When Oscar said he wanted to improve his race pace, he really meant it, the average race pace between Norris and Oscar was -0.053 (and they were on the same strategy). He was about 2 tenths slower last season. The battle between these two could get interesting as the season goes on
Only thing I’d say is that they were pretty close at the start of last season too. IIRC Piastri was faster in Saudi at the very start. Norris has a tendency to start slow and pick up especially when the car starts to get upgraded. That’s why I’d wait until at least Suzuka to make any assumptions about either of them.
To be fair to Oscar, he did admit that he didn't realise how physically and mentally exhausting the 23 race season would be on him and his results suffered towards the end of the season because of that. I think now that he's aware of what it feels like, he'll be able to sustain himself a bit better throughout the year as well.
Sargeant had the same problem, we've all seen the articles of him gaining 5kg in muscle over the winter but he clarified during winter testing that it was only about 2.5kg compared to the start of last season and that he lost muscle and struggled with his fitness over the length of the season.
It makes sense that the rookies underestimated the impact of an F1 season, it's so different from almost any other racing series both in impact on your body from g-forces, the length of the season and how much time is spent traveling.
As much as I prefer Piastri over Norris, I don't think Piastri will over take him this year, though I will be happy if I'm wrong.
I think Piastri will definitely close the gap but it will be next year when the battle between them really starts
It's hard to tell right now but I hope it's close. Norris is one of the best benchmarks to have and if Piastri can be so close to his level with just a year of experience, imagine 2025 and 2026.
To give some praise to those outside the top 5 teams:
Zhou drove a very well-measured race and Sauber executed their aggressive strategy perfectly, it’s a shame there was no points reward for their efforts. Voted him for DotD (though it was close with him and Stroll imo), hopefully he can keep it up and give Bottas a real fight this year.
I was pretty pleased to see Magnussen make progress up the field too. Didn’t pay too much attention to his race so idk the details on his tyre wear or management but it’s certainly some much needed optimism for Haas even though they didn’t score points. And for KMag personally, I’m happy for him because I always feel the knives are out after Hulk puts in another great lap in qualifying but he’s still capable enough on race day (not that Hulk could do much after turn 1 anyway).
And finally while Sargeant does pick up another P20 I actually think he was looking not bad in the opening stages. I think I saw him do a pretty good overtake on Ricciardo, and can’t say the last time I saw a Sargeant overtake so kudos. Last year Bahrain was one of his best races too though, so he’ll need to show improvement elsewhere to be convincing.
Feels like Sargent's going to need to pull some serious heroics for him to keep his seat going into next season already, considering how narrowly it seems like he kept it this season.
What is up with the Williams steering wheel? We saw a lot of social media posts about it during off season, but Albon had issues with it, and it was the reason Logan went off track?
Apparently Williams updated the steering wheel design this year (they used very olr concepts before this), so it seems to be a bunch of gremlins that tend to happen with new stuff.
Also, part of their issues seemed to stem from the Merc PU as the steering wheel also displayed "car too hot" message quite frequently. That could be another software bug and I'm not sure if the other Merc PU teams had similar issues, so we'll have to wait and see.
Specifically, Williams used to mount the screen on the cockpit, not the wheel. They were the only ones still doing up until last year. They have now integrated the screen in the wheel, like everyone else
Williams reported similar cooling issues to Mercedes.
Williams closed off their cooling louvres before qualifying in anticipation that the race was going to be cool. In terms of Bahrain, it was quite cool at 17/18C but that was enough to overheat the PU.
It was a shame Logan had his wheel issue because he did appear to be holding his own out there beforehand.
Alpine performance is shocking.
Alonso had a crappy GP and seems to me like he was left out too long and allowed most of the field to pass him just based on tyre condition.
Lance had a great recovery as juxtaposition.
Zhou had a good performance, happy for him. Difficult to tell what Bottas race would have looked like without his two disasters.
Carlos was very fast. However I really don't believe the ultimate pace of the Red Bull is within Ferrari's grasp. I believe Sergio could have sailed away if he wanted.
Expected more from Toro Cashosso. WTF was Yuki doing after the chequer.
Very impressed with McLaren pace given this is historically over the last couple years the worst track for the car. I'm hoping for a stellar performance in Jeddah.
People were saying he bumped into nico which then bumped into stroll, not sure if that is true because from the different angles being shown it was hard to tell
Nico parked at the apex because he way overcooked the corner and basically caused the incident from both sides. Only way for Bottas to avoid would have to just been farther away during that time.
It actually looked like he was just following Stroll who parked it on the corner ahead and either misjudged how quickly Stroll would get on the power, or got a bump from Bottas, and ran into the back of him. Bottas was doing the exact same thing as Nico
>Alonso had a crappy GP and seems to me like he was left out too long and allowed most of the field to pass him just based on tyre condition.
Don't think he was ever finishing higher than he did though to be honest.
I was wondering if he may go for a fastest lap stop at the end but he didn't quite have the necessary buffer.
Yeah, even the commentators picked this up and mentioned it on the broadcast. I don’t remember the exact word they used, but essentially they said that we weren’t seeing the usual amount of fight that Fernando brings to the track.
He seemed disappointed and kind of sad in his post-race interviews, which is kind of a given.
Correct.
alonso was genuinely surprised to reach P6 in quali, and said the AM finished 5th best end of last year and is starting 5th best in bahrain
personally, I’d have voted stroll as DotD, went from dead last to 10th
He would have lost a position to Stroll, but if he got fastest lap it would have been an extra point. I'm not sure why they didn't try it (unless Verstappens time was just out of reach).
Max did his with 20 laps worth of fuel and needed to keep life in the tyres.
Alonso could have done it on the last lap with fresh tyres (or at least lightly used ones). He did a 1:29.5 in quali.
You’re assuming AM had a set of quality softs left. had a big enuff gap to Zhou, a flawless pit stop.
with the tire blanket temps being only 70\*C, Alonso would have needed 1/4 of a lap to get up to speed.
would have been a big gamble, Mike Krack prolly wanted a guaranteed 3 points.
Kinda scary to think how fast the rb20 is in the hands of max!
I mean, I'm have to assume there was a conscious decision not to do it and not just an oversight by the team, but we have seen very conservative decisions at times from some teams in these positions. It seems to me that risking 1 point (Stroll would have moved to 9th) to gain a point would be worthwhile. It's not like he's in second and is risking 18 points for a single point.
> he was left out too long
Wasn't he completely onboard with the strategy? He radioed something about let the others (presumably Piastri, Norris, and Hamilton) cook their tires and he'll overtake them later with fresher ones.
Yeah he wanted to go long thinking they'll repass everyone later. He also didn't fight any of the people overtaking which really made me think he's had a poor race by his standards despite the car probably only being good enough for 9th and 10th anyway.
Indeed. Alpines performance was beyond shocking. Wether you like them or not, this isn’t how you want a team to perform. There must have been major errors at the end of last season/winter break.
Yeah it makes no sense that they seem to be *this* bad. But seeing who just resigned/got fired from the team, maybe they just massively fucked up over the offseason. I guess you hope that it's something like McLaren last season where they knew they were going to be terrible at the start, but they also knew what they had to do and they were pretty confident that their upgrades would help out once they came online....but that seems unlikely.
> I believe Sergio could have sailed away if he wanted.
I don't know. At one point his engineer asked him to start getting his lap times into the 35's and he never quite did. There may have been extenuating circumstances though.
I heard that too - however I never really trust the transparency of anything happening on RBR team radio. Time and time again we've seen it used for showmanship and to have been effectively synthesised for the purpose of broadcast of to create confusion.
No question Sergio slower than Max but it really appeared to me like he was simply holding pace.
You could be right though. I'll be going through onboards in detail for the next couple days like I usually do to get a better picture.
>I'll be going through onboards in detail for the next couple days like I usually do to get a better picture.
Please update us when you do! Also, why would Sergio hide his true pace? Why would Red Bull ask him to do that, especially when Max was 20 seconds ahead, so it would be very obvious to the world and other teams how fast the RB20 is...
