Author Archives: PressBox

Lando Norris was seen driving his Ferrari F40 around London after the rare supercar returned to the road following a crash outside Monaco in January 2025. Norris had taken delivery of the car in late 2024, and at the time of the crash he said it was not yet fixed and that he was “not happy at all” about the damage.

The car was wrecked weeks after delivery when a friend driving it lost traction while exiting a left-hand corner and hit the guardrails. Norris was away when the crash happened. The London sighting came shortly after he finished third at the Madrid Grand Prix.

The Ferrari F40 was built from 1987 to 1992, with 1,311 made. It was the last Ferrari overseen by Enzo Ferrari and the first street-legal car to break 200 mph. The sighting also prompted social media jokes linking Norris and Lewis Hamilton, who recently acquired his own F40.

Mark Walter, the billionaire behind TWG Global and Cadillac’s Formula 1 operation, is facing a federal class-action lawsuit that accuses his companies of diverting billions from insurance policyholders into his wider sports and business empire. The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida by Florida resident Ira Rosner and is being handled by Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd.

The lawsuit names Walter, TWG Global, Delaware Life Insurance and Group 1001. It alleges that insurers linked to Walter funneled about 42% of their assets, or roughly $17 billion, into his private network instead of lower-risk investments. The complaint also says the companies were used to conceal federal investigations and that the money helped support Walter’s expansion into sports, including the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Lakers and Formula 1 through TWG Motorsport and the Cadillac project.

No court has ruled that Walter’s companies did anything wrong, and no criminal charges have been filed. Group 1001 said it would defend the case vigorously, and TWG Global said in August that it was not considering a sale of the Cadillac team or other TWG Motorsport assets. The civil case does not stop Cadillac F1 operations.

Kimi Antonelli has played down talk of an immediate Ferrari switch, saying he is happy at Mercedes and wants to win as many titles as possible with the team first. He said Mercedes has backed him since he was 12 and that he feels indebted to the team, but he did not rule out racing for Ferrari in the future. At the Italian Grand Prix press conference, Antonelli said there will always be talk about Ferrari, while adding that he is very happy where he is.

Antonelli’s comments came after a home victory at Monza that he described as the most beautiful of his season. He recovered from an engine-change grid penalty to win in front of the tifosi and finished ahead of Mercedes teammate George Russell. Antonelli said the reaction from Italian fans was incredible, and hearing the anthem and the crowd chant his name gave him goosebumps. The win was his eighth Grand Prix victory of the season and moved him closer to a maiden Formula 1 world title.

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said Ferrari should have identified Antonelli years ago, rather than only noticing him now. Wolff said Ferrari would try to secure an Italian driver, but the move was not likely anytime soon. The report said Lewis Hamilton remains contracted for at least another year, Charles Leclerc has extended long term, and Ferrari’s leadership remains determined to sign Antonelli eventually. It also said Ferrari could reconsider its plan to promote Oliver Bearman.

Formula 1’s virtual safety car rules came under fresh scrutiny after Lando Norris was hurt by pit-lane timing at the Spanish Grand Prix, where a caution for Lance Stroll’s stranded Aston Martin was deployed just after Norris had passed pit entry. That timing let Kimi Antonelli and Max Verstappen make cheaper pit stops, while Norris lost time, dropped from the lead to fifth after a slow stop, and recovered to finish third in the inaugural race in Madrid at the Madring circuit.

Martin Brundle said the result exposed a flaw in the system and called it a robbery. He rejected closing the pit lane during a virtual safety car and said the better fix would be to make any virtual safety car last at least one full lap so every driver has the same pit window. Brundle also said Norris viewed the outcome as unfair because the rule effectively decided the race, and he expected layout, logistics and signage changes at the Madrid circuit by 2027.

Nico Rosberg also called for reform, suggesting either closing the pit lane during a virtual safety car or sharply reducing the pit-lane speed limit. Other proposals raised included freezing the virtual safety car for at least one lap or lowering the pit-lane speed limit in proportion to the virtual safety car delta. The article said each option would tackle unfairness differently, but each would also create new problems, including congestion, lost strategy, calibration difficulties and ambiguous exceptions, leaving Formula 1 with no simple fix that removes the lottery without creating another kind of unfairness.

Ferrari expects Charles Leclerc to face a grid penalty at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku after the team decided to add new engine parts to his car, with team principal Frederic Vasseur saying replacements are likely because Leclerc has already used his annual allocation. Ferrari said it was still trying to save the power unit from Leclerc’s Monza crash, which did not suffer terminal damage, but the team is preparing for the possibility that a penalty will be needed.

Leclerc said Ferrari was still checking whether the power unit fitted for the Italian Grand Prix could be salvaged, and that a grid penalty could follow if it could not be recovered. Ferrari had installed an improved power unit for Monza, then removed it after Leclerc’s heavy Lap 1 crash at Parabolica, a 60G impact. The team later fitted an older-spec power unit for last weekend’s race at the Madring.

Leclerc’s comments also pointed to broader problems for Ferrari beyond reliability. He said the car is stronger in race trim than over one lap, and that energy deployment is harder on Saturdays than on Sundays. Leclerc said there are no quick fixes for Ferrari’s qualifying weakness, though even small gains in qualifying would help race results. Ferrari enters Baku expecting a difficult weekend on a power-dependent track after Leclerc finished fifth at Zandvoort and fourth at the Madring.