re: 2023 Formula 1 season Thread

The inimitable Taki Inoue has put in his two cents. He believes de Vries should have been given the benefit of the doubt because of his record at the lower levels. Marko said recently that Horner never wanted de Vries in the seat, so they just weren't going to have any patience with him.



Taki Inoue has spoken.

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It keeps their options open since debris was toast anyway.

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While I think most people are surprised that a rookie F1 driver would get canned so early when everyone agrees it takes time to adjust to F1 (especially because of the lack of testing opportunities), yeah it became clear that de Vries was not in their future plans, so they made a move that will help answer some questions for next year. It was the smart (but ruthless) thing for Red Bull to do.

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Danny gets an audition but they can still keep Checo next year if they want or go with one of the handful of other possibilities.

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Man I am so looking forward to the next race. They're not just evaluating Ric, this is a way to figure out where Yuki is at in his development, since de Vries turned out to be an underwhelming competitor. Yuki made great strides this year in consistency and reliability, but the one thing that's harder to determine is, is he fast compared to the top guys? Since each team's car is unique, you can only figure that out by pairing a driver with another driver who is a known quantity. Red Bull would not have given Ric this opportunity if they didn't think he was back to his old self. They said they fixed (in the simulator) the bad habits he picked up from trying to drive the McLaren, and apparently his performance at the Pirelli test confirmed it. I wonder what people are expecting between these two?! Will Ric or Yuki consistently outperform the other? Will they go back and forth the rest of the year?

0% chance that happens.

ETA: I guess anything could happen, but that would be WILD wild.

As long as Checo keeps it in the top 10 and Max keeps doing Max things, I dont think constructors is at risk for them. The Ric/Yuki experiment is about who gets the RB seat in 2024.

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Let’s say Ric gets in and shows solid performance the next 3-5 races and Perez keeps Perezing, does RB swap the two with a handful of races left to ensure Constructors?

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Red Bull could replace Perez with Nicholas Latifi and still finish well clear of 2nd place in Constructors at this point.

What’s wild is Devries came in hot with Williams where he filled in doing P9 in that shite box that day.

Didn’t go great at AT, but I think the overriding thing is Horner didn’t want him in the first place.

If Checo wasn’t underperforming, I do wonder if this would have happened, the reality is, I think that had a lot to do with this move as there are reports that Horner told D Ric there was no chance he would do a direct back to Redbull.

toto wasting no time to meet with nyck. mick has the third driver role now, wonder if they let him sweep the garage?

Nyck looks like a jockey getting ready for the Kentucky Derby.

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What’s wild is Devries came in hot with Williams where he filled in doing P9 in that shite box that day.

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I think it’s been proven now that Monza ‘22 was fools gold for Debris.

Last years Williams was a rocket in a straight line (the reveal of their super simple floor shows partially why) and he got to drive it at the Temple of Speed.

He was teed up well to score points in a slippery car that was not representative of his/its performance over most of the calendar.

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the reveal of their super simple floor shows partially why

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Keep in mind that their floor was redesigned after that crash with an upgrade later in the season and their performance improvement is probably due in part to the newer floor design. The Williams is still a rocket ship on the straights though.