Yeah the W11 was just ridiculous
F1 2023 Season
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
Hamilton still living rent free in Alonso’s head.
And for 1/2 the McLaren has been arguably the joint second best… what’s your point?
Alonso admitted to brake checking him after the race.
The point is to say Alonso did extremely well to end 4th because the Aston was the 5th best car is a false narrative. The Aston was leagues ahead of all others except the RB early season. Sure the McLaren was excellent the second half, but it was clear the second half of the season was much more competitive between McLaren, Mercedes, and Ferrari. The Aston for a lot of the second half the season was worse. But, it wasn’t as easy for any of the other teams to pick up points to catch Alonso in the second half because of the increased competitiveness. I’m not knocking Alonso but it’s clearly understandable why I would expect him to finish 4th. He’s still had a fabulous season given his age. He’s still a fantastic driver.
Obviously there’s more nuance to the debate but it’s ignorance to think Hamilton hasn’t lost a beat in wheel to wheel racing. And that’s perfectly fine and understandable given where he is in his career. Saying that doesn’t downplay his achievements.
Hamilton definitely doesn't have 'the dog' in him anymore that defined him in his early career. I think it's a mix of a few things, the farcical decision for Max, the shite car and age.
DId you just forget Mexico Gp where this car was just working and pushed Max to his limit? The car was just undrivable as soon as he started to push it to its limits on the last races of the season.
Of course, he's still a world class driver. That doesn't mean he's not lost something which was one of his primary qualities during his peak. If they are in similar race cars next or the season after, I question whether Hamilton has the mettle in him anymore to dig deep and win over Max. There's no shame in that considering Max is in his peak and Hamilton is past his.
Two different things. I fully agree with you that he’s lost a step in that ability to be aggressive and decisive in wheel to wheel racing.
But he’s still rapid and incredibly consistent. Given where he is in his career most likely Max does come out on top. But it’s different in this scenario than a car where you’re competing for 3-8th. When you’re in one of the two fastest cars it’s just about consistency and performing under pressure. I still think he can deliver in that regard.
The mercedes is the most compromised car on the grid this season. Originally designed for slim side pods, had a mid season change of concept and its been running a frankenstein car ever since (the radiators are in the wrong place for example).
It doesnt have enough rear end downforce (the rear suspension needs to be re-designed). Therefore it needs to run with double beam wings to produce the necessary downforce (the RB and Mclaren run single Beam Wings). Even then thats not enough and it needs a larger rear wing to create more downforce, which in turn creates more drag, which in turn reduces straightline speed and DRS.
The cockpit is too far forward over the front axle, which doesnt inspire confidence for its drivers. Its wildly inconsistant from track to track, hot to cold and vice versa.
The corner entry is a gamble on whether it will rotate or under rotate. No wonder Mike Elliot, who originally oversaw the slim sidepod idea and ignored input from hamilton and russell left (ahem..cough..cough...fired) and was replaced by James Allison.
Hamilton quote from The Race website:
“It's just up and down, per corner from the moment you hit the brakes, the moment you turn, the moment you hit the apex, it's massively out of balance. Very hard to predict what's going to happen.”
The Race went on to say
"..Hamilton is at his best when decisive on entry and able to carry the speed into the corner, load the car up rapidly, rotate it quickly and then get on with feeding the power in for the exit..."
He hasnt been able to do that with the W13 or W14 cars, as both have been turkeys.
If James Allison and his team can give Hamilton a car he has confidence in, then he'll be back to his best, which will have a knockon effect on all aspects of his racing and racecraft. After all James Allison played a crucial role in two of the sport's most dominant F1 cars of their generations – the Ferrari F2004 of Schmacher and the Mercedes W11 of Hamilton.
Thats why i wouldnt write his racecraft obituary too soon. We might see Hamilton back to his best next season with a car that is built to his strengths.
Glad it's over. What a borefest this season was.
I partly get that sentiment but if you can't at least somewhat appreciate what happened this season... I guess the true appreciation may not come til years later when we think back to how ludicrous this dominance was. Or heck for this one we may actually have Netflix do some of that work and remind people a lot of other things happened this year.
9/10 people ive spoken with who said something similar hadn't even watched a single complete race this year and just regurgitate terrible F1 tabloid headlines. I really wish people would take some time to watch documentaries about the history of this sport and gain some respect for everything that goes into it. Especially now in a time when every sense of creativity, reliability and safety has virtually been regulated to death. In fact, if people want to complain about those aspects I d say go ahead.
