Piastri not only option: Brown

LONDON - Formula One is currently awaiting the result of arbitration between Alpine and their reserve driver Oscar Piastri.

Both sides were present at Monday's meeting, which was chaired by FIA's Contract Recognition Board (CRB).

Piastri in August declared he had no intention to race for Alpine next season, while the Renault-owned team have insisted their pre-contract with the Australian is watertight.

The 2021 Formula Two champion is understood to have signed a contract to instead race for McLaren in 2023, with the team having cleared space on their roster with the release of Daniel Ricciardo at the end of the season.

However, McLaren chief Zak Brown on Wednesday told Speed City Broadcasting, a weekly radio show in Austin, Texas, that the team were not putting all their eggs with Piastri, especially if arbitration is not in their favour.

"We have multiple plans," he said. "There is a CRB meeting which has been reported on - I think we'll be better placed to comment on it post the meeting.

"We've got a variety of options and of course, that's clearly one of them or we wouldn't be in that meeting. Let's just see how it plays out and then we will go from there.

"We have our testing programme, Colton Herta did an excellent job, Pato (O'Ward) was in the car at the end of last year, he did an excellent job. Off course, we've got our situation with Alex (Palou) going on... we'll see how that plays out but we certainly intend to put him in our Formula One car, so all those drivers have won a lot of races in a very competitive championship."

Meanwhile, Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton literally put a cap on a verbal spat with Alpine's Fernando Alonso in a teasing social media post on Tuesday.

Alonso branded Hamilton, his former teammate at McLaren, an idiot after a first-lap collision at Sunday's Belgian Grand Prix that saw the Briton crash out.

Hamilton accepted blame for the incident but said he would give Alonso the cold shoulder after what the Spaniard had said about him. Alonso, 41, remarked on team radio the 37-year-old "only knows how to drive and start in first (place)".

But Hamilton squashed the beef on Tuesday, posting a clip of two-time world champion Alonso calling for respect for the "F1 family". His message was accompanied by a photo of a signed cap with "To Fernando" written on it.

REUTERS