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Austrian media is reporting that despite Marko leaving RBR/RB, he still holds an ambassador position at his home race.

At the end of June, Marko will be on site at the Austrian Grand Prix in Spielberg. The home race takes place on June 28 in Styria. He is also scheduled to attend the MotoGP’s new September event at the Red Bull Ring in his capacity as an ambassador.

Aston Martin removed a component that cured most of the discomfort its F1 drivers have suffered and did not race it at the Japanese GP

The overall picture is that the sentiment among drivers is largely negative, although it should be noted that Melbourne was one of the most challenging circuits on the calendar in terms of energy management. It may not be as extreme at every circuit, and the FIA has already stated that it will evaluate the situation after the Chinese Grand Prix weekend to see whether adjustments are needed.

Those adjustments could relate to both the harvesting side of the equation - for example by allowing super clipping up to the full 350 kW - and the deployment side, where reducing the share of electrical power in race trim could theoretically be an option. Verstappen and Carlos Sainz, among others, have already urged the FIA to look into possible adjustments, although those would not change the fundamental DNA of these regulations - for that it is simply too late.

Toto Wolff is reportedly leading a Mercedes bid to buy a 24% share in Alpine from Otro Capital.

The former Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner has been rumoured to be keen to buy the exact same stake.

Briatore has previously stated “a few groups” are keen on purchasing Otro’s stake, but did not specifically disclose any names of the groups or individuals.

James Vowles and Andrea Stella have voiced how unexpected it is to see Mercedes extracting so much efficiency during deployment from the HPP engine.

McLaren, Williams and Alpine only received the latest version of the engine last Thursday, while Mercedes already ran it for all six days of testing in Bahrain. The F1 rules state that engines need to be delivered identically after homolugation; and HPP only went through homolugation after the Bahrain test.

Stella said: "We have work to do to exploit the potential of the power unit, which, once I see the potential that HPP is extracting, looks like there's more that is available.Now, it's not obvious how you do that. For us, we are in a journey of knowledge.

"The works team and HPP will have worked together for a long time. So, they will have collaborated, talked about how to use the power unit. That's fair enough, but we'll definitely intensify the collaboration with HPP because our understanding is that there is some low hanging fruit that we should be able to cash in.