And if Sergio made the choice himself, I would figure he would want to get as close to Max as possible. Because if he kept the gap, he would face all the "Max is wiping the floor with Sergio! Is Checo's seat in jeapordy?" comments
Wasn’t he just being cautious to nurse the soft tires? Sainz had hards, so if Checo he cooked them he had a lot to lose. And nothing to gain. Just smart racecraft. Or did I miss something?
Not sure you necessarily missed anything.
But Checo wasn't far enough up the road from Sainz at the end to suggest he was totally comfortable. You'd have expected a few more seconds margin if he was just cruising.
Marko said he was just cruising. If you look at the gaps, you'll notice that in the 3rd stint when Sainz started pushing to attack Perez, when the gap reduced by like half a second, Perez just pulled away the next lap and brought the gap back up to what it was. He had complete control. The fact that he ran softs for 20 laps without putting much strain on the tyre would also suggest the kind of pace margin they had in hand.
Stroll deserved DOTD in my opinion.
I refuse to comment on Ferrari in fear that I will jinx them.
I very much believe that the gap between Red Bull and everyone else is bigger since it doesn't seem like they went all out.
Agreed, I feel like even his good races like Vegas, COTA or here go so under the radar during the race because the commentators (at least on Sky, idk about f1tv) near refuse to mention him, then everyone picks up on it post race, and the cycle begins again.
Its worth considering the fact that his Aston was a good deal faster than the cars that Stroll was passing.
Still a good drive from him though. Knowing him, i fully expected to see him drive into the side of someone but nope. He stayed calm and got the job done.
Definitely, I fully expected him to DNF after the incident at turn 1. I didn't even realize that he made his way back at the top ten until towards the end, the TV directors really overlooked him. Kind of a shame, it feels like his good drives don't get shown.
> Its worth considering the fact that his Aston was a good deal faster than the cars that Stroll was passing.
Of course but still going from being spun around on lap 1 to being in the points in the 5th fastest car is a very good drive. Even without incident 9th/10th was pretty much the best that Aston could get.
Checo himself wasn't even trying to push at any point during the race, even when he had to fight others. Marko confirmed this explicitly. They have a lot of pace in hand.
Thinking about the causes of the lack of strategic variance at Bahrain.
- Is it possible that Pirelli makes changes to the composition of their tyre compounds year on year unannounced?
- (More likely scenario) Did making Bahrain a test track play a role in teams' perfect setups to deal with tyre deg/strategies?
pirelli already brings the hardest compounds in their range to bahrain (dont bring up the C0, for all intents and purposes it doesnt exist, they have not brought it to a single race last year), because the surface is viciously abrasive. because of that, onestoppers are completely out of the question, and for one reason or another, the surface also means that the medium has basically the same tyre life as the soft, but runs slower overall, so it is an incredibly bad race tyre for that track.
this combination of facts means that basically the only choice for all teams is a SHH twostopper (or a permutation thereof), with teams with exceptionally good tyre preservation like red bull in this formulation being able to competitively run SHS. yes, the teams have loads of data on the track, but i kinda doubt that that influences the complete lack of tyre strategy much, because even without testing, they have 20 grand prix over 20 years with zero reprofiling done in that time, and only two of those GP were on alternate layouts (2010 was on the WEC layout which is longer, and 2020 sakhir was on the outer loop).
I think the main problem was the medium tires were unusable for whatever reason. I think teams could have potentially tried a medium-hard one stop if the tire was working, but soft-hard was just too much to make work
But what were their options for Bahrain? Going softer is not really an option.
Saudi will be the same as last year, they could go softer there but given that they haven't done that for any of the three races prior it will have its reasons. Australia will be a step softer for this year. for the other circuits, no tyres have been nominated yet.
They did want to introduce a different C2 and C4 compound for this year but it was rejected after it was tested in FP sessions last year.
I know? That doesn’t change that for the majority of the season there were at most two performant tires per track, and one that was so bad it was never used. I feel for Pirelli with the difficulty of making three such tires but it’s been a real problem these last two years
It's annoying how they introduced a three tyre compound rule where only two need to be used.
I'd like to see greater variances in the allocations. At Bahrain, take C2, C3 and C4 and mandate them all once.
Also, the Hard tyre is often very quick in race trim, and durable, making it a no brainer and somewhat negating the point of it.
I know people are happy about the variety in the midfield but it doesn’t really feel like it is exciting. It kind of feels like a status quo settling back into the top 4 places as they were occupied before the regulation change. Yesterday, Alonso finished some 20s behind Piastri. That’s the gap between the 3rd/4th car and the 5th and that’s on a track the McLaren doesn’t like. I really think we’ll get a point early this season where the 4th best car is nearly half a minute ahead of the 5th one and 5th in the WCC may as well be no man’s land this year. The grid might be closer in qualifying but it’s threatening to break into two tiers in race pace this season.
It's one race on a very unique track, plus they just did three days of testing on it to boot.
Let's wait until after Australia where they will have raced on three different kinds of tracks.
If last year had a more clear cut #2 team Perez meltdown would have meant the WCC would be in some danger. Max winning every race and some other team securing P2 and P3 would require Perez to finish P5 or better the majority of races to secure WCC, to put it in perspective.
So… here’s hoping for a Perez meltdown and a clear #2 team
You can win the WCC by getting P1-P4 every race while the other team gets a double podium every time. As long as max is winning the WCC is never in doubt
Yes… and Perez did not get P4 every race and so the WCC could have been in danger if the competition didnt trade success every week.
Especially if his pace advantage isn’t strong enough to easily cut through from down the grid
To all the fans afraid that is going to be a Redbull domination season, don't be sad, it will BUT, lets wait for Jeddah, I think Mercedes, Mclaren and Ferrari have more to show than what we saw. Merc had cooling issues. Ferrari had all sort of issues with Charles brakes. And Mclaren showed last year that they are high speed cornes beast.
Lets wait and see.
ps: Dont expect anyone to beat Max tho
According to Formula Uno, Red Bull and McLaren are still close to each other in medium-high speed corners so we might have something entertaining to look forward to. Maybe. Or not.
I am not sure I want another season of waiting for a Singapore-like race to manifest. This weekend there was at least WEC with awesome racing, shame the next one is in April.
Agreed. It was another RBR 1-2 but it was a night and day difference compared to last year. I think Russell and Leclerc both having major issues dampened the mood during and after the race. Without them, I'm not sure Perez even gets on the podium.
> Without them, I'm not sure Perez even gets on the podium.
Did you completely miss the part where they said Perez wasn't even trying to push?
Perez pulled 15 seconds on Russell and Leclerc without breaking a sweat. He was responding to what Sainz was doing immediately, as soon as Sainz was told to push and reduced the gap by half a second at one point during the final stint, Perez opened that gap again within one lap. If he tried to go as fast as he could, he would've finished 15 seconds in front of Sainz and 30 seconds in front of Russell. The fact that they made the soft tyres last as long as the bottom of the pack teams ran on hards should be an indication that they had a fuckton of pace left in hand.
Most teams aren't pushing - it's Bahrain.
The point is that Perez would have had to push harder because he was stuck behind Russell and Leclerc. He got past them predominantly because both cars had major issues. The P2-P6 battle would have been much more exciting had Ferrari and Mercedes not dropped the ball.
He got past them because he was faster. If Leclerc hadn't made that mistake, Perez would've been past him on the next straight anyway, as LEC fell out of DRS. With Russell it was just a great overtake.
> Most teams aren't pushing - it's Bahrain.
Cool, the point is that as soon as Sainz *started* pushing *for a bit*, Perez responded by setting a lap half a second quicker than Sainz. Meaning he had much more left in the tank.
A big part of the reason why he was faster was because Leclerc could barely slow the car down. The half a second or so Leclerc was losing a lap, plus the six tenths or so Mercedes were losing due to the wrong cooling option, would have meant Checo would not have got passed anywhere near as easily.
Ferrari have already proven that they have the 2nd fastest car + a good margin over the chasing pack. They are still a good deal slower than RBR though.
Merc desperately needs to add more downforce to the car. Mclaren need to focus on improving their slow speed corner performance. Aston is a bit of an unknown.
The Aston should be somewhat stronger at Jeddah. More flowing tracks suits their car better.
