F1 2023 thread

They managed to put a race calendar together in 2020 even with the covid craziness, so no excuse for not finding another venue. 4 weeks break this early in the season is daft.

They chose not to replace the China GP which was decided well before the season started. Was hoping they'd put Portimao on the calendar to fill the gap

Ah, I don't think you're giving credit to how hard it is to organise a huge event for a quarter of a million people over a weekend. The covid races didn't have fans so they were just a matter of getting the track and garages ready and having the marshals and enough emergency crews for the 20 drivers. The money came from the FIA directly. Relatively simple.

If they need to fund through ticket sales then they need to arrange to sell the tickets and liase with government to arrange transport, hotels, police and emergency services for the hundreds of thousands of fans and service staff. You need hotels for those hundres of thousands of people who will arrive for the weekend, food, permits for this, applications for that and so on. It just cand be done properly in a fee months without someone paying for it. You'd be a fool to host a race without ages to publicise it and guarantee you sell all the tickets. The risks are just too big.

Portimao was never a suitable venue for a full race. The track is good but portimao doesn't have the facilities for a quarter of a million people. They could come from Faro I suppose but if you've ever been to the track, it's up the side of a mountain on small supply roads.

You'd imagine so. 3 races and a month to get upgrades ready it would be great if the other teams could close the gap to red bull but I think they're untouchable. Mclaren need some big improvements to fix their problems.

It's race week. I'll start a race thread later.

One for you @Jordan 199

Eddie was a smooth operator.

I doubt the people who have to travel to every race feel that way about it. The 4 week gap is a bummer alright but it’s understandable.

Leclerc on 6 points after 3 races. Pain.

Max certainly is in a <ahem> 'Nice' position.

Can someone tot this up for me,between 23 races, fastest lap points and Sprint points is 1000+ points in the constructors championship possible?

Even on a weekend where RB couldn’t exploit the real advantages of its car, it won.

Ferrari are quickly becoming the team equivalent of Monaco. Just there and involved because of the history.

While they've always been there or thereabouts, it's an oversimplification to say they've just always had a much bigger budget than the rest of the grid.

You get different figures from different sources, but for the last decade they've generally had a very similar budget to Mercedes (some years one has the biggest budget, some years the other) - prior to that in the 2000s they sometimes had a smaller budget than Toyota, McLaren, and even Honda and BMW in some cases. Figures from the earlier eras are much harder to come by but I'd be surprised if the likes of McLaren and Williams didn't have budgets just as big in their respective dominant heydays when they enjoyed vast amounts of tobacco money.

Basically Ferrari have always just had a broadly similar budget to most other works or manufacturer teams on the grid in any given season, with Renault probably being the biggest outlier that has consistently spent less than other manufacturers over the years.

For example, here are reported budgets from 2006, Michael Schumacher's last year at the team when he narrowly lost out to Alonso in the Renault for the championship thanks to an engine failure at Suzuka:

• McLaren: $400m
• Toyota: $393m
• Honda: $382m
• BMW: $378m
• Ferrari: $329m
• Renault: $300m
• Red Bull: $201m
• Williams: $134m
• Super Aguri: $95m
• Midland: $75m
• Toro Rosso: $66m

I don't think the title can be taken from Hamilton 15 years later. Could be wrong but I reckon Massa is pursuing this with a view to eventually sue someone for financial compensation.