Lando Norris, McLaren, Albert Park, 2022

Norris “a bit more unsure” about McLaren’s potential at Imola

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In the round-up: Lando Norris says that despite ‘small steps’ for McLaren in Imola, he is less confident in their pace than he was in Melbourne.

In brief

‘Small steps’ may help McLaren in Imola – Norris

After scoring a fifth place in Australia, backed up by team mate Daniel Ricciardo in sixth, Lando Norris said he’s “a bit more unsure” about McLaren’s prospects this weekend.

“Maybe not quite as positive or hopeful as I have been [in Australia] or going into Saudi say, but you never know. I think they’re going to find something in the car and I think bring some small steps.”

“If it’s not this year, it will be next year” for Piastri’s F1 chances

Formula 2 and 3 CEO Bruno Michel is ‘completely confident’ reigning Formula 2 champion Oscar Piastri will get a seat in Formula 1.

“There are only 20 seats in Formula 1 and as long as there are only 20 seats in Formula 1, you never know how many seats are going to be available the following season,” said Michel. “Some years, we were lucky enough to have three drivers coming in to Formula 1, some years two, some years one which is the case for this year because one seat only was available and it was with Alfa Romeo.

“So Zhou Guanyu was good enough and scored enough to be able to get to this position. Of course, we’d all love to see Oscar racing, Oscar is a great driver. There’s absolutely zero doubt about that. He will get his time at some point, I’m completely confident about that,” continued Michel.

“It would have been fantastic to have him this year – if it’s not this year, it will be next year, but we had already in the past some drivers that had to wait one year before they got into a Formula 1 seat and it never created a problem in their career,” he assured. “So I’m very confident and I know Alpine is doing the right thing to try to prepare as much as possible for the future.”

Federico Malvestiti fills final Jenzer F3 seat

Federico Malvestiti has taken on the third Jenzer Formula 3 seat for the remainder of the 2022 season. Malvestiti will start with the team in Imola, Niko Kari having been drafted in to race the first round of the season in Bahrain.

Malvestiti previously raced the 2020 F3 season with Jenzer, placing 30th and drove both the Jerez and Barcelona in-season tests for the team, this year.

Penske training Paretta pit crew again

Paretta has replaced its previous technical partnership with Penske with a new arrangement with Ed Carpenter’s team. However Penske will continue to provide Paretta’s squad with pit crew training as it did last year. Beth Paretta said she was grateful for Penske’s “very gracious” arrangement.

“The women who we hired, many of them live near Team Penske in Mooresville,” she explained. “So they are going to go through some pit training there because it’s easier because they can do a couple of weeks of it to just kind of get their legs back under them. Also, creatively, they need to learn what it’s like for a car to come in from left to right because you’re changing your economies of motion when you’re doing a pit stop.

“So they’re going to actually train and go through to Team Penske’s pit training school like they did last year. The women who we hired for our pit crew – and this is remarkable – those women we hired February 1st. They had never attended an IndyCar before, and from February 1st to the end of May, they learned from scratch. And if you look to see the pit stops, they pitted a car cleanly in the Indy 500. And so they did that all by being trained by the team at Team Penske.”

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Comment of the day

With changed rules about how pole is awarded during races with a sprint event, Tommy C questions whether the driver not starting at the front on Sunday could nonetheless score a perfect weekend?

Hypothetical scenario: Say Leclerc takes pole on Friday. He loses a spot or two on Saturday. On Sunday, he makes a cracking start and leads into turn one and is not headed on his way to victory and in the process sets the fastest lap. Does he or does he not make inroads on Jim Clark’s record of ‘Grand Chelems’?
@tommy-c

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Hazel Southwell
Hazel is a motorsport and automotive journalist with a particular interest in hybrid systems, electrification, batteries and new fuel technologies....

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23 comments on “Norris “a bit more unsure” about McLaren’s potential at Imola”

  1. COD – I’d pay it.

  2. Cotd is interesting, depends if you take the definition of leading every lap measured at the end of the lap, or led from start to finish conclusively. I think the latter is more correct so I’d say not.

    Grand chelem for a sprint race weekend would surely include leading the sprint race as well. It would just get an asterisk for the extra achievement. Otherwise you’d need to statistically seperate grand chelem and whatever you want to call that extra achievement, ultra chelem? entertainment chelem? money-talks chelem?

    1. @skipgamer To my understanding, at each lap’s end, but since he wouldn’t physically start the actual race from pole position, he couldn’t get credited for Grand Chelem/Slam.

      1. Some pages say to get pole position, to lead every lap, to get the fastest lap and to win
        other pages say to start on pole postion, to lead every lap, to get the fastest lap and to win

        So a driver must get the fastest lap in quali to have a chance of the chelem. But others say you don’t have to get the fastest lap and all you have to do is to start on pole?
        For my understanding it is the fastest lap, pole, lead every lap, fastest lap and win. Without sprint or with it. I put the sprint under the same umbrella as FP1,2 and 3.

  3. Those Arrow McLarens look ok together, but individually they look like they have been cobbled together from other cars.

