F1 news LIVE: Mercedes warned over ‘crazy’ car fixes as Max Verstappen faces ‘big task’ after ‘terrible race’

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.

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.

Formula 1’s introduction of the sprint races were a new innovation brought in at the start of the 2021 season.

A handful of races were given the go-ahead so that qualifying would take place on the Friday rather than the Saturday.

The sprint race would then replace qualifying on the Saturday, before the race took place as usual on the Sunday.

Last season the sprint races were at the British Grand Prix, the Italian Grand Prix, and the Brazilian Grand Prix. Here is all you need to know about the sprint races for 2022.

Sebastian Vettel has called on Formula 1 to do more to help Ukraine amid its ongoing invasion by Russia.

Four-time champion Vettel, who drives for Aston Martin, has been seen sporting a helmet this season that bears the colours of Ukraine’s flag and the words “No War.”

Drivers gathered around a banner carrying the same message ahead of the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, while teams have donated to Unicef’s fundraising appeal to help victims of the war.

“I think a lot of the things that are required to help people are basic,” Vettel said, per GP Fans.

“Basic things, other than shelter: making sure they have got food, they have got blankets, nappies, whatever you can think of. And to supply all these things in the end, you need money, so I think we should set up something and collect money.”

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Sergio Perez says he is “certainly concerned” with the fragility of Red Bull’s car in the 2022 season.

The driver had to retire from the Bahrain Grand Prix, as did teammate Max Verstappen, due to issues with the car. Defending champion Verstappen also had to pull out of the Australian race which squared Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc to another victory.

Perez says the entire Red Bull team are working on the problems in order to secure more points going forward.

“It’s certainly a concern,” Perez said per Planet F1. “We’ve lost a lot of points already in these first three races that in the end can make a huge difference in the championship. So we are obviously aware of it.

“All the team back home in Milton Keynes, here, are working flat out to try to come up with solutions.

“We don’t know exactly the issue on Max’s car. So yeah, we will see and I’m sure we will turn things around and hopefully we can start again from zero when we go back to Europe.”

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Alfa Romeo have expressed their surprise at Lance Stroll not being penalised for running Valtteri Bottas off the track in the Australian Grand Prix.

As the two competed for an overtake, Bottas dropped into the gravel to avoid colliding with Stroll and instead saw Pierre Gasly surge past him - but despite trackside engineering head Xevi Pujolar feeling it was a good example of a driver being forced off the track to gain an advantage, Alfa Romeo accepted the decision of no penalty.

“We were expecting him [Stroll] to get a penalty because it was not very nice what he did but the decision was no penalty and we take it,” said Pujolar.

“It was not a frustration for us. We believe that he [Bottas] was pushed out.

“We thought he would get a penalty but the decision was no. It is what it is.”

Stefano Domenicali resigned as team principal of Ferrari on this day in 2014 following a poor start to the Formula One season.

The Italian fell on his sword with the team he led struggling to compete with its rivals amid changes to regulations governing the sport.

Domenicali’s exit came in the wake of the Bahrain Grand Prix in which drivers Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen had finished ninth and 10th, respectively.

In announcing his departure, 48-year-old Domenicali said: “There are special moments that come along in everyone‘s professional life when one needs courage to take difficult and very agonising decisions.

“It is time for a significant change. As the boss, I take responsibility, as I have always done, for our current situation.”

Domenicali had joined Ferrari as an administrator in 1991 before becoming team manager in 1996 and then sporting director six years later.

He succeeded Jean Todt at the head of the Formula One team in 2007 and was officially appointed team principal in 2008, winning the constructors’ championship at the end of his first season.

However, the drivers’ title was to elude Ferrari during the remainder of his reign, and indeed since with Raikkonen’s 2007 title representing the most recent success.

Felipe Massa went agonisingly close to depriving Lewis Hamilton of the world title in 2008 and Alonso saw Sebastian Vettel pip him in the final race in both 2010 and 2012.

Alonso also finished second behind the German in 2013, but he was a long way adrift and the Spaniard was widely considered to be out-performing the car he had been given.

PA Sport

Frederic Vasseur has warned Formula 1 against calendar changes that would see the introduction of more races, with the Alfa Romeo team principal using MotoGP as an example of the difficulties that could arise.

The F1 season consisted of 22 races last year, with 23 events taking place this season – a record number.

There are plans in place to increase the number of races for future seasons, too, something that Vasseur has warned against.

“It’s true that with more and more races on the calendar, one of the key aspects of our business will become the freight quite soon,” said Vasseur, per GP Fans. “Not just for us, but I think it’s already the case in MotoGP or some other events.

“We’ll have to take care about the circuits that we are doing and the way that we are organising the race, because at one stage it will become tricky to be on time for every single event.

“But to be the first, second or third race in the championship, I’m not sure it makes a big difference because before Race 1 we have testing.

“It’s even more challenging for us to do Race 1 in Australia, because very often we are not ready for Race 1.”

An agreement that is currently in place dictates that the F1 calendar cannot feature more than 24 races until 2025. That limit is expected to be met in coming seasons, and F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali recently said that as many as 30 events could make up the calendar after 2025.

The 2021 MotoGP season consisted of 18 grands prix, with 21 scheduled for this year overall.

Former Red Bull driver Mark Webber has said his old team are throwing points “down the drain” due to issues with their cars this season.

Although defending champion Max Verstappen won the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, he failed to finish the other two races of the year so far in Bahrain and Australia. Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez also had a DNF in Bahrain, before finishing fourth in Saudi Arabia and second in Melbourne.

“We saw after Bahrain when they had the double non-finish there, there was a glimpse then of something not acceptable,” Webber told Channel 4.

“Off the back of a world championship, we need to be coming out of the gate stronger. Of course the speed’s there, they are strong enough – but not strong enough to win the race [in Australia].

“But when you haemorrhage 18 points and maybe the fastest lap and all the rest of it, they are big points down the drain, huge points.”

Read more on Red Bull’s title struggles here:

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff says the team are in a “better state” after the Australian Grand Prix following a disappointing start to the season.

George Russell bagged his first podium for Mercedes in Melbourne and Lewis Hamilton finished fourth, meaning the team are second in the constructors’ standings. Carlos Sainz’s retirement in the race for Ferrari, meanwhile, has put Russell second in the drivers’ standings.

“We are leaving Melbourne in a better state than when we arrived – more lessons learned, more data to analyse and more points on the board,” Wolff told the official Formula 1 site on Sunday. “Clearly we haven’t got the pace yet to challenge Ferrari and Red Bull, but we know where we need to seek performance.”

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