Author: ATH

Ricciardo is currently serving as reserve driver for Red Bull and AlphaTauri, and inevitably he has been mentioned in connection with a seat at the latter in 2024.

However, the team has always been seen in the Red Bull camp as a training ground for young drivers, and Tost says that won’t change unless it’s deemed that none of the youngsters are ready for F1.

“The philosophy is quite clear, the performance decides,” he said, when asked if Ricciardo might appeal for next year. “Of course, the team philosophy is to educate young drivers.

“But if young drivers are not currently there – there are coming some good young drivers, [Ayumu] Iwasa is doing a good job, [Isack] Hadjar is doing a good job – but it’s simply a little bit too early for them.

“I see them earlier or later in our team. But if the particular time is too early, then maybe we have to find another solution.

“But this has not been discussed so far. So far everything is like [as usual] with our team.”

Asked about Liam Lawson, who is currently starring in Super Formula in Japan and shares the F1 reserve role with Ricciardo, Tost said: “Liam has done a good job when he was driving for us last year in Abu Dhabi.

“He is currently also doing a good job in Japan because it’s quite a tough championship over there. As I said before, it’s a performance question.

“We have to find out, we have to see which driver is first of all available and matured enough and educated enough and ready to go for an F1 car. This we will see. Currently nothing has been decided.”

Asked if the seat of incumbent Nyck de Vries was under threat within this season, Tost said it was up to the Dutchman to prove that he deserved the drive.

“Nyck decides, not the team,” he said. “If he shows a good performance, why should we change him?”

Tost acknowledged that the first part of this season has not been easy for any of the rookie drivers, but made it clear he expects to see a better performance from de Vries on a run of traditional European tracks which he is familiar with.

“In F1 every driver has pressure,” said Tost. “And we will see how Nyck is doing here, how Nyck is doing in Silverstone because he knows these race tracks. We must not forget that the rookie drivers nowadays are really in a difficult situation.

“Why? If you look at the first part of the season, most of the race tracks they even don’t know, they haven’t raced in Melbourne before in F2 or F3, they haven’t raced in Saudi Arabia or Miami, Baku maybe.

“But in Baku we had the sprint race, that means like here [in Austria], FP1, qualifying for the race, qualifying for the sprint race, and then the sprint.

“That means the weekends are flying away. For the rookie drivers, this is really very, very difficult. Therefore now, at least, they come to tracks which they know, it’s Austria, Silverstone, Spa, Budapest, Monza. I think this helps more, also to be more confident there.”

Ocon has already made contact with the Hollywood star and is planning to visit him on the set of the next Deadpool 3 film in London.

Reynolds and his colleagues Rob McElhenney and Michael B. Jordan are part of a consortium of three US-based entities that have combined to acquire a 24% stake of the Alpine team.

“I think it’s fantastic,” said Ocon when asked by Autosport about the team’s new Hollywood connections. “I was extremely lucky to be able to chat on Tuesday with Ryan. So we exchanged a couple of WhatsApp [messages] together.

“I was in the simulator. And I usually take my phone just to take notes from all the runs and to have that on the record, but that time I allowed myself to send a little picture to Ryan saying, ‘I’m live from the simulator. This is the view.’ And he liked that.

“I said welcome to the team to him and straight away he said, ‘Hi Esteban I’m very much forward to learn from you and to meet you.’

“He sent me his phone number, his email address and we then texted on WhatsApp, so really good.”

Expanding on their initial contact, the Frenchman said: “He told me I was invited on the set in London for the Deadpool movie. So I’m definitely going to be going!

“He also said that he was very much looking forward to learn from our world, see how things work, and just to have a racing chat all together. I’m a massive comics and Marvel fan in general, and massive Deadpool fan, obviously.

“He’s just someone that is very inspiring in what he does. Outside his actor world I think he’s an extremely talented businessman as well.

“I’m looking forward very much to being able to meet him and have a chat with him properly.”

