Mercedes ‘don’t need Lewis Hamilton’ as Toto Wolff and Christian Horner agree
Max Verstappen sent offer to quit Red Bull and join F1 rival keen to be his team-mate
Max Verstappen will be able to wrap up his third Drivers’ Championship title in Qatar this weekend before the race even begins on Sunday. The Dutchman only needs to finish in the top six in Saturday’s sprint to secure the end-of-season honours and officially extend Lewis Hamilton’s barren spell for another year.
Verstappen still has a long way to go in order to match Hamilton’s impressive tally of seven titles, but he does not appear to be overly fussed about knocking the Brit off his perch. He recently insisted that although it is fun to break records, he remains focused on taking things one step at a time and doing the best he can at each and every Grand Prix weekend.
“It’s good but at the other end I’m not too focused about it,” he told the Mind Set Win podcast when quizzed on the prospect of smashing more F1 records.
“I just want to do the best I can every single time I’m in the car, and if that means that you break a record, okay, great, but it’s more important what you are doing and achieving. At the end of the day, my goal this year is to win the championship.”
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KEY EVENTS
Toto Wolff and Christian Horner in agreement
Toto Wolff and Christian Horner have both expressed their opposition to an 11th team being introduced to the F1 grid despite the FIA having already given Andretti the green light to join the sport in future.
Wolff has already suggested that such a move would risk upsetting the equilibrium and relationship between the current teams on the grid.
He said: “The FIA, FOM and the 10 teams, we need to protect the sport. We’re holding this sensitive sport that’s growing at the moment in our hands.”
Horner, meanwhile, added: “If [an 11th team] dilutes the existing 10 of course they are going to have an issue with it. Liberty [Media] are not going to want to dilute their element of the income.”
Mercedes ‘don’t need Lewis Hamilton’
Former Ferrari and Williams team manager Peter Windsor believes that Mercedes do not need Lewis Hamilton as long as they have George Russell, with the German outfit ‘imbalanced’ as things stand.
“I just come back to my thing of if you’ve got Lewis, you don’t actually need George, if you’ve got George, you don’t need Lewis,” said Windsor on his YouTube channel.
“It’s an imbalanced team, always has been, always will be, and that is the problem with it.”
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Hello and welcome to Express Sport‘s live coverage of the latest F1 news as we continue to look ahead to this weekend’s Qatar Grand Prix.
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