The first livery reveal is days away so let's get a new season kicked off. Last season was a lot of fun, better racing than before I think. A pretty close constructors championship for much of the season. I don't think F1 is ready to declare victory yet over the new aero changes but they seem to be a step in the right direction at least. A lot of driver (and team lead) changes this year. Not much in the way of technical changes. A few rookies are coming in. We'll probably miss Danny Ric but it's nice to see Hulk back. So anyway I'm looking forward to some racing!

The Grid

No changes at the top this year but nearly every other team replaced a driver. Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes all remain the same, as does Alfa Romeo. Last year Sebastien Vettel announced his retirement, which started some dominoes falling. Fernando Alonso will take Seb's place at Aston Martin and Pierre Gasly then moved from AlphaTauri to take Alonso's spot at Alpine. {It'll be interesting to see how this dynamic plays out.} Haas replaced Mick Schumaker with Nico Hulkenberg, who has been a reserve driver and was out of the sport altogether for a while. AlphaTauri brought in Nyck De Vries to replace Gasly. McLaren brought in Oscar Piastri to take Daniel Riccardo's seat, who never seemed to like that car. If you had Logan Sargeant as the next American F1 Driver, congratulations! He comes into Williams to replace Nicolas Latifi.

There was sort of a 2nd silly season this year as team pricipals moved around. The big news is that Binotto was sacked at Ferrari after a series of bad strategy calls last season, coupled with reliability problems. Fred Vasseur returns to the Prancing Horse to replace him. {I'm pretty excited to see how this works out.} Alfa replaced Vasseur with Andreas Seidl formerly of McLaren. Then Andrea Stella was hired as the new Team Principal at McLaren. {I know I'm forgetting at least one other move.}

Here's the Lineup

Red Bull Racing - Max Verstappen, Sergio Perez
Scuderia Ferrari - Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz
Mercedes/AMG - George Russell, Lewis Hamilton
Alpine - Esteban Ocon, Pierre Gasly
McLaren - Oscar Piastri, Lando Norris
Alfa Romeo - Valteri Bottas, Zhou Guanyu
Aston Martin - Lance Stroll, Fernando Alonso
Haas - Kevin Magnussen, Nico Hulkenberg
AlphaTauri - Nyck De Vries, Yuki Tsunoda
Williams - Alexander Albon, Logan Sargeant

Rules Changes

As opposed to last year there aren't many changes to the car this year as far as I know. There are some changes designed to improve (hopefully eliminate) the bouncing and porpoising problem that plagued several teams last season. There are structural changes to prevent the roll hoop from shearing off the way Zhou's did in Silverstone last year. Other than that I think they'll be driving pretty much the same car from the standpoint of the technical regs.

Launch Dates {to be filled in w/ links as reveals happen}

Haas: Livery reveal More photos
Red Bull: first look car launch
Williams: car launch more photos analysis
Alfa Romeo: first look more photos major change
AlphaTauri: February 11
Aston Martin: February 13
McLaren: February 13
Ferrari: February 14
Mercedes: February 15
Alpine: February 16

Calendar

Only 3 days of testing is allowed this year. This fits with F1's overall theme of giving the teams less time to gather data, creating more guesswork and opportunities to be wrong and just generally making it harder for them. The hope is to mix up the field because some will get it right and some will get it wrong.

The racing calendar includes 23 races again with 3 US races I think for the first time ever. Races in Miami and Las Vegas were added in addition to COTA. To make room, the China GP was booted off the schedule. They've had to cancel it for 3 years running now so probably no great loss. The other loser was the French GP. So we gave up two road tracks for a couple of city street tracks but at least they were pretty crappy road circuits.

Preseason Testing

Thursday, February 23 – Day 1 – Bahrain International Circuit
Friday, February 24 – Day 2 – Bahrain International Circuit
Saturday, February 25 – Day 3 – Bahrain International Circuit

Racing Schedule

March 3-5: Bahrain Grand Prix, Sakhir
March 17-19: Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Jeddah
March 31-April 2: Australian Grand Prix, Melbourne
April 28-30: Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Baku
May 5-7: Miami Grand Prix, Florida
May 19-21: Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, Imola
May 26-28: Monaco Grand Prix, Monaco
June 2-4: Spanish Grand Prix, Barcelona
June 16-18: Canadian Grand Prix, Montréal
June 30-July 2: Austrian Grand Prix, Spielberg
July 7-9: British Grand Prix, Silverstone
July 21-23: Hungarian Grand Prix, Mogyoród
July 28-30: Belgian Grand Prix, Spa-Francorchamps
August 25-27: Dutch Grand Prix, Zandvoort
September 1-3: Italian Grand Prix, Monza
September 15-17: Singapore Grand Prix, Marina Bay
September 22-24: Japanese Grand Prix, Suzuka
October 6-8: Qatar Grand Prix, Lusail
October 20-22: United States Grand Prix, Austin
October 27-29: Mexico City Grand Prix, Mexico City
November 3-5: Sao Paulo Grand Prix, Interlagos
November 16-18: Las Vegas Grand Prix, Las Vegas
November 24-26: Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Abu Dhabi

This post was edited on 3/12/23 at 8:40 am