Ocon acknowledged the success that Reynolds and his associates have had with Welsh football club Wrexham.

“I think all what Ryan has done recently with his company has been extremely successful,” he said. “There hasn’t been any failure that I know. So yeah, I think he’s a very good asset, him and his team behind our team.”

Other members of the investment consortium include sports marketing experts with deep knowledge of the NFL, NBA and European football, and Ocon acknowledged that they will also be a boost for Alpine.

“As a whole all the investors, in general, they’re going to bring their expertise into the team, and it really shows the dedication of the team to push forward on every aspect,” he said.

“Obviously that’s not going to help on the performance of the car itself, but on every other aspect that we can improve, we are going to have these investors expertise where they excel, basically.”

Ocon added that the extra funding will help the team to make progress by improving the factory facilities.

“I’m not going to go into details, but we know where that needs to go,” he explained. “It’s going to help infrastructure, and things that I will be using quite a lot as well.

“We know where want to take the team, we want to take the team up there, to be fighting for podiums, for wins, as soon as possible. That that is my aim, as quickly as possible.

“I’m not here to waste time. When we [finished] third in Monaco, we didn’t let Ferrari past because we thought they were ahead of us. We want to fight for these positions as quickly as possible.”

Gabriel Bortoleto was yet to turn one year old when his mentor Fernando Alonso won his first world championship with Renault in 2005. But the Brazilian teenager has learned a lot from the Spaniard, having been taken under his wing as part of A14 Management last September.

Moving to Europe aged 11 to compete in karting, Bortoleto made his car racing debut in 2020, finishing fifth in Italian F4 with junior series stalwart Prema and scoring his maiden win at Mugello. He impressed enough to graduate to Formula Regional European Championship with Alonso’s eponymous team before moving to R-ace GP for 2022, finishing sixth with two wins.

Bortoleto is now driving for Trident in Formula 3 and has quickly made an impact. He leads the standings after winning the first two feature races of the season in Bahrain and Melbourne, despite never having driven at either circuit before. Gabriele Mini’s start procedure infringement which resulted in a time penalty lifted Bortoleto to the top spot in Bahrain, but he needed no assistance in Australia as he fended off race-long pressure from Gregoire Saucy to convert pole position.

The 18-year-old admits he was “a bit surprised” by the instant good results, but says hard work is the key to his success.

“Hard work, I would say is the main thing, there is not a secret,” he tells Autosport. “This is just the main thing that I can think of. We have been working since last September, as soon as the F3 season finished. We had already a deal with Trident and we did a test in Jerez which went very well, we were P1 as well.

“From that moment, I think my worst position in practice or testing was today [in free practice] in Monaco to be fair. I think all of this is hard work and a lot of preparation.

“I knew that we had the potential because I trust myself, and I know how much effort I put in. Trident showed the potential last year as well from winning the last three rounds of the championship and being runner-up in the drivers’ standings.

Bortoleto scored feature race wins at the opening two weekends of the F3 season, putting him in a commanding position in the championship

Photo by: Formula Motorsport Ltd

“So yes, I would say that I expected good results. I would not say that I expected two wins in a row but for sure some great results.”

Although Bortoleto had already signed his deal with Trident before Zane Maloney took three consecutive feature race wins at the end of last year, propelling him to finish second in the standings, he says it still gave him a “confidence boost” ahead of joining the Italian outfit.

He has settled in well, driving this year alongside Italian driver Leonardo Fornaroli and 2022 Euroformula Open champion Oliver Goethe, with Trident currently second in the teams’ standings behind Prema. Bortoleto says he feels “up to speed, every round that we are going into, every test, we are always competitive, so I feel that I’m very confident with the car already”.

“I’m in bed and not sure if I should go to the gym today, and then you remember that this guy doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone, and he’s still going every day to do that” Gabriel Bortoleto

“The way we work is something for me [that is] unbelievable because I’ve never seen an atmosphere inside the team like this – between the team-mates, between the engineers, everyone,” he adds. “Even in difficult moments, we are strong, and we keep pushing to solve every problem. I would say things are going very, very well.”

