The Spanish Grand Prix is upon us, but there’ll be nine championships worth of experience unlikely to be taking part in the battle at the front.
Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton won’t have the machinery to fight for victory in Barcelona, and the Spaniard says it’s a sign of the times in modern F1 that neither is playing a role in the title fight despite their obvious merits.
One Spaniard who does have a shot at a home win is Carlos Sainz, but he’ll have to overcome health complaints to do it. The Ferrari driver has renewed his criticism of the FIA’s handling of his crash in Miami, and has now turned his attention to the aggressive bouncing of the cars this season and what he says will be potential long-term health impacts.
ALONSO WELCOMES HAMILTON TO THE MIDFIELD
Fernando Alonso, never shy to emphasise his own virtues behind the wheel, but on the eve of the Spanish Grand Prix he delivered former teammate and rival Lewis Hamilton a compliment — of sorts.
Both the Spaniard and the Briton have endured difficult starts to their 2022 campaigns. Alonso has scored just two points this season thanks largely to bad luck, while Hamilton has been held back from fighting for an eighth championship by a Mercedes car way off the pace under the new regulations.
Alonso, who returned to Formula 1 last year with Alpine in a final attempt to position himself for a third world championship, says the duo’s struggles are a sign of how influential the car is compared to the driver in Formula 1.
“This is the nature of the sport,” Alonso told the BBC. “Sometimes you have a better car, sometimes you have not such a good car and you still need to fight and make some progress.
“This year we see that the driver is very important in F1 but not crucial.
“Lewis is driving as good as he has been the last eight years. He was dominating the sport and breaking all the records and [claimed] 100-and-something pole positions.
“And now he is doing a mega lap … and he is one second behind.
“So, yeah — welcome.”
Alonso said it was a reminder that Formula 1 is, and always has been, more of a team sport than many want to recognise.
“We are so happy for what we are achieving that even if we try to share with the team, all the headlines are for the driver.
“It happened to me when I won the two championships [in 2005 and 2006 with Renault]. I was beating Michael Schumacher … but my car was more reliable at that time and had very good performance.
“To have more than 100 pole positions in F1 is something unthinkable. You need to have the best car and package for many, many years.
“We were doing magic laps sometimes and we were P15, and how do you explain that to people? It will be impossible.
“[Hamilton] deserves everything he’s achieved in the past, but this year is a good reminder that in all those records and numbers there is a big part on what you have in your hands as a package in the car.”
CARLOS SAINZ WORRIES ABOUT HEALTH CONCERNS FROM CAR BOUNCING
Carlos Sainz is advocating for a discussions about the safety of ‘porpoising’ in Formula 1 after reporting negative health effects after five races.
Sainz’s Ferrari car is one of the most aggressive bouncers on the grid, albeit one of the few that doesn’t appear to be adversely affected in performance terms by the rapid up-and-down movement.
There are several different ways to counter the bouncing. Teams can raise the ride height and cop the reduced downforce, or they can stiffen the suspension, reducing the violence of the bouncing but degrading the ride quality.
Ferrari has favoured the latter method, but Sainz says the bouncing is now taking a toll on his body.
“How much toll should a driver pay for his back and his health in an F1 career with this kind of car philosophy?” he said, per the BBC.
“I’ve done my usual checks on my back, neck tightness, and I see this year I’m tighter everywhere.
“I don’t need expert advice to know that 10 years like this it’s going to be tough, and you’re going to need to work a lot in mobility, flexibility.”
It’s not the first time Sainz has raised broad safety concerns this year. The Spaniard was outspoken about the FIA refusing to place a barrier in front of the concrete wall at the outside of turn 14 in Miami after he smashed his Ferrari there during Friday practice.
Esteban Ocon suffered a 51G crash there the next day and wrote off his car for qualifying, but despite both drivers reporting pain on Sunday, the FIA opted against modifying the barrier.
“I’ve been trying to recover from the slight knot that I have in my neck from the accident in Miami to arrive here fully prepared,” he said.
“We need a proper explanation to know exactly what’s the reason for not putting Tecpro there to protect Esteban.
“At the end we left that weekend with two drivers with a sore neck and nearly two broken chassis for a very slow crash, so there’s definitely something to review.”
BLING BAN IRKS K-MAG
Formula 1’s jewellery drama rolls on ahead of Lewis Hamilton’s deadline to remove his nose stud before next week’s Monaco Grand Prix, but he’s far from the only driver expressing discomfort with the new inflexible interpretation of the rule.
Kevin Magnussen has also waded into the debate, saying he would prefer not to have to remove his wedding ring if he were given the option.
“I understand what they are saying, but it is a wedding ring around a finger,” he said. “I’d take a little bit of extra burn on my finger to race in my wedding ring.
“If something bad was to happen, I’d want to be wearing my ring. It kind of feels bad to take it off.”
The ban on jewellery is on safety grounds, both in the event of extrication and also fire, when it could undermine the effectiveness of a driver’s flameproof clothing.
That said, Romain Grosjean, the F1 driver who’s had by far the closest run-in with fire in the car after his fireball smash in Bahrain 2020, said he still wears his wedding ring regardless.
“Where my ring was, I was protected,” he told Sky Sports. “I was protected by my wife.
“I understand some of it, but I wouldn‘t like to race without my wedding ring. That is big for me.”
The rule in self-policed, with teams having to report to the stewards ahead of the weekend if their cars and drivers are in compliance with the rules, putting sporting directors in as difficult a position as any driver who may want to flout the rules.
Pierre Gasly, who has worn a crucifix necklace through his career, said he’d favour better communication with the FIA as the argument heads towards a clash in Monaco.
