O’Ward, who set the pace on Thursday courtesy of a “pretty fat tow lap”, is looking forward to the extra turbo boost that becomes available in today’s so-called ‘Fast Friday’ practice in preparation for the weekend’s qualifying sessions.“When the boost comes up, the speed is so different,” said O’Ward. “It's so cool.“Honestly, it's one of the coolest...

Autosport has learned that Mercedes has begun an internal reshuffle of its aerodynamics department with Vino departing following six years at the team.He had been principal aerodynamicist from February 2018 until October 2022 when he moved into his current role.The change in aero personnel comes ahead of the earlier-than-expected arrival of two key...

But the current generation of ground-effect cars are trickier beasts to make fast, and the challenge involves nailing the right compromise between high-speed and low-speed performance.Throw on top of that the desire to make sure that the car is not too peaky and that drivers have confidence in it so that they are able to take it to the limit without...

Red Bull opened up for first practice at Imola on Friday afternoon with Tom Hart acting as the voice in Verstappen’s ear instead of Lambiase, who is also Red Bull’s head of race engineering.The team explained to Autosport that the temporary situation is being enacted to provide Hart with additional experience working as a race engineer – as he also...

After his stunning surprise debut in place of the appendicitis-addled Carlos Sainz at Ferrari in Jeddah, Bearman is now finally starting the main challenge of his season in the top categories of single-seaters.Imola marks the first of six FP1 appearances with Haas that were earmarked into his deal as the team's reserve driver for 2024, along with his...

Leclerc set the session’s best time – a 1m16.990s – aboard the updated Ferrari shortly after the one-hour FP1 action was stopped by Alex Albon’s Williams shutting down after he hit a kerb hard and ran down the Imola track from Piratella to Acque Minerali, where he stopped on the inside.Leclerc’s time was set with a second set of soft tyres and pipped...