2023 predictions

Anyone want to make early predictions for the 2023 season?


First of all we have some minor rule changes, the cars do carry over but are slightly revised thanks to the technical directive. The floor edge is to be raised thus sealing the floor is much harder. Other changes are tyre blanket temperature is reduced from 70c (down from 100c front, 80c rear in 2021) this year to 50c next year (unrelated to the TD, but was already planned and agreed over a year ago). Pirelli has also said their new tyre structure will give more feedback to the drivers (at a request from several drivers).

With that in mind, here's my predictions. Not based on feelings but more on what I believe the teams are doing right now, their strengths and weaknesses.

Ferrari
Ferrari started 2022 with a great car. It works well everywhere, warms it's tyres very quickly which will only be an advantage in qualifying 2023 with the lower tyre temperatures. Since TD39 however, tyre management during the race has fallen off a cliff. Before it was managable compared to Red Bull but now it's a big problem, and one not easy to solve. Add to that the "strategy" team that seems coated in teflon, well...

Prediction: King of qualifying, poor tyre management in the race will massively hurt prospects. Binotto will continue to protect the team that'll result in a nuclear fall out between him and Charles. Will Binotto see out the year?

Red Bull
IMO the clear favorites. If my understanding of the new floor regulations is correct, and looking how relatively high and with a small rake already this year the Red Bull runs, I don't think it'll affect them much. The team gells very well and since the TD is in place have been unbeatable. They'll have learned from this years car and will strip more weight out of it, and presumably it'll allow for more peak rotatation instead of the current ''lazy'' car. Max wants a lot from the tyres as well, so more feedback through those will only allow him to push harder.

Prediction: Probably fight tooth and nail with Ferrari on Saturdays, Sundays probably to be a repeat of post technical directive?

Mercedes
Mercedes has struggled with tyre heating for a very long time. They always invented clever ways to circumvent this. Not that their championships dependent on fixing this, it was more just another little aid that made their lives that bit more easier. If the clever wheels, DAS etc where removed in-season they'd have been just as dominant points wise. Now that the engines are all within 1% of each other though, Mercedes has really struggled with engineering their way out of probelms like they used to. Before they could rely on superior engines whilst they played with the setup to see what worked, now they can't...Their tyre issues still exist. Once up to temperature their car is best of the rest, though. A bigger worry for them is that their concept in my eyes relies completely on sealing the floor. Zero sidepods to reduce drag even further has big fired. We see from other Mercedes engined cars that top speed isn't an issue for them. With the new floor regulations surely they need a change of concept? I'd be surprised if they can be competitive with RB/Ferrari if they need to change concepts. Will their 2022 lobbying come back to bite them?

Prediction: I don't expect them to solve their tyre issue so their qualifying is to possibly be even worse than this year. As we learned since 2014, only a fool would write Mercedes off, so maybe they can pull a rabbit out of the hat. I'm going to predict that the most fighting they'll do is with Ferrari once their tyres fall of the cliff...

Mclaren
This is a hard one. This car is all over the place most of the year, but their recent update seems to have worked.

Prediction: They'll have learned from their latest updates and will be back on 2020/21 form and become semi-regular podium finishers.

Alpine
Will fall behind Mclaren, purely because their driver line up is weaker than Norris.

Aston Marin
With Alonso at the wheel they'll move up. Alonso is practically an old and frail man at this point but he'll make Stroll dig very deep to try and beat him

Williams
To fight hard with Alfa. Albon and De Vries make a strong combination of drivers in the back of the pack.

Alfa
Their early pace in 2022 is nowhere to be found so I suspect they'll be falling back further and further.

Haas
Solidifies their place at the back of the field once more. They need someone willing to put money in the team to come in. Only 1 upgrade this season despite having the most hours of anyone available. Clearly Gene Haas has said no mas. A shame really because the team had a lot of potential at the start of the year and had they thrown any money at it would've been a regular point scorer, making the team much more valuable when Gene finds a buyer (clearly he's out of love with the sport).

