F1 2023 thread

Yeah it looks like the RB is so comprehensively faster than any of the other cars I would imagine most races will be 1-2s for them. It’s very much like Mercedes a couple of years ago except Checo looks like he’ll be more consistent than Bottas was.

Horner keeps talking about other teams upgrading but it’s really difficult to see any other team essentially finding the 1 second a lap they’ll need to match the current RB, but likely they’d need more than that presuming RBs upgrades work as expected.

McLaren are a mess. I know they have plenty of new things coming down the line like the new wind tunnel but they seem like they really don’t understand their car at all. I would imagine Norris will be keeping an eye on seats opening up elsewhere.

Mercedes and Ferrari are in similar boats, flashes of pace followed by disappointment.

Hopefully someone gets their act together or it could be another long stretch of 1 driver winning the championship with several races to spare.

I must say that Alex Albon has been doing well for Williams quietly

Another fairly processional race. A lot of these circuits dont seem to have overtake opportunities outside of DRS. If I hear the term DRS train one more time. I think they have to start limiting DRS to specific windows during the race, every 10 laps for 2/3 laps maybe

Is it time for DRS to be banned. I certainly think so. It should either be binned this year from after the Summer break or banned from next year. They need to make F1 more exciting. We just had another dull race and DRS does not make it any more exciting g in fact it takes from it because it makes it far to easy for someone in a faster car like Max to overtake everyone else abd they have no way of defending from it.

How about making the space for DRS less for the faster cars so like Red Bull? So they would only get half the DRS advantage that the slower cars get.

So the Red Bull would have a smaller slot gap when there DRS is open but have more drag than the slower cars.

I thought DRS was just about perfect at Miami, it got cars close enough to overtake in braking zones which is exactly what it’s designed to do. Almost nobody flew by on the straight, other than one or two out of position cars with big tyre offsets after switching to mediums late on.

It should be hard but not impossible to overtake and that’s what we got - back and forth between Leclerc and Kmag all race, a bunch of overtakes amongst Alonso, Sainz, Russell, Gasly, Hamilton, and even a late race overtake for the lead. Thinking about it, every single position in the top ten was decided by an overtake at some point in the race and almost none of them were simple drive-bys.

So there was plenty of good racing and overtaking, but it wasn’t so easy that drivers in fast cars could just automatically make their way through without a fight they way they often have in the past, which is exactly how it should be.

The problem with DRS is that it varies from track to track and they’re forever tweaking it using out of date data and you never know if it’ll be too powerful or too weak in a given race.

All I want is races that need more than 1 tyre stop and allow for more variation in strategy. That will spice things up more than anything.

To be fair, the Red Bull is so much faster theres zero point right now in anyone actually trying to race or defend against Max or Checo right now.

Youd only end up delaying the inevitable and wasting some of your tires doing it.

Checo is giving Max a bit of bother at the moment but once we're back racing on regular tracks Max will open up the points gap. We need a few wet races it's our only chance of real excitement and unpredictability.

That is some serious amount of optimism there pal.

Max is not one bit bothered by Checo right now, he will only get stronger once we get to proper tracks, that is when you will see the the gulf in skills.

Boring George says RB dominance is bad for the sport.

You are probably right but you never know, as long as he is in the car that is the class of the field, he has a chance. A run of bad luck for max or if he had to miss a few races or whatever would make things interesting. Perez would need that as max will always have advantage within the team not to mention being faster.

Hamilton said the same about Vettel during his RB years...they are well trained PR lads.

I honestly think Perez has as much chance of winning the title as Charles LeClerc did this time last year.

If anything, it just shows how good those cars were that Bottas could even win a race.

Yeah. They were great. Similar to the Red Bull now that oerez can win an odd race too.

The point is that he could beat Hamilton on an odd occasion. Similar to how Perez can beat Maxnon an odd occasion. Doesn't mean either are serious title contenders.