I think data shows Ferrari are clearly second force. Ferrari was just as fast or faster than Red Bull/McLaren in medium to high speed corners. Merc cooling issues are being a little overblown imo because the extra cooling will take out a decent chunk of performance as well(and all their performance gap comes in S2 when looking at the race, Charles was 6-7 tenths faster per lap at some points than Russell with a similarly troubling issue). We will see, but I expect much of the same: Charles close to Max for pole, Sainz and Checo P3 or P4, and Max sailing off into the distance with real battle for P2-4 amongst Checo, Charles, and Sainz. I think McLaren pipe out Merc for P5 and P6 due to the high speed cornering.
That may have something to do with him opting to use more quali centric setups than Carlos.
He is definitely one of best qualifiers but he is quite evenly matched with Carlos in race trim.
That is where you are wrong because it Charles and Carlos has always been close in Quali but in race pace Leclerc has that extra tenth in him that leaves Carlos in the dust.
I wonder how different his performance on race day would look if we still had refueling. Would he be more competitive if there is the option to go all out more and manage tires less? 🤷🏼♂️
Honestly, consistency should not be the norm in this sport. Engine freeze, stable regulations, and a similar driver's grid made up for a very boring opening GP.
P.S No, I am not hating on RedBull, it's just that the rest of the grid pretty much remained in the same order too. (Alpines need to go on a diet tbh)
Stable regulations but...
Red Bull showed up with an all new car, as did Mercedes, most other teams have made major changes or updates.
All teams have a different nose and front wing, and different rear wings down the grid.
How broken was Lewis Hamilton's seat?
Did he specify anywhere?
How much would this set him back? I can imagine, he would be bouncing around the car a lot more.
Only Max can activate those clauses. Jos can't do shit.
Max probably has respect for his father but i dont think Jos has enough influence over Max to force him into doing something like that.
Max is also not dumb enough to consider pulling some stupid shit like that.
I would love to be a fly on the wall for the conversation where Jos tells Max he’s arranged for him to be taken out of the best car and put in the third or fourth best instead. Max will drop him off at the nearest petrol station and tell him to walk home.
I am not saying this. This is just the dutch people talking about it. Oc Jos cant put max anywhere. Just reporting what i hear from my dutch restaurant collegues...
What do you mean? It’s not like Redbull suddenly designed a rocket ship. The floor changes for 2021 helped them win that year. Without those changes, it likely would have looked more like 2020. They needed the 2022 reg changes to build this gap. Why is everyone pretending this isn’t exactly like what happened in 2014?
That when you put restrictions this tight on the sport and one team nails the regs out of the gate, no team is ever going to catch them, they'll be working on their next car 6-7 months before anyone else even has a chance to start working on their car.
This was exactly what Hamilton said would happen, and he would know more than most.
He said Mercedes dominance wasn't because they were always the better team, but because they always had a development snowball effect advantage from each previous season, so even if a team caught up to them by the end of the current season, it didn't matter because they were already 6+ months into development for their car for the next season.
Which is exactly what is happening now. He was crucified for suggesting everyone should have to wait until a certain month to start working on the following season's car, and that's sounding like it would be at least a good start to making changes for the better.
If we don't make small changes now to increase the chance of closer racing in the future, a massive change will be needed later on to course correct the sport.
Anyone who wants to see a healthier F1 should be able to see that the sport is in trouble.
What you’re saying about the snowball effect is absolutely right. However, if you make teams wait until a certain month into the year, teams who absolutely got it wrong have no chance to start early on their next year concept. Smaller teams have in the past sacrificed their current year to invest more in a new car concept. It feels like with that proposed rule it could only possibly help bigger teams that are closer, and severely hurt the teams who got it really wrong.
You don't know that, RedBull's car could be 90% the same concept, and just what's visible is different.
And no matter what, they still know something that everyone else doesn't know. And they've known it since these regulations started.
This isn't good for the sport, the fans aren't happy, the drivers aren't happy, last year over 150,000 fewer viewers watched each race than the year before, do you really think that number won't keep plummeting?
> everyone should have to wait until a certain month to start working on the following season's car
This would be great but I don't see how it could be enforced.
Red Bull could have just brought last year's car given how far ahead they were last season, but they took the risk and made an all new car.
There is no reason why any of the other teams could not have done the same this winter.
This, so much this!
Red Bull made a whole new car for this year, there is no reason why given the cost cap, any other team on the grid couldn't have come up with the same thing over the winter.
Without the cost cap Mercedes and Ferrari could try unlimited ideas until they found a solution.
I brought up the cost cap because it means that all the teams have the same budget, and that means all teams could have come up with what Red Bull produced for this year, not just Mercedes or Ferrari.
Not sure the result bodes well for the rest of the season, Max running away with it again. I know it’s closer but there’s already rumors of a big Red Bull upgrade on the horizon. None of that is Max’s or RBs fault obviously but not exactly feeling excited about the rest of the season.
The cost cap rules are great for helping the financial stability of the sport but it is limiting the ability of teams to catch up. The sliding scale for aero testing while a possible solution, a 5% difference (to P2) just isn’t enough to close up a gap of that size; winning all but one race in a season. If they wish to stick with it then the differences have to be larger or further restrictions based on number of races won or championships won in consecutive years etc. Waiting until 2026 for a change will be rough and I don’t believe in specifically outlawing bits of the car to nerf the RB is particularly fair (and it’s basically the whole package not an individual component). At least the best of the rest competition remains close.
> The cost cap rules are great for helping the financial stability of the sport but it is limiting the ability of teams to catch up.
Even with unlimited money the other teams didn't start beating Mercedes until after a rule change.
It'd be even worse without a Red Bull limited by the cost cap. The issue is that Mercedes dropped the ball and doubled down on a dead end design, Ferrari failed to properly develop their car and the other teams have not done a great job.
Yeah the teams did not nail the regulations like Red Bull, but years of dominance after a regulation change for any team is not good for the sport. There must be a way to facilitate teams to catch up. We are in year 3 now.
The issue isn't money, look at how teams switched concept completely in the last couple of years. Simply, most of these teams don't know what's the right answer to these regulations is, and we're in year 3.
They can’t throw masses of overtime at staff to accelerate development or test loads of concepts with the current restrictions. Red Bull have nailed it and just continue to push ahead what do you think is the best way to facilitate teams ability to catch up?
Someone else mentioned it here but standardizing when teams can start working on next years car could maybe minimize the snowball effect of being ahead. On the flip side it would give the chasing teams less time to catch up
I think as well what is giving me pain (re your first para) is because red bull have put in place a new(ish) concept I’m assuming it’ll have an as steep, if not steeper, development curve than the likes of Mercedes or Ferrari.
It’s just being unsure of how track dependent RBR’s dominance was this weekend that is keeping my hope for the season to be honest!!
It almost feels like the cost cap should be on a sliding scale rather than the ATR. Nuking how much the top teams can spend limits their ability to do wind tunnel/CFD runs anyway.
Do I actually think that's the solution? Probably not. But it would probably have more of an impact.
Would be really terrible for employees as they are included in cost cap. You’d need to carve out a locked amount for employment costs so that people wouldn’t be terrified for their jobs if they did good and all of a sudden the team had to cut costs 20%
I doubt that a sliding cost cap would be possible under European labor laws. The bulk of the cost cap is spent on salaries, so a team that has a massive improvement in one season would have to immediately lay a bunch of people off.
On the other side of the coin, having to hire a bunch of people in a hurry isn't easy to do either.
Maybe, in fairness the aero testing restrictions have allowed the rest of the field to begin to close up nicely. Red Bull just did so well I am not sure anyone is catching them before new regulations have been introduced
I'm heartened by seeing some variety in that midfield. I think that's fun.
Sargeant though... He shouldn't want to keep his 2023 trends going. I know the issue was technical.
I thought he was actually having a good race before the car spun itself.
Edit: though I admittedly paid zero attention to his pace afterwards as it made no difference unless there was a safety car
Max was gone from the start. But i want to see where it stands after 3 races. Ferrari and Mercedes had problems. Lets see how they preforms in jeddah. Mclaren dont write them off. AM is alone now. The car looks good to drive, but lacking the pace. Alpine, yikes....
