FIA have now announced that the Russian Grand Prix will not go ahead as things stand.
Re: Haas and their association with the Mazepin's - they've indicated they will be looking at the legal situation next week. Haas insist they have the funding to carry on without Uralkali, and the rumours have already started that well-funded drivers currently outside F1 have already approached the team about replacing Mazepin in the car. General consensus from what I've seen so far is that it looks like Haas want to cut ties completely, but they want to do it as cleanly as possible from the legal side of things. US and/or UK could do Haas a lot of favours by applying direct sanctions on Mazepin Snr and/or Uralkali.
As far as testing today is concerned: looks like my prediction of a possible 1:17:xxx won't happen. Having said that, they're down to the low 1:19's and I very much doubt that time was done as a low-fuel qually-style performance run. Still suspect a 1:17 is on the table if someone wants to go for it.
Alpine's running is done for this test - they had a hydraulics failure in the morning that caused a small fire and won't be able to get the car back on track. Haas (them again!) may not get much more track time today either - they had an oil leak in the morning.
IIt would also appear that teams/drivers may be pushing the boundaries a little more. After two very clean days in terms of keeping the track under green flag conditions, this morning's session saw 5 red flags. Some for cars having reliability issues, and 2 for spins - including Gasly finding the wall in the Alpha Tauri.
Re: Haas and their association with the Mazepin's - they've indicated they will be looking at the legal situation next week. Haas insist they have the funding to carry on without Uralkali, and the rumours have already started that well-funded drivers currently outside F1 have already approached the team about replacing Mazepin in the car. General consensus from what I've seen so far is that it looks like Haas want to cut ties completely, but they want to do it as cleanly as possible from the legal side of things. US and/or UK could do Haas a lot of favours by applying direct sanctions on Mazepin Snr and/or Uralkali.
As far as testing today is concerned: looks like my prediction of a possible 1:17:xxx won't happen. Having said that, they're down to the low 1:19's and I very much doubt that time was done as a low-fuel qually-style performance run. Still suspect a 1:17 is on the table if someone wants to go for it.
Alpine's running is done for this test - they had a hydraulics failure in the morning that caused a small fire and won't be able to get the car back on track. Haas (them again!) may not get much more track time today either - they had an oil leak in the morning.
IIt would also appear that teams/drivers may be pushing the boundaries a little more. After two very clean days in terms of keeping the track under green flag conditions, this morning's session saw 5 red flags. Some for cars having reliability issues, and 2 for spins - including Gasly finding the wall in the Alpha Tauri.