2023 Australian GP: Post Race Analysis

There is no question the Red Bull is the fastest car. I suspect Verstappen saved up a lot of battery while he waited for DRS to be enabled so he could attack right away. Alonso was doing his thing in 3rd running 1:24.644 on Lap 11, then 1:23.321 on Lap 12 in clean air, too far to use DRS. Gasly in the much slower Alpine did a 1:23.647 on Lap 12 with no DRS, and George Russell ran a 1:23.169 trying to pass Gasly but failed. So the 1.1 seconds faster was circumstantial to that lap, but is relative to the RBR/Max being a significantly faster car. There is no logical reason for LH to slow to a 1:24.616 while letting off the throttle extremely early on both straights. He lost 1 full second in just the lift early and brake early stages going into Turn 9, and Turn 11. The very next lap he was running normal pace.

Verstappen on Lap 12 hit 303 kph with a slight tow behind LH, no DRS. Lap 12 he hit 325 kph with the aid of a tow up to around 320 kph. That gives a DRS of about 22 kph, give or take. We don't know how much battery was used between those laps. Safe to say Max did not use overtake modes on lap 11 when he was specifically waiting for lap 12, where he likely did use overtake.

Max never hit 341 kph in the race. That was Perez. As I showed above, Max hit a Vmax of 325 kph while Hamilton did 298 before lifting early. A significant difference, but Lewis typically was hitting a bit over 300 kph. Alonso was mostly in clean air, but maybe a very slight tow behind LH, was hitting roughly the same speeds. Max in clean air with zero tow was doing maybe 1-2 kph faster, but we can assume engine was turned down.

The Red Bull is quite a lot faster than everyone, and they have a significant top speed advantage. No denying it. It's not much different than a lot of 2022, just perhaps more this year. It's not all DRS though, they aren't 2 seconds a lap faster than everyone, and they don't have a 30+ kph advantage over everyone either. The media is not correct with their halfassed reporting. Isn't it weird everyone is focused on Max's pass on Lewis on Lap 12, talking about the insane speed difference, but nobody is looking at the fact LH slowed down and made the speed difference far more exaggerated?