The Azerbaijan Grand Prix is already the site of one of Red Bull Racing’s great flashpoints. Could it be about to host another?

Sergio Perez is in fine form alongside reigning champion Max Verstappen and just 15 points off the title lead. He has underneath him a car that suits his driving style and around him the confidence of the team, which has re-signed him for two years.

For a team that’s traditionally liked to have just one strong driver in its line-up, is trouble brewing?

Not according to Helmut Marko, who expects Verstappen to comfortably overpower his teammate in a straight fight regardless of Perez’s rising form.

And while Perez has locked one of the grid’s most sought-after seats, way at the back of the grid drivers are positioning themselves to pounce on a potential opening at Williams at the end of the year — and if Aussie Oscar Piastri is in the mix, he’ll be up against some stuff competition.

MAX IS FASTER: RED BULL PLAYS DOWN PEREZ-VERSTAPPEN TENSION POTENTIAL

Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko has played down the prospect of intrateam tension erupting from a closely matched Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen, protesting that the Dutchman is quick enough to keep his teammate at bay.

Perez is having arguably a career-best season culminating in victory at the Monaco Grand Prix, having had Verstappen’s measure throughout the weekend in the Principality.

The win put him only 15 points behind the reigning champion in the drivers standings and just six behind Charles Leclerc. Had he not had to cede the lead to Verstappen in Spain, the pair would be split by just a single point.

Verstappen’s father, Jos, triggered the first potential flashpoint inside the team in the aftermath of Monte Carlo, writing on his son’s official website that he was disappointed in RBR management because it “exerted little influence to help Max to the front”.

But Marko, speaking to Germany’s Formel1.de, said he thinks Verstappen has a bigger margin over Perez than the points tally would have you believe.

“You forget one thing: Verstappen has already missed the finish twice this year,” he said.

“Both times he was in second place. If he had managed to collect those 18 points, then the distance to Perez would have been clearly greater.

“It doesn’t change the fact that Checo is having a great season, but still, when it comes to sheer speed, Max is usually the faster of the two.”

But the Austrian did praise Perez for closing the gap this season and reiterated the team position that both drivers were free to fight at the front to bring home the constructors championship.

“The new car concept means Perez is closer to Verstappen,” he said. “Sometimes it’s just one or two-tenths of a second.

“It is clear that as a team we also want to win the constructors title. From a financial point of view, most of our employees get a bonus if we win the constructors title, so you have to make sure you have the strongest driver duo.”

DRIVER MARKET: COULD 27-YEAR-OLD WORLD CHAMPION BE F1’S NEXT ROOKIE?

Dutchman Nyck de Vries could be in the frame for a seat on the 2023 Formula 1 grid after an impressive free practice performance with Williams at the Spanish Grand Prix.

The former McLaren junior turned Mercedes-affiliated driver is the 2019 Formula 2 title and the 2020-21 Formula E world championship and was only just beaten to the punch by Alex Albon for a Williams seat this season.

But Williams has retained an interest and used the Dutchman for one of its two mandatory junior driver practice sessions in Spain, in which his performance was solid enough to convince head of vehicle performance Dave Robson that he’d be worthy of a shot on next year’s grid.

“His pace was there,” he said. “His ability to understand the tyre and do the out-lap correctly was really impressive.

“He didn‘t put a foot wrong. He completed the engineering programme that we needed him to do, which for us was the most important bit.

“His feedback post-session was extremely good. He had some very useful comments on the balance of the car which agrees quite well with what we‘ve heard from the two race drivers.

“So, I think in that regard, considering he only gets an hour in the car, I think he did a really good job, and he clearly has what he needs to be to be an absolute top quality competition driver.

“He‘s worthy of a place on the grid I think, but so many people are. I think he took his opportunity well … and I think he should be you should be pleased and proud of what he did.”

Both Albon and Nicholas Latifi are out of contract this season. Albon has been impressive in his return campaign, having scored points twice already, but Latifi has struggled badly with the new car and is yet to finish higher than 14th.

The Canadian and his team have already rebuffed speculation that he could be replaced in the middle of the season, but he seems unlikely to be retained for a fourth season in 2023.

De Vries could be well positioned to take the seat, but he’ll be potentially up against Australian Oscar Piastri, whose Alpine backing may get him over the line.

WILLIAMS FIRST TEAM TO FALL FOUL OF COST CAP RULES

Williams has been fined US$25,000 for a procedural breach of the F1 cost cap regulations, the first penalty issued under the sport’s equalisation rules.

The cost cap was introduced last season. It’s set at US$141.2 million, or around A$195 million, this season and is schedule to drop a further $5 million in 2023.

Built into the financial regulations — the third regulatory book after the technical rules and sporting rules — are a series of interim checkpoints designed to keep team activity transparent through the financial yet.

Williams missed the 31 March deadline for reporting last season’s expenditure and has therefore been fined around A$34 million for the breach. The team has also been required to pay the costs involved in settling and administering the fine.

The team self-reported that it would have trouble meeting the deadline and was given until the end of May to file its financial statement, closing the matter.

The cost cap has become an intense subject of debate in recent weeks, with a slim majority of teams lobbying the FIA to temporarily increase the cap to account for rampant inflation in Europe and around the world.

Several teams have said they’re set to run over the year’s spending limit, with Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner comparing the increased prices for logistics and energy to the cost of travelling to four grands prix.

A vocal minority of teams remain opposed, however, on the grounds that they’ve been able to budget for the increased costs. They’re also wary that the larger teams will use the opportunity to wedge open the door to increasing spending permanently.

The FIA is yet to signal whether it will make adjustments to the cap.

