2023 Bahrain GP: Post Race Analysis

@SS454

I saw that post race interview with Lawrence Stroll and you're right.....not one mention of Alonso.....only his son.

 

This is not a surprise. Its public this is a father - son dream operation. Nothing else.

 

Alonso is probably one of the two drivers that can actually develop a car, so the Aston will only get better. I wonder what FA real reaction was when he found out who hit him at the start?!

 

He saw it in the post race room with Max and Checo.......he didn't say anything.

 

I saw that, but I think he already knew at this point.

 

The only analysis point that matters after this race is this. The 2023 season is going to be a disaster for F1. There is only one car and one driver in the championship - RB with Max. Aero GOAT Newey has destroyed the opposition and Perez is too weak to challenge Max. Everybody else is chasing the minor places.

Liberty should be desperately worried. This sort of dominance is not good for the marketability of F1. It’s a total turn off.

Look out for some desperate rule changes designed to try to slow down RB….

 

Great summary as per usual SS454.

This is the first time that Max started a car that appears to be truly dominant, assuming the Ferrari deg wasn't a one off...truly scary to think what he may just achieve this season.

 

Lights out and away we go

 

I don't know about the "F1 being a disaster" part for 2023.

Alonso is the talk right now along with ALOOOOT of people are wanting to watch the Alonso - Lewis battle on the track for 2023.....it is really amped up right now.

 

+1 I think the battle for 2nd 3rd and 4th is genuinely exciting.

Not sure what people want really. The engines are all very equal since 2022, so the difference is made between the aero, chassis and driver. Chassis and aero is limited by budget, CFD and windtunnel hours, with the better team getting the fewest hours...Only thing you can do to stop RB winning? Order Newey to retire and ask Max to drive for Mclaren.

 

The Alonso Lewis battle is a made up sub plot to todays race. For those of us interested in F1 as true fans, this is interesting, but to the casual F1 fan it’s just not. But be under no illusions, RB has already won. Ferrari will bag second. Merc will come third. Aston simply can’t compete with the pace of in season development of the top 3, and sadly, as the season goes on, they will struggle to keep their current level of performance.

Perhaps I’m wrong, and I’m being too negative. After all it’s only been one race. But I’ve watched this sport for over 40 years and rarely have I seen a team with such dominance from day 1. RB and Max will break records this year. I would put money on it.

 

Analysis:
Red Bull: unbeatable (at the moment)
Ferrari: new face same result..broken in so many ways
AM: damn!!!
Merc: lol
Mclaren: Suicide prevention
Williams: 2nd star of the show next to AM. Very impressive
Alfa: meh
Alpine: yikes
Haas: bad form
Alpha: meh

 

Here's what so sad about modern F1 for me.

Whenever I sleep during the actual race and have to watch the archived replay, I tend to skip around, waiting for the moment that Leclerc and Ferrari are listed as "out" on the scoring ticker. I did it Baku, I did it in France, and I did it today, and Ferrari didn't fail to deliver in failing so hard.

If Leclerc is smart, he'll run screaming from Ferrari before they ruin his career like they did Alonso and Vettel.

 

I'm actually going for AM to beat Merc this year (well, with Alonso. Genuinely no disrespect to Stroll right now, but Hamilton and Russell are the stronger drivers and I don't think AM can outdevelop Merc by *that* much). The team that AM has in place now, combined with their development time and their current pace, they really could beat Merc this year and look to make life difficult to Ferrari at certain tracks.

It's my belief that Merc has focused so damn hard on that porpoising, they actually completely forgot that a car with porpoising, wasn't exactly slow, it was more a by-product of their speed rather than the cause of them not being as fast as they hoped. You heard George, Lewis, Toto talk about it all year long last year and even got the rules changed for it. It's almost as if they genuinely started to belief all their issues had porpoising as the blame. One look at Ferrari last year showed that a porpoising car would still be mindblowingly fast.

Add in with Merc refusing to swallow their pride and sticking with their silly zero side pod concept, a theory Adrian Newey talked about YEARS ago in his book (having considered it for the FW14 or so...which had active ride height to even better manage everything...yet didn't implement it because he actually preferred using proper sidepods to manage the air for efficiency reasons!)...they could've gotten this knowledge by buying Newey's book for a not at all bank breaking 16 pounds on amazon.

They lost a lot of people over the years, their team manager finally can't piggy back over the work done by Brawn/Schumacher/Costa anymore and now faces a real crisis: His star driver not having signed as of yet, beaten by their customer team, needing a new concept...

 

If needed, Merc could simply reverse engineer the AM for themselves. But it is surprising to me that Merc stayed with the zero pod concept that had failed so spectacularly last year. Poor team judgement.

But, hats off to AM. They really have developed a mega car. And with Alonso, like him or loath him, they have a driver who can extract the maximum from their package. His race craft today was excellent.

 

For those that missed it....here it is. Not one mention about Alonso.

Lawrence Stroll Bahrain GP Post-Race Interview | F1 2023

 

Merc's biggest problem is that the whole layout of their ICE/Chassis etc revolves around the thin sidepods. Sure they could bolt on some RB/AM style sidepods but they wouldn't see as many benefits as they hope. A lot of what makes the RB/AM so good is what's under the skin...exactly what Merc doesn't have access to.

Alonso's car placement in the race, expecially once the softs where off, was amazing. He has a lot of confidence in this car. They'll be upsetting Merc and Ferrari more times than they'd like...

 

Formula 1 last year and this year summed up in one sentence: Five marques getting their asses kicked by a soda company. That was the story in 2022 and will be the same in 2023.

in case you were wondering they are SF, AM, MB, AR and Renault, regardless of what they call themselves. Amazing.

 

The worst most insulting part of yesterday is that item. Beyond absurd.

 

It doesnt take much to move into a design that has more space avalible to fit whats inside, if they was going smaller, it would be problematic, but expading the pods wont mean rearranging the insides to much, This current car was designed with changing concept in mind, they would have taken that into consideration to make the transition as easy as possible. They have been mentioning changing it since before testing even started.

 

Bizarre indeed to not mention Alonso at all. He was the start of the race yesterday. Their first podium in 2 years, certainly getting the best result possible with the Red Bulls so far away.

 

Bizarre, but not surprising. Unfortunately.

 

Not happy with Vasseur??

https://www.thedrive.com/news/violent-ferrari-crash-sends-296-gtb-flying-through-the-air-f12-burned-to-a-crisp