Fernando Alonso, Alpine, Imola, 2022

Andretti-owned team would be “the best news” for F1 – Alonso

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In the round-up: Fernando Alonso says he hopes Michael Andretti’s bid to enter a new team in Formula 1 is successful

In brief

Alonso hopes Andretti’s Formula 1 team bid succeeds

Fernando Alonso says he hopes Michael Andretti’s bid to enter a new team in Formula 1 is successful.

Alonso raced in the Indy 500 in 2017 with a McLaren team heavily supported by Andretti, leading 27 laps of the race before an engine failure forced him into retirement. Michael Andretti is currently lobbying for a future entry for the Andretti name into Formula 1, which Alonso says he supports fully.

“It could be a big thing,” said Alonso. “I know Michael very well, I know the Andretti family and they are obviously a big part of motor sport in general and they are legends. So if we can have them in Formula 1 that will be the best news, I think for both.

“Formula 1 would benefit from that and obviously Michael and his team will benefit from the sport and from being in Formula 1. And I think they have the capabilities, the resources, they have the talent to be in Formula 1 and be competitive as well. So I hope this thing comes true in the next few years, and I will follow very closely.”

Alfa Romeo impressed by Zhou’s racecraft

Alfa Romeo’s head of trackside engineering, Xevi Pujolar, says that he is impressed by Zhou Guanyu’s racecraft and ability to overtake in races.

Rookie Zhou has scored one point so far this season on his debut in the Bahrain Grand Prix and has yet to reach Q3 so far in 2022, meaning he has had to makes his way through the field in races. Pujolar says that Zhou has shown he has the ability to overtake despite his lack of experience.

“He has been shown that in every race, when he’s fighting with someone, he’s overtaking the guy,” Pujolar said.

“He’s not someone that gets stuck for 15 laps behind a competitor. He gets there and he overtakes. So on that one, I think it’s encouraging, the racecraft he’s showing. And for Barcelona with all the updates, we hope we will have two strong points contenders.”

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Social media

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Comment of the day

Is the FIA’s sudden insistence that the rules forbidding drivers from wearing jewellery while driving purely about enforcing safety restrictions, or is there a more political motive, asks @BasCB:

I get the idea that they want to get back to enforcing rules, especially the safety rules. But when I see some officials, even an F1TV pundit like Buxton mentioning that ‘hey, Mercedes asked the FIA to be strict on adhering to the rules, so there you have it’, combined with the FIA suddenly getting strict on this after 16 years of ignoring it?

Sorry, but to me that just shows there probably is someone who feels they have to assert their power over the drivers (the new president? The new race director/directors? The FIA itself?), because they must have known this would give them exactly the kind of thing they’ve got now with Seb Vettel walking around with his briefs over his overalls and Hamilton with all the bling he could fit on at a press conference. In other words, they wanted to get this for some kind of PR stuff.

Otherwise they could have just quietly informed the teams and drivers before the season started about wanting to get back onto enforcing this – probably with reference to the investigation into the Grosjean crash – from the start of the season and it would have given them time to solve things like piercings one cannot easily take out, religious and personal jewellery, or the fact that there is only one company actually providing a single model of fire proof sports bra (I presume the rules also count for the W Series, right?) etc… to wear under the Nomex stuff.
@BasCB

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Stephen, Mclarengal, Quinn and Dbradock!

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On this day in motorsport

Fernando Alonso, Pastor Maldonado, Kimi Raikkonen, Circuit de Catalunya, 2012
Today in 2012 Pastor Maldonado scored his only Formula 1 win, and the last to date for Williams

Author information

Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

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8 comments on “Andretti-owned team would be “the best news” for F1 – Alonso”

  1. I remember the 2012 Spanish GP like it was yesterday, what a race! Williams garage on fire and everything.

    Everyone thought after winning Pastor would be a more mature driver and have his pay driver reputation go away (like Pérez eventually did) however he was
    doing his shenanigans just on the next race at Monaco, what a shame.

  2. I agree with both in-brief notes.

    The foreseeable future is until this season’s end for now.

    Perhaps also a political motive.

  3. The Latifi rumours have been doing the rounds for a while. Possible that Norris McDonald is correct, just a bit early.

    1. Surprised he’s lasted this long to be honest, I mean he’s not the worst driver ever but so many better alternatives out there and he almost never gets close to whoever his teammate is, either in qualifying or the race.

      1. He’ll last just as long as Williams desperately need his bags of cash. It’s not like they’re keeping him because they’re not aware of more talented drivers. It astounds me that people often act like Williams is keeping him on because they’re not aware better drivers are available.

  4. Feels like today’s roundup is one long advert for new stuff you could (if you had oodles of cash) buy.

  5. They are BACK !
    GP Historique will be streaming all weekend from Monaco, this year featuring up to 35 Lotus GP cars
    MotorSport magazine story here, ACM Youtube channel here

    1. Thanks for the links, @uneedafinn2win!

      Great to hear and see the old cars looking as dangerous as ever.

      While I’ve been critical of F1’s technical changes in recent years, seems I’m 60 years too late. Once F1 abandoned front-engine beasts it’s been all downhill since. ;-)

      What wonderful noises the 250F and 246 Dino make.

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