Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Christian Horner has called the relationship between Red Bull Racing and engine suppliers Honda ‘phenomenal’ after the conclusion of their official partnership at the end of 2021.

Honda returned to Formula 1 as an engine supplier with the McLaren F1 Team in 2015 and spent three unsuccessful years with the Woking-based team before they switched over to Scuderia Toro Rosso in 2018.  Red Bull then also agreed to run with Honda power, starting from 2019 after falling out with Renault.

Since their partnership began, Red Bull and Honda have combined to win sixteen races and take thirteen pole positions, as well as taking Max Verstappen to his maiden World Drivers’ Championship in 2021.

Red Bull will take over the running of the Honda power units going forward, but the two parties will continue to work together on other projects.

And when asked if the relationship between Red Bull and Honda was the best they’ve had in Formula 1, Team Principal Horner was adamant it was.

Oliver Bearman, the first driver to win both the ADAC and Italian Formula 4 Championships in the same season, will make the move to FIA Formula 3 in 2022 and will join Prema Racing.

Bearman, who recently became a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy, took victory in five of the opening seven races in ADAC Formula 4 racing for Van Amersfoort Racing, and although he only took one further victory, his consistency across the season saw him finish twenty-six points clear of closest rival Tim Tramnitz.

His performances in Italian Formula 4, however, were extremely impressive.  His first win of the year came in the fifth race of the season, but he would win eight of the next nine, only being denied nine in a row by a disqualification in race three at the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari.  He ended over one hundred points clear of his rivals, which again were led by Tramnitz.

But now, the sixteen-year-old Briton will seek more success with a step up to Formula 3, and he will join Van Amersfoort’s rivals Prema for his rookie season in 2022.

“I’m really looking forward to stepping-up to FIA F3 with PREMA, as my first official year being part of the Ferrari Driver Academy,” said Bearman.  “We worked really well together in the post season test at Valencia, and their results in previous years across everything which they do, speaks for itself.

Logan Sargeant will make the full-time jump up to the FIA Formula 2 championship in 2022 after joining Carlin Motorsport.

The young American, who tested a Formula 1 car for the first time in the recent young drivers test in Abu Dhabi as part of his development driver role with the Williams F1 Team, will move up after three seasons in FIA Formula 3, which included three race victories.

It is the third time Sargeant has been part of the Carlin set-up, having raced in the F4 British Championship with them in 2017 and then in his rookie campaign in Formula 3 in 2019.

“This is an incredible week for me!” said Sargeant.  “I can’t wait to re-join Carlin who have been so strong in F2 and get to work on our 2022 programme.

“Big thanks to Trevor, my management at Infinity and of course Williams Racing for this incredible opportunity.”

Roy Nissany will remain with DAMS for the 2022 FIA Formula 2 season, with the Israeli driver looking to build on his performances with the French outfit from 2021.

Nissany secured his maiden Formula 2 podium with a third-place finish in the first of the sprint races in Monaco in 2021, and he also scored points in the feature races in Monaco and the Autodromo Nazionale Monza.

This ensured he finished sixteenth in the Drivers’ Championship, his best result in what was his third full season in Formula 2.

“I’m extremely happy to continue with DAMS, we have become a family which has made me feel very confident and comfortable,” said Nissany.  “I’m sure we will carry on with the amazing progress we have achieved so far, constantly pushing ourselves upwards.

“I’m really focused on continuing my development within the team throughout the new season and getting some solid results next year.”

Felipe Drugovich will remain in FIA Formula 2 for a third consecutive season in 2022, with the Brazilian re-joining the MP Motorsport team that he raced with in his first campaign in the category in 2020.

Drugovich returns to MP Motorsport after a season racing for UNI-Virtuosi Racing, and the twenty-one-year-old is eager to find the form that took him to three victories in his rookie season. 

He ended eighth in the championship with UNI-Virtuosi in 2021 but failed to add to his victory tally with them while team-mate Guanyu Zhou took four wins and finished third in the championship.

“I’m really delighted to reconnect with MP for my third season in FIA F2,” said Drugovich, “I have such wonderful memories of my debut season with them in 2020, starting off with a win in my very first F2 weekend and collecting two more victories after that.

“The team and I are eager to repeat that form in 2022, and then some more!”

Pierre Gasly reckons his 2021 season was his most consistent of his Formula 1 career to date, with the Frenchman ending the year ninth in the Drivers’ Championship standings.

Gasly broke through the one-hundred-point mark for the first time, with the Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda driver scoring one hundred and ten points, with his best result coming in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix when he finished third behind Sergio Pérez and Sebastian Vettel.

The Frenchman believes AlphaTauri often had a car that was better in Qualifying than in the race, with Gasly securing his first front row start in the Qatar Grand Prix, but he still managed to place inside the top six on nine occasions on race days.

“I think the balance between quali and race, you can’t adjust the car, it’s a fine line,” Gasly is quoted as saying by Motorsport Week.

