March 2021

Nikita Mazepin will not get preferential treatment at Haas this season, team boss Gunther Steiner insists. Mick Schumacher may be the more famous and popular Haas rookie for 2021, but the company headed by Mazepin’s billionaire father Dmitry is the team’s new title sponsor. “Both drivers are equal in the team,” Steiner insisted to the German broadcaster n-tv. “Mr (Dmitry) Mazepin also said: ‘My son has no advantage’.” Steiner said that position is also backed up by the contracts signed between Haas and the Russian fertiliser producer Uralkali. “Uralkali is the main sponsor, but with no rights to have an advantage,” Steiner said. “It’s not sporting and we wouldn’t do that anyway. That’s what I stand for.” Steiner said he has been pleasantly surprised so far by the professionalism of Haas’ all-rookie lineup. “We have never had young drivers at Haas, so I’m all the more surprised at how well prepared they are,” he said. Steiner said Haas had a good pre-season test in Bahrain, although he has acknowledged that the American team could actually be dead last by the end of the season. “We’re not at the front,” he smiled, “but we already knew that.” Steiner has ordered that Haas should focus all of its resources on the 2022 car, declaring that he hopes to give the drivers “sharper weapons” next year. Nikita Mazepin is not complaining. “This is simply the situation,” said the 22-year-old. “Whatever the team’s plans are, it is the driver’s job to maximise the results. “I think I am at a good point to start my Formula 1 career,” the young Russian added. “The team has also been extremely helpful in helping a young driver like me, which is not something I would have assumed.”

Dr Helmut Marko does not think Red Bull newcomer Sergio Perez will need five races to start driving and racing his 2021 car at full speed. 31-year-old Mexican Perez, with almost 200 grands prix and a maiden win in 2020 under his belt, has joined Max Verstappen at the team following the ousting of Alex Albon. He said after the Bahrain test that he is not yet “on top of the car”. “Once we go to very different races with different conditions, you understand the car and the team a lot better,” said Perez. “I think five races, proper races, and then we should be good.” However, Red Bull’s notorious driver program manager Dr Marko doesn’t think Perez will need that long. “His long run was the fastest as far as I saw,” said the Austrian. “He has already fully lived up to his reputation as a tyre specialist and at the same time as a fast driver.” As for Perez’s five-race prediction, Marko added: “I don’t think it will take that long. Maybe for a qualifying lap, but in the race he will certainly be there from the first grand prix.”

Organisers of the grand prix at Sochi are pressing ahead with preparations for the race in September, despite Russia’s anti-doping ban from international sport. There is already controversy over Haas’ new ‘Russian flag’-style 2021 livery, while Nikita Mazepin is unable to display the Russian flag on his overalls or car. Sochi GP promoter Alexey Titov told Tass news agency that he is still in talks with the FIA about how the anti-doping bans will affect the September race. “We are still figuring out what will happen. The FIA are yet to release the details for all of the events,” he said. “We have answers about the drivers, which is understandable, but the work on the organisational side is still underway.” However, Titov said it is clear that the anti-doping ban will affect the Russian GP in certain ways. “Obviously our anthem will not be played at the beginning of the grand prix,” he said. “And there will be no Katyusha either, but I think it’s actually good that we won’t have a song instead of the anthem. “Our athletes are still able to win, so let everyone understand that we cannot be defeated by the absence of the anthem.” Titov also told the Ria Novosti news agency that the anti-doping ban cannot compel race organisers or the FIA to drop the official name of the Russian GP. “From the point of view of the name, there will be no restrictions,” he insisted. “They have no legal ability to do this because the commercial rights belong to Formula 1. Everything is clearly stated that we are called the grand prix of Russia,” Titov said.

