F1Minute - Bitesize Formula One News

Lewis Hamilton was fastest in the first Brazilian practice, with Max Verstappen scooping second place. There were a couple of Friday drivers in action, with Charles Leclerc taking up a seat at Haas, and Sergey Sirotkin deputising in the Renault – although he only managed to complete 10 laps before parking up with a problem.

It had been widely rumoured, once Renault re-signed Jolyon Palmer to their spare race seat, but now it has been confirmed: Kevin Magnussen will join the American squad, Haas F1, for the 2017 season. Magnussen moves to the team to race alongside Romain Grosjean, replacing the outgoing Esteban Gutiérrez. It will be Magnussen’s third team in the sport, as the Danish driver made his debut with McLaren in 2014, before taking a year out as test driver the following season. In 2016, he was with Renault and now moves to Haas.

The Force India squad have filled their spare race seat for the 2017 season by signing Manor driver Esteban Ocon for what is a multi-year deal. Pairing the French driver with Sergio Pérez for the coming season and beyond, Force India are benefitting from their association with Mercedes, as Ocon is a young driver for the German manufacturer.

With news that Nico Hülkenberg was joining the Renault squad from 2017 onwards, the question on everybody’s lips – would it be Jolyon Palmer or Kevin Magnussen who was retained alongside him? The answer has now arrived and it is Palmer who has been given the go ahead to participate in his second season in Formula One. Magnussen has more points from 2016 so far but Palmer has impressed the bosses.

Felipe Massa is heading towards his final two races in F1, the next event set to be an emotional farewell in Brazil. To take our minds off it, Williams have confirmed who will be replacing the veteran driver next season, with 18 year old Lance Stroll set to get his F1 debut in 2017.

Sebastian Vettel was in all sorts of trouble after the Mexican Grand Prix. Firstly, he was penalised out of his inherited third place position due to an infringement in his defensive driving against Daniel Ricciardo. Then he found himself under scrutiny by the FIA, after some abusive words uttered by the German over the team radio.

As with many races, the excitement of the Mexican Grand Prix was focused very much on the start of the race, and the very end. Lewis Hamilton got a great start and held on to his pole position to easily lead the way to victory. Nico Rosberg struggled to keep in contact but worked his way into second, doing what he needed to do to keep his hands on the title at this point.

Jolyon Palmer was unable to participate in the qualifying session for the Mexican Grand Prix, after his Renault was being busily repaired after practice. Palmer hit the kerbs and damaged his chassis in FP3 forcing him to the sidelines for qualifying.

Lewis Hamilton finally got the start to a race he’s been looking for at the last few events, getting away cleanly from pole position and leading the way to victory in reasonable comfort. Nico Rosberg, meanwhile, had more trouble off the line, losing out to Daniel Ricciardo who muscled his Red Bull into second place.

Defending champion Lewis Hamilton has put himself in the best possible position for a race win on Sunday by qualifying ahead of his teammate Nico Rosberg, but the gap between them was only two tenths of a second. Red Bull locked out the second row of the grid, a full half a second off the pace of the Mercedes pair.