F1 news LIVE: Emilia Romagna GP build-up as Red Bull try to catch Ferrari

Ex-Formula 1 driver Mika Hakkinen believes Lewis Hamilton may be looking to leave Mercedes after a bad start to the 2022 season.

Hamilton has been on the podium once this campaign, a third-place finish in Bahrain, leaving him in fifth in the driver standings. The British driver would have been targeting a record eighth title this season but he is currently 43 points behind leader Charles Leclerc.

The same can’t be said for Hamilton’s teammate George Russell who slid into second after a podium finish at the Australian Grand Prix.

“George comes from a team with little or no success. He had some good results in qualifying but not in races. All these achievements with Mercedes are new to him. Everything feels super-good,” Hakkinen said.

“For Lewis, this is a disaster. And with George being ahead, it’s even worse. I wonder how Lewis behaves in the team meetings – I bet he’s sulking. I can imagine the sulking. There’s lots of complaining and whining.

“And now starts the natural thought process of drivers. ‘Should I go somewhere else?’

“It’s a fact. He’s been at Mercedes for years and won multiple championships. Now that things are not going well, he’ll start thinking of switching teams.”

Former F1 team boss Giancarlo Minardi has urged Sebastian Vettel to retire from the sport because he ‘won’t win any more races’.

The four-time world champion missed the first two races of the 2022 season after testing positive for coronavirus.

He then returned at the Australian Grand Prix but only qualified in 18th place, before then retiring from the race on the Sunday.

And Minardi, who was in charge of his self-named team from 1985 until 2006 when it was bought by Red Bull and renamed Toro Rosso, feels Vettel should call it a day.

Speaking to Corriere della Sera, he said: “He was unlucky to have missed two GPs with Covid, in the third one he went out.

“But he should retire. He has a lot of money, he’s won a lot of titles and he won’t win any more [races].”

Aston Martin technical director Andrew Green believes the team must fix its porpoising issue before it can find the pace to compete better on the grid.

Aston Martin are the only team yet to win a point this season while Sebastian Vettel has endured a nightmare start, missing the opening two races due to Covid before failing to finish the Australian Grand Prix.

Green admitted the team are still struggling to solve the issue after designing the car to go “low and hard” in the hope of maximising downforce.

“It wasn’t possible to shoot in all directions in detail,” Green said. “Instead, you try out different paths in the initial phase and see how they develop. To do that, you set a target where you’d like to end up with the field flow and the lap time. Where the jumps are the biggest and where you think it’s most likely to land at the target, you stay.

“That’s what the geometry of your car tells you. If you choose a different flow field than a competitor at the beginning, you’ll end up with two different cars.

“To [maximise the downforce], you set a vehicle height for yourself that you think will give you the most performance. Then the shape of the car evolves from that,”

“We went low and hard to the road. We could see the goal, so it seemed like the right way to go. None of our simulations suggested that it would give us a problem with the instability of the car.”

Red Bull boss Helmut Marko is aware how important Max Verstappen is for the team securing partnership deals.

Verstappen is the Formula 1 defending champion and has become a household name since joining the F1 team in 2015. Marko says Verstappen’s name carries weight in terms of deals and who works for the team.

“Max Verstappen is certainly an important figure in the whole chess game,” Marko told Formel.de. “It’s not absurd for manufacturers to look at that and in that respect it was important for the team to be able to say, ‘Look, we have the fastest and best driver tied up’.

Red Bull driver Sergio Perez is hopeful the team can “start again from zero” after reliability failures cost them a host of points in the opening three races of the season.

Both Perez and Max Verstappen looked in contention for a podium place in the first race in Bahrain before engine problems saw both of them fail to finish.

They then enjoyed a successful weekend in Saudi Arabia as Verstappen won and Perez came fourth.

But in the next race in Australia the issues from Bahrain showed themselves again as Verstappen was forced to retire his car when he looked poised to take second place.

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc is happy to be back fighting for the drivers’ championship after a sensational start to the 2022 season.

The Monegasque driver has already picked up victories in Bahrain and Australia to go with his second place in Saudi Arabia.

Leclerc’s impressive opening three races have left him with a huge 34-point lead in the standings as his title rivals have suffered various pace and reliability issues.

And the 24-year-old was in a positive headspace while discussing his championship credentials ahead of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix this weekend.

Speaking to Sky Sports, he said: “Obviously we only had the third race, so it’s difficult to think about the championship, but to be honest, we’ve got a very strong car, a very reliable car too.

“We’ve always been there, so I hope it continues like this and if it does, then we probably have chances for the championship, which obviously makes me smile after the last two years that have been difficult for the team and obviously for myself. It’s great to be back in this position.”

Mercedes chief strategist James Vowles says an “enormous” amount of work is being done on the team’s car ahead of Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

Despite the sluggish start, Mercedes are second in the constructors’ title with Hamilton’s teammate George Russell runner-up in the driver standings. And Vowles says the team are dedicated to improving the car ahead of this weekend’s Emilia Romagna GP.

“I think often people see the race team on TV and think that’s the entire team. It’s not,” he said. “We are fortunate to have a base in Brackley, and in Brixworth, with hundreds of people working every hour they possibly can to make this racing car fast, competitive and a championship winner.”

Williams’ head of vehicle performance Dave Robson says the team are close to solving their porpoising issues.

The team have been struggling this year but they bagged their first points of the season when Alex Albon managed to fight through the field and finish 10th at the Australian GP>

“In terms of the ride height and the set-up, the porpoising, we are getting pretty close to operating in the right kind of window now,” he said.

“If we get it a little bit wrong we risk damaging the floor so that is probably our limit, we are pretty close to where we want to run it.

“I think the rest of it, other than that one little balance issue we are trying to sort out, we just need a bit more load, that will help get the tyres in the window and make us quicker everywhere.”

AlphaTauri driver Pierre Gasly would be shocked if the Monaco Grand Prix was removed from the Formula 1 calendar as it’s an “iconic” track.

The circuit has been a permanant fixture of the F1 season since 1955 but there have been calls to get rid of the street track as the qualifying order usually determines the race result. But Gasly has defended the circuit and wants it to remain on the billing.

“That would be a bit of a shocker if Monaco gets taken out of the calendar,” Gasly said as per Motorsport.com. “It’s probably the most iconic race in the world.

“Talking to non-F1 fans, everyone had heard about Monaco for various reasons, whether it’s racing, whether it’s party-related, whether it’s all of the action that happens around the grand prix. It’s a very iconic weekend.

“I think, and I really hope, we get to experience it as drivers because it’s probably the toughest track of the season, the most challenging, and is my favourite one.”

Mercedes driver George Russell says he doesn’t get hyped up before a Formula 1 race and likes instead to feel chilled.

Russell, who joined Mercedes at the start of the season, is second in the driver standings after bagging his first podium at the Australian Grand Prix. He has spoken about all he pre-race rituals.

“I’m not one of these guys who likes to hype it up,” he said on the IWC ‘Partners In Time’ Podcast.

“I’m not one of those ‘I need to listen to this, I need to get in the zone’, because I feel like your body is in this excited, almost angry state when you’re hyping yourself up and you’re almost anxious I feel.

“So I’ve almost got the opposite approach, I like to be calm, I like to be relaxed, I like to go about it as if it’s any other day, I feel like I perform best when I’m calm and I’m relaxed and I don’t put any pressure on myself.

“I listen to a bit of music in the morning on the way into the track, nothing crazy, say hello to everyone, have a coffee, chill out and to be really honest, that’s about it.”