Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

MP Motorsport’s Felipe Drugovich has completed a double winning race weekend in round four of the 2022 FIA Formula 2 season after winning Sunday’s Feature Race at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya and extending his lead at the top of the championship.

The win marks MP Motorsport’s fourth successive win at the Spanish circuit after Drugovich’s victory in Saturday’s Sprint Race as well as the Dutch racing outfit taking both victories in 2020, the last time F2 raced at the circuit.

Virtuosi Racing’s Jack Doohan finished in second place after starting on pole position with ART Grand Prix’s Frederik Vesti completing the top three on his first visit to the podium in Formula 2. Following on from his podium in the Sprint Race, Logan Sargeant had another strong result in fourth place.

When the five lights went out, Vesti got the jump on the Hitech Grand Prix car of Jüri Vips to take second place at turn one. Cem Bölükbasi and Liam Lawson also had lightening starts as both drivers made up seven positions on the first lap.

After a promising qualifying, PREMA Racing’s Jehan Daruvala became the first and only casualty of the race as he suffered a power failure which left him stranded at turn seven of the track and brought out the safety car.

Victor Martins took his second win of the FIA Formula 3 Championship season in the Feature Race in Barcelona on Sunday morning.

Roman Stanek led the field away from the line, ahead of Martins, Alexander Smolyar and Isack Hadjar.

Everyone made a clean start, with Martins wasting no time in getting around the outside of Stanek at Turn 1 and finishing the move off at Turn 2 to take the lead.

Zak O’Sullivan and Reece Ushijima tangled exiting Turn 12, as they did a couple of times in the 2021 GB3 Championship. The stewards deemed no further action was necessary, with GB3 champion O’Sullivan sitting 16th after starting 18th.

Ushijima’s Van Amersfoort Racing team-mate Rafael Villagomez crashed out on Lap 3 at the same corner after colliding with Kush Maini, scrambling the safety car.

Heat races to set starting grids are not uncommon in motorsport. Nitro Rallycross and Formula E take it another step further with a one-on-one elimination format. On Saturday, the NASCAR Cup Series determined the field for Sunday’s All-Star Race with a slightly different approach: a four-tyre pit stop at the end of pit road and one lap around Texas Motor Speedway.

New for 2022, the starting lineup for the All-Star Race was determined using a bracket system that gave pit crews a bigger role. Previous All-Star Races also utilised crews such as having drivers make mandatory stops while setting a flying lap in qualifying or during the race, while the Pit Crew Challenge—in which crews made their stops before pushing their cars to the finish—was a fan favourite until its discontinuation in 2012.

Kyle Busch‘s #18 Joe Gibbs Racing crew proved to be the best as he defeated team-mate Martin Truex Jr., Kyle Larson, and Ryan Blaney to win the pole.

“This is a cool event,” commented Busch’s crew chief Ben Beshore. “A good way to showcase our pit crew and they did a great job. They put in a lot of hard work this off-season and throughout the year. They clicked off awesome stops there and it’s exciting.”

Twenty cars were locked into the All-Star, and the top eight in traditional qualifying advanced to the knockout round. Aric Almirola kicked off the experiment on an inauspicious note when he missed the green light to signal the start, causing him to fall significantly behind and William Byron to easily win. Blaney defeated Ross Chastain to take on and eventually defeat Byron.

Scott Borchetta can finally call his Big Machine Racing Team a NASCAR Xfinity Series race-winning organisation, even if the help of a Cup Series regular was needed. Tyler Reddick, in his second start for the team, took the lead after the final caution in a wreck-filled affair to win at Texas Motor Speedway.

Ten cautions for crashes took place, knocking out multiple drivers like pole winner Noah Gragson, Sheldon Creed, Jesse Iwuji, Ryan Sieg, and J.J. Yeley. Iwuji missed qualifying on Friday as he was at an exercise with the United States Navy, leaving Kyle Weatherman to qualify his car, while Yeley had impressed by starting fourteenth in MBM Motorsports‘ best qualifying effort ever. The latter was caught in a particularly large crash on lap 137 that claimed six other drivers on the frontstretch, which turned out to be the final yellow flag of the day.

Reddick, who was in first prior to the crash, continued to lead on the ensuing restart while fellow Cup full-timer William Byron gave chase. However, Byron and JR Motorsports team-mates Sam Mayer and Justin Allgaier could not catch Reddick. The two-time series champion has now hit double-digit race wins, becoming the forty-fourth driver to do so and the second such story in 2022. Cole Custer, a fellow Cup driver, accomplished the same at Fontana in February; coincidentally, Custer’s win was the first for his owner Bobby Dotter (SS-Green Light Racing).

Big Machine Racing, currently in its second season of operation, had struggled to begin 2022. Despite a solid rookie season in 2021, Jade Buford struggled with a single top-twenty finish (eighth at COTA, which is to be expected out of someone with road racing experience) before Kaz Grala and Reddick replaced him; Reddick drives for Big Machine ally Richard Childress Racing at the Cup level. Although Reddick being a Cup driver means his win would not lock the #48 team into the owner’s championship playoffs, it obviously provides the spark that it had been sorely needing.