Bortoleto credits some of his success to his good friend and compatriot Felipe Drugovich, the 2022 F2 champion and now Aston Martin development driver. He says Drugovich has issued some helpful advice in his rookie season, including during a difficult Monaco weekend with mixed conditions.

Naming Drugovich as “one of my best friends,” Bortoleto says he thinks it’s “something great, to have friends that are good, and that have the experience to teach you something and he’s one of my friends that taught me the most in this sport”.

“As my biggest inspiration today, I would say Fernando because I work very close to him nowadays, Bortoleto continues. “We do a lot of things together in the simulator, or even in the race weekend, we’re always getting the contact and talking to each other.”

Bortoleto highlights Drugovich as a helpful source of advice, and has also benefitted from collaboration with Alonso

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Of course, given his nationality, Bortoleto cites Ayrton Senna as an inspiration, but the biggest impact has come from Alonso himself.

“Before I didn’t work with him, I knew that he was a legend of Formula 1 because he was always very good. But I didn’t know how much effort he puts into that,” he says. “At the end of the day, he’s already 41. It’s not easy to keep in this sport this long, and with this physical shape, and also in this performance that he is keeping on track.

“These F1 cars are amazingly fast so you need to also have the reflexes, and to have all this you need to keep practising. Fernando I think is one of the most dedicated drivers I’ve ever seen in my life, and that’s what also keeps me motivated and pushing every day when I wake up.

“I’m in bed and not sure if I should go to the gym today, and then you remember that this guy doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone, and he’s still going every day to do that. So you say look, I need to one day become one per cent of what this guy is, so I need to push, I need to do my best.”

With five rounds remaining, Bortoleto leads the championship by 24-points from fellow Alonso protege Pepe Marti (Campos), and says his success this year has “made me feel alive again because I think this was my best result for a while, even if I won races last season and the season before”.

He continues: “Winning in your F3 debut and also in the second race in a row, I think this shows to yourself that everything that you are doing, it’s paying off, and everything that you pass through during the years, even if it was not easy to not be first in the championship and stuff. It’s paying off now, all this effort.”

Bortoleto is already looking to the future and hopes success this season will bring an F2 promotion for 2024. Beyond that, does he believe he will be the next Brazilian F1 driver?  “I hope so. That’s my plan.”

Bortoleto takes inspiration from Alonso’s dedication and hopes it will help propel him to the top of the motorsport pyramid

Photo by: Formula Motorsport Ltd

The Spaniard and his team-mate Charles Leclerc have struggled for much of this season with their SF-23 proving to have a lack of consistency, especially on Sundays.

This has left the duo unable to take the fight to Red Bull in grands prix, even though in qualifying the car has often shown itself to be quite close to the RB19.

Ferrari has seen signs of progress in recent weeks with its understanding of what it needs to do, but it is still not yet at a stage where it feels confident it has addressed all the factors at play.

Reflecting on why Ferrari faced the unexpected difficulties, Sainz thinks that there was already evidence last year about there being a race-pace question mark over its F1 challenger.

“If you analyse it a bit as a bigger picture, already towards the second half of last year you could see that we had a car capable of fighting for pole positions but, in the race, we were always getting beaten by Red Bull,” Sainz told Autosport in an exclusive interview.

“People a lot of times were blaming it on the strategy. But actually, I think a lot of times we were just never as fast as them in the race, like in Budapest or in Austin, or places where we put it on pole and then we went backwards.

“Maybe the difference there was that we were on pole by one-tenth, and then on race pace, we were down by two or three-tenths.

“But the delta itself this year is we are half a second off in some qualifying, and then eight-tenths in the race. So, it’s some bigger deltas maybe.”

