JR Hildebrand is to return to Dreyer & Reinbold Racing for the 2019 Indianapolis 500, this time carrying the #48 made famous by Dan Gurney. The Dennis Reinbold squad will retain the same driver line-up as last year, with Hildebrand partnering Sage Karam. Hildebrand has made eight Indy 500 starts and almost took a win
Haas Formula 1 team boss Gunther Steiner says he is preparing for “disappointment” at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, as the Baku track characteristics are worse for the car than recent venues. The American-owned outfit is struggling this year with its VF-19 that cannot get enough heat into its tyres – and is especially vulnerable on
George Russell believes driving at 98% rather than at his maximum potential could help extract more performance out of his Williams Formula 1 car. Russell has impressed in his first three grands prix of the year against team-mate Robert Kubica as both drivers attempt to get on top of a challenging and underperforming car. But
Christian Horner insists his Red Bull team never laid out a target for the number of Formula 1 wins it wanted in 2019, despite motorsport advisor Helmut Marko’s goal. Marko had said during pre-season that he wanted Red Bull to win more races in 2019 than it had the previous year, which meant it had
Carlos Sainz Jr says McLaren’s incoming managing director Andreas Seidl has made a “very good” first impression and is “impatient” to start working at the Formula 1 team. McLaren has recruited the ex-Porcsche LMP1 boss to complete the management overhaul it hopes will lead it to the front of the F1 grid again. Seidl will
Robert Kubica believes Williams’s slump to the back of the Formula 1 grid is not a “one-man issue”, even though chief technical officer Paddy Lowe is leaving the team. Lowe joined Williams from Mercedes early in 2017 but the two cars designed and built under his technical leadership have been the slowest on the grid.
Toyota driver Ott Tanak says he is “taking more care” and avoiding “unnecessary risk” in a bid to turn around his fortunes and win a first World Rally Championship title this year. Tanak’s title bid fell apart last year despite winning the most stages and four consecutive rallies in the second half of the season,
Pol Espargaro says he is “super-excited” by KTM’s potential in MotoGP this year, after claiming the Austrian marque’s best dry-weather result to date. Espargaro recorded KTM’s best qualifying result, fifth, at the Circuit of the Americas which he then converted into an eighth-place finish in the race – his highest since joining the team, excluding
Antonio Giovinazzi says his experienced Alfa Romeo Formula 1 team-mate Kimi Raikkonen reminds him of his own final season in European Formula 3 in 2015. Raikkonen, the 2007 world champion, joined Alfa Romeo from Ferrari on a two-year deal, and is currently contesting his 17th season in grand prix racing, while Giovinazzi’s prior F1 record
George Russell says it is understandable under-pressure Red Bull juniors drive at “120%” given the programme’s “cut-throat” history, but believes fellow Formula 1 rookie Alex Albon can thrive this year. Red Bull dropped Albon in 2012 but managed to extract the British-born Thai from a Nissan Formula E contract last year so it could re-hire
Ferrari must ensure its Formula 1 team boss Mattia Binotto is not overwhelmed by his responsibilities and consider recruiting a secondary figure to help deal with politics, says Gerhard Berger. Binotto was previously Ferrari’s technical director but replaced Maurizio Arrivabene as team head at the start of this year. Ferrari was seen as the benchmark
Autosport readers have their own say in our Formula 1 driver ratings after each race, and so far in 2019 it’s not looking good for Sebastian Vettel and Pierre Gasly. While Lewis Hamilton took the lead from Valtteri Bottas in both the actual F1 world championship and the Autosport readers’ table following the Chinese Grand
Daniel Ricciardo believes short-term judgements on Formula 1 drivers’ form are like questioning the quality of a footballer on a brief goalless streak. A combination of terrible luck during his final season with Red Bull and his new Renault team’s lack of competitiveness means it is almost one year since Ricciardo scored a podium in
Pierre Gasly’s efforts to show more speed at Red Bull are being hindered by his style not totally suiting the team’s 2019 Formula 1 car, says boss Christian Horner. Toro Rosso graduate Gasly has had a difficult start to the F1 season, but managed to score his best result of the season with sixth place
The Williams Formula 1 team must outdevelop its rivals at “double or triple the rate” to make up for its current disadvantage, George Russell believes. Williams’s drivers Russell and Robert Kubica have qualified and finished at the back of the pack so far this season, well adrift of the other nine teams except when rivals