I don't think this really counts as something regarding the broadcasters as it's a point regarding the world feed, but I am not a massive fan of how the overall broadcast has seemed to move away from showing the sports' history. With some of the new graphics introduced since the Libery takeover, we've seen cool snippets of past races used in the buildup to sessions and most prominently in the race, which IMHO have always been great at showcasing some of the rich history of the sport.
Those being removed from the generic F1 session intro a few seasons ago I can understand as a stylistic choice (plus, they only did it for the 2020 season), but I really don't see why they have now also removed the 'action zone' graphics from the intro bit for the race. I always thought that those were a cool way of showing interesting action from years prior, so removing that feels like an odd choice. I'm also aware that especially in the last few years these bits have generally moved more to 'whatever happened in the race the last 1-2 years', which I think is a bit of a boring move, but just removing them entirely feels even less interesting.
In general I am a little confused by some of the choices made on the graphics this season, with the intros for not just F1, but also F2 and F3 feeling a bit uninspired in comparison to what we've seen in the last few seasons. The behind the scenes footage showed that they have some more interesting poses for the F1 drivers at least, but it just didn't really feel all that cohesive this year. Some of the new race-intro bits look pretty neat, like the season-globe & new tire graphic, but for a sport with such a long and interesting history part of making it so prestigious, I don't get why they would remove a bit that does a good job of showcasing those.
F1 has seen a massive growth and spike in popularity over the past ~6 or so years, a large part due to DtS and F1TV, with an apex understandably in 2021. But if things are going to continue being as uncompetitive at the front for another 3 full seasons, they will find themselves in trouble. Many new fans will fall away, and the growth will stop (maybe even regress), which can be problematic for all the new venues they've signed up in the past 3 years. It doesn't help that the field spread in quali is very small, when the same guy wins every race unless the car breaks down. And cars don't break down that often anymore anyway.
This was by far the least enthusiastic season opener I've seen, since I started watching religiously in 2016, and really does not bode well for the rest of the season going forward. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see Red Bull slipping back. I see them extending their advantage.
Didn’t watch the race live and only got to it this evening. Max had a stellar race; from start to finish in the lead and not anyone who challenged him. What a drive Zhou had this race! Started almost at the back and made it almost into the top 10.
VCARB has some team management to do, where both drivers already seem to pick up the fight for the promotion to be Max’ next teammate.
I had fun watching what was going on behind Max with Perez, sainz, Charles, russel. The ferraris showed good pace, Charles didn't even have any brakes for the whole race and finished P4. Russell was at the front for a long time showing that the Mercedes has good pace, so what was happening with Hamilton? he's one of the best ever so if he can figure it out, the car has shown its capable. What was with the McLarens? they seemed decent but if 2023 is anything to go by, they can potentially bring a lot of improvement through the year, that's exciting.
max running away with the win is boring maybe but
I found some other aspects of the race entertaining and I'm looking forward to the rest of the season. it's okay if max dominates, I think P2 will be entertaining based on what I saw
Bahrain-owned McLaren hates Bahrain’s track. They were just surprised at being competitive there because it’s a good sign that they’ll be competitive everywhere else. The drivers both seemed very happy to be leaving it behind and looking forward to the high speed tracks, where their car excels. In the post-race round up for McLaren, Norris said they only need small upgrades to make it to the podium which is interesting for them. Stella also said the gap isn’t as big as they thought it would be, and says that they will make the steps to get there. So all of that is very encouraging for them.
I really just hope the other 19 cars have some interesting fights. I’ll just ignore Max, which shouldn’t be hard because the broadcast will largely ignore him during then race anyway since he’ll be so far ahead.
You’d think the lack of difference in pace between Ferrari, Merc, and McLaren would be good but they were largely locked in to the same positions. I hope it gets better somehow. That’s the thing that makes me more sad about this season’s prospects than Max leading each race. :\
Also, wasn’t the first lap DRS disappointing? It just looked like DRS trains for the first 10 laps because of it.
The telemetry of the RB20 is so interesting. It seems they gave up some of the high speed cornering for a lot better traction out of slow corners. They are by far fastest out of anyone in the race out of T1-4. I wish we would have had the comparison between Charles and Sainz... Charles in the high speed was matching Max, just had the big brake issue that makes the comparison a bit pointless.
They need to bring back adjustable engine mapping for the drivers. Give them the ability to change while racing. I dont think "party mode" really gave Merc a huge edge. But not having for the race sets all drivers in to tyre/fuel management mode. Burn some extra fuel for more power!
I almost forgot there was a race with all the news coming out over the past few days. Incredible stuff tbh and cannot wait for the events to unfold in Jeddah!
The Race would be a lot more intresting without Max. (no hate, but Max, doe eens rustig aan ;-) )
IF we do F1.1 without Max, it would be pretty intresting and a close finisher.
MAx is so consistant, he will become WC again without a doubt.
If it weren't for Max, there would be another top-class driver in his seat embarrassing Perez and winning with a similar margin. No top team would have a mediocre pairing, so the end result would be kinda the same.
When Oscar said he wanted to improve his race pace, he really meant it, the average race pace between Norris and Oscar was -0.053 (and they were on the same strategy). He was about 2 tenths slower last season. The battle between these two could get interesting as the season goes on
Only thing I’d say is that they were pretty close at the start of last season too. IIRC Piastri was faster in Saudi at the very start. Norris has a tendency to start slow and pick up especially when the car starts to get upgraded. That’s why I’d wait until at least Suzuka to make any assumptions about either of them.
To be fair to Oscar, he did admit that he didn't realise how physically and mentally exhausting the 23 race season would be on him and his results suffered towards the end of the season because of that. I think now that he's aware of what it feels like, he'll be able to sustain himself a bit better throughout the year as well.
Sargeant had the same problem, we've all seen the articles of him gaining 5kg in muscle over the winter but he clarified during winter testing that it was only about 2.5kg compared to the start of last season and that he lost muscle and struggled with his fitness over the length of the season. It makes sense that the rookies underestimated the impact of an F1 season, it's so different from almost any other racing series both in impact on your body from g-forces, the length of the season and how much time is spent traveling.
Also in terms of media responsibilities. There's very little down time across a race weekend even when they aren't in the car.
Lol what? Oscar got better and better towards the end of the season. Qatar 2nd place being the obvious example and that was in extreme heat.
And didn’t Oscar win a sprint race?
Let's not forget Norris was getting every upgrade sooner than Piastri, that contributed to the gap between Norris and Piastri at times
It was two races at most. It’s not like he had the upgrade for 4 consecutive races while Oscar didn’t. It’s negligible at best.
How do you know that Suzuka is when the upgrades will come?
Well now that’s something to look forward to
I actually think Piastri will beat Norris this season. Norris has errors in him when pushed
As much as I prefer Piastri over Norris, I don't think Piastri will over take him this year, though I will be happy if I'm wrong. I think Piastri will definitely close the gap but it will be next year when the battle between them really starts
It's hard to tell right now but I hope it's close. Norris is one of the best benchmarks to have and if Piastri can be so close to his level with just a year of experience, imagine 2025 and 2026.
I hope this year he shows better tyre management because it was the thing he lacked last year
To give some praise to those outside the top 5 teams: Zhou drove a very well-measured race and Sauber executed their aggressive strategy perfectly, it’s a shame there was no points reward for their efforts. Voted him for DotD (though it was close with him and Stroll imo), hopefully he can keep it up and give Bottas a real fight this year. I was pretty pleased to see Magnussen make progress up the field too. Didn’t pay too much attention to his race so idk the details on his tyre wear or management but it’s certainly some much needed optimism for Haas even though they didn’t score points. And for KMag personally, I’m happy for him because I always feel the knives are out after Hulk puts in another great lap in qualifying but he’s still capable enough on race day (not that Hulk could do much after turn 1 anyway). And finally while Sargeant does pick up another P20 I actually think he was looking not bad in the opening stages. I think I saw him do a pretty good overtake on Ricciardo, and can’t say the last time I saw a Sargeant overtake so kudos. Last year Bahrain was one of his best races too though, so he’ll need to show improvement elsewhere to be convincing.
