Jenson Button hailed Honda's latest power unit as a good step forward for McLaren after completing 121 laps and finishing fifth fastest on the second day of Formula One's final pre-season test on Wednesday.
Valtteri Bottas won a dramatic first race of the delayed Formula One season for champions Mercedes in Austria on Sunday
Team boss Christian Horner said Verstappen's lap of one minute 22.109 seconds was one of his best of the year and the Dutch driver sounded remarkably relaxed given the amount of pressure on him.
Lewis Hamilton put no limits on what he could achieve after roaring past retired Ferrari great Michael Schumacher on Sunday as the Formula One driver with most wins in the history of the sport.
Max Verstappen put Red Bull on pole position for Formula One's season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix on Saturday, with seven times world champion Lewis Hamilton alongside on the front row for Mercedes.
Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton has tested positive for COVID-19 and will miss the upcoming Sakhir Grand Prix.
World champion Nico Rosberg's retirement announcement on Friday came as a complete surprise even to the man who knows most of Formula One's best-kept secrets, commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone.
Hamilton is seven points clear of Finnish team mate Valtteri Bottas after five of the 21 races.
One word seemed to encapsulate Fernando Alonso's Malaysian Grand Prix weekend.
Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton set the pace in an incident-filled opening Monaco Grand Prix practice on Thursday, with debris and a loose drain cover bringing an early end to the session.
Valtteri Bottas won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Sunday and retook the Formula One lead from team mate Lewis Hamilton after a fourth successive one-two finish for Mercedes.
An angry Leclerc dropped to fourth after Ferrari called him in again for slicks and then told him, too late, to stay out after Sainz also pitted and went directly from wets to the dry tyres.
Britain's Paul di Resta is set to become a grand prix regular as Force India's reserve driver while compatriot Gary Paffett will be McLaren's main tester, according to team principal Martin Whitmarsh.
Lauda won two world championships in 1975 and 1977 with Ferrari and a third in 1984 with McLaren. His rivalry with British driver James Hunt, the 1976 champion for McLaren, was intense and became the subject of the acclaimed 2013 film "Rush".
Lewis Hamilton won the Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix for Mercedes on Sunday after French driver Romain Grosjean had a miraculous escape from a fiery first-lap crash that ripped his car in two.
Formula One championship leader Nico Rosberg snatched pole position from Mercedes team mate Lewis Hamilton in the final seconds of a marathon Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying session on Saturday.
The Mercedes driver was fastest in every phase of qualifying to take pole with a time of one minute 42.553 seconds, a track record.
Lewis Hamilton assured activists that he would not let human rights issues go unnoticed.
The pole was the second of the Dutch 22-year-old's Formula One career and the first in Brazil for engine partners Honda since the late triple champion Ayrton Senna in 1991 with McLaren.
Nico Rosberg beat title favourite Lewis Hamilton to pole position for the decisive Abu Dhabi Formula One Grand Prix on Saturday as the dominant Mercedes team mates locked out the front row in qualifying.
Formula 1 expert and former racer Karun Chandhok sees four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel taking either a sabbatical next year or walk into retirement after finding himself without a drive for the 2021 season. The 2020 season is yet to start due to the COVID-19 pandemic but Vettel leaving Ferrari at the end of year has given the sport's followers plenty to talk about.
Hamilton has won the last three races, out of four so far in this COVID-19 affected season, and will start as favourite again.
Germany's Nico Rosberg won the Brazilian Grand Prix on Sunday to end team mate Lewis Hamilton's run of five successive victories and cut the Briton's championship lead to 17 points with one race remaining.
Hamilton said he only realised the significance of what he had done when he came into the pitlane after taking the chequered flag.
The new Force India car, equipped with Mercedes engine and McLaren gearbox, will be unveiled in Spain early March, team owner Vijay Mallya said in New Delhi on Sunday.
Leclerc had seized the lead at the start, and held it through an initial safety car period, before Verstappen made up for his poor getaway and passed the Monegasque -- whose tyres were fading fast -- with a late move around the outside.
The pole was Charles Leclerc's second in a row
'I could never have dreamed of being where I am today.'
Alonso said he had huge respect for Hamilton and had no problems with him.
Fernando Alonso made a troubled start to testing McLaren's new Formula One car
Lewis Hamilton led a Mercedes 1-2 at the top of the timesheets for the first free practice session at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix on Friday, while McLaren's hopes of a clean start were tempered by reliability issues.
Hamilton has won 71 races, 20 fewer than Schumacher, and four titles for Mercedes in the past five years. The first was with McLaren in 2008.
Ferrari felt the pain on Sunday after emerging with just two points from a hard day in front of their home fans at the Italian Grand Prix.
Verstappen leads seven times world champion Hamilton by six points with six races remaining and the pole at Austin's Circuit of the Americas was the ninth of the season for the Dutch 24-year-old -- and eighth in the last 11 races.
The strangest of campaigns crammed 17 races, instead of the record 22 originally envisaged, into little more than five months from July with four triple-headers.
The France-Austria-Britain sequence of races poses a fresh logistical challenge for teams hitherto committed only to back-to-back weekends, with the 21-round season hurrying to the halfway point.
Team by team analysis of Sunday's Russian Grand Prix (listed in championship order):
Ferrari will present their new Formula One car online on January 30, a day after McLaren take the wraps off their Honda-powered challenger.
Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton took the first Monaco Grand Prix pole position of his career on Saturday to deny Mercedes team mate Nico Rosberg a hat-trick.
Formula One championship leader Charles Leclerc took pole position for the inaugural Miami Grand Prix ahead of Ferrari team mate Carlos Sainz in a front row lockout in qualifying on Saturday.
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