re: 2023 Formula 1 season Thread

RBR seems to be a better race day car. Still hoping for an Alonso podium.

quote:

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Magic Alonso may be old, but he's still the best driver.

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I am drunk on an Alonso resurgence. I hope he pushes like hell on Ferrari and RB tomorrow to force errors. Sainz is guaranteed one, Charles will get a le tired of fighting, Checo no se, Max will not let him pass so.

Max 1
Alonso 2
Merc 3

1 LEC
2 VER
3 RUS

Just watched qualifying, two topics wondering if addressed:

I saw several times in Q1 and Q2 Alonso's DRS open then immediately slam close like RBR last year. Was Alonso suffering DRS issues? Cameras didnt focus on him much in Q3.

Is tire strategy the reason Hulk didnt abort his flying lap, come in, change tires, and try to put up a time in Q3? I find it very concerning, and very HAAS-like if the team didnt alert him to abort that flying lap. His track limit was Turn 4 and he had plenty of time to cool down, come in, and make it back around for flying lap. But it looks like he finished the lap + cool down killed a chance for another run.

130.809 was Hulk Q2, good enough for P8 in Q3 without improvment. However P7 was decent jump to 130.384.

Still though, Id think you gamble in Race 1 with such promising Q2 times.

I also want to see video of Hulks track limit. The ESPN broadcast made it seem the track limits were very lenient.

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Interesting that last year Ferrari owned the low speed corners and now it seems that Red Bull does.

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I guess it makes sense on Ferrari's end. They got beat routinely early on because of their straightline speed disadvantage.

Red Bull probably has a car that can do whatever they want. They might ultimately have better straightline speed when they deem it necessary.

Helmut Marko says that the race for them will be with Alonso. Ferrari's deg is too high to compete right now.

and

Toto Wolff admits Mercedes must change car design concept

quote:

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"I don't think this package is going to be competitive eventually," he said. "We gave it our best go over the winter and now we need to regroup, sit down with the engineers, who are totally not dogmatic about anything -- there are no holy cows -- and decide what is the development direction that we want to pursue in order to be competitive to win races.

"It is not like last year when you score many podiums and eventually you get there, I'm sure that we can win races this season, but it's the mid- and long-term that we need to look at and which decisions we need to make."

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Side note for this year as an experiment:

For the six Saturday sprints in 2023, the activation of DRS after the start or a safety car restart will now begin following one lap of action, rather than two.

Its RaceDay

Prediction for today

Ver
Per
Alo
Lec
Rus

I do think a Merc and Ferrari implode and DNF. I'm guessing its Ham and Sai

What we don’t know yet is how these engines perform over a full race. Remember last year how bad RBR was with reliability. I’m sure we see some of that today with a team or two.

Sky has allowed Nico back… guess they got off their Vax bullshite