FORMULA ONE: Verstappen crowing but something’s brewing for Oscar Piastri amid Lewis Hamilton comparisons
Formula One is grappling with three unsavoury off-track controversies. A race will break out soon enough.
And in the latest episode of the greatest soap opera in world sport …
Red Bull’s ruthless three-time world champion Max Verstappen topped the combined practice timesheets at the Australian Grand Prix, leapt from his cockpit, played a small violin and said: “We’re dominant, blah, blah, blah, it’s boring. It’s not boring! I’m trying to win as much as I can. Why should I feel sorry for people who are slower than me? I have zero empathy for everyone.”
Australian Daniel Ricciardo’s coughing and spluttering RB was middle of the road across Friday’s practice runs but Oscar Piastri was a little further along in his gleaming McLaren. If you were writing a Golden Slipper-style form guide for Sunday’s fast and furious race at Albert Park, you’d bracket Ricciardo and Piastri and suggest, “Consider others.” And yet there might be something special brewing for Piastri. Just a hunch.
“He’s got his rookie stripes off now,” McLaren boss Zak Brown said. “He’s already a mature young man.
“You can definitely see a year on he’s got a higher level of confidence because he knows what to expect, and I think that will just drive even better performances with the helmet on. Oscar had a fantastic rookie season – people are saying it’s the best rookie season since some other guy in a McLaren, seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton.
“He continues to get faster and faster. I’m very excited about the future. He doesn’t make mistakes and he’s extremely fast.”
Piastri finished 10th and seventh in his practice runs. Ricciardo was 11th and 12th. Verstappen’s only frustration was over Red Bull boss Christian Horner’s perplexing texting scandal. Horner remains under investigation for allegedly behaving inappropriately by sending suggestive messages to a female colleague. Rather than Horner taking questions about Verstappen, mad Max is fielding inquiries about Horner
“Would we have liked to have more talk about our car? Probably, yes,” Verstappen said. “But we just try to keep on working on the performance and to keep winning. From what I know, everything is handled in the right way. I’m not going into any further details from that side because I don’t know more than that. And I also don’t want to know because that’s not my job or my task within the team.”
Horner’s case is one of three making the Formula One community blush, cringe and get all a titter on what used to be Twitter. The messages at the heart of the Red Bull drama have left Horner’s missus, the ex-Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, ginger with embarrassment and reportedly “hurt,” “tormented,” “humiliated” and “in floods of tears”. Seriously folks, it’s havoc in the paddock. The sport couldn’t be more dramatic if Alf Stewart turned up in a Home and Away T-shirt and roared, “Stone the flamin’ crows!”
Horner’s messages were cringe-worthy. What are you wearing? A skirt? Send me a photo! Your body’s flexible? Send me a photo! Jeez you look good in those leggings. Send me a photo! Can you please delete this chat? He was cleared of wrongdoing by Red Bull and the FIA but his accuser has appealed and his job is in peril. He spent most of Friday hiding behind the pot plants and managed to avoid the team boss’s press conference.
Horner’s seat is so hot it should be in a cockpit. The only details of his case have come from the media. His scandal is just one of three gripping the sport. FIA chief Mohammed Ben Sulayem was accused of interfering in the result of the 2023 Saudi Arabia Grand Prix – then cleared by his own ethics committee without a single detail being made public. Horner’s case is ongoing and now Susie Wolff, the managing director of the all-female F1 Academy, and wife of Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, has filed a legal complaint against the FIA over its handling of an investigation into her potential conflict of interest.
Stone the flamin’ crows. A race will break out eventually. “All the items that have come to light here in recent times are very serious situations,” Brown said.
“We’re living in 2024, not 1984, which means total transparency. The three situations are different, but all very serious. We need to make sure that things are done in a transparent, truly independent manner. I think everyone should welcome transparency.”
Susie Wolff was investigated last year. She described the FIA process as causing huge reputational damage, “insulting” and born of “intimidatory and misogynistic behaviour”.
The instruction from the garage on practice days always mirrors the one you give your mate when he borrows your ute. Don’t ding it. Piastri and Ricciardo avoided fender-benders and bingles but Alex Albon wasn’t so lucky. His Williams was totalled after he thundered into the wall between turns 7 and 8. He was uninjured his car was battered and bruised like it had faced the West Indian quicks of the 1980s. Albon practises Buddhism and is normally a Zen sort of figure but it’s difficult to be Zen when your F1 car is trashed so badly it needs to be towed away. He missed the second practice shootout and might not be on the grid on Sunday. Dinged it.
Piastri’s McLaren teammate Lando Norris was quickest in Friday’s first time trial. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc took the honours in the next. Verstappen was second in both sessions despite damaging the floor of his Red Bull. Perhaps he hit the accelerator so hard he pushed it right through to the bitumen.
“Unfortunately, a little bit messy,” Verstapen said. “I went wide, damaged the floor and the chassis. It took a little bit longer to fix. I lost about 20 minutes. I think the turnaround we did as a team was very quick so I more or less still completed the program.
“Maybe I would have liked a few more laps but we were missing 20 minutes. That’s how it goes. I think Ferrari is quick but from our side there’s nothing crazy, nothing worrying. I think we just need to finetune the car a little bit.”
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