To me the 90s were peak F1 but I also know that's a lot of unhealthy nostalgia. Teams could virtually spend and creative design their way out of of a bag and safety and reliability were secondary. Do we want those times back? I honestly don't know. Seeing how toxic F1 social media is these days I'm very happy it didn't exist then because the sport now is squeeky clean in comparison. Its a sport that keeps evolving rather a footie which has largely remained the same and that can be both great and terrible depending on what side of the outcome your fav team or driver is on. Who knows, in 26 Alpine s celebrity investments may pay off and we ll all be moaning about the French making it boring.
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90´s were just awesome nothing like those races.
I appreciate good racing but that really wasn´t the case this season.
Let´s just say that RB have had some luck regarding penalties and judges decisions lately.
But that always happens to the best teams, lets just say you make your own luck.
It’s very hard to compare, given the amount of tanking he’s done. You could see when he needed to pull out a gap he could pop the engine mode up and pull out a second in a corner or two.
Ive been watching F1 since the 80s and there has always been teams that get a lead on a new set of rules. Teams were generally able to spend to quickly catch up or the FIA would regulate, sometimes race to race, to slow an extraordinarily fast car down. With the cost cap and the overall incompetence of the stewards neither of those things are happening right now. Between Max's dominance and DRS we've got the dullest racing I can ever remember.
Except for the 5 seasons it took for any team to catch up to Ferrari and the 7 it took to finally stop Mercedes.
One has to seperate Max's achievements and F1's general development. It's not his fault he couldn't race in better times and he's hardly put a foot wrong in 2 years of racing now. He has the best car but so does his teammate... and it's a world of difference between them.
F1 general development is as poor as anyone could have predicted at liberty's takeover. We've had one championship worth it's salt in the past 7 years, and that year they bungled it so bad that the only people keen on remembering it are the ones who felt wronged. Everyone else just attempts to act as if that year didn't happen. DRS kills all race-craft around overtakes and the cost cap is detrimental to the sport, straight bizarre sometimes (Sainz). The people running the sport have never been as disrespectful towards every other stakeholder (drivers, teams, fans). I hope we some day find a worthy successor to what F1 used to be.
F1 general development is as poor as anyone could have predicted at liberty's takeover. We've had one championship worth it's salt in the past 7 years, and that year they bungled it so bad that the only people keen on remembering it are the ones who felt wronged. Everyone else just attempts to act as if that year didn't happen. DRS kills all race-craft around overtakes and the cost cap is detrimental to the sport, straight bizarre sometimes (Sainz). The people running the sport have never been as disrespectful towards every other stakeholder (drivers, teams, fans). I hope we some day find a worthy successor to what F1 used to be.
The field is closer together than it’s probably ever been since it went to 10 teams.
Biggest problems are oversaturation of races, money tracks that are shit and devoid of atmosphere, over reliance on DRS for overtaking and tyres that overheat in dirty air.
If they could fix the tyres so they don’t overheat when following DRS could be scrapped easily.
Overtaking should only be determined by braking, driving line and battery use
Biggest problems are oversaturation of races, money tracks that are shit and devoid of atmosphere, over reliance on DRS for overtaking and tyres that overheat in dirty air.
If they could fix the tyres so they don’t overheat when following DRS could be scrapped easily.
Overtaking should only be determined by braking, driving line and battery use
You can use qualifying records when the cars were light weight and obviously going flat out. Just for an example take Bahrain: Max's pole this year was 1:29.703, Lewis' in 2020 was 1:27.264. If Max rocked up to the 2020 GP in this year's car he'd be down in 16th nestled between the Alfa's of Giovinazzi and Raikkonen.
Agreed F1 is a mess. You cant seperate Max's achievements and general F1 as he and his team races within the rules set by F1.
The "Cost Cap" although required to reign in spending of the big teams is broken and has led to worse racing on track and skewed the barometer towards single team domiance.
Its obvious to everyone if you nail a new set of regulations then your competition will struggle to catchup. Therefore leading to one team and ideally two drivers (not one) dominating for a few years. This is nothing new, same for Mercedes and turbo-hybrid era. In that era we had the artificiality of 'tokens' blocking drivetrain development. Once dropped the gap to Mercedes, engine wise began to close. Leaving aside the rule changes to slow them down.
If say Ferrari or another works team nail the 2026 regulations then theres every chance someone like leclerc could do a verstappen and win almost every race for 2-3 seasons. Until the next change. Because no one can catch up due to the cost cap.
The cost cap also handicaps some teams unfairly. AM and Mclaren managed to get their new wind tunnels outside of cost cap because work started on them before the cost cap began.
Williams want to upgrade their facilities some of which are 20 years old. They should be allowed to do so outside of the cost cap. But FIA said no. So Williams are stuck. Try to develop the car with out of date facilities or sacrifise the car and prize money to develop the facilities. Catch 22 and utter bullshit.