Race results

Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team Principal Toto Wolff believed the team made the most of qualifying at the Spanish Grand Prix, with George Russell in fourth and Lewis Hamilton in sixth. 

“P4 and P6 are probably the best positions we could have expected to slot into today, given the challenges we have faced in the first five race weekends, and the progress we are now starting to make with the car.”

Wolff said that, unlike their competitors, the team had shifted their focus to solving the bouncing issue before pursuing further development. Now that they have a handle on the porpoising, Wolff is confident that the team can move forward and shrink their gap to the front. 

“Overall, I think we have made a solid step forward this weekend, and we know how to unlock more performance, too. Our rivals have continued development while we have paused to solve the bouncing – so when we pick that up and start to better understand the tyres now the bouncing is gone, then I think we will be closing them down.”

Wolff said that W13 is better suited to the race rather than qualifying, which may play a role in their ability to defend their position or even move up the order. 

Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN are looking strong ahead of Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix, despite a mixed qualifying result. Valtteri Bottas performed brilliantly to qualify in seventh, whilst Guanyu Zhou could only manage fifteenth.

Bottas ended Saturday as ‘best of the rest’, and did well to recover from a disappointing Friday. The Finnish driver has a great chance at scoring some big points during the Grand Prix, where overtaking looks set to be a challenge.

Zhou had the pace to qualify better than he did, however, the Chinese driver didn’t have a new set of soft tyres to use in Qualifying 2, having used all his fresh sets during the opening part of qualifying. Despite this, Zhou has got the pace to battle for points on Sunday, if he can work his way through the midfield.

Alfa Romeo Team Principal Frédéric Vasseur, is confident that points can be scored by both drivers during the race at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

“The team bounced back really strongly from a challenging Friday, and this clearly shows we are not letting any adversity get in the way of our work. On this day, P7 on the grid was the best possible result and Valtteri delivered an impressive lap to bring home this result.

Valtteri Bottas has a great chance of scoring some strong points at the Spanish Grand Prix, after qualifying in seventh-place at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

After missing out on some Friday running due to a technical fault, the Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN driver made strong progress throughout Saturday, and fully deserved his seventh-place start. Bottas qualified as ‘best of the rest’, with the three main teams locking-out the top six. Bottas claimed seventh spot with a 1:19.608, nine-tenths behind polesitter Charles Leclerc.

Bottas is delighted with his performance, especially as he predicts overtaking to be difficult during the race.

“I am happy about today’s result, we had a strong qualifying and we are in a really good place for tomorrow. In theory, we didn’t expect this track to suit us too well, but I think the upgrades gave us a good step forward in terms of performance. We had a solid FP3, which allowed us to make up some of the ground we lost yesterday, and we were quite consistent in each run throughout the day.

“I am glad we qualified well as I don’t think it will be easy to overtake on this track: I think P7 was the best result we could get today so I am happy we have achieved it – actually, the gap to the cars in front is not that big! Our car is usually better in the race, so we could be in for a good Sunday.”

Charles Leclerc recovered from a spin early in Q3 to take a fourth pole position of the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Saturday.

The Scuderia Ferrari driver was left with a lot of work to do in his final run after losing control of his F1-75 at the chicane on his first run, the spin ending his chance of putting in a lap time.

However, he recovered well to snatch top spot away from Oracle Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen to secure career pole number thirteen, and he goes into Sunday’s race confident of a third victory of the season after strong long-run pace in final practice.

Ferrari struggled with their tyres over the longer runs on Friday, so Leclerc was happy with the progress they made as they look to beat Verstappen on Sunday.

“We really turned things around since yesterday and our team did an amazing job,” said Leclerc. “We struggled a lot in the first two practice sessions this weekend, especially with the tyres.

Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team’s George Russell qualified fourth ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix— his best qualifying result this season. He did, however, believe that there was even more performance to be found, as his tyres weren’t in optimal condition for his final run.  

“Today was a good step in the right direction. It’s our best qualifying position as a team this season, ahead of one Red Bull, and a positive session for us as we’ve finally got a good baseline. The pace gap to Ferrari on pole is still big, but there was more potential for us, too – the tyres were not in a perfect window and that made it tricky, especially in Q3.”

Russell predicted that he will be in a “better place” on race day, and is unsure of how surrounding cars will fare in comparison. Ultimately, he was pleased that the team found a “good baseline” that they can further improve upon as the season continues. 

“There’s a long race ahead tomorrow and I think we’ll be in a better place then – while some of the cars around us are a bit of an unknown. And on the development, we’ve finally now got a good baseline, and we need to continue this path and find more performance.”

“We are getting closer to the front” – Lewis Hamilton

Team-mate Lewis Hamilton was pleased with the improvement in performance the cars have shown this race weekend, which has translated in another step “closer to the front” with both Mercedes reaching Q3. 

Felipe Drugovich took the lead of Saturday’s Sprint Race at turn one of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya and never looked back on the way to his second victory of the 2022 FIA Formula 2 championship which bumps the Brazilian up into the top spot of the championship standings.

