Alpine have provided two women with the opportunity to drive an F1 car in Saudi Arabia ahead of this weekend’s grand prix in Jeddah.

Saudi driver Aseel Al Hamad and Alpine academy prospect Abbi Pulling took part in a demonstration run around the streets of Jeddah in the team’s E20 car.

Alpine have said Al Hamad and Pulling are the first women to drive a F1 car in the country, where the ban on allowing women to drive was only lifted in 2018.

Al Hamad, who previously drove the Alpine E20 ahead of the French Grand Prix in 2018, is Saudi Arabia’s representative on the FIA’s Women in Motorsport Commission while Pulling is set to compete in this season’s W-Series.

Aston Martin have revealed they are using less paint for their livery in order to shave vital grams off the AMR22 in an effort to make it quicker.

The team’s 2022 car was among the slowest in the field at last weekend’s season-opening grand prix in Bahrain and drivers Lance Stroll and Nico Hulkenberg both finished well outside the points, squabbling with fellow on-the-day backmarkers Williams and McLaren.

Now, chief technical officer Andy Green says some areas of the car are being left unpainted in an effort to reduce the weight of the car, which has looked heavy through the corners.

“Weight is a big, big issue,” Green explained told Motorsport.com.

“These cars are heavy by regulation, and to get down to the regulation weight, it’s a challenge. We went through the whole car from front to back, and we took paint off wherever we could. I think in total we saved about 350 grams.”

Carlos Sainz has been discussing Ferrari’s plan for possible team orders if one of their drivers is competing for the Formula 1 world championship later in the season.

The Spaniard and team-mate Charles Leclerc are driving what seems to be the fastest car on the grid right now, and the Monegasque took victory with Sainz in second at the season opening Bahrain Grand Prix last weekend.

Former McLaren driver Sainz says either team-mate will help the other if one is competing for the title, but that the ideal is for both to battling one another for glory.

“The team will allow us to compete and race each other,” Scuderiafans quotes Sainz as having told Spanish radio show The Great Match of COPE.

“Obviously, if one of us stands out and gains a lead in the standings, the other one will help during the World Championship fight. It happens in all teams. What matters is taking part in the battle. The ideal situation would be to compete for the title between us without having the pressure of other teams.”

New FIA president Mohamed Ben Sulayem insists that sacked Formula 1 race director Michael Masi remains an “important figure” to the FIA, despite removing the Australian from his role over his controversial handling of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Masi’s unprecedented interpretation of the safety car rules at Yas Marina rendered race leader Lewis Hamilton a sitting duck and essentially gifted the world championship to rival Max Verstappen. One of Ben Sulayem’s first acts since taking up the presidency at the beginning of the year was to fire Masi and replace him with two new alternating race directors, Niels Wittich and Eduardo Freitas.

“[We wanted] to take the pressure and the stress from him, because he really went through a lot,” Ben Sulayem told the FIA website.

“We are grateful for the three years that he invested with us, and he put his time [in]. But now we are negotiating with him of course to stay in the FIA. He is [an] important figure to us so our people are negotiating other, I would not say a job, but another place for him within the FIA.”

Sky Sports F1 commentator Martin Brundle believes Lewis Hamilton could walk away from the sport at the end of the year if Mercedes are unable to catch frontrunners Ferrari and Red Bull.

Despite Hamilton taking a podium in Bahrain last Sunday, Mercedes’ W13 challenger for 2022 is not yet as fast as the machinery developed by their biggest rivals.

“As long as [Hamilton] still has the motivation to get in the gym and to get on a plane… the hours of debriefing afterwards and the hours of media, talking to the likes of me – that’s what the drivers hate, basically. They just want to drive racing cars,” the commentator told foxsports.com.au.

“As long as he’s still enjoying the bits around F1 or he can tolerate those bits around F1 and balance it out with just loving driving the car, [he’ll stay]. [But] if he goes through the whole year and Mercedes are third fastest and others are catching them up, then I suspect he’ll take a different view and my enjoyment analogy will play out in that he won’t be enjoying it anymore.”

Lewis Hamilton is sporting a revamped helmet design for this season, dropping the purple he has run with in the past few Formula 1 seasons in favour of a return to the yellow he started with in the early days of his career.

As well rekindling a bit of nostalgia, Hamilton said he spent hours deliberating on a colour in order to help fans tell the difference between the two Mercedes cars for 2022.

“What I’ve noticed and [I am] sensitive to [is] those that are watching the grands prix can’t tell the difference between the two cars, and that was an issue I brought up to the team,” Hamilton said.

“I spent hours at home after the launch with my iPad, taking a picture and you’re editing [it on] some sort of editor, and sending these pictures of what the car livery would look better as to Toto [Wolff] and to Ola [Kallenius].

“I did some research, I looked for what the most popping colour would be, and came back to yellow. So we put that on the car.”

The fast-flowing nature of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix circuit means Mercedes could be much closer to Ferrari and Red Bull at the front of the Formula 1 pack this weekend, says Sky F1 pundit Anthony Davidson.

Lewis Hamilton won the inaugural race at the Jeddah track last December, but the Mercedes W13 car which is contesting the 2022 campaign was significantly off the pace of their rivals in Bahrain last weekend. Davidson, though, believes that the track configuration could suit the Silver Arrows.

“Jeddah is a fast, flowing track, very smooth and I do expect there to be a shake up in the order, naturally,” he said. “Perhaps Mercedes will be a bit closer to the front of the competition, for example; they may be able to run their car lower to the ground, which is a bit of an Achilles’ heel for them. Maybe Red Bull will be the best car in Jeddah and Ferrari will be lagging just that bit behind.”

Sky F1 pundit Anthony Davidson says that Max Verstappen may have to alter his approach to battling Charles Leclerc if the pair end up contesting the world drivers’ championship.

The Red Bull driver squabbled for the lead with the Ferrari man at Sakhir last Sunday in a thrilling tussle after the first round of pitstops, successfully making the overtake twice into Turn 1 before being re-passed on entry to Turn 4.

Now, former BAR Honda driver Davidson says that the Dutchman may need an alternative approach.

“Max is going to have to rethink how he races him, I think, going forward from here – it is going to be interesting,” Davidson said. “I think Charles, every time he is with Max now, treats him differently -than when they first battled for race wins in 2019], and that’s what I immediately saw come into play in Bahrain.”

Red Bull says it has a fix in place for this weekend’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, which resolves the fuel system problem which caused Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez to retire late on in Bahrain on Sunday.

Both men’s RB18 cars lost power at the Sakhir circuit in the very final stages of the race, meaning the team goes into the second round at Jeddah bottom of the constructors’ championship.

Now, Autosport reports that the Milton Keynes-based squad are satisfied that the system will not cause them any further issues.

Having the performances of the experienced Kevin Magnussen as a yardstick will help Mick Schumacher improve as a Formula 1 driver, says Haas team principal Gunther Steiner.

The young German is being partnered by the returning Dane after Nikita Mazepin’s contract with the team was terminated over his close familial links to Russian president Vladimir Putin, and Magnussen scored the team’s best result since 2018 by finishing fifth at the season opener in Bahrain last Sunday.

A reference is very helpful,” Steiner said, per Motorsport-Total. “If someone does a lap two, three tenths faster and you look at that data, you might find one or two tenths in there, the braking points, the line and so on. So that will help him a lot.”