F1 2023 thread

Ferrari have a major problem with their management structure.

As it stands, the day-to-day Principal of the Scuderia and the guy sitting o21n the F1 pitwall, is also the head of Gestione Sportiva (all Ferrari racing efforts) and a member of the Ferrari S.p.A board. Until today that was Mattia.

Its worth remembering that Ferrari also has a massive GT and customer racing programme, works as an engine supplier and as of 2023 will run a full WEC/Le Mans Hypercar programme with the new 499P, which for my money will be every bit as tough as an F1 season, given the amount of competition which will be joining them from Porsche, Peugeot, BMW, Cadillac, Honda etc and the very restricted rules.

Ferrari needs the Sporting Director to sit at board level, with a separate executive manager responsible for each of the strands of racing I mentioned above, especially the F1 team, where the Team Principal has no other job than to oversee the development and operations of the Scuderia.

That model can be seen in other teams. Christian Horner runs Red Bull Advanced Technologies, which manages the RBR effort, but Horner has no seat on the RB board, but answers to a joint CEO called Mintzlaff, just as he did to the late Dietrich Mateschitz.

McLaren has Andreas Seidel as Team Principal. He in turn reports to Zak Brown as CEO of McLaren Racing and then Brown sits on the board of McLaren Group.

The separation of duties and reporting lines is clear and necessary and Ferrari don't have that. They should get a new sporting director to wear the Fendi suits and get Guenther Steiner in to run the F1 team at ground level, as Principal.

Of course he did, as Elkman is CEO of Ferrari S.p.A.

But both Ferrari S.p.A. and its sporting division are massively bigger now than they were in the days of Jean Todt. (600% more road cars produced now)

Having the guy on the pitwall and who pushes operations on the factory floor of 4 distinct racing efforts, being the same guy who sits on the Board, in an organisation the size of Ferrari, is mental.

I see the FIA have officially cancelled the Chinese GP for next year due to the Covid situation there. So down to 23 races for next year unless they decide to go somewhere else for that weekend instead.

Get rid of China and bring back Germany

Interesting ranking of the teams in terms of driver pairing for next year. Ranked by The-Race journalists.

Ah, they're a bit more interesting than that. It's actual racing journalists rather than the public and they give decent reasoning for their opinions.

Mclaren having a rookie makes them a bit unknown. But Norris is excellent and he'd fit in at any of the top teams. I'd rate him better than perez and Sainz. Up there with Russell, Leclerc and Hamilton last year.

I think Aponso will make a fool of Stroll next year. Now Vettel is gone, people won't need to pretend he's a good driver to make vettel look decebt by comparison. I think he'll be really shown up next year.

You think AM deliberately slowed Vettel down? That's silly. I wo der of you think they have a spin button to make Veteran lose control of the car from time to time. Why get an excellent driver like alonso, pay him a fortune and then slow him down? Silly stuff.

I don't see much to disagree with in the ranking. The reasoning is pretty sound. There's wiggle room as there always is with opi ions, but I thought it was a pretty well reasoned opinion.

Ah yeah but are you eing ironic saying they did it deliberately or do you really think they did it?

Vettel was slower than expected and spun more than expected, which follows a long pattern for him since 2018. No conspiracy theory needed to explain it.

Think he was replaced by Binotto as team principal in January 2019, the F1 season starts in March. Didn't really cut the mustard at ferrari while he was there.

Vasseur to be announced at Ferrari tmrw apparently

I don't see a problem with the sprint races, you've less practice time, so maybe that makes them less predictable or easier to have a bad weekend if you don't get on top of the setup quickly, there isn't a huge points advantage to winning the sprint race. The main race it's 7 points between first and second with the sprint race that points difference covers the top 7. With three sprint races it's been good, hopefully the 6 will work well too, the tracks they've picked should be ok for overtaking so there probably won't be any huge surprises

So the races so far were good and the 6 tracks are well chosen for sprints, but you think having entertaining sprints is bad so you want them to fail. Classic F1 fan thinking. What's new is bad, even if it's better.

Give it a few years and you'll get used to them and oppose getting rid of them.

Nope I am not against that. That works perfect for me. It will still be watched on the Sunday.