As the 2021 season creeps ever closer, the 2021 grid has finally been confirmed with a contract announcement from the Mercedes camp. Fernando Alonso has been injured in a bike accident. And Rich Energy CEO William Storey has announced his intentions to bring his brand back into Formula One.
The week started off with the news that many fans were waiting for. Lewis Hamilton signed a one-year contract extension with Mercedes for 2021. The defending World Champion has been without a contract since the end of 2020. Team manager Toto Wolff partly blames the delay in finalizing a contract on Hamilton catching COVID-19 late in the 2020 season and insists that a longer deal for 2022 and beyond will be discussed this season.
Just six weeks before his Formula One return with Alpine (formerly Renault), Fernando Alonso has been hospitalized after being struck by a car while riding his bike in Switzerland. According to police, the driver of the vehicle was turning into a supermarket parking lot while Alonso was passing a line of stationary vehicles. The Spaniard was conscious when transported to hospital and has undergone surgery for a fractured jaw. The team insist that he will be in good health in time for the season of the season in Bahrain.
While F1’s We Race As One campaign will still be present in 2021, the rainbow branding has been dropped. This announcement came as the sport announced its objectives for the campaign in 2021. The rainbow was prominently featured on the safety car in 2020 and on some of the trackside branding. This season, the campaign will be focusing on “sustainability, diversity and inclusion, and community”. The sport plans to continue to include a moment before the start of the race to “show our united support for important issues”. In 2020, this was the time when some drivers took a knee; a move which was controversial for some.
The sport may be experimenting with a new weekend format this season. The 2021 season may have sprint races at three weekends. The current plan is race weekends in Canada, Italy and Brazil to have a sprint race on Saturday and main race on Sunday, with qualifying being moved to Friday after a single practice session. The change to the weekend format has been suggested for some time, since way back when Bernie Ecclestone still ran the show.
On Sunday, the controversial UK-based energy drink brand Rich Energy has announced plans to return to Formula One. The brand was at the center of a messy divorce with Haas F1 after prematurely terminating a title sponsorship deal that was supposed to run from 2019 to 2022. The situation led to a fight within the company as shareholders forced out both company directors and rebranded. But CEO William Storey bought back his majority stake in the company only weeks later.
The announcement came in the form of a two part video (part 1 & part 2) by William Storey, in which he made numerous claims. The first part of the video started with Storey providing a brief summary of his involvement in Formula One. He starts by describing a failed bid to purchase Force India in 2018, which according to him was “ruined” when Sergio Perez forced the team into administration. Storey claims that his bid for the team and a Russian bid to purchase the team were both higher value, than Lawrence Stroll’s bid. He then described negotiations with McLaren and Williams, the Haas sponsorship which was ended because of “poor performance both on and off the track” and some legal issues with Red Bull.
While the video was vague about how Rich Energy plans to return to F1, Storey claims that an “ally” of Rich Energy has agreed to purchase a majority stake in an existing F1 team. Rich Energy will reportedly partner with that team in 2021 and then become the title sponsor in 2022. It’s unclear which team Storey is referring to, but in the video he did describe Dorilton Capital (the company behind the Williams takeover in 2020) as “our [Rich Energy] friends”. Storey says he will be attending the first grand prix of the 2021 season in Bahrain.
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