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Welcome to Thursday’s edition of the RaceFans round-up.
Comment of the day
Starting the formation lap on intermediate tyres may have been a mistake for McLaren but starting from the pits on slicks would have compounded their error, says Rprp:
The McLarens didn’t come out plumb last after the pit stops. A pit lane start would’ve guaranteed them being last at turn one on lap one. They might’ve made up fewer, the same, or more positions than taking a stop after lap one and two, but it’s not totally straightforward.
What’s also worth noting is Piastri making an awful job of a recovery drive. Decent points were up for grabs – probably Hadjar’s fifth place, given all his penalties. Similar to Baku last year. He needs to sort that aspect of his racing out, in order to be in the same breath as the champions on the grid.
Rprp
Happy birthday!
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On this day in motorsport
- 20 years ago today Fernando Alonso won the Monaco Grand Prix. His title rival Michael Schumacher came fifth after being sent to the back of the grid.
- Born on this day in 1968: Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur
- 15 years ago today Sebastian Vettel took pole position in Monaco after Sergio Perez crashed heavily at the chicane
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‘George’s PU failure (…) was an engine kill caused by a failure in the battery, which just suffered a catastrophic failure third of the way into the race and brought George’s race to an end there. We could see enough at the end of the race that the battery was fairly unhappy, some heat damage there, and we’ll have to figure out in the coming days and weeks exactly what caused that and put it right.’
Gucci enters Formula 1 with Alpine (Alpine)
‘Alpine will race under the banner of ‘Gucci Racing Alpine Formula One Team’ from the start of the 2027 season’
How Hamilton proved his critics wrong (The Telegraph)
‘Although they do move, the simulators do not create G-force in the same way and to the same extent as a real F1 car on a track. It does not give the driver a true feel about how the car performs. I think Hamilton is right to take a step back and just go by his gut feeling with the SF-26, as opposed to trying to address the theoretical world. It certainly seems to be working, at least for him.’
Le succès du Grand Prix annonce un été record à Montréal (Le Journal du Montreal – French)
‘According to him, ‘for restaurants, it’s definitely better when it’s still in June,’ because the weather is milder then. ‘It’s colder now, which isn’t ideal for the grand prix,’ he commented, while admitting that restaurants are ‘still full’ and ‘sales are good.”
Montoya: ‘Montreal fightback a credit to Prema’s hard work behind the scenes’ (Formula 2)
‘It was a very, very difficult race. I think it was really easy to make mistakes, and I was just doing what I could. On options, we struggled quite a lot. And the main thing there was just to survive. We had a pretty terrible start but then after that, we just did what we could. ‘
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