 

RedBull X2 titles as the car is well refined!

The rest will give us things to talk about.

Will Piastri be noticed. Lol. Not much will be new. Gasly n Ocon ?? Lance Vs FA.

 

I think Piastri will do no better than Ricciardo thus wondering if it was worth it for Mclaren to have bought Ric out of his contract...would've been better of putting him at Williams on the Mclaren payrol for a season and then take him for 2024.

 

Fully agree!! The Management for Piastri caused a useless storm and should not have allowed him to speak directly in addressing Alpine situation.
Also Norris needs a better car soon or he might be hoping to leave. He is wasting years now not challenging for wins. McLaren will be an interesting evolution!

 

Yup...with the amount of noise generated from the Alpine fallout, they sure put the eyes on themselves IMO.

If Mclaren doesn't improve this year, Norris is the number 1 candidate for a Mercedes seat when that opens up.

 

Well, nobody predicted what happened in 2021 or 2022 so any precition at this moment would be a crapshot. If Mercedes changes or fixes its concept, or if Ferrari makes a step forward similar to this year´s, there could be a big change at the top. Also it´s going to be the second season for Ferrari´s and Alpine´s engines and that could change the balance in the mid-pack. Piastri could be a flop like many other future stars and Alonso could bring his usual jinx to Aston Martin. Who knows.

 

+1 agree

 

The effects of the budget cap will start to become more obvious. I would expect more budget monitoring from now on by the FIA, and maybe mid-season checks to make sure all teams fall in line and avoid a repeat of this year's controversy. The top teams (and previous high spenders) will see their advantage eroded over the years, starting from 2023. There will be a leveling up of chassis performance between teams as they have become acquainted with the ground effect rules, and have less resources and less money to develop new design. Track performance, race strategy, and tyre management will make the difference, with drivers skill too, of course.

My prediction is that Red Bull will still be at the top, followed by Mercedes making a come back and Ferrari dropping to 3rd spot.
Red Bull is the most solid team, and ticks all the boxes. We will see if Mercedes is good as catching up. Ferrari is simply waiting for its palace revolution.

Big unknown at McLaren, Alpine and Aston Martin; they will be jousting for the 4th spot, each having a new driver. Will Piastri be as good as they say? What about the Gasly-Ocon partnership ? With Alonso, Aston may in fact progress in the coming years, as Stroll Sr is investing in equipment and staff.

Then it will be the usual tail enders: Alpha Tauri (pity for De Vries), Williams, Alfa Romeo and Haas. Alfa/Sauber will probably be declining until the Audi take-over in 2026.

 

Ferrari, forget it slump back into midfield

 

Ferrari will get its **** together.
The update on the car will solve the tyre issue.
Chuck will be WEC and Carlos runner up.
Ferrari will win the WCC





Oh, hold on, that was a dream I had last night

 

De Vries at AT no? Second Williams driver unconfirmed,

Interested to hear where you think AT will sit next year

 

Wow I'm stupid! You're absolutely right.

AT...very very hard to say. They've massively underperformed this year. De Vries will be the real test for Tsunoda. Tsunoda has had an up and down year so far, had a few bad performances, but also good ones that in the end went unrewarded due to reliability issues/things out of his hand. I expect them to slot in between Aston and Williams.

 

The Ferrari will be "dominant" in qualifying and racing with CS slightly behind CLC.

The FIA will "discover" Ferrari exceeded the budget cap in 2022 and punish them, unlike RBR, and they will be excluded from driver's and constructor's championships...

Max and RBR will inherit the 2023 championships.

 

That is an interesting position. I think Norris is on alot of radars!

 

Italy would actively be at war if that were to happen.

 

Depend on the outcome of the budget cap story this year !