“As drivers, we agree that we would like more communication on what we feel is right, what they feel is right and find a compromise.”
If the FIA chooses to crack down on breaches, the fines are expected to be around €250,000 (A$376,590).
F1 HOPEFULS TAKE ADVANTAGE OF NEW TESTING RULE
The Spanish Grand Prix won’t be about only new parts being trialled by the teams but also new drivers, with three teams taking the opportunity of running at a well-known racetrack to put test and or junior drivers in their cars for a free practice session.
Red Bull Racing will field Juri Vips in Sergio Perez’s car for FP1. The 21-year-old Estonian, who’s currently eighth in the Formula 2 championship standings, is a long-time Red Bull Junior Team driver and the nominated Red Bull Racing test and reserve driver since 2020.
Williams will place 2020-21 Mercedes Formula E world champion Nyck de Vries in Alex Albon’s car for FP1. De Vries has been on F1’s periphery for more than a decade, first as a McLaren young driver between 2010 and 2019, after which he defected to the Mercedes Formula E roster, which opened the door to him becoming the German marque’s test and reserve driver from 2020.
De Vries was in the frame for a Formula 1 debut this year after George Russell confirmed his move away from Williams, but the team opted for Albon thanks to his two seasons of F1 experience with Toto Rosso and Red Bull Racing.
The Dutchman is out of contract at the end of the current Formula E season when his Mercedes team withdraws from the all-electric series, and his trialling this weekend could be a sign of its reported interest in the highly rated Dutchman for a 2023 drive.
Vips and De Vries will check the box for the requirement for every team to run an inexperienced driver in at least two free practice sessions this season.
Finally, the familiar Robert Kubica will pilot Zhou Guanyu’s Alfa Romeo in FP1 to evaluate the team’s raft of upgrades as its official test driver. The Pole also drove during preseason testing, but reliability confined him to just nine laps, making this weekend his first chance to sink his teeth into the new-generation car.
F1 SCRAPS PLANS TO REPLACE RUSSIA, CALENDAR SHRINKS
Formula 1 confirmed overnight that it won’t replace the cancelled Russian Grand Prix on the 2022 calendar, reducing the schedule to a record-equalling 22 rounds, down from 23.
The Russian Grand Prix in Sochi was called off one day after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, and F1 subsequently tore up its lucrative contract with the race promoter, ensuring “Russia will not have a race in the future”, as per the statement. The deal had four more year to run.
Formula 1 has been deadset about maintaining what would have been a record 23 grands prix, but the cancelled race was the first of an ambitious triple-header travelling from Russia to Singapore to Japan, and the need for a replacement to be on the same weekend, 23–25 September, proved limiting.
Qatar was an early frontrunner. The Middle Eastern nation has a 10-year contract starting next year but isn’t on this year’s schedule to enable it to prepare to host the FIFA World Cup. September was theoretically early enough to avoid the build-up to the first kick-off on 21 November, but the weather is on average 10 degrees hotter in September compared to November, when it hosted its first race last year, which made it a non-starter.
Singapore then emerged as a possibility to host a double-header round, with the first race perhaps taking place in the afternoon before its traditional night race the following weekend, but plans more recently fell through, with financial considerations understood to be the sticking point, particularly given the temporary street circuit would need to be stood up a week earlier.
And a race in Europe wasn’t an option for logistics reasons. F1 teams essentially have two different freight set-ups — one that can travel by truck for European races and another configured for air cargo for overseas events. A race in Europe would have forced teams to pack down on Sunday night, truck their gear back to their factories, unpack their gear from the truck and repack it into airfreight containers, transfer to the airport and arrive in Singapore in the space of about a day.
Instead the decision was made to leave the weekend blank, creating a two-weekend break between the end of the European season and the start of what could be the title-deciding six-race overseas leg in Asia, the Americas and Abu Dhabi.
The decision will come as a welcome relief for travelling staff, who were facing a gruelling schedule of 13 race in 10 weeks across seven different time zones and for whom burnout will become a major issue by November.
AXED F1 DRIVER MAZEPIN TO MAKE OFF-ROAD DEBUT
Sticking with the Russian theme, ex-Formula 1 driver Nikita Mazepin will get back behind the wheel later this year in the Silk Way Rally, an off-road rally raid-style event.
According to The Race, Mazepin will enter the multidisciplinary event in the car category in an all-terrain side-side-by side vehicle in the T4 class.
Mazepin has reportedly been training with Russian Dakar class winner Sergey Karyakin, though one might uncharitably opine that Mazepin had plenty of off-road experience over the course of his year in Formula 1.
Mazepin had his F1 contract terminated before the 2022 started when his former Haas team tore up its contract with then title sponsor Uralkali in light of the war in Ukraine.
Uralkali, part owned by Mazepin’s father, Dmitry, has funded Nikita’s racing career, and the Mazepin family was subsequently pinged by European sanctions targeting Russian oligarchs.
Mazepin has railed against his axing as being a form of “cancel culture”.
Russian athletes are allowed to compete in FIA-sanctioned events providing they do so under a neutral flag and sign a “commitment and adherence to the FIA’s principles of peace and political neutrality”.
Mazepin has refused to say whether he would make such an undertaking to continue racing in Europe.
But the Silk Way Rally, ordinarily held through Central and East Asia but this year run exclusively in Russia, will not subject competitors to any such commitment given it’s not an FIA-sanctioned event.
The Silk Way Rally was formerly part of the FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies, but this year it was dropped from the program when the series became a joint endeavour between the car and motorcycling governing bodies to form the World Rally-Raid Championship, which opened with the renowned Dakar Rally in January.