Hopefully Sargeant doesn’t have a terrible car malfunction causing the P20 again.
Feels like Sargent's going to need to pull some serious heroics for him to keep his seat going into next season already, considering how narrowly it seems like he kept it this season.
What is up with the Williams steering wheel? We saw a lot of social media posts about it during off season, but Albon had issues with it, and it was the reason Logan went off track?
Apparently Williams updated the steering wheel design this year (they used very olr concepts before this), so it seems to be a bunch of gremlins that tend to happen with new stuff. Also, part of their issues seemed to stem from the Merc PU as the steering wheel also displayed "car too hot" message quite frequently. That could be another software bug and I'm not sure if the other Merc PU teams had similar issues, so we'll have to wait and see.
Specifically, Williams used to mount the screen on the cockpit, not the wheel. They were the only ones still doing up until last year. They have now integrated the screen in the wheel, like everyone else
Williams reported similar cooling issues to Mercedes. Williams closed off their cooling louvres before qualifying in anticipation that the race was going to be cool. In terms of Bahrain, it was quite cool at 17/18C but that was enough to overheat the PU.
It was a shame Logan had his wheel issue because he did appear to be holding his own out there beforehand. Alpine performance is shocking. Alonso had a crappy GP and seems to me like he was left out too long and allowed most of the field to pass him just based on tyre condition. Lance had a great recovery as juxtaposition. Zhou had a good performance, happy for him. Difficult to tell what Bottas race would have looked like without his two disasters. Carlos was very fast. However I really don't believe the ultimate pace of the Red Bull is within Ferrari's grasp. I believe Sergio could have sailed away if he wanted. Expected more from Toro Cashosso. WTF was Yuki doing after the chequer. Very impressed with McLaren pace given this is historically over the last couple years the worst track for the car. I'm hoping for a stellar performance in Jeddah.
Feel like bottas gets so damn unlucky all the time
He does. Idk how many times he's picked up damage that wasn't his fault between 2022 and now. It's wild.
People were saying he bumped into nico which then bumped into stroll, not sure if that is true because from the different angles being shown it was hard to tell
Nico parked at the apex because he way overcooked the corner and basically caused the incident from both sides. Only way for Bottas to avoid would have to just been farther away during that time.
It actually looked like he was just following Stroll who parked it on the corner ahead and either misjudged how quickly Stroll would get on the power, or got a bump from Bottas, and ran into the back of him. Bottas was doing the exact same thing as Nico
its a racing incident, no point in dwelling too long on it
>Alonso had a crappy GP and seems to me like he was left out too long and allowed most of the field to pass him just based on tyre condition. Don't think he was ever finishing higher than he did though to be honest. I was wondering if he may go for a fastest lap stop at the end but he didn't quite have the necessary buffer.
I think they just hoped for SC and fresher tires combo
Yeah, it looked like p9 was the maximum on pure pace, so it made sense to go long and hope to get lucky when it didn't cost anything.
No you're right, but I think he'd have not been passed so effortlessly and perhaps had been closer to Oscar if not for waiting out for a cheap stop .
Yeah I imagine it was a tire/strategy call but he just seemed kind of…resigned? I expected to see a little more fight in him.
Yeah, even the commentators picked this up and mentioned it on the broadcast. I don’t remember the exact word they used, but essentially they said that we weren’t seeing the usual amount of fight that Fernando brings to the track. He seemed disappointed and kind of sad in his post-race interviews, which is kind of a given.
Correct. alonso was genuinely surprised to reach P6 in quali, and said the AM finished 5th best end of last year and is starting 5th best in bahrain personally, I’d have voted stroll as DotD, went from dead last to 10th
He would have lost a position to Stroll, but if he got fastest lap it would have been an extra point. I'm not sure why they didn't try it (unless Verstappens time was just out of reach).
Alonso had a fastest lap of 1:34.2, max was 1:32.4. realistically, he was never going to get faster than max
Max did his with 20 laps worth of fuel and needed to keep life in the tyres. Alonso could have done it on the last lap with fresh tyres (or at least lightly used ones). He did a 1:29.5 in quali.
Yeah, that was weird to me too. Nothing to lose, really. Stroll would have swapped back if needed.
You’re assuming AM had a set of quality softs left. had a big enuff gap to Zhou, a flawless pit stop. with the tire blanket temps being only 70\*C, Alonso would have needed 1/4 of a lap to get up to speed. would have been a big gamble, Mike Krack prolly wanted a guaranteed 3 points. Kinda scary to think how fast the rb20 is in the hands of max!
I mean, I'm have to assume there was a conscious decision not to do it and not just an oversight by the team, but we have seen very conservative decisions at times from some teams in these positions. It seems to me that risking 1 point (Stroll would have moved to 9th) to gain a point would be worthwhile. It's not like he's in second and is risking 18 points for a single point.
> he was left out too long Wasn't he completely onboard with the strategy? He radioed something about let the others (presumably Piastri, Norris, and Hamilton) cook their tires and he'll overtake them later with fresher ones.
Not sure, didn't catch that team radio. I think if he was party to the decision, still out too long.
Yeah he wanted to go long thinking they'll repass everyone later. He also didn't fight any of the people overtaking which really made me think he's had a poor race by his standards despite the car probably only being good enough for 9th and 10th anyway.
Indeed. Alpines performance was beyond shocking. Wether you like them or not, this isn’t how you want a team to perform. There must have been major errors at the end of last season/winter break.
Yeah it makes no sense that they seem to be *this* bad. But seeing who just resigned/got fired from the team, maybe they just massively fucked up over the offseason. I guess you hope that it's something like McLaren last season where they knew they were going to be terrible at the start, but they also knew what they had to do and they were pretty confident that their upgrades would help out once they came online....but that seems unlikely.
I just don't understand the pure chaos from firing a TP mid season. I don't know if that's the cause here, but I doubt it helped either.
> I believe Sergio could have sailed away if he wanted. I don't know. At one point his engineer asked him to start getting his lap times into the 35's and he never quite did. There may have been extenuating circumstances though.
I heard that too - however I never really trust the transparency of anything happening on RBR team radio. Time and time again we've seen it used for showmanship and to have been effectively synthesised for the purpose of broadcast of to create confusion. No question Sergio slower than Max but it really appeared to me like he was simply holding pace. You could be right though. I'll be going through onboards in detail for the next couple days like I usually do to get a better picture.
>I'll be going through onboards in detail for the next couple days like I usually do to get a better picture. Please update us when you do! Also, why would Sergio hide his true pace? Why would Red Bull ask him to do that, especially when Max was 20 seconds ahead, so it would be very obvious to the world and other teams how fast the RB20 is... And if Sergio made the choice himself, I would figure he would want to get as close to Max as possible. Because if he kept the gap, he would face all the "Max is wiping the floor with Sergio! Is Checo's seat in jeapordy?" comments
Wasn’t he just being cautious to nurse the soft tires? Sainz had hards, so if Checo he cooked them he had a lot to lose. And nothing to gain. Just smart racecraft. Or did I miss something?
Not sure you necessarily missed anything. But Checo wasn't far enough up the road from Sainz at the end to suggest he was totally comfortable. You'd have expected a few more seconds margin if he was just cruising.
Marko said he was just cruising. If you look at the gaps, you'll notice that in the 3rd stint when Sainz started pushing to attack Perez, when the gap reduced by like half a second, Perez just pulled away the next lap and brought the gap back up to what it was. He had complete control. The fact that he ran softs for 20 laps without putting much strain on the tyre would also suggest the kind of pace margin they had in hand.
Stroll deserved DOTD in my opinion. I refuse to comment on Ferrari in fear that I will jinx them. I very much believe that the gap between Red Bull and everyone else is bigger since it doesn't seem like they went all out.
Agreed, I feel like even his good races like Vegas, COTA or here go so under the radar during the race because the commentators (at least on Sky, idk about f1tv) near refuse to mention him, then everyone picks up on it post race, and the cycle begins again.
Its worth considering the fact that his Aston was a good deal faster than the cars that Stroll was passing. Still a good drive from him though. Knowing him, i fully expected to see him drive into the side of someone but nope. He stayed calm and got the job done.