Mercedes’ disappointing performance during the winter tests in Bahrain is the talk of the towb, but Red Bull’s Christian Horner doesn’t believe that Mercedes are really as bad as they seem. Mercedes are now known for the so-called sandbagging. Making themselves look worse than they actually are in order to pull the wool over the eyes of the competition. Horner therefore believes that Mercedes do not have as many problems as is now being said. “Two years ago they also had problems with testing,” Horner told Speedweek.com. Horner is referring to Mercedes’ disappointing performance during the 2019 winter tests. Of the eight test days, Mercedes were not fastest once. At the time, all hopes were pinned on Ferrari, who were very strong during the winter tests, to finally break the dominance of Mercedes. “We all know what happened then,” Horner concluded, referring to Mercedes simply winning both championships again.

Toto Wolff provided an apt, if unappetising, analogy for Mercedes’ pre-testing troubles as he said the Bahrain sessions had proved crucial in highlighting the problems with the new W12 car – and given the team a chance to fix them before the season itself gets underway. Gearbox issues for Valtteri Bottas and the Finn’s indictment of the W12 as “snappy and unforgiving” were followed by a spin for Lewis Hamilton on day two that brought out red flags, and a further spin at the end of day three. It was far from the smooth sailing that we’ve come to expect from the dominant force of the turbo-hybrid era – but team boss Wolff said he would be worried regardless of Mercedes’ mixed showing at the test. “I always worry, sometimes for the right reasons, sometimes for the wrong reasons, but pre-season testing is always exciting because you always find the hair in the soup, things that are not good and we had quite some struggle in the first few days,” he said. Reigning champion Hamilton and trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin also warned that Mercedes have their work cut out after the last three days of testing – and Bottas hinted that he’d have preferred Mercedes to have completed a shakedown of their car ahead of testing to flag up out any reliability issues – but Wolff said the team had not become complacent, nor did they regret forgoing a shakedown. “It’s not a matter of complacency,” continued Wolff. “There’s a reason why there are not many teams winning World Championships or doing it with consecutive championships. It’s an organisation that needs to stay energised and motivated at all times, and that’s not trivial. “The shakedown, if it’s done in the right conditions, allows you to understand a little bit more, but our failures in the first days were not down to doing or not doing a shakedown,” he added. With two weeks remaining until the first race of the season, Wolff explained the next steps for the Silver Arrows to ensure they start the season on the front foot against a resurgent Red Bull. “On the job list is that we will crunch the data,” he said. “Try to understand where we performed well, and where not, where we had good correlation to our simulations and the tunnel and where not, and just generally, it’s like sleeping overnight on an idea. Next day you wake up more intelligent.” Given the Silver Arrows’ remarkable run of seven consecutive world championship doubles in the past seven years, it would perhaps be foolhardy to write them off entirely after this test, but we’ll only get a true picture of where they stand at the first race of the season – the Bahrain Grand Prix at the end of March.