“I think our car was generally strong in quali more than the race, and finding in terms of set-up and potential to extract the maximum, I feel I’ve made a step, you get more confident, this year was probably my most consistent year.

Frédéric Vasseur believes Valtteri Bottas can emerge from the shadow of Lewis Hamilton in 2022 after the Finn left the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team to race for Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN.

Bottas leave Mercedes after five seasons and being part of five consecutive Constructors’ Championships, but the Finn was never truly in contention for a Drivers’ title in that time whereas Hamilton claimed four of them.

His 2021 campaign saw him win only once compared to the eight of Hamilton, and he ended a distant third in the championship, well adrift of his team-mate and eventual champion Max Verstappen.

But now he finds a new home at Alfa Romeo, and his new Team Principal Vasseur believes Bottas will be revitalised by not being team-mates with Hamilton, with the Finn always going to be in his shadow for however long he was to be at Mercedes.

“For sure, it’s always a target to do a good job,” Vasseur is quoted as saying by GPFans.

Andreas Seidl says there were never any issues with Mercedes-Benz surrounding their supply of power units to the McLaren F1 Team in 2021, even when it was clear that a fourth engine would be needed.

McLaren returned to Mercedes power for the first time since 2014 this year having spent three years with Honda and three years with Renault power, and they took their first victory since the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix when Daniel Ricciardo triumphed in the Italian Grand Prix in September. 

However, both Ricciardo and team-mate Lando Norris needed an additional power unit on top of their allowed three in 2021, but despite this, they faced no dramas with Mercedes, and Seidl, the Team Principal at Mercedes, says the plan was always in place with their engine suppliers before the season even began to see how best utilise their engines.

“We set out a plan together with Mercedes at the beginning of the season [for] how we want to use the engines,” Seidl is quoted as saying by FormulaRapida.net.  “Then during the season, it was clear that at some point we have to take a fourth power unit.

“That was something which was always discussed and planned together with Mercedes. We didn’t have a single situation where we had any debate there or a mismatch between what we wanted and what Mercedes would have given us. So very happy with how that went.

Andreas Seidl, the Team Principal of the McLaren F1 Team, has downplayed any suggestion that Lewis Hamilton had a different ‘rocket’ engine for the São Paulo Grand Prix, despite the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team driver appearing to be in a different class to everyone else.

McLaren are one of Mercedes-Benz’s customer teams in Formula 1, alongside the Williams F1 Team and Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team, and regulations state that engine manufacturers cannot supply inferior engines to their customers. 

Seidl says he saw the data from the São Paulo race, which had seen Mercedes introduce a new power unit for the event, and he says there was nothing extraordinary about the engine used at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace.

And he believes the fact it was a new engine rather than a well-used power unit was the main reason to why Hamilton appeared so quick in Brazil and was able to climb from twentieth to fifth in the Sprint Qualifying race on Saturday and from tenth to first in the main race on Sunday.

“When I look into the data, and we compare the data from other teams, I don’t see there was ever an extraordinary, spicy engine around,” Seidl is quoted as saying by FormulaRapida.net. “In the end, we were happy with what we got supplied the entire year from Mercedes.

Lando Norris felt he did as much as he could to help the McLaren F1 Team beat Scuderia Ferrari in the Constructors’ Championship in 2021, only for bad luck to come into play towards the end of the season.

Nevertheless, the British racer had his best season in Formula 1 to date, securing four podiums in the Emilia Romagna, Monaco, Styrian and Italian Grand Prix, and he was on course to win the Russian Grand Prix – after starting from pole position for the first time – only to be denied by a change in the weather in the closing laps.

McLaren missed out on third to Ferrari by forty-eight and a half points as the Maranello-based squad continued to grow in strength until the end of the year whereas the Woking-based team appeared to fade and drop back a little. 

However, that does not tell the whole story as Norris lost better results in both the Qatar and Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, which also lost him fifth place in the Drivers’ Championship to Carlos Sainz Jr.

“There are things for me to improve on again, but I’m happy, it’s still been my most successful season,” Norris is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com.

Carlos Sainz Jr. hopes the fair racing he experiences against the young crop of drivers in Formula 1 continues if the battle moves towards the front of the grid.

The twenty-seven-year-old Scuderia Ferrari driver was one of the standout performers in 2021, silencing many of his doubters with strong performances that saw him earn four podium finishes and fifth place in the Drivers’ Championship.

However, battles with the likes of team-mate Charles Leclerc, McLaren F1 Team’s Lando Norris and the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team-bound George Russell have all been close but fair up until now, and the Spaniard hopes this will continue even if the battle is for wins or podiums.

Sainz feels he has reached a level where he is capable of fighting with anyone on the Formula 1 grid, but he just hopes it all remains civil and fair going forward.

“I just enjoy battling guys like Charles, Lando, and George when he will get the Mercedes next year,” Sainz is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com.  “It’s a generation of drivers that, even if I am not exactly the age that they are, I just enjoy fighting with them.