One lap pace has often been an asset but Ferrari has been unable to translate this into race trim

Photo by: Jake Grant / Motorsport Images

Concept timing

The emergence of doubts over the race-pace consistency of Ferrari’s car last year came after the squad had already committed to the concept of its SF-23, so weaknesses got baked into the design for this season.

Sainz said Ferrari had no way of knowing at that stage what the situation was, especially as rival Red Bull did not really hit its stride until the middle part of the season.

Reflecting on the timing of Ferrari committing to the 2023 design, Sainz said: “I think it’s something interesting because, if you look back at last year, by the time this car was born, it was when we were still super competitive.

“So, we didn’t have time to know what the second part of the season was going to be like. We didn’t know this car was going to struggle on race pace.

“We were fast in the race, and fast in quali, in the first six, seven races of the season. And that’s why probably this car is born this way.

“Also, because it’s after six/seven races where you commit to a car or to a concept, maybe even those strong first six races of the [2022] season also made us trust maybe this concept and this car.

“Maybe if the second half of the season, it would have come earlier, maybe the first half [of 2023] would have been easier. You can see it both ways.

“That is why F1 is so complicated, and F1 is so difficult to understand. It’s so easy to criticise from the outside. You just need to take it in the chin, be reactive, make sure you take the right steps and keep working as a team.”

Sainz says its concept for 2023 was locked in before the extent of its weakness relative to Red Bull was realised

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Ferrari car ‘can surprise you’

While it took Sainz some time to get comfortable with the 2022 car, he has appeared more on top of things this year – even though the car is not as competitive relative to the opposition.

But despite the outside appearances, Sainz has admitted that the SF-23 is not a car that inspires confidence when taken to the limit.

“I’m not going to lie, the feeling with the car is still not great,” he said. “It is not a car that I drive to the limit, and I’m comfortable with it on the limit.

“It’s a car that can surprise you. It’s a car that is difficult. You can see it from the outside, but at least I understand more or less how I need to set it up and how I need to drive it.

“If I have these two variables covered, I know that every given weekend, I know I can put the car more or less where it needs to be.

“With the exception of Baku, which is still a weekend I don’t understand and I will never understand, every other weekend, I’ve been more or less where the car has to be. And in that sense, I am proud of it.

“But I’m also not happy because still I want to enjoy more, and I want to push more and I want to not go backwards in the race.

“I want to look forward. I don’t want to spend races looking in the mirrors. And this is what we’re trying to improve now.”

Sainz says the 2023 Ferrari has traits that can “surprise” its drivers

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Vasseur right man

Ferrari’s difficult transition into 2023 came against the backdrop of a management change, with team principal Mattia Binotto stepping down and being replaced by Fred Vasseur.

One of the concerns voiced after Binotto’s exit was that the team would lose technical continuity, with the Italian having a deep understanding of the design aspects of the car.

Asked if he felt Binotto’s exit had impacted things, Sainz said: “I don’t know and I will never know. We will never know how much of an effect it had. But I want to believe all the changes are for the better and it will pay off soon.

“I think we’re going to see progress. Honestly, I think that by how much we’re testing, and how much we are trying and all the things that we are discovering, there’s going to be a point where we start finding it. But time will tell.”

Sainz does believe, however, that the impact of Vasseur is now starting to be felt.

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“I do think everything is starting to work,” he said. “It is just that it’s very difficult to back it with proof when you have weekends like Barcelona, where you still feel a bit down.

“I feel like the more we do more weekends like Charles in Baku, me in Australia and there are positive weekends and more proof, the more encouragement we will have. But right now. I would say it’s difficult to show it.

“But I have full confidence in Fred, the way he’s handling things, and the way he’s leading the team. I must say I have been very impressed. And I’m getting on very well with him. I like how he thinks, his ideas and the direction that he sees for Ferrari.”

Sainz has confidence in team principal Vasseur to get Ferrari back to the summit

Photo by: Ferrari