FORMULA 1

McLaren have “taken some measures” to boost reliability ahead of February’s first pre-season test, says CEO Zak Brown. Last year, their first with Renault power, McLaren were dogged by reliability issues in testing. McLaren suffered five separate breakdowns over the course of a troubled eight days although a late surge saw Fernando Alonso finished second fastest overall. The Woking team covered just 599 laps, fewer than Sebastian Vettel managed alone. This year Brown says they are taking steps to avoid a repeat performance. “I don’t want to share in detail some of the things we’re doing differently this off-season than we did last season,” he told RACER. “We are doing things differently, to be more prepared, not just with performance but we had a lot of reliability issues going into Barcelona testing last year. So we have taken some measures to get ahead of that. “We will continue to develop as all F1 teams do, on a weekly basis, and we’ll bring to Australia our most developed performance that we’ve been doing here since we started developing the car and having reliability programs to make sure [it is better]. “One of the reasons why we were slower to bring performance (in 2018) is because we had reliability issues. “You roll off the truck in Barcelona, instead of being able to get straight down to performance, you’re having issues — wheel nut issues, heating issues — you then stop focusing on performance and you start focusing on reliability. “The team did a good job to give us reliability coming out of Spain testing, to have cars both finish in the points in Australia. “We’re in a better place performance wise and reliability coming into winter testing.”

Ferrari have officially confirmed that Mattia Binotto has replaced Maurizio Arrivabene as team principal.

How was your first day as a McLaren driver? It’s been an intense three days! After the race finished in Abu Dhabi, we’ve been full steam ahead on 2019. I’ve been learning names of my new colleagues, how the car works, how the system works, also building relationships with the engineers – and that has gone all to plan. Thanks to the 150 laps I did at the test, I can go into winter with a lot of information to analyse.

After months of waiting, Force India have finally announced that Lance Stroll will partner Sergio Perez in next year’s championship.

Charles Leclerc began his Ferrari career with a P1 as the chequered flag fell on the Pirelli tyre test, the final out of the 2018 Formula 1 season.

Bidding farewell to F1 in Abu Dhabi, Stoffel Vandoorne has hinted at “politics” playing a role in his final season in the sport.

Times 1 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:34.794 2 Valtteri Bottas Mercedes 0.162s 3 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 0.331s 4 Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 0.571s 5 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull 0.607s 6 Max Verstappen Red Bull 0.795s 7 Romain Grosjean Haas 1.398s 8 Charles Leclerc Sauber 1.443s 9 Esteban Ocon Force India 1.746s 10 Nico Hulkenberg Renault 1.748s 11 Carlos Sainz Renault 1:36.982 12 Marcus Ericsson Sauber 1:37.132 13 Kevin Magnussen Haas 1:37.309 14 Sergio Perez Force India 1:37.541 15 Fernando Alonso McLaren 1:37.743 16 Brendon Hartley Toro Rosso 1:37.994 17 Pierre Gasly Toro Rosso 1:38.166 18 Stoffel Vandoorne McLaren 1:38.577 19 Sergey Sirotkin Williams 1:38.635 20 Lance Stroll Williams 1:38.682

Ocon has lost his Racing Point Force India seat to Lance Stroll as part of the changes triggered by Stroll’s father Lawrence leading the consortium that rescued the team.

Kubica is back on the F1 grid and he will be racing for Williams from 2019.

McLaren team boss Zak Brown commented: “We’re incredibly pleased and proud to be able to race a special one-off livery for Fernando in Abu Dhabi this weekend.