F1 latest news LIVE: Mercedes to ‘take a chainsaw’ to W13 as Max Verstappen slams Red Bull reliability

Red Bull are hoping for a strong showing in Saudi Arabia this weekend after retiring both cars in the opening race in Bahrain on Sunday.

Drivers Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez both looked set to finish in the top four slots before power losses in the closing laps so both cars retire meaning they picked up no points in the Championship.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says Lewis Hamilton only has a long shot of fighting for the world championship this season.

Wolff’s verdict came after the opening round of the season where Hamilton’s Mercedes team were outclassed by Ferrari and Red Bull in Bahrain only to luckily clinch a podium after both Red Bull’s failed to finish the race.

“If we look at the pecking order today, it seems it will be a very long shot to even think about being in contention for the drivers’ or constructors’ championships,” said the Mercedes team principal.

“We probably scored the maximum points that we could have on Sunday, and we need to take it from here. Every weekend counts.

“But at the moment we have to be realistic and when you are third on the road you cannot think about winning it.”

The battle between Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc wasn’t the only display of great racing at Bahrain as drivers went wheel to wheel in the middle of the field.

AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly and Hass’ Kevin Magnussen found themselves in a well fought duel but their was only one winner. On his return to Formula 1 Magnussen finished P5 behind Ferrari and Mercedes whilst Gasly’s car caught fire and didn’t finish the race.

Red Bull twice attempted to undercut the Ferrari driver by bringing Verstappen into the pits early but the defending champion was left furious after being told to look after his tyres on the out lap.

After the undercut failed and Leclerc retook the lead following his pit-stop, Verstappen vented his frustration on the team radio. “This is now two times that I take it easy on the out-lap, that I could have been in front,” he said. “I am never, ever doing it again!”

Toto Wolff has heaped praise on George Russell for his driving style while taking a shot at Max Verstappen.

The reigning Formula 1 world champion is known for his aggressive style and the Mercedes team boss has labelled his approach as “win it or bin it”.

While Wolff also praised Russell for marrying intelligence and skill, with the young driver delivering fourth in his debut for the Silver Arrows in Bahrain last weekend.

“I think Max’s approach – and this is George’s phrase since he was in go-karting – is ‘win it or bin it,’” Wolff told GQ.

“George approaches it more from an intellectual standpoint while having all the skills.

Ralf Schumacher says the Aston Martin AMR22 is “a disaster” and feels the team’s Toyota-like “bulldozer approach” to reaching the frontof the grid will not work.

Schumacher drove for Toyota when they owned a Formula 1 team in the 2000s, and felt it was a case of a big named brand spending a lot of money in the hoping to build a front-running team and which ultimately failed.

Aston Martin’s boss, Lawrence Stroll, is currently in the process of funding a new factory and wind tunnel for the Silverstone team having already recruited more than 200 new staff with the aim of getting the team back up Formula 1’s leaderboard and Schumacher sees parallels in this approach to his time at Toyota.

“The car is, so we hear, a disaster,” said Schumacher on AvD Motor & Sport Magazin on German TV, “It has to be able to do everything you don’t need. And on top of that, apparently the team owner is now also sitting in the meetings and voicing how things should be done. If that’s the case, it gets really, really complicated.

“The team have lost the thread. They wanted to achieve too much too quickly and that simply doesn’t work in Formula 1. You can’t just take a lot of people and a lot of money, put them in a pot, stir it briefly and then something good comes out.

“The team wanted to take a bulldozer approach and that didn’t work at Toyota.”

Mercedes manage to finish third and fourth in the 2022 Formula 1 opener in Bahrain but they struggled throughout the race with ‘porpoising’. A phenomenon seen this year when the car violently bounces on its suspension at high speed.

George Russell, who finished fourth behind Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton, suggested Mercedes could be stuck with the problem for the rest of the campaign.

“This bouncing we are experiencing down the straight is slowing us down because we are smashing into the ground, rather than going forward,” he said.

“It is promising to see that other cars have had the same issue and they managed to solve it which means there is a solution there, but we are struggling to find it.

“It would have been brilliant if we solved it in testing where we had so much running. But we truly just don’t know how long it will take, if it is next weekend or after the summer break.

“We hope it will be as soon as possible, but there is no reason why it may not continue the whole year.”

Ferrari on top, Kevin Magnussen back with a bang and Red Bull yet to get on the board – here are how the standings look after the opening race of 2022.

Valtteri Bottas led Alfa Romeo to a double-points finish in the Bahrain Grand Prix after finishing sixth in the opening race of the 2022 season with teammate Zhao Guanyu coming in P10.

Bottas says he was even more pleased with his performance given a “disaster” of a start that saw him fall from P6 to 14th on the opening lap.

Copious amounts of wheelspin dropped the ex-Mercedes driver well out of the top 10 on the first lap but having pitted three times, Bottas made it up to eighth on the final Safety Car restart before picking up two extra places when both Red Bulls retired.

“The start was definitely the weak point of the race and a bit of a disaster, just massive wheelspin off the line,” said Bottas. “I pretty much cooked the rear tyres and then I was like a sitting duck after the first lap.

“Something to learn, something to look into, but when things stabilised it was a good recovery, good strategy, and a smooth race. I think we had decent pace, which is encouraging.

“And I’m very happy for Zhou Guanyu in his first race; he got points, which is pretty good. Double points to start the season – not bad.”

Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen was left frustrated during the Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday after his second pit stop as the planned undercut of race leader Charles Leclerc failed to work for a second time. He suggested over the team radio that he had not been allowed to push on his tyres in a bid to get ahead of the Ferrari.

On both occasions, Verstappen found himself still behind Leclerc after the Ferrari driver emulated the move and also took on fresh tyres. After the second time this happened an angered Verstappen said: “This is two times I’ve taken it easy on the out-lap and I could have been in the lead. I’m never doing it again!”

But, Team Principlal Christian Horner explained the situation when he said: “It’s always a balance [because] what you take out of the tyre early in the stint, you pay for it later in the stint.

“Possibly we underestimated the undercut but Ferrari had the pace that had we got that track position they would have made the overtake. We just didn’t quite have their pace.

“But encouraging we’re able to take the fight to them at least and it’s a basis from which to build but we need to quickly address this issue that caused the DNF.”