Full list of Teams and Drivers line-up for 2021 F1 Season

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The 2021 Formula One season will be the 72nd year of the Formula One World Championship and it will have 23 Grand Prix held around the world where the drivers and teams will compete for the World Drivers’ Champion and World Constructors’ Champion, respectively.

This year’s calendar consists of twenty-three races, considering the reinstatement of the suspended Sao Paulo Grand Prix contract and of course, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which hampered the championship in a big way last season. The first race of the season is set to be the Bahrain Grand Prix at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir on March 28 and the last is supposed to be the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi.

There have been some changes to teams too, with McLaren moving to a Mercedes engine from Renault. Team name changes include Racing Point becoming Aston Martin and Renault will now be known as Alpine.

With loads of team and driver changes, we take a look at the final line-up of the 10 teams and 20 drivers taking part in this year’s competition:

MERCEDES

Lewis Hamilton – 44

Valtteri Bottas – 77

Last year’s constructors champion will continue with the same driver line-up of Britain’s Hamilton and Finland’s Bottas as they chase another successful season at the top. Mercedes won their seventh Constructors’ Championship last year, thus, breaking the record for most consecutive constructors’ championships.

Hamilton won the championship last season, his sixth with Mercedes and seventh overall, while Bottas came second.

RED BULL

Max Verstappen – 33

Sergio Perez – 11

Red Bull finished second last year in the constructors championship and will now look to improve on their performance and give Mercedes a run for their money this season. They have made one change in their line-up with Mexico’s Perez coming in place of Alex Albon.

Verstappen was very fast last season and will look to go head-to-head with Mercedes boys again, while Perez, who was dropped by Racing Point, finished fourth behind Max.

FERRARI

Charles Leclerc – 16

Carlos Sainz – 55

Big and bold changes were made by the Italian giants as they decided to let go of their long-serving driver in Sebastian Vettel and pursue with two youngsters in Monaco’s Charles Leclerc and new boy Carlos Sainz of Spain. Ferrari finished a lowly sixth last season.

While Leclerc showed enough promise to lead for Ferrari, he finished eighth last season while Sainz, who was racing for McLaren, was sixth on the charts.

MCLAREN

Daniel Ricciardo – 3

Lando Norris – 4

This will be a fun team to watch with both Ricciardo and Norris being good drivers. McLaren had a sensational season last year and finished third behind Mercedes and Red Bull and will look to do the same with two fast exciting drivers.

Britain’s Norris, who is in his third season in the grid, was ninth last year, while Australia’s Ricciardo was fifth on the driver’s standings.

ASTON MARTIN

Sebastian Vettel – 5

Lance Stroll – 18

Racing as ‘Racing Point’ last year, the rebranded Aston Martin team will look to better their fourth place in this year’s championship. For this, they will have a newly acquired four-time drivers champion from Germany — Sebastian Vettel and Canada’s Stroll.

Vettel, who was with Ferrari last season, had a torrid run and finished 13th, while Stroll was 11th in the standings.

ALPINE

Fernando Alonso – 14

Esteban Ocon – 31

Another rebranded team. Known as Renault last year, they are lining up with the returning two-time world-champion from Spain Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon of France. Alpine finished fifth last year and will look to go up from here instead of staying in the midfield.

Ocon finished 12th last season in the standings, while Alonso is returning to the grid once again after 2 years. He left the grid in 2018.

ALPHATAURI

Pierre Gasly – 10

Yuki Tsunoda – 22

AlphaTauri finished seventh last year and will be represented by France’s Gasly and the young Japanese Tsunoda, who was promoted from Formula 2 by Red Bull.

Gasly finished 10th last season in the standings, while Tsunoda will be having his first season at the top level.

ALFA ROMEO

Kimi Raikkonen – 7

Antonio Giovinazzi – 99

The team based out of Switzerland has made no changes and will be going into the season with the same line-up for the third season in a row. They finished 8th last season.

Finland’s Raikkonen and Italy’s Giovinazzi finished 16th and 17th respectively last season.

HAAS

Nikita Mazepin – 9

Mick Schumacher – 47

Haas, who finished ninth last season, will have more eyes on them because of Mick Schumacher, who is the son of seven-time world champion and F1 legend, Michael Schumacher.

Haas has dropped both their drivers of last season (Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen) and will now go with the Russian Mazepin and German Schumacher — both graduating from Formula 2.

WILLIAMS

Nicholas Latifi – 6

George Russell – 63

Canada’s Latifi and Britain’s Russell will be racing for Williams for the second season in a row, despite them finishing at the bottom of the pile last year.

In the driver’s standings, Latifi was 20th, while Russel finished 18th.

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McLaren’s Lando Norris Preparing for His Hardest But Best Formula One Season

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McLaren’s Lando Norris expects 2021 to be the hardest but best season of his fledgling Formula One career, with a new teammate in Australian Daniel Ricciardo, a switch to Mercedes engines and absolutely no excuses.

The 21-year-old will be starting his third year in grand prix racing having already established himself as the youngest Briton to stand on the podium after finishing third in Austria last year.

He ended that season ninth overall after finishing 11th in his debut year.

“In many ways it’s going to be the hardest season altogether but I am hoping the best season too,” Norris told reporters ahead of the online launch of McLaren’s new MCL35M car at the factory alongside Ricciardo.

“The hardest for different reasons and one of them being that I’m the guy with the experience at McLaren so I need to take on a bit more of that role and show how it is done and lead the team in the right direction.

“It’s a bigger opportunity for me to take up that lead and something I will work very hard on.”

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Ricciardo has replaced Spaniard Carlos Sainz, who has moved to Ferrari, at the Woking-based team and Norris suggested the challenge for him would not be very different with the driver change.

“I don’t think it makes it any harder. Carlos is an extremely good driver and there are things Carlos is going to be better at than Daniel and vice-versa,” he said.

“I don’t believe Daniel is a big step above anything that Carlos has achieved so it doesn’t really change much for me.

“There’s probably more pressure on him because he has been in Formula One for longer,” added Norris, who said he had fully recovered from contracting COVID-19 in January while in Dubai.

Norris said there would be no excuses in his third year and he would have to perform.

He said he had stepped up in training, mentioning that he had also modified habits such as “trying not to have a pizza as often”.

“I am trying to think outside the box and dedicating more time and thinking more than normal to work out what is good for me and push myself to the next level,” he said.

The season starts in Bahrain on March 28.



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