The unpredictability of NASCAR’s 2021 race winners was finally met with familiarity on Sunday when Martin Truex Jr. won the Instacart 500 at Phoenix. Truex led the final 25 laps of the race, separating himself from second place finisher Joey Logano by 1.7 seconds at the checkered flag. The victory marks Truex’s 28th career Cup win, and his first victory at Phoenix Raceway. He had the pole position for the spring race in 2018, but finished in fifth. Truex’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin finished third. Truex made contact with the wall in the opening 20 laps and his No. 19 Toyota suffered early damage, but the team made adjustments and Truex was leading laps by early in the final stage. “At the beginning of the race I thought we were going to run 15th or so,” Truex said on FOX. “I just can’t really believe it. I’m kind of speechless.” He beat out Logano for the lead off the final restart, but Logano said Truex probably would have caught up with him eventually. “He was fast,” Logano said. “It started to show at the end of the second stage…We’re just not fast enough right now.” While it wasn’t Phoenix titan Kevin Harvick whose name dominated the leaderboard Sunday, familiar frontrunners still took up top spots throughout the 312-lap race. Former Cup champions made up the top five finishing spots, including Brad Keselowski and Chase Elliott, for the first time this season. Truex became the fifth different winner in the first five races of the season. He joins Michael McDowell, Christopher Bell, William Byron and Kyle Larson. Logano said after the race that he believed the return of regular leaders was because the 750 horsepower rules package used for the track is harder to drive. “I think experience probably comes out more,” Logano said. “There are different techniques that I think the experienced guys have learned over the years racing cars that don’t have much downforce, don’t have horsepower.” For the past two weekends at Homestead and Las Vegas, NASCAR elected to use the 550 horsepower, high downforce NA18D rules package, but Phoenix marked a change. Denny Hamlin said that the same package, including changes to the spoiler height, was last used in 2017, which gave more experienced teams and drivers an advantage. “We’ve all been through tire changes, car changes, aerodynamic changes, track changes that we’re ahead of the game I guess you could say,” Hamlin said. “Especially since we have no practice, it lends itself more to experience.” Martin Truex Jr. is one of those experienced veterans, but the 2017 Cup champion earned just one victory in the series last season. He earned 14 top-five finishes last year and was a consistent field leader, but his best finish this year prior to Sunday — when he snapped a 29-race winless streak — was third at Homestead. Truex, who was jubilant after the race, couldn’t pin down the exact change that allowed for his win at Phoenix after 31 starts, but said the No. 19 team focused closely on the specific package and track. “I’ve probably had cars that felt better than what I had today,” Truex said. “But with the track being the way it is, this tire wearing out and the track getting as slick as it is, we were good enough to win. And that’s really what it’s all about.” “It’s definitely a moving target in this sport,” he continued. “Everywhere we go, every week it’s different.”

As the third and final day of pre-season testing wound down at the Bahrain International Circuit, the TV feed showed Sainz and Alfa Romeo’s Raikkonen running closely together off-track at the exit of Turn 10. Sainz had been attempting a final flying lap on a set of soft tyres in the final minutes of the test, but was forced to abandon after coming across a slow-moving Raikkonen on an in-lap. A replay showed that Sainz took the inside line at Turn 10, only for Raikkonen to turn in and cause the two cars to come close to contact before taking late evasive action, with both going wide into the run-off area. Sainz was then seen tailing Raikkonen’s car closely for the remainder of the in-lap in a sign of his frustration. Asked about the incident, Raikkonen explained that he was unaware Sainz was behind him and coming up so closely, but believed they avoided contact. “I don’t think we touched, I don’t know,” Raikkonen said. “I had zero idea that he was there, and then I saw him at the last minute, and I pulled right. But I don’t know. “I guess he was pissed off and tried to play games. Anyhow, I doubt that we even touched. I didn’t feel it.” Raikkonen ended the final day of pre-season testing with the highest individual lap count of any driver, racking up 166 laps in the Alfa Romeo C41 car. The Finn closed out testing with the fourth-fastest time, marking a decent result that indicated the team has made progress after a difficult 2020 campaign. Raikkonen refused to draw too many conclusions from the test running, but felt the car represented a step forward compared to last year. “It’s only testing, so you never know what the others are doing, but purely for feeling, for sure it’s better than it was last year,” Raikkonen said. “Faster I guess than we were at the end of the year. Like we said, it’s testing, and I think the feeling with the car is a bit better. “We’ll see in a few weeks’ time where we end up.”

