RaceFans Round-up: F1 “cannot intervene” to make championship more competitive

In brief

Budget cap will close up the competition – Domenicali

Red Bull have won all five races so far this year, including four one-twos, and only lost one of the last 15 rounds. Domenicali insists it isn’t a foregone conclusion they will win the championship again, but ruled out making any changes aimed it making the season more competitive.

“This year, we need to say the truth: Red Bull did a better job than the others, it’s a fact,” he said at an event run by the Financial Times. “But I would be imprudent to say the championship is finished.

“We cannot intervene in the performance of the teams. I am sure what we did in terms of financial regulations will help to minimise the gap on the technical side.”

Tsunoda hopeful for AlphaTauri’s “big update”

Most if not all the F1 teams are expected to bring updates for this weekend’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. Yuki Tsunoda, who has scored both of AlphaTauri’s points so far this year, wants to see big gains from theirs.

“We’re going to have hopefully a big update [at] Imola,” he said in response to a question from RaceFans. “So hopefully that will work well.”

Now in his third year as an F1 driver, Tsunoda says he has raised his performance this year and is getting more from his car than he used to. “The driver needs to extract performance as much as possible from the car,” he said. “So it’s good that I am able to definitely extract the performance every race, more than last year, which is good. I have to keep [going] like this.”