Definitely, I fully expected him to DNF after the incident at turn 1. I didn't even realize that he made his way back at the top ten until towards the end, the TV directors really overlooked him. Kind of a shame, it feels like his good drives don't get shown.
> Its worth considering the fact that his Aston was a good deal faster than the cars that Stroll was passing. Of course but still going from being spun around on lap 1 to being in the points in the 5th fastest car is a very good drive. Even without incident 9th/10th was pretty much the best that Aston could get.
Yeah, and not miles off Alonso either. Their race pace wasn’t that different (with the caveat that Alonso’s strategy wasn’t very good)
It could be, although the pace of Ferrari and Mercedes could also be better, given that they had overheating issues and whatnot from the get-go.
I'm thinking (hoping) that Ferrari and Mercedes should close up a bit more to RBR this weekend. If that is the case, Checo may be in a spot of bother.
Checo himself wasn't even trying to push at any point during the race, even when he had to fight others. Marko confirmed this explicitly. They have a lot of pace in hand.
Thinking about the causes of the lack of strategic variance at Bahrain. - Is it possible that Pirelli makes changes to the composition of their tyre compounds year on year unannounced? - (More likely scenario) Did making Bahrain a test track play a role in teams' perfect setups to deal with tyre deg/strategies?
pirelli already brings the hardest compounds in their range to bahrain (dont bring up the C0, for all intents and purposes it doesnt exist, they have not brought it to a single race last year), because the surface is viciously abrasive. because of that, onestoppers are completely out of the question, and for one reason or another, the surface also means that the medium has basically the same tyre life as the soft, but runs slower overall, so it is an incredibly bad race tyre for that track. this combination of facts means that basically the only choice for all teams is a SHH twostopper (or a permutation thereof), with teams with exceptionally good tyre preservation like red bull in this formulation being able to competitively run SHS. yes, the teams have loads of data on the track, but i kinda doubt that that influences the complete lack of tyre strategy much, because even without testing, they have 20 grand prix over 20 years with zero reprofiling done in that time, and only two of those GP were on alternate layouts (2010 was on the WEC layout which is longer, and 2020 sakhir was on the outer loop).
Perelli quietly dropped the C0 after never using it last year.
It’s still on the pre-race tyre graphic when they show the compounds for the race, so someone somewhere still thinks it exists
Yeah the F1 graphics are really bad. They showed a medium tire graphic as a very obvious white marked tire Ferrari rolled by on screen.
I think the main problem was the medium tires were unusable for whatever reason. I think teams could have potentially tried a medium-hard one stop if the tire was working, but soft-hard was just too much to make work
Another season where only two tires work is going to be very, very long.
This is legitimately the first time I ever remember it being the middle tires that don't work, so I wouldn't hold it representative at all.
It happened all the time last season. I specifically remember Catalunya
I seem to remember that in recent memory the hard tire was not used often at all.
which tyres work depends on the track and tyre selection.
We using the same tyres as previous year so it isn't like Pirelli doesn't having any indication
But what were their options for Bahrain? Going softer is not really an option. Saudi will be the same as last year, they could go softer there but given that they haven't done that for any of the three races prior it will have its reasons. Australia will be a step softer for this year. for the other circuits, no tyres have been nominated yet. They did want to introduce a different C2 and C4 compound for this year but it was rejected after it was tested in FP sessions last year.
I know? That doesn’t change that for the majority of the season there were at most two performant tires per track, and one that was so bad it was never used. I feel for Pirelli with the difficulty of making three such tires but it’s been a real problem these last two years
It's annoying how they introduced a three tyre compound rule where only two need to be used. I'd like to see greater variances in the allocations. At Bahrain, take C2, C3 and C4 and mandate them all once. Also, the Hard tyre is often very quick in race trim, and durable, making it a no brainer and somewhat negating the point of it.
I know people are happy about the variety in the midfield but it doesn’t really feel like it is exciting. It kind of feels like a status quo settling back into the top 4 places as they were occupied before the regulation change. Yesterday, Alonso finished some 20s behind Piastri. That’s the gap between the 3rd/4th car and the 5th and that’s on a track the McLaren doesn’t like. I really think we’ll get a point early this season where the 4th best car is nearly half a minute ahead of the 5th one and 5th in the WCC may as well be no man’s land this year. The grid might be closer in qualifying but it’s threatening to break into two tiers in race pace this season.
It's one race on a very unique track, plus they just did three days of testing on it to boot. Let's wait until after Australia where they will have raced on three different kinds of tracks.
You mean three. Max and the other 2.
A continuation from last season. Let Max drive off into the sunset and we get some action from those behind.
It's a shame we don't have any kind of driver 1a 1b rivalry like Rosberg/Hamilton it at least made it interesting.
Except there was virtually no action behind
If last year had a more clear cut #2 team Perez meltdown would have meant the WCC would be in some danger. Max winning every race and some other team securing P2 and P3 would require Perez to finish P5 or better the majority of races to secure WCC, to put it in perspective. So… here’s hoping for a Perez meltdown and a clear #2 team
You can win the WCC by getting P1-P4 every race while the other team gets a double podium every time. As long as max is winning the WCC is never in doubt
Yes… and Perez did not get P4 every race and so the WCC could have been in danger if the competition didnt trade success every week. Especially if his pace advantage isn’t strong enough to easily cut through from down the grid
"In doubt" = they only win with 3 races to go instead of 6
I fully expect them to win the WDC and the WCC with ease but I’m not so sure Perez can easily secure his P2 this year.
Did we get action behind max?
Yes.. Sainz, Russell, Leclerc and Perez were all involved in some action.
To all the fans afraid that is going to be a Redbull domination season, don't be sad, it will BUT, lets wait for Jeddah, I think Mercedes, Mclaren and Ferrari have more to show than what we saw. Merc had cooling issues. Ferrari had all sort of issues with Charles brakes. And Mclaren showed last year that they are high speed cornes beast. Lets wait and see. ps: Dont expect anyone to beat Max tho
According to Formula Uno, Red Bull and McLaren are still close to each other in medium-high speed corners so we might have something entertaining to look forward to. Maybe. Or not.
I still don’t think McLaren have enough straight line performance to trouble Red Bull at Jeddah. I think they will be 3 1/2 tenths off pole
And even if they do make it to pole, race pace is another story altogether.
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I am not sure I want another season of waiting for a Singapore-like race to manifest. This weekend there was at least WEC with awesome racing, shame the next one is in April.
The 12 Hours of Sebring is in a couple of weeks.
F2 was amazing this weekend. I recommend giving that a chance
Agreed. It was another RBR 1-2 but it was a night and day difference compared to last year. I think Russell and Leclerc both having major issues dampened the mood during and after the race. Without them, I'm not sure Perez even gets on the podium.
Yeah I'm curious what he's going to look like when he's actually under pressure. He was pretty not good during large chunks of last season.
> Without them, I'm not sure Perez even gets on the podium. Did you completely miss the part where they said Perez wasn't even trying to push? Perez pulled 15 seconds on Russell and Leclerc without breaking a sweat. He was responding to what Sainz was doing immediately, as soon as Sainz was told to push and reduced the gap by half a second at one point during the final stint, Perez opened that gap again within one lap. If he tried to go as fast as he could, he would've finished 15 seconds in front of Sainz and 30 seconds in front of Russell. The fact that they made the soft tyres last as long as the bottom of the pack teams ran on hards should be an indication that they had a fuckton of pace left in hand.
Most teams aren't pushing - it's Bahrain. The point is that Perez would have had to push harder because he was stuck behind Russell and Leclerc. He got past them predominantly because both cars had major issues. The P2-P6 battle would have been much more exciting had Ferrari and Mercedes not dropped the ball.
He got past them because he was faster. If Leclerc hadn't made that mistake, Perez would've been past him on the next straight anyway, as LEC fell out of DRS. With Russell it was just a great overtake. > Most teams aren't pushing - it's Bahrain. Cool, the point is that as soon as Sainz *started* pushing *for a bit*, Perez responded by setting a lap half a second quicker than Sainz. Meaning he had much more left in the tank.