Before the season began, not much focus was put onto Grégoire Saucy and his potential to win the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine title, but by the end of the year, everyone was talking about the Swiss racer, who dominated the 2021 season.

The ART Grand Prix driver won eight of the twenty races, including both races at the Circuit de Barcelona and Circuit Zandvoort, and wrapped up the title with three races of the season remaining.

Saucy became the first winner of the FRECA title after the merging of Formula Renault Eurocup and Formula Regional European Championship at the end of 2020.

New Series, Large Fields, Good Racing

One of the plus points from the 2021 season was the size of the field, with the merging of Eurocup and Formula Regional at the end of 2020 bringing together ten teams and grids of over thirty cars.

Prema Powerteam, a frontrunner in any Junior Formulae they compete in, were on the grid as 2020 FREC champions, while ART Grand Prix and R-ace GP headed up the former Eurocup contingent. They were joined on the grid by KIC Motorsport, G4 Racing, Arden Motorsport, FA Racing, Monolite Racing, JD Motorsport, MP Motorsport, DR Formula and Van Amersfoort Racing.

Sebastian Vettel has praised Mick Schumacher for doing an ‘incredible job’ with a poor car in 2021, with the German crediting his countryman for giving the Uralkali Haas F1 Team something to cheer about in what was a terrible year for them.

Schumacher, the 2020 FIA Formula 2 champion, moved into Formula 1 for 2021 with Haas but endured a car that was difficult to drive and was not developed at all as the team focused purely in putting their resources into developing the 2022 car.

However, despite being the slowest car on the grid – sometimes by a big margin – Schumacher was able to put the VF-21 into Q2 in Qualifying twice in France and Turkey, a massive achievement in relation to what car he was driving.

And this has not been unnoticed by Vettel, who has been acting as some kind of mentor to Schumacher, and he has giving praise to the Haas driver for his level of performance.

“Well, I think it’s difficult to judge because the car has been so far off,” Vettel is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com. 

The #48 Ally Racing Cadillac will return to IMSA in 2022. On Tuesday, Action Express Racing announced the entry will run next year’s four Michelin Endurance Cup races—the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona on 29/30 January, Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring (19 March), Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen (26 June), and Motul Petit Le Mans (1 October)—with Jimmie Johnson, Kamui Kobayashi, and Mike Rockenfeller once again in the roster. Former touring car star José María López will join the trio.

Upon Johnson’s retirement from a decorated NASCAR Cup Series career at the end of 2020, he made the jump to IMSA in addition to a part-time NTT IndyCar Series schedule with plans to run the latter’s full slate in 2022. As part of his itinerary in the former, he and NASCAR sponsor Ally ran the 2021 Rolex 24 with Kobayashi, Rockenfeller, and fellow IndyCar driver Simon Pagenaud. Rockenfeller is the 2013 DTM champion with overall triumphs in the 2010 24 Hours of Daytona and Le Mans, while ex-Formula One racer Kobayashi has enjoyed tremendous success in the FIA World Endurance Championship and won the Rolex 24’s overall in 2019 and 2020. In Johnson’s first Rolex 24 since 2011, he spent less time in the car than his team-mates, but the quartet finished runner-up overall.

At Sebring, the #48 received a penalty after one of Pagenaud’s stints ran over the four-hour time limit, resulting in a last-place finish in the DPi class. The penalty spoiled what had been a tumultuous day for Johnson, who rebounded from a spin-filled weekend to take the lead.

Watkins Glen, where Johnson is perhaps more recognised for flying into the styrofoam barriers in a 2000 NASCAR Xfinity Series race, saw the #48 finish fifth. Rockenfeller did not race with the team at The Glen or Petit Le Mans. The latter, held at Road Atlanta, ended with a fourth-place finish.

Pagenaud departs the team as he will likely race for Meyer Shank Racing, whom he joins in IndyCar. In his place, AXR has enlisted López, the FIA World Touring Car Champion from 2014 to 2016 and 2019/20 World Endurance Champion for Toyota Gazoo Racing alongside Kobayashi. López has never raced in the Rolex 24, while he ran the 2007 12 Hours of Sebring in the GT2 class.

George Russell has been praised by Jost Capito, the Team Principal and CEO of the Williams F1 Team, ahead of his move to the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team in 2022.

Russell has been a part of the Williams set-up since the 2019 season and has often shown himself to be amongst the best drivers on the grid, despite the car at his disposal not being a frontrunning one.

It took until the Hungarian Grand Prix of 2021 for Russell to finally score points for Williams (he did score points during his one-off appearance for Mercedes when he replaced Lewis Hamilton in the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix), but his performances before and after that merited more reward.

His Qualifying performances often outshone the car, with Russell making numerous Q2 and Q3 appearances throughout 2021.  His best effort, however, was at Spa-Francorchamps when, in difficult wet conditions, he put his Williams onto the front row of the grid, only being denied pole position by Max Verstappen.

The podium that followed on Sunday may have been lucky as the weather prevented any green flag running, but the points (albeit only half points were rewarded) had certainly been earned on Saturday.