Former Formula 1 driver Gerhard Berger believes Ferrari is wrong to favour Sebastian Vettel over Charles Leclerc so early in the 2019 season. Team boss Mattia Binotto has made it clear since testing that Vettel would have priority in any “50/50” situation because his experience as a four-time world champion means that Vettel is the
Max Verstappen hopes Red Bull will be ready to challenge Formula 1 rivals Mercedes and Ferrari at all tracks from the halfway point of the 2019 season. Red Bull’s start to the season was made challenging by an inability to fully understand its chassis after Pierre Gasly’s pre-season crash and has admitted engine partner Honda
Safari Rally organisers have been tasked with toughening up the route for the event’s proposed return to the World Rally Championship following a visit by WRC safety delegate Michele Mouton. Mouton visited Kenya to drive as much of a proposed route as possible ahead of a July candidate event which could be the final sign-off
Sebastian Vettel believes Ferrari faces a vital few weeks in which it must establish how to develop its car over the middle part of the 2019 Formula 1 season. Ferrari emerged from pre-season testing with an apparent edge over Mercedes but has been muted in the first three grands prix, while its rival has claimed
Yamaha’s Valentino Rossi believes MotoGP’s newest race winner Alex Rins is a threat for the title this year after the Suzuki rider’s breakthrough success at Austin. Rins overtook Rossi in the closing stages of Sunday’s Austin race to secure his first premier class win, and Suzuki’s first triumph since the 2016 British Grand Prix. After
NASCAR will use its non-championship Charlotte All-Star race to debut two parts from its planned 2021 Cup Series Gen-7 car. Current manufacturers Toyota, Chevrolet and Ford have been in discussions with NASCAR to help inform the direction of the new regulations, and the series has consulted manufacturers outside of the series in a bid to
Mercedes has revealed that original idea for the stacked pitstop for Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton in the Chinese Grand Prix came from its Formula 1 boss Toto Wolff. A strategy headache had been caused by Red Bull pitting Max Verstappen for the second time and raising the possibility of Verstappen undercutting the leading cars.
Lewis Hamilton believes Ferrari is yet to achieve its “full potential” at any point so far in the 2019 Formula 1 season. Hamilton and team-mate Valtteri Bottas outpaced the Ferraris throughout the Chinese Grand Prix weekend, making Mercedes the first team to start a season with three one-two finishes since Williams in 1992. The world
Reigning World Rally Championship manufacturers’ champion Toyota plans to build an R5-specification car that could compete in the WRC2 class, says team boss Tommi Makinen. Toyota is the only one of the WRC’s current four factory teams not to have a car available for the R5 class, which started in 2014. The delay has been
Reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano says he and his Penske team need to “clean up some mistakes” after missing out on what he believes were three winnable races. Logano ran up front at Richmond last weekend, where a slow pitstop forced him to fight back towards the front. He managed to catch race
Ferrari hopes Alfa Romeo will switch to new control electronics as soon as possible following the failures that have hit Charles Leclerc and Antonio Giovinazzi in successive Formula 1 races. Leclerc lost a certain victory in the Bahrain Grand Prix on only his second start for Ferrari when a short circuit within an injection system
Jorge Lorenzo says he was making “strange mistakes” in the opening stages of MotoGP’s Grand Prix of the Americas before his Honda bike failed. Lorenzo qualified 11th for his third MotoGP race as a factory Honda rider at Austin, but he slumped to 15th in the opening laps. He recovered to 10th when his RC213V
Suzuki MotoGP rookie Joan Mir says the speed he showed after a jump-start penalty at Austin left him feeling angry that he missed out on a strong finish. Moto2 graduate Mir was one of two riders who received a ride-through penalty for jumping the start at Austin, alongside Yamaha’s Maverick Vinales. But while Vinales was
W Series driver Jamie Chadwick has landed an Aston Martin factory contract and will contest this year’s Nurburgring 24 Hours with the British manufacturer. The 20-year-old, who won the GT4 class in the 2015 British GT Championship for the marque, has been made an Aston Martin Racing junior and will undertake multiple rounds of the
Formula 1 is holding exploratory talks with government officials from six Chinese cities over the prospect of adding a street race to the calendar. F1 owner Liberty Media has ambitions to add another F1 race in China to complement the current race at Shanghai. Speaking at last weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix, commercial chief Sean Bratches