  4. Miami residents obviously haven’t seen F1 since the V10 era.

    1. I think they’re about to get a rude shock as to just how quiet they are from a distance. I only got my 7 year old to put his ear muffs on when he was within about 5m of the barrier. Outside that, it was quite bearable even for an entire session. Wearing earplugs inside a house is incredibly ridiculous! Besides, it’s only an hour at a time and a bit more for the race. Are there any incredibly loud supports running?

    2. and moreover its just one weekend in a year. They must be profound haters

    3. and moreover its just one weekend in a year. They must be profound dislikers

  5. Grand chelem is defined as a driver who leads every lap, wins the race, sets fastest lap and ‘starts’ from pole. In the COTD’s case, the driver wins pole position but doesn’t start on pole and hence won’t be a grand chelem.

    Winning pole and not starting from it happens in non-sprint races also. E.g : Leclerc in Monaco 2021.

    1. Hmmm, makes me wonder: do you achieve Grand Chelem if you don’t take pole but inherit it (eg the driver on pole gets a grid penalty)?

      1. @nordmann Yes, as physical starting position is what ultimately matters.

  6. I must be showing my age again, but those McLaren liveries for the Indy 500 are awful.

    1. Sponsors colours…… I am old also so i don’t like them either…..

    2. @geemac i am young and dislike them severely. It looks like they just dumped buckets of paint on each panel separately and then screwed the cars together like the world’s most confusing jigsaw puzzle. Olive green can be very pretty, it just doesn’t easily go with any colour, especially not vibrant, bright ones.

  7. Small steps may help, but I reckon Melbourne’s pace remains a one-off case.

    Maybe, but I can only really see one option & that’s replacing Latifi at Williams.

    I’m surprised the noise complaint matter is still ongoing.
    This would be more understandable with V12s, V10s, or V8s, but V6 turbo hybrids don’t even require earplugs on trackside (I know from personal experience), so somewhat pointless court-filing.

    I enjoyed reading the Imola president’s interview.

    Formulino is among my favorite cats featuring mostly YT ones.

    COTD is interesting, but he wouldn’t ultimately get credited for Grand Slam in this scenario, as I’ve explained below.

  8. The only way Miami residents are likely to be exposed to noise-related injury is if Horner and/or Marko go into full-on, high-pitched whinge mode.

    1. Or when you drive your fake Daytona’s around ;)

  9. As much as I’d simply rather not have the Sprint. Surely the most sensible option over pole is that whoever qualifies first takes pole for BOTH the sprint and proper race. The other positions for the main race are decided by results of the Sprint, but it gives the pole winner some protection and reward. Makes quali even more important.

  10. I really don’t see any team bringing upgrades this weekend – there just isn’t the time to fit them and then check the data and run any comparison give they have only 1 hour to get the cars set up this weekend.

    All because of the ridiculous sprint abomination – essentially teams are going to have to guess their best set up and hope like hell.

    Surely if they’re so hell bent of having these stupid sprints, they could delay them until the second half of the season to give teams a chance to sort out their cars.

    1. The cars have been in development for more than 2 years already, @dbradock.
      If they haven’t figured them out yet, then that’s just better for us, the viewers.

      The teams benefit greatly from the sprint sessions. Why would they delay them until the second half of the year?
      Just so the earlier GP’s are less unpredictable?

      The constant complaining about the sprints here is tiresome.
      The only reason I would support the removal of sprints is to put an end to the moaning and bleating about them.

      1. Clearly you’ve failed to notice that the car development was halted for 2020 due to COVID so they had a year at best to develop and next to no testing time in comparison to other times ther have been massive regulation change.

        You also don’t seem to have noticed that pretty much every team, even Ferrari and Red Bull have got issues with porpoising which is heavily impacting their performance, something that wasn’t anticipated and didn’t really show itself until the cars hit actual track rather than simulations, wind tunnels and CFD.

        As for sprints – we “moan” about them because they’re a waste of time, effort and energy and contribute nothing to F1 weekend events. In fact at the moment, it’s just going to force all teams to adopt a conservative approach to set up which will lead to poorer racing and less chance of any unpredictability.

        1. Clearly you’ve failed to notice that the car development was halted for 2020 due to COVID so they had a year at best to develop

          Do you really believe they weren’t doing development work during that time?! Wow.

          I’ve noticed the porpoising @dbradock, and I like it. It’s great to see F1 cars that aren’t perfect for a change.
          I prefer seeing the the teams have to think, adapt and develop through competition rather than just turning up with a perfectly polished package.
          As I’ve said dozens of times here before – the process is far more interesting than the results in F1.

          I completely disagree with your assessment of sprints. The sprint itself may not set the world on fire, but on all three occasions last year they set up a pretty good GP, by F1 standards. Indisputably, some stuff happened due to the weekend format that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
          Look at the event holistically rather than each session individually, and you’ll see the benefit. Assuming the benefit of having the track time taken up more under competitive conditions than dull, boring data acquisition isn’t sufficient for you.

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