F1 2023 thread

Another spin from Wolff.

Obviously all other drivers are not honest?

It goes to show how much Verstappen and Red Bull are living in their heads

It's a complete waste of Toto and Mercs time to be banging on about RedBull. Since 2021 they've had one win, they made a complete balls of the car, they are no where near winning a championship as it stands and this season is over when it comes to winning anything. So focus just on finishing 2nd in the constructors and next years car

OK. Well as long as we all maintain a measured approach then everything will be fine.

He was well prepared by the sounds of it, especially given his team mate was trying to pick his pocket for most of the race.

Two back-to-back races coming up next. Singapore on the 17th and Japan on the 24th.

Japan is the first race where he can seal it.

I wonder willhe get the record forbiggest winning margin and most points in a season if he keeps up his winning record.

It's really not just a cycle. The 2014 rules were pretty much custom built for Mercedes. The sport had originally agreed an I4 engine spec that was due to come into effect in 2013, which Renault in particular had invested heavily in, but later switched to the engine formula we have now under intense political pressure from Mercedes. Di Montezemolo later admitted it was one of his greatest regrets at Ferrari to not push harder against this (their preference was to continue with the V8s but they saw the V6 Formula as a compromise meeting in the middle between 8 and 4 cylinder engines), and Lauda was quoted as saying Mercedes had been working on this engine (particularly elements like the MGU-H which had never been used before) as much as a decade earlier in preparation for pushing for the rule changes to come in, giving them a massive head start once they did. Ecclestone has also mentioned similar about the head start Mercedes got with their engine, and Mercedes themselves later admitted they would have pulled out of the sport had the previous V8 engines remained.

So 2014 - 2020 were far from a normal cycle, you had one team with a massive head start over the rest and a vastly more powerful and more reliable engine thanks to that head start. Token systems were also put in place to stop anyone else developing and catching up. This resulted in the most dominant series of cars in the sport's history, easily capable of 1-2 in every race unless there was a massive mess up during the race weekend. There was also unprecedented rule stability for much of this time, barring the aero increase in 2017 to make up for the fact that the original hybrid cars were laughably slow, slower than GP2 at some circuits. Mercedes didn't adapt to those regs quite as well as other teams and lost some of their massive advantage, but they were still miles faster than the rest and it was really only Vettel pulling off some miracles in the cockpit pushing the car way beyond comfortable limits that could be maintained reliably that gave the false impression of competition here and there, which was never possible to sustain.

2022 was a return to the normal cycle, with rule changes that were equal for everyone, and it was finally once again simply a matter of who did the best job, which so far has been Red Bull and Verstappen. A bit like how it was mostly Red Bull and Vettel the last time there was a fair and level playing field under the 2009-2013 rules. But unlike 2014-2020, things are far more competitive now with almost every other race breaking records for closest ever qualifying field spread, and other teams regularly faster and able to take pole positions on any given day, with Perez in particular often struggling to even qualify in the top 3 or 4 rows. However while Red Bull can't rely on a massive pace advantage, their race day execution has been near flawless all year, from Verstappen in the driving seat to the strategists to every single member of the pit crew, which they've needed to be to keep up the extraordinary run of results they've achieved. All of which makes it so much more enthralling to watch than the previous formula when every championship was already decided before they'd even turned up at the first race, no matter how the drivers or anyone else at the track performed.

Yeah basically, his usual go to troll jizz

Same old thing, no factual basis for any of it. Just making stuff up to suit the narrative

Its race week.

They were saying on F1 Nation that AlphaTauri want to get back to being a young driver development team so Ricciardo wouldn't really fit into that narrative.

You have to say, Logan Sergeant's seat at Williams is looking like a very attractive position these days. Both Yuki and Daniel might want to open talks with James Vowles

Isn't Yuki really only there due to Honda having a word in RBs ear? With Honda going to AM for the future, you would have to imagine that Yukis time there is limited.

Yuki and Stroll might be the worst driver lineup on the grid. Both pay drivers of sorts. Certainly the worst driver lineup for a team with ambitions towards the front.