Earlier this month, Haas prompted a WADA investigation after it revealed the livery of its 2021 car. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has concluded its investigation of the Haas F1 Team’s 2021 livery, a source at the international doping watchdog told Formula1News.co.uk on Monday. The watchdog will not be taking any further action at this time, the source added. WADA launched its investigation into Haas’ 2021 livery earlier this month, shortly after the American racing outfit released renderings of it which revealed that they are planning on running the colours of the Russian flag this upcoming season. “WADA is aware of this matter and is looking into it with the relevant authorities,” WADA told this publication on 5 March. The livery in question is based on the colours of the Russian flag, arranged in a way to resemble the flag itself on certain parts of the car, such as the front-wing. This raised eyebrows immediately after the livery was unveiled, as the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) had announced a two-year ban for Russian athletes at world championship sporting events in late 2020. The ban, which relates to state-sponsored doping at the 2014 Winter Olympics and was imposed following a WADA investigation, means that Russian athletes, including racing drivers, won’t be allowed to compete under their national flag or have it on display at official events until the end of 2022. Russian racing driver Nikita Mazepin, whose father’s company was recently announced as Haas’ title sponsor, therefore won’t be allowed to race under the Russian flag in his debut season in Formula One. Last week, the same WADA source told Formula1News.co.uk that they were still investigating the livery despite the FIA saying that it had clarified with Haas that the controversial livery is not in violation of the CAS ruling. “The team has clarified the livery with the FIA – the CAS decision does not prohibit the use of the colours of the Russian flag,” the FIA said. With WADA now no longer investigating the livery, the Haas F1 Team will be free to run it throughout the 2021 season.

Valtteri Bottas reveals that their 2021 contender is proving to be a bit of a handful as he admits that the rear end is “snappy” and “unforgiving” Though we have grown used to Mercedes habit of playing down its chances, over the last three days the German team has genuinely appeared to struggle. While it is not the “horror show” that some headline writers would have you believe, it is clear that issues with the W12, not to mention the obvious step taken by Red Bull, suggest the world champions have a fight on their hands this year. Aside from technical issues such as the gearbox change on Friday, the W12 doesn’t appear to sit as well as its predecessors, while both Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton have had ‘moments’ in the car which can’t all be put down to the wind. “It’s a bit more windy conditions than we’ve had normally at the race,” said the Finn at Sunday’s press conference, moments after his pre-season running had come to an end. “But still, I would say one of the big issues with the car is the rear end… it’s quite snappy and it’s quite unforgiving. “That topped up with the new tyres, that they feel quite sensitive to the sliding, it’s not that easy,” he added. “We are kind of trying to calm the car down a bit and that way trying to get some more pace.” Though quickest on Saturday afternoon, albeit on the C5s, by the end of testing he and his teammate were both over a second off Max Verstappen’s pace, the Dutchman having posted his best on the C4s. “We’ve made a bit of progress with the balance on higher fuel and the car was more predictable,” said trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin at the end of testing, “but we can see from the data we’ve collected over the last few days that on race pace, we’re not as quick as Red Bull. “The lower fuel work was a more confusing picture,” he admitted, “we didn’t gain enough and we need to go and look at our approach as far too many cars were ahead of us on pace today. “We’ve had issues in recent years with pace in winter testing and managed to make good progress before the first race but we may have our work cut out this time. We’ve not got long before we’re back here for the race so we’ve planned a programme of work to try and understand some of our issues and will be leaving no stone unturned in our efforts to find some more speed over the next ten days.” Ahead of testing, the German team had been extremely coy in terms of how it had dealt with the aero regulations introduced over the winter, going to great lengths to hide its new floor and refusing to say how its development tokens were used.

