Eight rounds into the season and Formula 1 is just starting to heat up.
As the sport pushes past the one-third marker of its record-breaking 24-round campaign, the battle at the front has never been closer. For the first time under this set of rules, Red Bull Racing has shown a weakness.
Two defeats in three grands prix haven’t exactly opened the fight for the drivers championship open, but it’s been enough to inspire some hope.
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Having split those two wins between them, McLaren and Ferrari smell blood, and both think they’re well equipped to go hunting.
WHO HAS THE MOMENTUM?
Three rounds, three different winners from three different teams. It’s been a very long time since we’ve been able to say that in Formula 1.
You have to go back to 2021 for the last time F1 enjoyed such variety, when Max Verstappen won in the Netherlands for Red Bull Racing, Daniel Ricciardo won in Italy for McLaren and Lewis Hamilton won in Russia for Mercedes.
But unlike then, when Ricciardo’s win was out of character for the uncompetitive McLaren, this year the form guide is genuine.
McLaren, Red Bull Racing and Ferrari have each won races on merit to blow up everything we thought he knew about the form guide.
Verstappen leads Leclerc by 31 points and Norris by 56 points in the drivers championship.
Red Bull Racing leads Ferrari by 24 points and McLaren by 92 points on the constructors table.
But those tallies don’t reflect the momentum.
Points scored since Miami, drivers table
1. Charles Leclerc: 64
2. Max Verstappen: 61
3. Lando Norris: 55
4. Carlos Sainz: 39
5. Oscar Piastri: 33
(6. Lewis Hamilton: 23)
7. Sergio Pérez: 22
A similar picture is reflected in the constructors standings in the last three rounds, where Sergio Pérez’s underperformance is laid bare.
Points scored since Miami, constructors table
1. Ferrari: 103
2. McLaren: 88
3. Red Bull Racing: 83
Why is this slice of three races relevant?
It was since the Miami Grand Prix that McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull Racing brought their latest major upgrade packages.
The division of wins and points we saw in May was genuine, at least for the variety of tracks the sport visited.
Ferrari is optimistic that it has an all-round package. Even McLaren was surprised how much its latest upgrade improved its weakest areas.
Red Bull Racing, meanwhile, says it’s had its own weak spots found out.
Canada isn’t an archetypal grand prix circuits, being mostly long straights and slow chicanes. But it’s also not an outlier like Monaco.
This weekend all three teams believe they have a shot. And if it’s close here, it can be close enough for much of the rest of the season.
CAN SERGIO PÉREZ OVERCOME RED BULL RACING’S PROBLEMS?
You’ll note this doesn’t beg the same question of Verstappen. That’s because we already know the answer is yes.
He would’ve taken his injured and slow car to victory in Miami without the intervention of the safety car. He hung on against a faster Norris to win in Imola.
Even in Monaco he probably would have put his car in contention for the front row of the grid had it not been for a mistake on his final run in the first sector — an error borne of the need to hustle the RB20 too hard.
Verstappen is a safe set of hands. Sergio Pérez? Less so.
When the RB20 struggles, Pérez really struggles.
It’s no coincidence he’s been way off the pace in the last few rounds as the rest of the field has caught up.
Red Bull Racing’s problem is with slow-speed corners and high kerbs that put the car’s particular suspension set-up out of its sweet spot.
Corners — especially chicanes — that require a driver to really attack the kerbs dramatically upset the car. Just look at Red Bull Racing’s performances in Imola and Monaco — and Pérez’s poor comparison with Verstappen.
Canada is another one of those circuits, with the only route to a decent lap time being over the kerbs.
Verstappen’s remarkable feel in the cockpit will likely cover for most of this deficit. Pérez lacks the same sensitivity.
Such a challenge comes at an interesting time for Pérez, who’s fresh from inking a new two-year deal to stay with Red Bull Racing on the one-year anniversary of his steep nosedive in form.
This time last season he was entering his darkest period, failing to make Q3 five grands prix in a row. Twice — in Monaco and Britain — he was knocked out in Q1.
This year has looked alarmingly similar, but he no longer has a dominant car at his disposal.
He was just okay in Miami, picking up a flat fourth, but he was eliminated in Q2 in Imola and finished eighth, and in Monaco a Q1 knockout left him caught up in a race-ending first-lap melee with Kevin Magnussen.
Is this the same pattern repeating? And can Pérez do anything to break it to defend Red Bull Racing’s constructors title?
CAN FERRARI KEEP APPLYING PRESSURE?
The only redeemable quality of the soporific Monaco Grand Prix was Charles Leclerc’s popular first victory at his home race, the first time a Monegasque has won in Monte Carlo in the world championship era.
It also turned the promise of Ferrari’s latest upgrade package into something tangible.
It left Leclerc cautiously optimistic, the team having predicted earlier in the season that it could meaningfully reduce the gap to Red Bull Racing.
