F1 2023 thread

I can't see someone who's been beaten by Russell, Rosberg and Button in equal machinery, which is three of his last four teammates with Bottas the only exception, could beat someone of the caliber of Leclerc who is in a different league to those three.

In my amateur opinion, should things not improve at McLaren after, lets say 5 races, Brown should swap Andrea Stella and Ian James over. When McLaren bought the Mercedes EQ Formula E team they inherited a Mercedes-Benz team principal who had a more successful couple of years then his F1 counterpart delivering back to back drivers and constructors championships. Stella's history looks more like Binotto 2.0

Mclaren have said publicly they scrapped their initial car concept a few months back and are due the new package by Baku, season is essentially a write off already as everyone will be working/upgrading their current concepts from the weekend so they're essentially playing catch up all season. You'd expect lando to maximise any potential points on offer if they do get to that stage of challenging.

You're right. Anyone with a bit of sense should be able to recognise that Rosberg only managed to beat Hamilton in a single season where Hamilton had worse reliability.

The 2014 regulations were designed to stop anyone catching up, with token restrictions on development meaning teams at a disadvantage were stuck there, a complete abandonment of the previous engine equalisation, and a huge unassailable head start for a single team. The current rules are quite rigorously designed to stop anyone maintaining a lead by handicapping those at the front in their development options, in addition to putting a stop to excessive spending like the 100 million+ per year Mercedes and Ferrari were spending more than anyone else.

We've already seen it work with the jump Aston Martin have made to jump from having the single slowest car on the grid this time last year to be in the fight for poles and podiums now, along the fact that the field spread in qualifying is the smallest it's been in decades. In 2015, the second year of the hybrid formula, the gap in the opening qualifying of the season between the Mercedes in 1st and their top competitor in 3rd was 1.4 seconds. In 2023, the second year of the current formula, the gap from 1st to the dead last car in 20th was only 1.2 seconds. It's not even remotely close to the same ballpark as the level of dominance the was enshrined in the previous regs.

You'd be crazy to write this season off on the basis of one race and one test session at one track, where the field was actually very close in raw pace and only spread out due to degradation which will always vary from track to track. And Bahrain is a track that has a history of being unrepresentative of the season as a whole and producing winners who don't go on to win championship most seasons.

And you'd then have to be incredibly stupid and lacking in knowledge of F1 or critical thinking skills to go on and also write off the next 3 year's championships off based on that same single race.

The stat about 1st to last being covered by 1.2 seconds is misleading. Sometimes a stat is so cool that you don't want to look into it in case it's not true.

Q1 was covered from 1st to last by 1.2 seconds. But in reality the pole time was 2.5 seconds faster than the 20th place time. It's still a small spread from pole to 20th, but it wasn't really 1.2 seconds.

I think you are missing a few key points in this argument, or ignoring them.

The first being the budget cap. Teams are really bound by that now so in the past, if Merc for example were having a bad run of form (I belive they did in winter testing for 2017) they just spend a bomb on an upgrade and they were right back in it.

Limited windtunnel time and CFD also plays a massive part in this as well. Merc are limited on that so it's not a case of just running the tunnel and CFD as long as they want to find performance, they have to be strategic on that.

Aston Martin have hired a raft of technical staff (one being a designer who worked directly on the RB of last year) to help this, and are reaping the rewards of that along with more WT time and CFD due to finishing where they did last year.

Comparing the current way of doing things to the past won't cut the mustard anymore. Cost caps and baked in concepts for cars have longer lasting impacts now. Mercedes already know this from their own internal numbers and simulations. They finished 50's or so behind the RB, outpaced by the AM and couldn't get by the Ferrari. They have solved thier issues from last year and are STILL slow, they car has no flaws other than just being slow, no more bouncing to put the blame on or anything. Their concept won't give them what they need.

Damon Hill with a decent review of things from the weekend.

Quakola has been on my ignore list for over a year now. This is why.

Anyway F1 question, where is the first Sprint weekend this year?

Yeah but the front guys never push to the max in q1. You know this stuff.

It sounds like a great stat and the ultimate spread of 2.5 seconds helps make the point that the grid is closer than normal. But the 1.2 second stat is misleading.