Half the teams dont even get anywhere near the cost cap limit on a yearly basis.
Also drivers have to be more careful on track with overtakes and defending. No point defending too aggressively if it damages your car and costs you down the line with upgrades you then cant afford to bring to the track. How many 'lick the stamp and sent it' lunges have we seen since cost cap started? Alot less.
How many times have we seen drivers and teams let other drives through for position "as its not them we're racing" or "thats not our race" ?
Will disagree on the one championship in past 7 years statement. 2017 and 2018 were good years in which vettel and ferrari as a combination blew chances to beat hamilton to the title. Whatever innovation or grey area ferrari were exploting, it gave them a chance at a championship. We wont get that sort of innovation under the cost cap as everyone's too far behind RB and chasing just to copy the car concept nevermind improve on it.
So i think we are unfortuntely stuck with one team domination per rule change era for a good while yet. Records will be padded out as the number of races increases.
The only way to judge seasons like 11/12/13/19/20/22/23 where a single driver had no competition even from his teammate, will be in a decade after that season. Opinions change as recentism becomes history.
One of the best examples is Seb Vettel at RB. We would judge him very differently if he retired after title no4 rather than go on to struggle at ferrari and AM. Its modern day formula one, where the machinery makes more of a difference than the driver. The pendulum swung the other way in F1's glory years of the 70s & 80s.
Sometimes I feel like Toto Wolf is posting in this thread.
It felt like Christian Horner was posting in here during the turbo hybrid era.
Yea but RB has been dominating for 2 seasons now. 2! That's a lot longer than 5 or 7 seasons and FIA should be ashamed of themselves for not changing the rules completely 3 races into the 2022 season to stop F1 from becoming a one horse race for the first time ever.
There's too many races and too many sprint races which are a complete farce. Domination is part and parcel with F1.
I mean, you can just not watch few races you don't like.
I am enjoying watching F1 this often, and I'll definitely miss it during this winter break.
There were only probably two truly dominant seasons in that Ferrari reign with some true greats challenging them either side. They were just that good.
I don't see much different in what Mercedes did to what Max is doing to be honest.
And is still argue RB didn't even really dominate until the second half of 22. Had Ferrari not shot themselves in the foot consistently that would have ended much closer than it did.
On another note: though the driver lineups are set so no speculation there - I am *very* curious about what cars Merc and RB in particular will bring to testing. Or rather - the first race because at least one of those will bring a mule. Either one has the potential to bring something rather drastically different again. Merc bc they basically have to and have the power to do it, and RB because their windtunnels and development cap will largely be unlocked now. As has been joked about before - wouldn't surprise me if Newey finds a way to make the zero pod work, especially since the RB pods have continued to get smaller already.
Bring on the extremely fuzzy spy shots!!
Hamilton had genuine competition from Rosberg till end of 2016.
Then genuine competition from Vettel for 2017 & 2018.
2019/2020 were the most current RB like (22/23) season's where there was no competition even internally.
There isn't an issue (as far as im concerned with RB dominating). The issue is the complete lack of competition for verstappen, from rivals (their own fault for crap design) and internally (teammate who isnt good enough). So it makes it as dull as Mercedes years 2019/2020.
Who has asked for the rules to be changed? No-one. Not in the paddock, nor on here as far as i can recall.
I mean, you can just not watch few races you don't like.
I am enjoying watching F1 this often, and I'll definitely miss it during this winter break.
I enjoy watching it regularly too, so like the number of races BUT wish they'd get rid of some of the duff tracks and bring back some of the proper circuits
Theres a cost cap and testing is extremely limited. No one will bring a "mule". RB may sandbag and hide some new stuff, only cause they are so far ahead.
Also no one is going to go down zero side pod design. It requires active suspension to make it work as you need a floor that can be moved across the lap. The RB is designed to have a stable aero profile map i.e. anti dive and anti lift. Its key to the RB floor geometry.
I dont think I agree with you.
We could see that the car for most of the season was utter shit and only very briefly showed it could be a race winner , but then went backwards.
We can only hope that Mercedes have got next seasons car right and are up there with RB and getting wins, because another season like this and more and more fans will turn their back on the sport.
The rumoured change in the sprint race, will not work for me, I thin better to scrap it totally.
You are right that 2021 knocked the stuffing out of him, but I thought he came back well and yes his age is against him, where has I have no doubt he is physically fit, I would bet he hurts more after each race.
Iam not taking anything away from Max, he , the team and the car were working in perfect unison, and you need all 3 to get a winning season, but I have never seen a team , driver and car working so well , not even Mecedes at their peak.
Lewis is now 38, realistically how many season does he have left in him, well Alonso is 42 and in the right car I think he could win races, Lewis is a better driver than Alonso, so I would say minimum 4 more seasons, he is desperate for that 8th title.
