File image of Lionel Messi (left) and Franco Colapinto (right)© X (Twitter)

Carlos Sainz announced Monday that he had signed a two-year deal to race for Williams starting from the 2025 season amid what he said was an “exceptionally complex” market for Formula One drivers. The 29-year-old Spaniard will leave Ferrari at the end of the 2024 campaign after seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton was announced as his replacement at the Italian giants earlier this year. Sainz has won three F1 races so far in his career, the most recent at the Australian Grand Prix in March.

Having previously driven for Toro Rosso, Renault and McLaren, Sainz had been linked with several teams for the 2025 season including Alpine, Sauber and Mercedes.

But on Monday it was confirmed he had agreed an initial two-year deal at Williams, with an option to extend.

“I am very happy to announce that I will be joining Williams Racing from 2025 onwards,” Sainz said in a team statement.

“It is no secret that this year’s driver market has been exceptionally complex for various reasons and that it has taken me some time to announce my decision.”

He added: “However, I am fully confident that Williams is the right place for me to continue my F1 journey and I am extremely proud of joining such a historic and successful team, where many of my childhood heroes drove in the past and made their mark on our sport.

“The ultimate goal of bringing Williams back to where it belongs, at the front of the grid, is a challenge that I embrace with excitement and positivity.”

Sainz will replace Logan Sargeant at Williams, where he will partner Alex Albon.

Founded in 1977 by the late Frank Williams, the team have won nine F1 Constructors’ Championships and seven drivers’ titles, with Alan Jones, Keke Rosberg, Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost, Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve all crowned world champion while at Williams.

But Williams have struggled in recent seasons and last took a podium finish in 2021, while their last race victory came via Pastor Maldonado’s shock win back at the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix.

“Carlos joining Williams is a strong statement of intent from both parties,” said Williams team principal James Vowles.

“Carlos has demonstrated time and again that he is one of the most talented drivers on the grid, with race-winning pedigree, and this underlines the upwards trajectory we are on.”

Audi have announced former Ferrari Team Principal Mattia Binotto as the new boss of their Formula 1 project on Tuesday. Earlier this year German car maker Audi took full ownership of the Sauber team, which will be run under the Audi banner from 2026, with an all-new power unit currently being developed in-house in Germany. Binotto, 54, will take charge of the operation on August 1 as Chief Operating and Chief Technical Officer, based at the Sauber factory in Hinwil, Switzerland. He will report directly to the board of directors.

In the restructuring, former McLaren Team Principal Andreas Seidl, who joined Sauber in January 2023 as CEO of the Audi team, is departing, along with Audi executive Oliver Hoffmann, who was overseeing the project. Binotto served as Chief Technical Officer at Ferrari before being promoted to Team Principal in 2019. He left the role in 2022 after three years and had been with the Scuderia since the mid-1990s.

“I am delighted that we have been able to recruit Mattia Binotto for our ambitious Formula 1 project,“ said Audi CEO Gernot Dollner. “With his extensive experience of more than 25 years in Formula 1, he will undoubtedly be able to make a decisive contribution to Audi.“

Explaining the restructure, Dollner added: “Our aim is to bring the entire Formula 1 project up to F1 speed by means of clear management structures, defined responsibilities, reduced interfaces, and efficient decision-making processes. For this purpose, the team must be able to act independently and quickly.

“I would like to thank Oliver and Andreas for their important work in establishing our entry into Formula 1 and their commitment to preparing it,“ he said.

Nico Hulkenberg, who will leave Haas at the conclusion of the season to join Kick Sauber, is the first driver confirmed to be a part of Audi’s team. The German driver called the move “interesting” and “very exciting”.

Since 2022, Chinese racer Zhou Guanyu and Finnish driver Valtteri Bottas have represented the Hinwil team; however, when the current campaign concludes, it is unclear what lies ahead for either driver.

945 days. 56 Grand Prix races. For a man who had won in every season of Formula 1 till then to have to wait for so long for another win seems beyond belief. But Sir Lewis Hamilton – the most successful driver in the history of his sport – had to wait that long. Through spells of agony, self-doubt and crushed glimmers of hope. But when it came, it came in the best way possible. Lewis Hamilton claimed his 104th F1 win at his home British Grand Prix on Sunday.

The win was, by all means, a fairytale. On a track no one drives quite like he does. In front of a colosseum of fans adorned in his masks and race number ’44’. He had won in Silverstone a record eight times before – including perhaps one of Formula 1’s greatest-ever drives in 2008 – but his ninth win, in 2024, is perhaps the most special.

“I can’t stop crying,” said Hamilton in the post-race interview. “Since 2021, every day getting up, trying to fight, to train, to put my mind to the task and work as hard as I can,” Hamilton tried to reason.

He didn’t need to. After having a championship taken away from him in heartbreaking circumstances at the end of 2021, Hamilton never got a chance to fight back as Mercedes fell down the pecking order.

Too many times, he had had his ability questioned. Sunday allowed Lewis Hamilton to release years of pent-up emotion: from needing a result for the effort he put, to being able to prove, to himself, that he has still got it. Oh boy, has he still got it.

On Sunday, Hamilton rode the ebbs and flows better than anyone else. He overtook teammate and pole-sitter George Russell on track. He then closed the gap to Lando Norris in a faster McLaren through a tricky spell of rain. Blitzed his outlap to overtake Norris after the final pitstops. And when Norris faded, Hamilton stayed strong, taking care of his soft tyres till the end to hold off a fast-charging Max Verstappen.

