Las Vegas GP and latest news on F1

We’re back with some more high-octane F1 news one week before the teams hit the track again in Saudi Arabia.

A lot has happened in the last few days, with drivers, principals and strategists coming out and spilling facts & fiction in interviews around the world.

We’re still testing to see what are the best dates/times to send you our twice-a-week newsletter. Reply to this email if you have any suggestions on what your preferred days of the week are.

🏁 Latest updates after Bahrain

• Hamilton says he knew 'from the moment I drove the car' that W14 would need work - Link

• Mercedes admits they got the car concept totally wrong. Seems that Zero Pod is not as fast as previously estimated. - Link

• How did Red Bull manage to overcome the 2023 floor regulations and gain so much pace over last year's car? Mark Hughes has a look, with technical illustrations from Giorgio Piola. - Link

• Nico Hulkenberg says he went through his tyres like a “knife through butter” after his Haas Formula 1 car suffered front wing damage early in the Bahrain Grand Prix. - Link

• Red Bull was the only top team to be able to do 2 stints in softs.

  The RB camp says they could have been 1sec+ faster.

• After just one race in the new Formula 1 season, Red Bull's motorsport consultant Helmut Marko has already written off one of the biggest competitors. "The world title is out of reach for Mercedes," said Marko in an interview. "You can't design two or three vehicles. If a completely new vehicle were to come now, it would be difficult due to the financial limits. And even with a new vehicle, you cannot expect it to be immediately competitive. You have to develop it to be competitive from the start. They lack the three days of testing and the racing experience." - Link

• The head of Ferrari's SF-23 development program, Sanchez, has resigned and already has other job offers. This will have a significant impact on Ferrari's season, and replacements will likely be sourced from within the company due to gardening periods. - Link

• Alonso pulled off some great overtaking moves, which included a brilliant dive down the inside of Lewis Hamilton at the tricky Turn 10.

  These passes were possible because Alonso knows that one of the strengths of his AMR23 car is under braking.
  The most critical of changes Aston Martin has made to its brakes is in abandoning the three o'clock mounting position it had for its caliper in 2022. Instead, it has moved back to the more familiar six o'clock position. - Link

• Zhou Guanyu finished 16th at the season opening Bahrain Grand Prix last weekend. And while he was left to rue his luck with the timing of a late Virtual Safety Car, he took comfort from the potential displayed by Alfa Romeo’s 2023 car, the C43. - Link

• Logan Sargeant says he didn’t want to be “too greedy” on his Formula 1 debut in Bahrain and that failing to make Q2 was the biggest disappointment he encountered. - Link

🏁 Some more interesting news

• Kimi Raikkonen to make racing return at scene of last F1 race win later this month. - Link

• Lando Norris has said the wait McLaren is having to endure before its revised car arrives later in the season shows how is it not yet operating like a top Formula 1 team. - Link

• Las Vegas GP Renders are here. I’m really curious if there’s anything that beats the cringiness from the fake water in Miami. - Link

  

👉🏼 Features 14 corners. Only Austria’s Red Bull Ring and Italy’s Monza have fewer turns
👉🏼 second longest street track on the F1 calendar, behind the Jeddah Corniche Circuit
👉🏼 Cars will hit top speeds of around 342km/h, similar to Monza.

• The intriguing, serrated floor edge that Alfa Romeo revealed at the launch of its new Formula 1 car has been confirmed as a fake by team insiders. That would’ve been a race to the bottom with Mercedes on who wins Worst Update of The Year award. - Link

• McLaren's new wind tunnel has been completed and could soon be in use. McLaren's new team boss revealed that there is still some fine-tuning and installation to be done before the wind tunnel can be put into use, but by June the car should be able to sit in the tunnel. - Link

• Red Bull’s Horner has confirmed he has held initial talks with McLaren over a potential deal to supply power units to the Woking team from 2026. Red Bull have committed to building their very own engine for the new regs, in partnership with Amercian car giant Ford. - Link

📈 Bahrain Race Charts

📅 Next Race

NEXT UP: 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia Grand Prix, March 17-19th

🔥 Meme of the day