I was being facetious mate. A post that says 2 seasons are longer than 7 seasons isn't a serious one.
The-Race website have a interview with Hamilton.
He confirmed the team didn't listen to him for the changes he wanted for the 2022 car. But those changes are happening for 2024 car. So probably one of the reasons Mike Elliot got fired and replaced by James Allison.
Though he did confirm he was going to retire after the abu dhabi race if it had ended differently.
Does make me wonder, who Mercedes would have gotten for 22 in such short notice. I presume they would have tried somehow to get Alonso? (Obviously no one knew the car would be a dog). If Alonso wasnt available then who?
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/hamilton-end-of-year-interview/
He confirmed the team didn't listen to him for the changes he wanted for the 2022 car. But those changes are happening for 2024 car. So probably one of the reasons Mike Elliot got fired and replaced by James Allison.
Though he did confirm he was going to retire after the abu dhabi race if it had ended differently.
Does make me wonder, who Mercedes would have gotten for 22 in such short notice. I presume they would have tried somehow to get Alonso? (Obviously no one knew the car would be a dog). If Alonso wasnt available then who?
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/hamilton-end-of-year-interview/
Abdu Dhabi - post season, tyre and young driver test Results.
1. Carlos Sainz 1:24.799 69 Laps
2. Sergio Perez 1:25.724 49 Laps
3. Oscar Piastri 1:25.930 48 Laps
4. Felipe Drugovich 1:26.265 53 Laps
5. Robert Shwartzman 1:26.267 60 Laps
6. George Russell 1:26.283 58 Laps
7. Jake Dennis 1:26.441 61 Laps
8. Pato O’Ward 1:26.499 72 Laps
9. Lance Stroll 1:27.775 34 Laps
10. Franco Colapinto 1:26.832 65 Laps
11. Oliver Bearman 1:26.928 45 Laps
12. Esteban Ocon 1:26.958 63 Laps
13. Daniel Ricciardo 1:26.965 55 Laps
14. Frederik Vesti 1:27.041 58 Laps
15. Jack Doohan 1:27.176 53 Laps
16. Pietro Fittipaldi 1:27.368 54 Laps
17. Theo Pourchaire 1:27.783 12 Laps
18. Alex Albon 1:27.824 51 Laps
19. Zhou Guanyu 1:28.747 54 Laps
20. Ayumu Iwasa 1:30.538 41 Laps
1. Carlos Sainz 1:24.799 69 Laps
2. Sergio Perez 1:25.724 49 Laps
3. Oscar Piastri 1:25.930 48 Laps
4. Felipe Drugovich 1:26.265 53 Laps
5. Robert Shwartzman 1:26.267 60 Laps
6. George Russell 1:26.283 58 Laps
7. Jake Dennis 1:26.441 61 Laps
8. Pato O’Ward 1:26.499 72 Laps
9. Lance Stroll 1:27.775 34 Laps
10. Franco Colapinto 1:26.832 65 Laps
11. Oliver Bearman 1:26.928 45 Laps
12. Esteban Ocon 1:26.958 63 Laps
13. Daniel Ricciardo 1:26.965 55 Laps
14. Frederik Vesti 1:27.041 58 Laps
15. Jack Doohan 1:27.176 53 Laps
16. Pietro Fittipaldi 1:27.368 54 Laps
17. Theo Pourchaire 1:27.783 12 Laps
18. Alex Albon 1:27.824 51 Laps
19. Zhou Guanyu 1:28.747 54 Laps
20. Ayumu Iwasa 1:30.538 41 Laps
Maybe Albon given the Mercedes Williams links?
Toto Wolff revealed that Aston Martin’s performance gains at the start of the F1 2023 season were beneficial to Mercedes. The impressive surge by Aston Martin allowed Mercedes to rule out shared components as the cause of their early-season struggles.
“It was actually really good that Aston Martin was so competitive at the beginning of the season,”
“Because that at least for us made it clear that the rear end is not the problem, the gearbox is not the problem, the engine is not the problem, the rear suspension is not the problem. We have to look elsewhere.”
“And that’s why I like having teams that are on the same spec.”
VIA: [PLANET F1]
“It was actually really good that Aston Martin was so competitive at the beginning of the season,”
“Because that at least for us made it clear that the rear end is not the problem, the gearbox is not the problem, the engine is not the problem, the rear suspension is not the problem. We have to look elsewhere.”
“And that’s why I like having teams that are on the same spec.”
VIA: [PLANET F1]
That level of troubleshooting is more common at a software startup that scrambles to provide an overnight fix in production than an F1 racing team with thousands of employees.
Here's one more for Toto, the paint probably was not the problem either.