The eight-time grand prix world champion has won seven times at the Circuit of the Americas in his MotoGP career, starting with his maiden victory in 2013. Winning every year at COTA between 2013 and 2018, Marquez last won at the circuit in 2021. Having achieved a first sprint podium on the Gresini Ducati in Portugal last month, many have viewed Austin as the place where Marquez could get his first win on the GP23. But speaking on Thursday ahead of the third round of the 2024 campaign, Marquez...
After Bahrain, the AMR24 appeared benchmarked as the fifth fastest car in the leading group on race pace, finishing ninth and 10th.
On Thursday, Alonso and Aston Martin announced the Spaniard would stay with the team until at least 2026, when Honda joins the Silverstone team as its works power unit partner. Read Also: Formula 1Alonso commits to Aston Martin with new F1 deal Formula 1Alonso: "Lifetime project" at Aston Martin key to new F1 deal Alonso and Honda endured strained ties when they worked together during a fraught three-year McLaren-Honda partnership, which was terminated early due to poor results and an...
On Thursday afternoon, Aston Martin ended speculation about the two-time world champion's future with the team by announcing a multi-year contract extension for the Spaniard, tying him to the Silverstone outfit until the end of 2026. Alonso's contract was up for renewal this year, which prompted extensive speculation about the 42-year-old's future as top teams Red Bull and Mercedes also have seats up for grabs amid a wildly open driver market. Alonso's domino is now the first to fall, with the...
In the hottest conditions of the weekend at Suzuka, Verstappen was never threatened even through two standing starts around the crash between Daniel Ricciardo and Alex Albon at Turn 3 on the initial opening lap. Behind, Ferrari continued its early 2024 podium streak via Carlos Sainz and made a bold strategy choice for Charles Leclerc work, after the Scuderia had endured a disappointing qualifying session. But there were plenty of additional factors across the grid that fed into how we rank the...
Sam Mayer led on the restart to overtime, but Sheldon Creed dived inside of Mayer to make the field three-wide as he tried to get him and Almirola. Instead, Creed nearly caused himself and Mayer to spin out. That allowed Almirola to pull away to the lead and his victory was secured when NASCAR was forced to throw a caution on the final lap for a multi-car wreck. Almirola also collected the season’s first $100,000 Dash4Cash bonus as the highest finishing eligible driver. The win was redemption...
The Maranello outfit had hoped that the progress it had made with its SF-24 this year would allow it to pose a proper threat to Red Bull around the high-speed swoops of Suzuka. Good progress has been made at the kind of corner speeds that are common around Suzuka, so the venue was going to be a good litmus test of how much of a step forward the team had taken. While it duly managed to cut the deficit to Red Bull from 0.665 seconds last year to 0.485 seconds now, the gains still left a sense of...
Alpine A524 technical detail Photo by: Giorgio Piola A look at the two front wing specifications available to Alpine in Japan, with the newer of the two being the upper one (splattered with green flo-viz paint). Note not only how the shape of the upper flaps differ considerably different but also how the team has made the switch to semi-detached flap tips at the endplate juncture. McLaren MCL38 technical detail Photo by: Giorgio Piola A look at the McLaren MCL38 as mechanics prepared the...
Teams all too frequently bin off one of the choices – either because the soft is too aggressive, the medium falls into no-man's land, or the hard is too conservative – but this weekend's race in Japan has left what Pirelli's head of car racing Mario Isola says is a real "headache" for strategists. With high-degradation Suzuka making a one-stop pretty much a no-goer (unless we end up with a lengthy safety car period at the perfect point), F1 teams are going to be burning the midnight oil tonight...
The Spaniard ended Q1 second fastest but as the pace sharpened he dropped to fifth place in both Q2 and Q3, but he still felt the pace jump from Aston's car updates were greater than predicted. Alonso ran the previous AMR24 car package during Friday practice at Suzuka, with team-mate Lance Stroll using the upgrades to provide comparison running, before both drivers switched to the upgrades - which focused on a revised sidepod and floor area changes. "Yesterday I had the old package, today the...
The Red Bull drivers were amongst just a handful of drivers to gain time on the second runs in Q3, where Ferrari's challenge failed to materialise and the Mercedes drivers ended up behind Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso. Verstappen led the way on a 1m28.240s on the first Q3 fliers, where Norris was his closest challenger after producing a then session-best opening sector. But he could not replicate that on the second attempts, where Perez, leading Verstappen on the track, snuck ahead of the...
The last race at the Shanghai circuit was held in 2019, before COVID-19 triggered an extended absence from the country. Since then, the F1 technical regulations have changed substantially, including a switch to 18-inch tyres. Inevitably the track surface will also have altered over the intervening years, but unusually Pirelli has not been able to send engineers to assess it in advance, which would normally be the case with brand new venues or one that have not been used for a while. Given that...