Formula 1 is picking up in Belgium where it left off in Hungary: with the 2023 driver market still considerably unresolved and the clock ticking down on those without contracts.
And though the seismic defections of Fernando Alonso and Oscar Piastri from Alpine have dominated the silly season, the ripples caused by the sudden fracas aren’t affecting every corner of the market.
Haas still has a hand to play, it’s setting up a chance to evaluate former F1 driver Antonio Giovinazzi in one of its cars as it moves towards judgment on Mick Schumacher’s two-year F1 career.
Williams is also high and dry after losing what seemed to be a certain loan deal for Oscar Piastri, which might prove to be good news for incumbent Nicholas Latifi.
With Alpine still down a driver for 2023 and McLaren seemingly with too many on its books, this silly season still has plenty of silliness to come.
Antonio Giovinazzi will get back behind the wheel of an F1 car for two free practice sessions with Haas as the American team firms its driver line-up for 2023.
The 28-year-old, who currently races in Formula E, will make his appearances at the Italian and United States grands prix, with Mick Schumacher and Kevin Magnussen giving up one session each.
The Italian’s 62 career starts with Sauber, including three full-time seasons in 2019–21 before being dropped for Zhou Guanyu, means he doesn’t qualify for the rule requiring each team to give up two FP1 sessions to rookie drivers each year. That means Haas will need to find a further two races to run a junior in the nine rounds remaining.
Haas boss Guenther Steiner said he was giving Giovinazzi two sessions on the request of Ferrari, with which his team has a technical and driver partnership.
However, Giovinazzi has also been linked to Haas as a potential replacement for Schumacher should the team decide the German’s rate of progress isn’t great enough to warrant retention.
Giovinazzi has made no secret of his keenness to return to F1 if given the chance, having spent his entire career racing in a car barely capable of scoring points. Ferrari also rates him highly enough to have retained him in a reserve capacity this season.
Though both are backed by Ferrari, Steiner has previously said the Italian team doesn’t have a final say over the identity of Kevin Magnussen’s teammate.
Schumacher’s form has improved in the month before the mid-season break, but he still commands just over half of Magnussen’s points tally despite the Dane’s last-minute return to F1 after a year out of the sport.
“I’m so glad to have the chance to drive again in official F1 sessions,” Giovinazzi said. “It’ll be an opportunity to get confident with the new generation cars — it’s the best way to be ready if I were called as reserve driver.”
Steiner said earlier this month that it’s aiming to finalise its driver line-up by October.
Oscar Piastri’s Alpine defection continues to reverberate through Formula 1, with Williams driver Nicholas Latifi hoping the sudden lack of clear successor to his seat will secure his place in the sport for a fourth season.
Williams had been preparing to welcome Piastri on an Alpine-backed loan deal from next season when the Aussie F2 champion suddenly cut ties with the French team earlier this month.
Latifi, who has underperformed alongside new teammate Alex Albon, was set to make room for Piastri, but the seismic twist in the driver market has left Williams without an obvious alternative to the popular Canadian.
A further boost to Latifi’s prospects is that he’s notably improved since receiving a chassis change at the British Grand Prix in July, and the 27-year-old wants his team to judge him on his performance since then rather than on his underwhelming start to the new regulatory era.
“Now that I do feel much more comfortable in the position I‘m in with showing up [on] the weekends knowing that, okay, if I drive the way I know I can drive and get as much as I can out of the car, then the performance is where it needs to be, which I think is deserving of staying in F1,” Latifi told Autosport. “Whereas obviously at the beginning of the year that wasn‘t the case.
“I‘ve made my position clear that you can’t deny the past races, what’s the change in performance, and I’ve put more pressure on myself now, because performance is there now [for the team to assess] me from now onwards.
“So I‘m putting more pressure on myself, but the pressure is always going to be there. And so I know I can and I feel I can deliver, and for me, I showed that to myself the past few races.”
Williams’s possible alternatives to Latifi are 2021 Formula E champion and Mercedes reserve Nyck de Vries, who it ran during FP1, or junior driver Logan Sargeant, who is third in the Formula 2 championship.
RAIKKONEN CRASHES OUT OF NASCAR DEBUT
Kimi Raikkonen’s first racing foray in his post-F1 career has ended in the barriers after crashing out of a NASCAR race at Watkins Glen in New York.
Dis NASCAR Cup debut started promisingly, and he was running as high as eighth early in the wet-dry race but was forced off the road and into the wall battling on the outside of a four-car contest, ending his race after 44 laps.
Raikkonen retired at the end of last year but has remained open to racing for fun, with the Finn famously disliking virtually all aspects of motorsport other than the racing itself.
The 2007 F1 world champion was making a one-off appearance for a team set up to bring international talent into the sport and is uncommitted to any further races in the series.
“I have nothing against it,” the 42-year-old Raikkonen said, per Racer. “It was all good and they were very nice and helpful. We just ended up at the wrong place.
“I felt we had very good speed, especially after the pit stops, but maybe I was a bit too harsh on tires on one of the sets.”
Raikkonen had previously sampled NASCAR racing in the sport’s feeder series. During his only race he famously vociferously complained about his broken water bottle, hot seat and “shit car”. He also entered one race of the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, a ute-racing category, scoring points on debut.
