We are one week closer to lights out in Bahrain! It’s this officially this month! This week saw so many team and car launches, enough to get any F1 fan excited for the season. But what else happened in the world of F1? With two weeks to go, let’s discuss the other news stories that have caught my attention. From Portimão to Netflix, the countdown to the season couldn’t get more thrilling.
Portimão is back!
It’s official! F1 is heading back to Portugal in 2021! After such an exciting race at Portimão last year, who knows what we’re going to see this year. With Lewis Hamilton breaking records by winning his 92nd race, hopefully we will see something equally as exciting at this new F1 track in its second year.
Drive To Survive trailer:
The F1 world came alive on Friday when the Drive To Survive Season 3 trailer was released. We get to relive the highs and lows of the Formula 1 2020 season, just in time before the first race at the end of the month. There were many moments to make us laugh and lots more to look forward to. The standout moment of the trailer has to be the classic Marion Grosjean eye-roll. Romain’s description of himself as “the man who walked out of fire” was one that his wife had clearly heard before. Seeing an insight into the behind the scenes moments of the season will never stop being exciting. I just wish they’d release it sooner! I feel like we’ve waited forever for F1 to return.
Reserve and test drivers:
Both Williams and Alpine confirmed their reserve and test drivers this week. The new Alpine team announced theirs during their launch to be Daniil Kvyat as their reserve and Guanyu Zhou as their test driver. It’s such good news that the Russian driver may get another chance after finding out so late in the season that his time at AlphaTauri was over. It’s also really nice to see that the Chinese F2 driver will test the car, hopefully setting up up to join the sport in 2022. We will have to wait and see what happens and if either of these drivers get a good opportunity to perform respectively. Seeing either of these drivers in an F1 car will be good news to any F1 fan I’m sure.
The Williams duo of Jamie Chadwick as test driver and Jack Aitken as reserve will continue this year. After just one chance on track this year, we all hope to see Jack given more opportunities to drive, although not to the detriment of either George or Nicholas. What’s more exciting is Jamie Chadwick continuing as their development driver. Seeing a female as development driver, while also fighting to keep her W-Series title during F1 weekends, is so exciting. We are so close to seeing more women being able to join the F1 grid and I for one can’t wait to see it happen.
Next week:
With one more car launch (Ferrari) and testing in the next week, we have so much to look forward to. I’ll be back to talk about everything F1 as always, particularly once we’ve seen which cars are looking strong for 2021. Who knows what we’re in for this season!