The MP Motorsport driver held off the DAMS rookie, Ayumu Iwasa, for the entirety of the race with the Red Bull junior glued to the back of him as he took the first podium of his Formula 2 career.

Drugovich was booted out of reverse grid pole due to a three-place grid penalty for impeding his championship rival Théo Pourchaire in Friday evening’s qualifying session.

This put Trident’s Calan Williams into the front spot of the grid which was the cause of early dramatics when the young Australian stalled at the start of the formation lap and was forced to start from the pit-lane..

Now starting from fourth on the grid, Drugovich benefited from the empty grid position as he powered past Jake Hughes and Pourchaire when the five lights went out to start the race. In the post race interview, Drugovich said,

Max Verstappen will start the Spanish Grand Prix from second on the grid, but the Dutchman was disappointed not to attack on his final lap as an issue with his DRS left him down on pace.

The Oracle Red Bull Racing driver had been fastest after the first runs in Q3 but found himself shuffled down to second after a stunning final lap by Scuderia Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

“We are starting second tomorrow which we can be happy about but it was a bit of a shame with the last run,” said Verstappen. “The DRS didn’t open so I backed out and aborted the lap as I was losing a lot of time, three or four tenths.

“That meant we didn’t get the opportunity to fight for pole, nevertheless, we will give it a good go tomorrow.”

Verstappen says Ferrari look ‘pretty strong’ again this weekend, but he is confident he can overhaul Leclerc to secure a third consecutive victory on Sunday afternoon at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

Charles Leclerc clinched pole position at the 2022 Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Spain. Max Verstappen was in second position, 0.323 seconds slower than Leclerc. Carlos Sainz was in third position at his home race.

George Russell and Sergio Pérez rounded off the top five positions in the qualification session. Leclerc had just one lap in the dying minutes of the session and easily overhauled Verstappen’s lap time.

The qualifying session started under hot conditions with air temperatures at 34 degrees C and track temperatures at 46 degrees C at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

The Pirelli tyre choice at this race is the white-striped hard compound tyres (C1), yellow-striped medium compound tyres (C2), and red-striped soft compound tyres (C3), the hardest range of compounds in the Pirelli tyre range.

Q1: Alonso knocked out

Zhou Guanyo set the early pace with a lap time of 1m21.065s. The Oracle Red Bull Racing drivers, Verstappen and Pérez, went to the top of the time charts.

Andrew Green, the Chief Technical Officer at the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team, has dismissed concerns over the legality of the updates brought to the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya this weekend, particularly surrounding the similarities compared to Oracle Red Bull Racing’s RB18.

Red Bull has questioned how the AMR22 is so similar to their own car following the updates brought to the car for the Spanish Grand Prix weekend, with Christian Horner commenting that it could have been possible that their intellectual property had been used following the arrival at Aston Martin of several former Red Bull employees.

But Green says the car has been months in the making, with designs going back well before the likes of Dan Fallows arrived at Aston Martin, and the FIA were happy with the way the updates came about.

“I don’t know what these accusations are that Red Bull are talking about,” Green is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com. “All I can say is that at no stage did we ever receive any data from any team or anyone.

“The FIA came in and did a thorough investigation, examined all the data leading up in the history of this car, they interviewed all the people involved and concluded that it was completely independent development.

Questions have been raised at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya over the legality of the upgrades brought to the track this weekend by the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team, with many similarities to Oracle Red Bull Racing’s RB18 being noted.

And the similarities have been noted by Red Bull’s Team Principal Christian Horner, who has said that the changes to the AMR22 cannot be coincidental since the arrival at Aston Martin of some former Red Bull employees, including their former head of aerodynamics Dan Fallows.

Red Bull say the transfer of its intellectual property would be a ‘serious breach’ of the sporting regulations, and Horner has said they were given a heads-up about the similarities by the FIA as they checked over the cars ahead of this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix.

“Imitation is the biggest form of flattery, at the end of the day,” Horner said to Sky Sports F1.  “It’s no coincidence that we’ve had a few individuals that have transferred from Red Bull to Aston Martin over the winter and the early part of this season.

“It was brought to our attention by the FIA earlier in the week, when they said ‘we’ve got a car that looks remarkably like yours, can we have a list of your leavers to see where they went?’ So that immediately raises alarm bells.

Charles Leclerc led the third and final free practice session of the 2022 Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Spain.

Max Verstappen  finished in second position, just 0.072 seconds slower than the Scuderia Ferrari driver. George Russell finished in third position at the end of the session

The third free practice session of the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya started in baking hot conditions with air temperatures at 31 degrees C and track temperatures at 43 degrees C.

The hardest tyres in the Pirelli range of tyres has been designated for this race – white-striped hard compound tyres (C1), yellow-striped medium compound tyres (C2), red-striped soft compound tyres (C3).

Lando Norris was the first driver out on the track. The young Briton had just 6 laps in second practice because he suffered damage to his chassis. Norris has a new chassis and set the first timed lap of 1m23.641s on the medium compound tyres.