Nikita Mazepin to sue Haas over unpaid 2022 salary

F1 driver market

If you were a team boss in the midfield, which driver would you target to improve your fortunes?

Carlos Sainz

"I want to take it a bit more race by race, you know, not thinking too much about the championship or anything like that.

"I really want to focus in getting to a track and see if I can get myself in a good window of performance and comfort inside the car. I think this weekend I did that, right since FP1 I looked very quick, both in qualifying and race pace.

"In the race I was pushing flat out without any fear of losing the car, like I had, for example, in Barcelona.

"Some good progress being made; we’ve changed a bit of things on the car to try and make it a bit more to my liking, and they seem to be working."

Is Verstappen the best ever?

"Max is very good and he is a very complete driver," explained Sergio Perez.

"He is without a doubt one of the best in the history of Formula 1, if not the best, for everything, for his education and because he has things that other Formula 1 drivers do not have.

"The special thing about Max is the ease of going to the limit, Max goes to the limit from the first lap, every change he makes to the car is important and it's not that he changes his conditioning style, he always goes to the limit.

"The difference is always a corner, it is a level that demands a lot as a driver."

Are Mercedes back?

“One swallow doesn’t make a summer,” said Toto Wolff on Sunday after the Canadian GP. “We saw that swallow in Barcelona but somehow it flew somewhere else. So, I think we need to be careful. We were off the pace on Friday, in the wet we were good yesterday, I think it was respectable.

“And I think that today at times we were with the quickest cars. In the second stint, Lewis and George were almost matching the front-runners – not quite, but on some laps – so that was very encouraging to see, but we need to be careful. There’s so much work we need to do to be back at the front and we aren’t there yet.”

Is Nico Rosberg biased against Lewis Hamilton?

Zak Brown: Let new teams enter F1

McLaren CEO Zak Brown told Sports Business Journal about the potential of Andretti joining F1, despite the reported $200m entry fee: "I hope it’s not dead, but it certainly seems like it’s meeting a lot of resistance.” 

“I wouldn’t want to comment on what I think the right number is [for the entry fee] but what I would say is the value of an F1 franchise - from when the Concorde Agreement was signed to now - it’s grown rapidly.

“Ultimately, it’s up to F1 to decide what the right number to buy in is.”

Hamilton: Can Russell be the guinea pig?

Lewis Hamilton on Mercedes' race-by-race experiments...

Bernie Ecclestone writes off Charles Leclerc

The former F1 supremo said to German newspaper Blick about the Ferrari driver: “Errors are creeping in again.

"The reliability we are seeing is often reminiscent of the old days and the drivers themselves are not always confident on the track.

“It means Max is having an easy time in the Red Bull with six wins already. Like many people, I had hoped that Ferrari would succeed again after more than 14 years.

"Unfortunately, I have to say that anyone who continues to put their money on Ferrari or Leclerc will get nothing."

If you ran an F1 team, which version of Lewis Hamilton would you rather have?

Driver Market - the latest in silly season

• Who is contracted?
• Who could switch teams?
• Which driver do the big teams want long-term?

The big talking points answered here

Red Bull suspend Juri Vips

The test driver has been suspended after he made a racial slur on social media.

Mazepin claims he is suing Haas!

Former Haas F1 driver Nikita Mazepin says he is taking the team to court over unpaid salary for the 2022 season. 

Mazepin was replaced at Haas by Kevin Magnussen on the eve of the 2022 season in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

In an interview with Russian media outlet RBC, Mazepin said: “When the contract was terminated, Haas had a salary arrears to me for 2022. And they still haven’t paid it.

“I’m only talking about the fact that contractual obligations were not fulfilled.

“You also need to understand that we had two independent contracts. And breaking the agreement with the title sponsor [Uralkali] did not have a direct impact on my future in the team.

“So they [Haas] made two separate decisions. I didn’t see my money, so we’re going to court.”

Good morning and welcome to our live blog for Wednesday 22 June 2022.