After just three days, 2021 pre-season Formula 1 testing is over – and despite the carryover cars, the picture is far from what would’ve been expected. According to the teams’ test runs we have come up with team rankings based on our own analysis of the three testing days. 1. RED BULL Best time: 1m28.960s – Verstappen, day 3, C4 tyresTotal laps: 369 It is difficult to envisage how Red Bull’s test could have gone better. Max Verstappen was quickest, the RB16B looked brilliantly responsive on the front and stable at the rear, and its all-new Honda engine proved reliable enough for Red Bull to tick off everything it needed to over three days of running. Verstappen’s feedback that the car was responding well to set-up changes offered a different kind of encouragement, while Sergio Perez seems to have started life at the team solidly – although he is talking with the sort of caution that suggests he might be short of his full potential early on, given his limited preparation. 2. MERCEDES Best time: 1m30.025s – Hamilton, day 3, C5sTotal laps: 304 Many will doubt Mercedes’ claim it is slower than Red Bull heading to the season opener, but the world champion is a wounded giant. Once Friday’s early gearbox problem had been overcome, and half a day’s running sacrificed in the process, Mercedes was able to rack up laps in a more familiar manner. But its work rate was not the most impressive and performance did not seem so easily forthcoming. The car looked better on high-fuel runs on the final day than earlier in the test, when Lewis Hamilton spun into the gravel and Valtteri Bottas said the W12 was “quite snappy and unforgiving”. But it was still slower than Red Bull, and on Sunday evening Hamilton had a spin on soft tyres, while the team professed itself “confused” by the lack of pace on lower fuel. Some think this is all just a bluff and Mercedes will win the season opener. It might do. But Mercedes does have a lot of work to do to get there. 3. McLAREN Best time: 1m30.144s – Ricciardo, day 3, C4sTotal laps: 327 The transition to Mercedes power here was accomplished astonishingly smoothly. McLaren was the team that pushed hardest to have the test two weeks before the first race rather than one week – because of the big technical task of changing power unit provider, especially with an engine so different in architecture to the previous one. Yet the new car ran reliably from the off and what’s more it looks a driveable, lithe machine, one in which Daniel Ricciardo immediately pressed on hard. 4. ALPHATAURI Best time: 1m29.053s – Tsunoda, day 3, C5sTotal laps: 422 With a fastest lap time just half a second slower than the team’s qualifying best in Bahrain last year, and a tendency to run Honda’s higher engine modes at the end of testing, we can make the relatively assured assumption we saw very close to AlphaTauri’s best in Sunday’s final hour. Is the sister team really a tenth slower than Red Bull? Almost certainly not. But its performance, coupled with what looked like a neat package on-track, bodes well for AlphaTauri. It looks like it has established itself firmly in the top half of ‘the rest’ again. How far forward Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda can be will depend on how much the other teams were holding back – but AlphaTauri has sent a decent statement of intent through testing, with a real lap time to back it up. 5. ASTON MARTIN Best time: 1m30.460s – Stroll, day 2, C5sTotal laps: 314 It was a frustrating few days for the newly-badged team and its beautiful-looking AMR21, which suffered problems that seriously limited the much-needed running for Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll. An electrical glitch, a gearbox problem and a troublesome turbo at various points had the car sitting in the garage and the driver doing nothing. But Stroll showed in the ‘happy hour’ of Friday that the car has pace and there’s no reason yet to believe it won’t be vying hard for the ‘best of the rest’ status throughout the season. 6. FERRARI Best time: 1m29.611s – Sainz, day 3, C4sTotal laps: 404 Ferrari has reason to be encouraged but not elated. The new car looks a definite step on from last year. Both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jr completed solid race simulations on the final day and with more power unit performance apparently unleashed late in the day Sainz’s single lap pace put Ferrari nominally at the upper end of the group behind the two Honda-powered teams. At no point did the car look to have the sheer performance of the Red Bull and we might suspect that whatever is at the root of Mercedes’ struggles, it will soon enough be fixed and that Ferrari will therefore be demoted from its apparent position on the final day. 7. ALPINE Best time: 1m30.318s – Alonso, day 3, C4sTotal laps: 396 Fernando Alonso’s performance looked so assured and Alonso-like despite his two years away that the biggest novelty about Alpine’s running wasn’t the two-time world champion being back in an F1 car, but the eye-opening girth of the A521’s airbox. The team is adamant the packaging gains are worth it. On track, Alpine looked strong without being exceptional, and was hard to split from Ferrari in terms of performance. There was no obvious sign of a step forward from where it sat in 2020 in its Renault guise, but encouraging long runs and a generally trouble-free test present a good building block for the first year of its new era. 8. ALFA ROMEO Best time: 1m29.766s – Raikkonen, day 3, C5sTotal laps: 422 There was an Alfa Romeo driver in the top six on all three days of testing and no team racked up more miles than the Sauber-run operation. That means every box was ticked – and more – even if the car isn’t as rapid as setting the fourth-fastest time suggests. On track, the C41 looks reasonably well-balanced…