It wasn’t a win through luck, or in the fastest car; accusations that’ve unfairly been thrown Hamilton’s way in the past. Instead, it was a display of sheer genius. Hamilton was the best driver on Sunday. Period.

Hamilton himself admitted that he rarely cries. But as he teared up inside his car and then went on to have a long embrace with his father, it brought back memories of Turkey 2020.

Turkey 2020 was the race when Hamilton equalled the record for the most championships in Formula 1 history. The fact that this win caused Hamilton to react in a similar manner to that record-breaking race tells you everything about the magnitude, and what it meant to him.

To top it all off, the win came in Silverstone, his home race. The circuit where a part of the track is named after him. It’s the place where the crowd roars loudest for Formula 1’s most popular driver. As an emotional Hamilton jumped over the barriers and waved the Union Jack high, it was hard to not let a tear escape.

“To make him win again, at the British Grand Prix, in his last race for Mercedes here, it’s almost like a little fairytale. You couldn’t have scripted it better,” quipped Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff at the end of the race.

Despite turning 40 next year, Hamilton may still have many more romantic chapters to write as he prepares to don the Ferrari red next season. But he’ll have to do quite something to beat Sunday’s storyline.

McLaren’s Lando Norris (centre) took pole position for the Spanish GP.© AFP

Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton topped the times ahead of Australian Oscar Piastri in an intriguing opening free practice for this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix. Hamilton clocked a best lap in his Mercedes of 1minute and 12.169 seconds to outpace McLaren’s Piastri by 0.029sec with his ‘silver arrows’ team-mate George Russell third. Lando Norris was fourth in the second McLaren ahead of local favourite Charles Leclerc in the leading Ferrari, two-time champion Fernando Alonso and his Aston Martin team-mate Lance Stroll. 

The late pause, after Chinese driver Zhou Guanyu lost control of his Sauber, interrupted some teams’ plans to switch to soft tyres in the closing minutes, leading to an unrepresentative outcome.

Three-time world champion Max Verstappen, who did not run on softs, complained about his Red Bull car as he struggled in 11th place and 0.815secs off the pace. 

“It is so loose on the bumps, any correction with engine braking or brake bias just makes it worse,” said Verstappen, who remarked on Thursday he envisaged a tough weekend labelling the track “one of the more difficult” for the team.

McLaren introduced a striking yellow and green livery as a tribute to the late Ayrton Senna, one of many changes as the teams switched from the sweeping corners of Imola last weekend to the narrow and unforgiving barriers of Monaco. 

On an overcast day with rain threatening, Hamilton led the cars out of the pit-lane to start the session, most teams opting for hards. 

Piastri set the early pace ahead of Verstappen whose father Jos was present for the first time since Red Bull’s early season off the track difficulties.

Norris soon took over for McLaren with a lap in 1:15.294 before Leclerc gained the initiative in 1:14.238.

Norris and Leclerc continued swapping fastest laps, the Monegasque showing his form on the track that was his childhood bus-run to school. 

After 30 minutes of the hour Verstappen and then Hamilton moved up to second before Russell went top on softs ahead of his Mercedes team-mate.

Hamilton then improved to 1:12.169 to go top before Zhou Guanyu crashed to trigger a red flag. 

The Chinese driver clipped a barrier and lost part of his front wing which was then collected by Leclerc’s Ferrari as he ran over the debris. 

This forced Leclerc to pit for repairs as light rain fell and on resumption Perez pitted with a puncture.

Lewis Hamilton said he was grateful for a moment of reflection on Thursday morning when he recalled his first visits to Monaco and the realisation of his teenage dreams. Speaking ahead of this weekend’s 81st running of the Monaco Grand Prix, the seven-time world champion said he had a striking sense of the history and majesty of the event that he first attended as a 13-year-old as he arrived in the famous harbour driving through the tunnel.

“I really felt the place and its history and as I came through the tunnel I remembered Ayrton (Senna) from watching it on TV as a kid and that it felt surreal to think that I am now one of the 22 to do it – and that I have been doing it for so long,” he said.

“It was my dream when I was 13 and I came here the first time and I thought this is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been and I want to live here.”

Hamilton not only realised that dream, winning the Monaco Grand Prix three times – in 2008, 2016 and 2019 – but by buying an apartment and living in the Mediterranean principality.

“I raced here the first time when I was 18 or 19,” he added.

“In Formula Three. And it was epic. I had a rented scooter and I was running around town and I went up to Eze and it was really epic for me. And then, I got to go on the grid and it was crazy because I had only ever seen Martin Brundle there.

“It’s a crazy place, a special place, it’s the pearl of our sport and the second smallest country in the world.”

Hamilton’s golden recollection of his early experiences in Monaco may not have coincided with W. Somerset Maugham’s description of the principality as “a sunny place for shady people”, but it was heart-felt.

The Mercedes driver, who is set to join Ferrari next year, has not allowed the demise of his team’s form to diminish his pleasure from driving and suggested he will relish the action again this weekend.

Now 39, he takes a more mellowed view of his racing than he did as a forceful younger man.

“We don’t have any upgrades this weekend,” he said. “The package was spread over the last two races. We have our highest downforce package and an evolved wing, but otherwise I don’t know where we’ll be.

“But I am more excited than I have been with the previous two cars. They were not so great. This one is a real work in progress and it’s much better than last year.

“There are so many things to consider – how high or low to run, the balance, weight distribution, cambers and tows. It is one thing to practice in the ‘sim’, but it is only at the track that you discover the issues you may or may not have.

“I hope we just hit the ground running and we don’t look back, but that’s not been the case for the last two years. But this car is more predictable and it is nice to drive. It’s not perfect, but we are going in the right direction.”