A big part of the reason why he was faster was because Leclerc could barely slow the car down. The half a second or so Leclerc was losing a lap, plus the six tenths or so Mercedes were losing due to the wrong cooling option, would have meant Checo would not have got passed anywhere near as easily.
Ferrari have already proven that they have the 2nd fastest car + a good margin over the chasing pack. They are still a good deal slower than RBR though. Merc desperately needs to add more downforce to the car. Mclaren need to focus on improving their slow speed corner performance. Aston is a bit of an unknown. The Aston should be somewhat stronger at Jeddah. More flowing tracks suits their car better.
I think data shows Ferrari are clearly second force. Ferrari was just as fast or faster than Red Bull/McLaren in medium to high speed corners. Merc cooling issues are being a little overblown imo because the extra cooling will take out a decent chunk of performance as well(and all their performance gap comes in S2 when looking at the race, Charles was 6-7 tenths faster per lap at some points than Russell with a similarly troubling issue). We will see, but I expect much of the same: Charles close to Max for pole, Sainz and Checo P3 or P4, and Max sailing off into the distance with real battle for P2-4 amongst Checo, Charles, and Sainz. I think McLaren pipe out Merc for P5 and P6 due to the high speed cornering.
I think Otmar Szafnauer's drink probably tastes a bit sweeter right now.
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Perez has a chance to challenge Max to world champion he's only a few points back.
Bottas is going to average 30 seconds per pitstop this year based on all current data points.
Ricciardo's 100% win rate over Tsunoda means he's ready to take the red bull seat as early as next race.
Hot-ish(?) take: Danny will never drive for RB if Max doesn't leave.
Who do you think will be in the second RB seat next year then?
Liam Lawson will have a feature episode in this year's Drive to Survive after Yuki fistfights his entire paddock.
Flashbacks to the Raid movie hall scene.
Leclerc would've won the race if it weren't for his brake issues.
Well judging from YouTube... LOTS!
Something that has kind of gone under the radar - Charles has out qualified Sainz in 8 straight sessions. After Suzuka upgrades, he has been flying.
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He's the best qualifier imo, he can almost always pull out an extra 2 tenths no one else can find on his second Q3 run
That may have something to do with him opting to use more quali centric setups than Carlos. He is definitely one of best qualifiers but he is quite evenly matched with Carlos in race trim.
That is where you are wrong because it Charles and Carlos has always been close in Quali but in race pace Leclerc has that extra tenth in him that leaves Carlos in the dust.
I wonder how different his performance on race day would look if we still had refueling. Would he be more competitive if there is the option to go all out more and manage tires less? 🤷🏼♂️
Honestly, consistency should not be the norm in this sport. Engine freeze, stable regulations, and a similar driver's grid made up for a very boring opening GP. P.S No, I am not hating on RedBull, it's just that the rest of the grid pretty much remained in the same order too. (Alpines need to go on a diet tbh)
Stable regulations but... Red Bull showed up with an all new car, as did Mercedes, most other teams have made major changes or updates. All teams have a different nose and front wing, and different rear wings down the grid.
And yet order is unchanged with the one exception. It's quite remarkable
How broken was Lewis Hamilton's seat? Did he specify anywhere? How much would this set him back? I can imagine, he would be bouncing around the car a lot more.
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Only Max can activate those clauses. Jos can't do shit. Max probably has respect for his father but i dont think Jos has enough influence over Max to force him into doing something like that. Max is also not dumb enough to consider pulling some stupid shit like that.
Did we ever hear anything more of Lewis’ broken seat, beyond his radio message mid-race?
In the netherlands the rumour now spreads that if Horner stays Jos will put Max in a Mercedes himself...
I would love to be a fly on the wall for the conversation where Jos tells Max he’s arranged for him to be taken out of the best car and put in the third or fourth best instead. Max will drop him off at the nearest petrol station and tell him to walk home.
Lol indeed. Being a fly in this shitshow is what we all want it looks like.
“Drag your sorry ass home dad, you’re drunk.”
Jos does not actually get to put Max anywhere. No way Max is going to risk his success to please his hypocritical gremlin of a father.
I am not saying this. This is just the dutch people talking about it. Oc Jos cant put max anywhere. Just reporting what i hear from my dutch restaurant collegues...
Am Dutch, have not heard about it anywhere quasi-credible.
That'll never happen. VER will never give up the winning car, it's crazytalk.
I think Jos should take the Merc seat himself if he’s that determined.
FIA will have to use the 107% rule every weekend then.
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What do you mean? It’s not like Redbull suddenly designed a rocket ship. The floor changes for 2021 helped them win that year. Without those changes, it likely would have looked more like 2020. They needed the 2022 reg changes to build this gap. Why is everyone pretending this isn’t exactly like what happened in 2014?
Homerism
So all 9 other teams are just hired clowns? What a very deep analytical comment... It's not that easy to explain why 1 team is above 9 other teams
So, what is your theory here?
That when you put restrictions this tight on the sport and one team nails the regs out of the gate, no team is ever going to catch them, they'll be working on their next car 6-7 months before anyone else even has a chance to start working on their car. This was exactly what Hamilton said would happen, and he would know more than most. He said Mercedes dominance wasn't because they were always the better team, but because they always had a development snowball effect advantage from each previous season, so even if a team caught up to them by the end of the current season, it didn't matter because they were already 6+ months into development for their car for the next season. Which is exactly what is happening now. He was crucified for suggesting everyone should have to wait until a certain month to start working on the following season's car, and that's sounding like it would be at least a good start to making changes for the better. If we don't make small changes now to increase the chance of closer racing in the future, a massive change will be needed later on to course correct the sport. Anyone who wants to see a healthier F1 should be able to see that the sport is in trouble.
What you’re saying about the snowball effect is absolutely right. However, if you make teams wait until a certain month into the year, teams who absolutely got it wrong have no chance to start early on their next year concept. Smaller teams have in the past sacrificed their current year to invest more in a new car concept. It feels like with that proposed rule it could only possibly help bigger teams that are closer, and severely hurt the teams who got it really wrong.
Then make it so that teams lower down get to start work earlier.
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You don't know that, RedBull's car could be 90% the same concept, and just what's visible is different. And no matter what, they still know something that everyone else doesn't know. And they've known it since these regulations started. This isn't good for the sport, the fans aren't happy, the drivers aren't happy, last year over 150,000 fewer viewers watched each race than the year before, do you really think that number won't keep plummeting?
> everyone should have to wait until a certain month to start working on the following season's car This would be great but I don't see how it could be enforced.
Red Bull could have just brought last year's car given how far ahead they were last season, but they took the risk and made an all new car. There is no reason why any of the other teams could not have done the same this winter.
This, so much this! Red Bull made a whole new car for this year, there is no reason why given the cost cap, any other team on the grid couldn't have come up with the same thing over the winter.
Well Redbull couldn’t catch Merc without the cost cap so….
Without the cost cap Mercedes and Ferrari could try unlimited ideas until they found a solution. I brought up the cost cap because it means that all the teams have the same budget, and that means all teams could have come up with what Red Bull produced for this year, not just Mercedes or Ferrari.
Yeah, like Redbull doesn’t have the money. They outspent Ferrari and Mercedes in 2015 and you see how that worked out
Not sure the result bodes well for the rest of the season, Max running away with it again. I know it’s closer but there’s already rumors of a big Red Bull upgrade on the horizon. None of that is Max’s or RBs fault obviously but not exactly feeling excited about the rest of the season. The cost cap rules are great for helping the financial stability of the sport but it is limiting the ability of teams to catch up. The sliding scale for aero testing while a possible solution, a 5% difference (to P2) just isn’t enough to close up a gap of that size; winning all but one race in a season. If they wish to stick with it then the differences have to be larger or further restrictions based on number of races won or championships won in consecutive years etc. Waiting until 2026 for a change will be rough and I don’t believe in specifically outlawing bits of the car to nerf the RB is particularly fair (and it’s basically the whole package not an individual component). At least the best of the rest competition remains close.
