F1 news LIVE: Red Bull ‘facing difficult times’ as Lewis Hamilton questions Mercedes’ hunger

Charles Leclerc considers himself a “real Monegasque”; not the sort that arrives in Monaco with a bulging bank account and a significantly lower tax bill but the natives who were born and schooled there, writes Lawrence Ostlere.

His parents, Hervé and Pascale, were not poor but he did not grow up accustomed to the flash Monte Carlo lifestyle many might imagine. He is proud of his beginnings, and jokes that the typical Monegasque is “like the French, but maybe more polite”.

Leclerc is certainly that. The laid back Ferrari driver and current leader of the F1 world championship gets on with everybody and has only love for his rivals – “I have no enemies in the paddock,” he says. His name, which sounds like a sweet delicacy in French, is regularly botched by the English-speaking world with a hard “z” on the end of Charles and a firm “erk” at the end of Leclerc, but he never corrects the mispronunciation. “I like both,” he says with a smile.

The unassuming 24-year-old was immersed in motor sport from a young age. Hervé was a Formula 3 driver in the 1980s and 1990s, and later he would take Charles and his two siblings (older brother Lorenzo and younger brother Arthur, now a Formula 3 driver himself) to a local karting track owned by his best friend and fellow racer Philippe Bianchi.

Max Verstappen complained that Formula 1’s safety car was “like a turtle” during the Australian Grand Prix after it caused Charles Leclerc to understeer at the final corner moments before the restart.

The mistake gave Verstappen the opportunity to snatch the lead from Leclerc but the Red Bull was unable to rival the Ferrari’s raw pace and the reigning world champion was later forced to retire from the race due to reliability issues with his car.

Asked about the restart, Verstappen criticised the speed of the Aston Martin Vantage safety car and said he preferred the Mercedes version.

Toto Wolff has questioned new Formula One race boss Niels Wittich’s jewellery ban by asking: “Is that a battle he needs to have?”

Lewis Hamilton defied the FIA’s clampdown as he competed with piercings in both ears and a nose stud at the Australian Grand Prix – and said afterwards that he has no plans to remove them in future outings.

Wittich was hired by the FIA following Michael Masi’s dismissal for breaking the rules at last season’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – an event which denied Hamilton a record eighth championship.

“How he has run the first few races has been respectful, solid and he hasn’t put a single foot wrong,” Mercedes team principal Wolff said of Wittich.

“But is that [jewellery ban] a battle he needs to have at this stage? However, if it turns out to be the biggest unfortunate misstep of a race director, I would take it a thousand times over.”

The 2022 Formula 1 season was supposed to bring with it a new era of unpredictability. In plenty of ways, it has, writes Dan Austin.

The biggest regulation change the sport has undergone in a generation has changed things forever, dramatically altering the ways cars race one another, shaking up the establishing running order, rendering old masters also-rans, and characters who were previously mere extras into show stopping leads.

The racing in the first three rounds of the season has been ceaseless and breathless, with drivers unable to take progress through the field for granted anymore. Once an overtake is done, ground effect aerodynamics mean the man who has dropped down a place is able to stake a claim to take his position back once again almost instantly.

Formula 1 will be delighted with the entertainment value its new-age form of structured chaos is providing fans and sponsors, as it looks to take advantage of its booming popularity among young people around the world.

How strange, then, that this brave new world is being so overwhelmingly defined by one far less anarchic constant thus far – the pristine poise of Charles Leclerc’s driving.

Lewis Hamilton has demanded Mercedes act now to salvage his dwindling F1 title dreams.

The seven-time world champion departs Australia 43 points behind Charles Leclerc following the Ferrari driver’s one-sided victory at Melbourne’s Albert Park on Sunday.

Hamilton started fifth and finished fourth – one place behind George Russell who claimed his first podium in Mercedes colours.

Hamilton heads to Kuala Lumpur for a sponsor event on Monday, before the next round in Imola on April 24.

“I will be on Zoom calls with our bosses, and really trying to rally them up,” said Hamilton.

Charles Leclerc says he is not thinking about winning the F1 World Championship just yet after taking a second victory in the opening three races of the 2022 season at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne.

The Ferrari driver led from start-to-finish around the revamped Albert Park circuit as he stretched his lead at the top of the standings to 34 points from Mercedes’ George Russell, who took third behind Red Bull’s Sergio Perez.

Leclerc tussled for the lead in thrilling fashion with rival Max Verstappen at the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grand Prix earlier in the campaign, but here he comfortably kept the Dutchman at bay with strong pace and consistent lap times before Verstappen was forced to retire from the race with a mechanical failure.

In the aftermath of his victory, Leclerc was quick to praise and his car and team but avoided talk of a sustained title challenge across the course of the whole campaign.

Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto says Charles Leclerc has shown tremendous ‘growth’ since he joined Ferrari, which is powering his title challenge and led him to his second victory of the 2022 season at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne.

The Monegasque took his fourth race win since joining Ferrari in 2019, and completed a Formula 1 ‘grand slam’ by taking pole position, winning the race, leading every lap and securing the fastest lap of the Grand Prix.

Leclerc completely dominated Sunday morning’s race around Albert Park, showing stronger pace than Max Verstappen in the Red Bull before the Dutchman’s retirement, and winning by over 20 seconds from Sergio Perez and Mercedes’ George Russell.

Binotto believes that Leclerc’s development since joining Ferrari is the key to his current success, but doesn’t believe the team is pulling away with the championship already.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says he understands Max Verstappen’s frustration after the Dutchman was forced to retire from an F1 grand prix due to a mechanical failure for the second time in three races at the beginning of the 2022 season.

Verstappen was running a consistent second at the Australian Grand Prix on Sunday morning befort stopping abruptly after the pit straight when he began to smell fluid leaking from his RB18. The Dutchman pulled over at the side of the road and was told to turn off the engine by race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase, before a marshal took a fire extinguisher to his stricken RB18.

The loss of points combined with another victory for Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc means Verstappen has been cut adrift from the top of the championship by 46 points, sitting sixth in the standings behind rival Lewis Hamilton in fifth.

Mercedes have made progress at the Australian Grand Prix this weekend and shouldn’t doo anything too ‘drastic’ to try and catch up to frontrunners Ferrari and Red Bull, said pleased drivers George Russell and Lewis Hamilton after finishing third and fourth in Melbourne on Sunday morning.

Russell was able to earn only the second podium of his Formula 1 career after an impressive outing at the Albert Park circuit, aided by a retirement for Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in the second half of the race following a mechanical failure.

Hamilton, meanwhile, would likely have taken the podium himself if a well-timed safety car hadn’t gifted Russell a cheap pit stop which allowed him to leapfrog his team-mate.

A frustrated Max Verstappen bemoaned Red Bull’s reliability problems after retiring for the second time in three F1 races, calling the situation ‘unacceptable’.

The world champion was running second in Sunday morning’s Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park before stopping his car abruptly at the beginning of a new lap. He said over team radio that could “smell some weird fluid”, before shutting of the engine and watching on as a marshal used a fire extinguisher on the smoking rear of his RB18.

Team principal Christian Horner said that the team will need to wait until next weak to decipher the cause of the failure, but believes that the problem was fuel rather than engine related.