F1 champion Alan Jones has weighed into the debate on Daniel Ricciardo’s troubled McLaren tenure, declaring his 2023 contract “doesn’t mean much” in the face of underperformance.

Ricciardo has been hammered by pundits in the wake of back-to-back disappointing rounds in Spain and Monaco, which extended his pointless streak to four races.

He’s currently 11th in the drivers standings and 37 points adrift of teammate Lando Norris in seventh.

Despite Ricciardo holding a contract until the end of 2023, Jones says no deal is worth much if the team-driver combination isn’t working.

“(His future at McLaren) is questionable at the moment,” Jones said.

“I don’t know if it’s in jeopardy or not, but unless he makes a few improvements quick smart, I really can’t see him being there for too much longer to be honest.

“A contract in Formula 1 doesn’t mean much.

“At the end of the day — and I hope to God he doesn’t — if the situation remains the same as it is, I have no doubt in my mind they will exercise one of those options that are in the contract.

“He is a great little race driver and he is a hell of a nice guy, but of course we all know nice guys don’t get anywhere, particularly in Formula 1.

“The biggest d*** you are, the better off you are. There are a few out there at the moment that have proved that.”

Jones, Australia’s last world champion, knows a thing of two about unfulfilled contracts too, having signed a deal to race for Ferrari in 1977 only for the Italian team to renege on him without notification and signing Gilles Villeneuve instead.

Jones was also surprised to hear McLaren CEO Zak Brown talk publicly about being let down by Ricciardo and discuss his contract, something the 1980 title winner says could backfire on the team.

“You can start overdriving the car and maybe making a few decisions that you wouldn’t normally if you were totally relaxed,” he said. “I see that as a real danger area for him at the moment.

“I just think he has got to buckle down, block all of this out of his head and say to himself he is going to prove all of these people wrong, because the more he thinks about it, the worse he will get.”

VETTEL WOULD PREFER BATHURST OVER VEGAS

Four-time champion Sebastian Vettel says he’d rather go to Bathurst than Las Vegas in a swipe at Formula 1’s expansionist plans.

Vettel is a well-known F1 traditionalist and has previously spoken out against the prospect of heritage circuits losing their spots on the calendar to new cashed-up venues. He laments, for example, that he’s unlikely to ever take part in another German Grand Prix after the race was squeezed out of the market.

Several European races are out of contract this season, including the Monaco and Belgian grands prix, while the United States was awarded a third race earlier this year with the addition of Las Vegas.

In Q&A published on Monday from the Australian Grand Prix, Vettel said he doesn’t understand the appeal of Vegas to Formula 1 and that he’d rather the sport’s significant cash outlay to race there were spent on restoring old circuits.

“To be honest, I have been to Vegas,” he said. “I didn’t really like it. I think it’s too busy and people misbehave.

“Nothing against misbehaving … but it’s just when you go too far. Vegas seems to be a hotspot for people who just go too far, when it’s not funny anymore.”

“I’d rather go to Bathurst — take the cash we’ll take to Vegas and invest it in great tracks that already exist.

“That would be a real challenge. I think that track is a monster. I’ve never been but, one day, I hope to go and experience it.”

A Formula 1 race at Bathurst is unfortunately a fanciful proposition. The New South Wales circuit holds only a grade 3 FIA licence and would require substantial modification to be made safe for F1 machinery.

The only modern Formula 1 car to ever make it up the Mountain was the 2008 McLaren MP4-23 driven by Jenson Button on a promotional outing. Its lap time was an unofficial 1 minutes 48.8 seconds — almost 16 seconds quicker than Chaz Mostert’s official track record set in 2019.

 

ALONSO BAULKS DRIVER SALARY CAP TALK

Fernando Alonso has hit out at talk that F1 might move to limit driver salaries in a further move to lock down costs, declaring he’s busier than he’s even been racing in Formula 1.

While global inflationary pressures are keeping F1’s general cost cap in the spotlight, the drivers have been happily shielded from any cash crunch because their stipends are excepted from the spending limit.

Each team’s three highest paid staff are excluded from the cost cap, generally taken to include both drivers and the team principal.

But capping all performance-related expenses is on F1’s radar, and a salary cap on drivers has long been mooted as one of the next steps to fully equalising constructor finances and further boosting the sport’s financial health.

In fact Ferrari team boss told RacingNews365 that an all-inclusive cost control has been under discussion among the teams for more than a month, though he admitted a workable model is still some way off.

“We are trying to understand what could be a solution,” he said. “It will not be in the short term.

“The reason for that is we already have contracts in place, and we cannot simply breach them. There are legal implications certainly to understand how to do that, so it‘s a discussion.

“It‘s an important one. We understand it and we recognise it will take time, but certainly we will go through the process.”

But Fernando Alonso has rejected any need to restrict his and his rivals’ pay, protesting that the drivers are worked more aggressively than ever in F1’s expanding calendar.

“I don‘t think it’s needed,” Alonso said, per Autosport. “Drivers have been always outside this topic, and I think the drivers, they are using us more and more to promote Formula 1. We do more and more events we are more in contact with the fans.

“They are asking more and more from us and they are benefiting from that. So we should be outside from that cap. It‘s very complicated.”

Teams reportedly reached an in-principle agreement last year to limit expenses for both drivers to US$30 million per constructor, with any money spent over the limit subtracted from the general cost cap, but no proposal has yet moved through the sport’s formal regulatory process.

Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen reportedly earn above the nominal cap, at an estimated US$40 million and US$35 million respectively, while Fernando Alonso is the next best paid at an estimated US$20 million.