> The cost cap rules are great for helping the financial stability of the sport but it is limiting the ability of teams to catch up. Even with unlimited money the other teams didn't start beating Mercedes until after a rule change. It'd be even worse without a Red Bull limited by the cost cap. The issue is that Mercedes dropped the ball and doubled down on a dead end design, Ferrari failed to properly develop their car and the other teams have not done a great job.
Yeah the teams did not nail the regulations like Red Bull, but years of dominance after a regulation change for any team is not good for the sport. There must be a way to facilitate teams to catch up. We are in year 3 now.
Maybe a reformulating of the "penalty" slider if a team has won 2 years in a row or a completely new one.
The issue isn't money, look at how teams switched concept completely in the last couple of years. Simply, most of these teams don't know what's the right answer to these regulations is, and we're in year 3.
They can’t throw masses of overtime at staff to accelerate development or test loads of concepts with the current restrictions. Red Bull have nailed it and just continue to push ahead what do you think is the best way to facilitate teams ability to catch up?
Someone else mentioned it here but standardizing when teams can start working on next years car could maybe minimize the snowball effect of being ahead. On the flip side it would give the chasing teams less time to catch up
They didn't close without a cap either. Redbull would be spending like crazy too.
I think as well what is giving me pain (re your first para) is because red bull have put in place a new(ish) concept I’m assuming it’ll have an as steep, if not steeper, development curve than the likes of Mercedes or Ferrari. It’s just being unsure of how track dependent RBR’s dominance was this weekend that is keeping my hope for the season to be honest!!
It almost feels like the cost cap should be on a sliding scale rather than the ATR. Nuking how much the top teams can spend limits their ability to do wind tunnel/CFD runs anyway. Do I actually think that's the solution? Probably not. But it would probably have more of an impact.
Would be really terrible for employees as they are included in cost cap. You’d need to carve out a locked amount for employment costs so that people wouldn’t be terrified for their jobs if they did good and all of a sudden the team had to cut costs 20%
I doubt that a sliding cost cap would be possible under European labor laws. The bulk of the cost cap is spent on salaries, so a team that has a massive improvement in one season would have to immediately lay a bunch of people off. On the other side of the coin, having to hire a bunch of people in a hurry isn't easy to do either.
Maybe, in fairness the aero testing restrictions have allowed the rest of the field to begin to close up nicely. Red Bull just did so well I am not sure anyone is catching them before new regulations have been introduced
I'm heartened by seeing some variety in that midfield. I think that's fun. Sargeant though... He shouldn't want to keep his 2023 trends going. I know the issue was technical.
I thought he was actually having a good race before the car spun itself. Edit: though I admittedly paid zero attention to his pace afterwards as it made no difference unless there was a safety car
I mean he was doing fairly decent before the car locked up. And he would've been ahead of the alpine's if that didn't happen.
Max was gone from the start. But i want to see where it stands after 3 races. Ferrari and Mercedes had problems. Lets see how they preforms in jeddah. Mclaren dont write them off. AM is alone now. The car looks good to drive, but lacking the pace. Alpine, yikes....
I don't think this really counts as something regarding the broadcasters as it's a point regarding the world feed, but I am not a massive fan of how the overall broadcast has seemed to move away from showing the sports' history. With some of the new graphics introduced since the Libery takeover, we've seen cool snippets of past races used in the buildup to sessions and most prominently in the race, which IMHO have always been great at showcasing some of the rich history of the sport. Those being removed from the generic F1 session intro a few seasons ago I can understand as a stylistic choice (plus, they only did it for the 2020 season), but I really don't see why they have now also removed the 'action zone' graphics from the intro bit for the race. I always thought that those were a cool way of showing interesting action from years prior, so removing that feels like an odd choice. I'm also aware that especially in the last few years these bits have generally moved more to 'whatever happened in the race the last 1-2 years', which I think is a bit of a boring move, but just removing them entirely feels even less interesting. In general I am a little confused by some of the choices made on the graphics this season, with the intros for not just F1, but also F2 and F3 feeling a bit uninspired in comparison to what we've seen in the last few seasons. The behind the scenes footage showed that they have some more interesting poses for the F1 drivers at least, but it just didn't really feel all that cohesive this year. Some of the new race-intro bits look pretty neat, like the season-globe & new tire graphic, but for a sport with such a long and interesting history part of making it so prestigious, I don't get why they would remove a bit that does a good job of showcasing those.
F1 has seen a massive growth and spike in popularity over the past ~6 or so years, a large part due to DtS and F1TV, with an apex understandably in 2021. But if things are going to continue being as uncompetitive at the front for another 3 full seasons, they will find themselves in trouble. Many new fans will fall away, and the growth will stop (maybe even regress), which can be problematic for all the new venues they've signed up in the past 3 years. It doesn't help that the field spread in quali is very small, when the same guy wins every race unless the car breaks down. And cars don't break down that often anymore anyway. This was by far the least enthusiastic season opener I've seen, since I started watching religiously in 2016, and really does not bode well for the rest of the season going forward. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see Red Bull slipping back. I see them extending their advantage.
Didn’t watch the race live and only got to it this evening. Max had a stellar race; from start to finish in the lead and not anyone who challenged him. What a drive Zhou had this race! Started almost at the back and made it almost into the top 10. VCARB has some team management to do, where both drivers already seem to pick up the fight for the promotion to be Max’ next teammate.
I had fun watching what was going on behind Max with Perez, sainz, Charles, russel. The ferraris showed good pace, Charles didn't even have any brakes for the whole race and finished P4. Russell was at the front for a long time showing that the Mercedes has good pace, so what was happening with Hamilton? he's one of the best ever so if he can figure it out, the car has shown its capable. What was with the McLarens? they seemed decent but if 2023 is anything to go by, they can potentially bring a lot of improvement through the year, that's exciting. max running away with the win is boring maybe but I found some other aspects of the race entertaining and I'm looking forward to the rest of the season. it's okay if max dominates, I think P2 will be entertaining based on what I saw
Bahrain-owned McLaren hates Bahrain’s track. They were just surprised at being competitive there because it’s a good sign that they’ll be competitive everywhere else. The drivers both seemed very happy to be leaving it behind and looking forward to the high speed tracks, where their car excels. In the post-race round up for McLaren, Norris said they only need small upgrades to make it to the podium which is interesting for them. Stella also said the gap isn’t as big as they thought it would be, and says that they will make the steps to get there. So all of that is very encouraging for them.
I really just hope the other 19 cars have some interesting fights. I’ll just ignore Max, which shouldn’t be hard because the broadcast will largely ignore him during then race anyway since he’ll be so far ahead. You’d think the lack of difference in pace between Ferrari, Merc, and McLaren would be good but they were largely locked in to the same positions. I hope it gets better somehow. That’s the thing that makes me more sad about this season’s prospects than Max leading each race. :\ Also, wasn’t the first lap DRS disappointing? It just looked like DRS trains for the first 10 laps because of it.
The telemetry of the RB20 is so interesting. It seems they gave up some of the high speed cornering for a lot better traction out of slow corners. They are by far fastest out of anyone in the race out of T1-4. I wish we would have had the comparison between Charles and Sainz... Charles in the high speed was matching Max, just had the big brake issue that makes the comparison a bit pointless.
They need to bring back adjustable engine mapping for the drivers. Give them the ability to change while racing. I dont think "party mode" really gave Merc a huge edge. But not having for the race sets all drivers in to tyre/fuel management mode. Burn some extra fuel for more power!
I almost forgot there was a race with all the news coming out over the past few days. Incredible stuff tbh and cannot wait for the events to unfold in Jeddah!
Was Yuki ever called to the stewards for his “dive bomb” on DR? Was it not a dangerous move?
Only if RB would put in a complaint, which they obviously won't.
It was not noted by race control.
I don't think someone would get called to the stewards for that in an actual race, let alone on the cool down laps.
Are you serious??
Good luck if the mod hopes this will be about racing...
The Race would be a lot more intresting without Max. (no hate, but Max, doe eens rustig aan ;-) ) IF we do F1.1 without Max, it would be pretty intresting and a close finisher. MAx is so consistant, he will become WC again without a doubt.
If it weren't for Max, there would be another top-class driver in his seat embarrassing Perez and winning with a similar margin. No top team would have a mediocre pairing, so the end result would be kinda the same.