 

Another prediction related to this:

Around this time next year several teams will have gone over the budget cap. Fall out from this is that it'll essentially be cancelled because it's uncontrollable in a timely fashion, and the hypocrisy of the budget cap will be highlighted since the big teams in reality only spend a fraction less than before.

 

Red Bull will be the favorites. Max has Newey and his design team building a car around him, with Honda providing a fast and reliable engine. Red Bull and Max are just too good on the medium and low downforce circuits to not be the favorites. They learned from the end of 21' how important tire management and top speed are, and they don't seem to give two craps about poles, focusing on the best setups for tire management. Max is also cool under pressure. He reminds me of Schumi in how a driver can breath down his neck for 30 laps and he doesn't crack, and he's always searching for a faster line in the race.

I actually put Mercedes above Ferrari to be the closest to Red Bull. I think they comeback enough to win some races. Toto will whip the team into shape in the off season, and I expect them to bring two car concepts to Bahrain testing again for them to build on. They won't make the same design mistakes. I'd also wager they put more resources behind Russel, because he seems cool under pressure and his assertiveness to override the strategists in Zandvoort was impressive. You have to speak up in those moments and save the team from themselves. Hamilton seems totally lost in the new era. If he wants good results, he needs to get better at his qualifying form.

Ferrari are a mess. I think they'll resolve their tire issues. The reason the tires fall off the car right now is because of the lower downforce setups the team have been force into post TD39, and that can be resolved with a new rear suspension design, likely.

The bigger problems for Ferrari is that they're not building the car around Leclerc, and supporting him as their lead driver. For whatever reason, they keep trying to develop the car and team around two drivers, and that has a terrible history of never working at Ferrari. The development cycle at Ferrari is simply behind the teams. While Red Bull and Mercedes bring major concept experiment to Bahrain, and have two or three major updates to their cars by Barcelona, Ferrari twiddle their thumbs in Bahrain, and only get serious around Silverstone. It's an old story at this point that Ferrari rest on their laurels in the spring.

Leclerc has to assert himself more on the radio and override stupid strategy calls. He has to take some responsibility. And he has to learn that overdriving a 2nd or 3rd place car and trashing it trying to win an unwinnable race is unacceptable. Binotto needs to stay in the damn motorhome on race weekends, and take Rueda and Jain with him.

Anyone else notice Laurent Mekies taking a more active and aggressive role? Seems the race weekends are more drama free when he has more control over race operations, but maybe I'm imagining things. He's also getting more active in the press, too.

 

I definitely agree on those points.

Red Bull has only to fine-tune their already winning car concept. Verstappen near perfect in all circumstances.

Mercedes has to design a new car. Right about Russell taking over the leading role there.

Ferrari, well ... They actually live in a parallel universe. The management should be treated for schizophrenia first.

 

I think it will be closer with the top 3 teams. Both Ferrari and Merc have strong points. Ferrari - qualifying, Merc - race pace. They just need to sort it out.

 

Mercedes will be the main challenger to Red Bull next year, IMO.

Ferrari has too many aspects to fix first.

 

Tough to disagree with much of this. The advantage Ferrari has over Mercedes is that Ferrari's concept is something proven that works and can be improved upon, but you are also correct that Ferrari's total failure in supporting Leclerc, they won't be serious contenders. They'll snatch a win here and there but again will fail. I think 2023 will be the last year of Binotto.

Interesting to see if Merc can beat Ferrari or not. I for one hope they definitely won't.

 

https://www.planetf1.com/news/ferrari-connection-td39-tyre-wear/

 

Haas will sell to Andretti, Alonzo and Sainz will move there, as will Alfa Romeo sponsorship. Ferrari will replace Sainz with Riccardo, and because of management, will be fighting to hang on to 4th. It will be Leclerc's last year with the team. Audi will rebuild Sauber with Norris and Zhou. Perez will go to Williams. Mercedes will try to find a nice way to move Lewis out. Red Bull will bring in a young driver to pair with Max. Thoughts for now.