“I feel that the turning point of the season has been a few races ago already,” he said after winning his home grand prix.
“I think the upgrades that we have brought in Imola, we have still to see how well they work and where it will bring us, and then it’s all about maximising all weekends, and then hopefully, little by little, we’ll get there.”
Ferrari has won in Canada only once in the last 20 years and not since 2018. Its car sits on a knife’s edge in terms of the track’s demands — its turbo configuration makes it mighty out of the chicanes but leaves the car asthmatic at the end of the long straights.
It’s something Leclerc has said he thinks the team can work around, though. This weekend will be a timely test.
Carlos Sainz is certainly optimistic.
“Common sense tells me that on normal tracks Red Bull should still be favourites,” he said. “Domination like we were seeing, hopefully not. but favourites, yes.
“Then it will be a very tight fight with both McLaren and us.
“When I talk about a ‘normal’ track, we can talk about maybe a Barcelona. Canada I think is quite specific.
“I think Ferrari will have our opportunities in these sorts of tracks [like Monaco]. I think McLaren will have their opportunities.
“I think we are all three at a very similar level.
“It still means that that any small progress, any small upgrade, any small thing that we bring to the car might switch it to a potential race victory or a winning car.”
HOW WILL McLAREN FARE IN BIG TEST?
We know the McLaren story by now. Since its resurgence last year its cars have loved high-speed, high-downforce circuits and hated tracks that demand slow-corner performance and top speed.
Circuit Gilles Villeneuve falls entirely into the latter.
The track is just a bunch of straights stitched together with chicanes and a couple of hairpins. You couldn’t have designed a worse track for Woking.
Except that might no longer be the case since the team’s latest upgrade.
“In terms of the traits of the upgraded car compared to last year, what we see and what we expected is just more downforce in all conditions,” team principal Andrea Stella said after the Monaco Grand Prix. “The car compared to what we expected seems to be well behaved also in low speed, possibly slightly more than we anticipated based on our development tools, which is good news.
“Obviously this is something that we need to understand very accurately so that we have the right information to further develop in this direction, because it seems to be very profitable for lap time and also seems to make us competitive at circuits which have low-speed corners.”
Performance in low-speed corners has been McLaren’s defining weakness. If the team has finally managed to find a solution, there’d be very few tracks left for it to fear.
Canada can provide the acid test.
“Our car has performed well at a few different types of circuits, but we know we might have our work cut out in Canada,’ Lando Norris said. “Our competitors are likely to be strong here.”
McLaren also arrives with Oscar Piastri in excellent form, having been Leclerc’s closest challenger in Monaco to conclude an understated but very strong month of May.
Fresh from a podium in Monte Carlo, there’s an undeniable sense of momentum behind the Australian as he chases Norris on the road to his maiden grand prix victory.
“I’ve been happy with where my driving is at the moment, especially the consistency that I’ve shown across the last three events,” Piastri said. “Progress is never linear, but I’m enjoying showing what I can do and driving this car, which the team have done such a strong job with.
“Hopefully in Canada, we can pick up where we left off, because it’s so tight at the sharp end of the grid and we want more.”
CAN JACK DOOHAN CEMENT HIS 2025 CHANCE?
Esteban Ocon’s departure from Alpine at the end of the season had been on the cards for weeks, but it took the first-lap calamity in Monaco for the team to bring forward the announcement.
Reportedly team boss Bruno Famin wanted to bench Ocon for a week but was talked down on legal contractual advice.
Instead it seems he’s done the next-best thing: dump Ocon out of first practice for heir apparent Jack Doohan.
Aussie young gun Doohan was already scheduled for two practice sessions this year as per the rules requiring teams to give rookies seat time, but normally these come much later in the campaign. Last year Doohan drove in Mexico and Abu Dhabi, for example.
But the early call-up is perfect timing for him as he attempts to stake his claim on the seat.
He won’t be chasing headline lap times or looking to make a big public statement. Being fully embedded in the team since halfway through 2022, he doesn’t need to prove he’s fast. Alpine wouldn’t have kept him on the books if he were slow.
Instead he’ll need to demonstrate he can be an effective contributor to the team effort — something he’s already got a track record of doing over the last two years.
Other candidates for the seat won’t have this advantage. Make the most of it and he can sell himself as the obvious replacement for the outbound Ocon.
“I am grateful to the team for the opportunity to get more track time and also familiarise myself with 2024 machinery early in the season,” Doohan said. “This will also help with the work I am doing in the simulator, particularly at the European rounds.
“My focus will be on doing the best for the team and maximising the session for both drivers, looking at certain test items and understanding the new track surface.”
Doohan will get at least one more FP1 session this year, though it wouldn’t be surprising to see him called up more often if the team wants to prepare him for next year.
Do a good job this weekend and that decision will become only easier to make.