of it being extended until 2028.
The deadline for applicants was May 15, with the FIA now going through the process of evaluating the proposals from interested parties before making a call on who the approved bidders are on 16 June.
The successful candidates will ...

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The as yet unnamed film is being made by the team behind Top Gun: Maverick, with Lewis Hamilton serving as a producer and consultant.
It is set to start production in the coming weeks from a base at Silverstone, with some of the action to be shot around real race events with the filming fitted around the regular schedule.
Pitt, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Joseph Kosinski met team ...

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Perez had a disrupted FP3 as he joined the session 20 minutes late, and he ended up over half a second down on team-mate Max Verstappen after two push laps were wrecked by locking up under braking.
Speaking after qualifying, Perez explained that "we thought we fixed that" prior to qualifying, only for his RB19 to skate into the gravel on his first push lap in Q1 at Turn 3 after locking his ...

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His comments echo those the seven-time world champion made after his first run in the troubled W13 last season in what turned out to be his first winless campaign in F1.
However, Hamilton says that the team is in much better shape as the porpoising that afflicted the old car is now absent, making it easier to push on with performance development.
"I knew from the moment I drove the car where ...

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Alpine will continue racing with a French racing blue and BWT pink livery on the A523, although it too follows the recent trend of leaving parts of its car in unpainted carbon fibre to save weight.
Drivers Esteban Ocon and newcomer Pierre Gasly, who joins from AlphaTauri, presented a car which appears to build on the strengths of its predecessor, the A522.
As in 2022, the team also presented ...

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Indeed, recent decades have highlighted some extremes - from the 1980s and 1990s when questionable super exotic blends were the only way to win, to the current turbo hybrid era where it is about getting the most energy out of a set weight of fuel.
But, as F1 eyes a carbon-zero future, attention is now shifting to the impact of the switch to fully sustainable fuels from 2026.
And, while the ...

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After two seasons where McLaren has enjoyed a relaxed atmosphere between Norris and Daniel Ricciardo, the arrival of Piastri looks set to deliver a very different dynamic at the team.
Piastri is at a very different stage in his career compared to Ricciardo, and will want to make a name for himself after being at the centre of a tug-of-war battle between McLaren and Alpine over his services for ...

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Williams confirmed Jost Capito?s exit after two years heading up its F1 operations, along with the technical director he appointed, FX Demaison, in December. It marked a big change at the top of the team, signalling a desire from its owner, Dorilton Capital, to clean house and go in a different direction.
The team said it would announce a replacement ?in due course? and is yet to confirm ...

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The start of an engine freeze from 2022 to 2026 could have been a moment when things calmed down a bit, as teams have to stick with the same designs for several years now.
However, a total of 36 engine grid penalties, which came from 137 times drivers exceeded component limits, showed the challenge manufacturers still face to keep within the limits.
There were 20 occasions when drivers ...

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The Australian put in his best performance of the year in Mexico City last weekend, using a successful medium/soft tyre strategy that gave him the pace with which to charge up to seventh place ? while negating a 10-second penalty for colliding with Yuki Tsunoda.
The race came just a week after one of Ricciardo's most disappointing outings of the season in Austin, where he finished a lowly ...

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With the 2022 season winding to a close and the majority of teams now fully focused on developments for next year, few are bringing many new parts to races.
But there has been a big focus on cooling for this weekend?s Mexican Grand Prix as teams look to get on top of the high-altitude conditions that make it a race unlike any other.
The Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez sits at 2.2km above sea ...

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Street circuits are known for being mentally taxing despite the lower speeds involved, requiring full concentration at all times and little time for respite on the short straights.
But Singapore is a beast like no other. It is renowned for being one of the hardest races to compete in both physically and mentally, meaning it requires a kind of preparation unlike any other race.
Daniel ...

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...

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Piastri was confirmed as a McLaren driver for at least the next two seasons after the F1 Contract Recognition Board decided in favour of the Woking team in a tug-of-love with Alpine.
Piastri will race alongside Lando Norris, with the latter entering his fifth season with the team and already fully established as a frontrunning F1 driver.
Seidl is confident that Piastri has what it takes to ...

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Leclerc comes into this weekend?s Belgian Grand Prix 80 points down on standings leader Max Verstappen following a DNF in France while he was leading and a questionable strategy from Ferrari in Hungary, dropping him to sixth while Verstappen won the race.
Ahead of the resumption of hostilities, Leclerc admitted he was worn out by an ?accumulation of emotions? in the first half of the ...

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The McLaren driver shadowed Ferrari?s Charles Leclerc by just 0.217 seconds in FP2 at the Hungaroring, having also ended FP1 inside the top five in fourth.
This follows a week on from a French GP weekend in which Norris was 1.1s off pole in fifth and finished the race 52s adrift in seventh.
But despite the strong start to his Hungary weekend, Norris says this can largely be attributed to ...

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A core group of teams led by Ferrari and Red Bull are unhappy about the scale of revisions that the FIA is intending to make to the technical regulations for next year.
In particular, they are unhappy that a proposed 25mm raising of the floor edges and a lifting of the diffuser throat will force them to change development direction on the 2023 cars, something which could prove expensive and ...

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Ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring, F1 teams , Formula One Management and the FIA will meet to discuss a number of burning topics that are being put forward for action.
As well as the discussions to involve the inflation impact on the cost cap and the latest on the 2026 F1 engine regulations, it now looks certain that the issue of the FIA's intervention on porpoising will be ...

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A raft of updates to the W13, allied to the smooth and high-speed Silverstone circuit perfectly suiting its car, allowed Lewis Hamilton to fight with Ferrari for the win.
Although Hamilton eventually finished third, behind race-winner Carlos Sainz and the recovering Sergio Perez, the fact that he was able to battle for a podium spot on pure pace marked a big step forward for his Brackley-based ...

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While the new-for-2022 regulations have reduced the teams? ability to bring one-off aerodynamic upgrades to increase downforce, as they have done in the past, there were still many changes required to deal with the barrier-lined circuit that won?t feature elsewhere on the calendar.
Topping this list are changes to the steering assembly and front suspension, with no less than six teams ...

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Norris said that if he had been feeling 100% fit and had not made mistakes on his lap, he might have qualified even higher.
Speaking at length for the first time about his recent illness, Norris made it clear just how tough the Spanish GP weekend was for him as he battled to an eighth-place finish.
"It's been a long week, just because of suffering the amount I did last week with the ...

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Aston is the only team not to have scored a point thus far in 2022, and it currently lies 10th in the world championship, handicapped by a struggle to control porpoising.
Between them Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll were involved in four accidents over the Australian GP weekend, with the damage further compromising development plans.
Krack says he understood even before taking on the job ...

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Ultimately, pole was secured by Red Bull's Sergio Perez with new tyres, but that was not the case for his immediate rivals.
Pirelli Formula 1 boss Mario Isola says that it was due to the grip recovery characteristics of the 2022 tyres, something that could continue to provide teams with an extra challenge in qualifying in Melbourne this weekend and elsewhere
Teams will now have to find out ...

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One area that has changed significantly, and has caused some early dramas for a number of teams is the brakes.
Teams had built a reliance on the brake assembly for a number of reasons, all of which have been reduced significantly as part of a push to reduce costs and improve the racing.
Firstly, the allowable brake disc diameter has been increased in line ...

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