Sergio Perez, Esteban Ocon, Red Bull Ring, 2024

Low-scoring Perez ‘helping McLaren’s constructors’ championship bid’ – Piastri

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In the round-up: Oscar Piastri says Sergio Perez’s lack of points compared to team mate Max Verstappen helps McLaren.

In brief

Perez scoring low helping McLaren – Piastri

Perez’s low scoring in recent rounds compared to Red Bull team mate Max Verstappen “certainly helps our constructors’ championship bid,” McLaren driver Piastri said in response to a question from RaceFans.

“It has just been Max, really. Whenever you have two cars up the front versus one, it opens up some opportunities and is always good for point scoring. I think it’s just always a good thing to have.”

Gasly to run heavier Alpine again at Silverstone

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Pierre Gasly says he will race the heavier of Alpine’s two chassis during this weekend’s British Grand Prix for the third consecutive weekend, with team mate Esteban Ocon having the lighter chassis.

“[Ocon’s] was actually lighter the last two weekends,” Gasly said in response to a question from RaceFans. “We swapped chassis after Canada, which was always the plan. And we’re going to be swapping that chassis around.

“There’s never been any weight issue – if anything, I started the season overweight the first six races. But that’s how it is. The team always tries to tackle this weight topic and make it as fair as possible. Sometimes it goes one way, sometimes the other.”

Bearman explains number choice

Oliver Bearman, Haas, Circuit de Catalunya, 2024
Bearman will have 87 on his car next year
Oliver Bearman will race using the number 87 when he makes his grand prix debut next year. He was assigned the number 38 when he drove as a substitute for Carlos Sainz Jnr in Saudi Arabia.

“I didn’t get to choose my number in Jeddah,” said Bearman, who will race for Haas next year. “First of all, even if I did, that was the last of my worries!

“But, yeah, it’s the number that I’ve raced since the beginning. It’s a number that my dad raced with. I’m born on the 8th of May and my brother on the seventh of, August, so 87 was the number of choice and that would continue to be the case.”

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Hamilton not looking to buy Moto GP team

After reports that Lewis Hamilton was pursuing a purchase of the Gresini Moto GP team, the Mercedes driver and part-owner of the NFL’s Denver Broncos insists he is not actively looking to do so yet.

“I’ve always loved Moto GP,” Hamilton said. “I’m interested in the potential growth of the sport, but I haven’t looked that far into it just yet.

“But anything’s possible. I’m definitely interested in, as I said before, about equity and already with the Broncos, it was already a first step in team ownership. “So I think over the next five to 10 years, there’ll be hopefully more. We’ll see where.”

“No issues” for Marti over Hadjar team orders row

Pepe Marti insists he has no problem with Campos team mate and fellow Red Bull junior driver Isack Hadjar after Hadjar appeared to defy a team order at the end of last weekend’s F2 feature race to let Marti by after Marti had previously conceded his position to Hadjar.

“It’s fine,” Marti told media including RaceFans. “Obviously there was a little bit of a misunderstanding on the radio with team, but mostly it was just about I was under investigation for a penalty [for making pit stop under VSC], which I was aware of, but I was quite confident from my side that I been over the [Safety Car 1] line. And then it turned out to be wrong.

“Even though we spoke about the chance of maybe giving the position back before the last corner – or after the last corner as Franco [Colapinto] was already through – but with three laps to go, when you have a guy coming on super-softs who is obviously coming two or three seconds a lap faster, you want to protect the guy who is ahead. So it was quite clear and my issues are dealt with.”

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Comment of the day

With Fernando Alonso critical of F1’s superlicence penalty points system, Roger Ayles concurs…

I’ve always felt the licence point system is silly and unnecessary.

Penalty points and, indeed, things like race bans should be reserved for the most serious offences rather than minor bits of contact that occurs from hard racing.

I wonder how many points Gilles Villeneuve and Rene Arnoux would have received for the bits of contact and running each other track that occurred during their incredible fight at Dijon 1979?

Heck, I wonder how many points and race bans Gilles Villeneuve himself would have gotten over his career as he had a fair bit of contact with other drivers and drove back to the pits with a wheel hanging off his car at Zandvoort in 1979 – which is only one of the most iconic moments in F1’s history – and we saw from the Red Bull penalty in Montreal that you can’t drive a damaged car back to the pits in the ‘show over sport’ sanitised modern F1.

Let drivers race!
Roger Ayles

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Ben73!

Author information

Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

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3 comments on “Low-scoring Perez ‘helping McLaren’s constructors’ championship bid’ – Piastri”

  1. Profile Photo

    Jere (@jerejj)
    5th July 2024, 8:19

    Indeed & this will probably continue further into the season, possibly even costing Red Bull Racing another constructors’ championship as the worst-case scenario.

    87 is a number I’ve chosen in games alongside 88 as I like how these numbers look + because they’ve been used by certain ice hockey players & of course, using 38 in Jeddah was simply about an FIA-allocated reserve driver number, which is 38 for Ferrari this year.

    I like Checo’s retro design & especially Zhou’s event-specific one, which instantly became one of my outright favorites.

  2. Profile Photo

    F1statsfan (@f1statsfan)
    5th July 2024, 11:32

    Points scored last 5 races:
    Max 101 points
    Perez 15 points
    Red Bull total 116 points

    Lando 73 points
    Piastri 71 points
    McLarenl total 144 points

    Although it is funny that Piastri is making this comment as if you look at 3 races before that you get:
    Max 85 points
    Perez 57 points
    Red Bull total 142 points

    Lando 56 points
    Piastri 13 points
    McLarenl total 69 points

    So those 3 races Piastri scoring low helping Red Bull
    Overall Piastri is of course right – Piastri finished ahead of Perez 6 times including all of the last 5 races.

  3. Coventry Climax
    5th July 2024, 11:55

    The biggest Checo ‘stunner’ for me is that the Red Bull brand is still on his helmet. Basically, that’s what Piastri confirms here.

    Managed to look at the picture posted at “The platform formerly known as Twitter”, which I otherwise never use.
    Nearly as incomprehensible as Checo still driving for Red Bull, is why a selfrespecting news site would just point to and parrot what others say – and think it is added value.

    The team [Gasly’s] always tries to tackle this weight topic and make it as fair as possible.

    How about them making two equal chassis, to make it as fair as possible? It’s not like the heavier one just might have an advantage worth exploring further, is it?

    “I’ve always loved Moto GP,” Hamilton said. “I’m interested in the potential growth of the sport

    Not looking to buy a team – for now, but anyways, apparently in it for the money only, with the first part of his sentence just being what’s always said. No difference to Domenicali and other’s overwhelming ‘love for the sport’ to getting involved in the management layer.

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