F1 2023 thread

It's race week. I'll start a race thread later.

One for you @Jordan 199

Eddie was a smooth operator.

I doubt the people who have to travel to every race feel that way about it. The 4 week gap is a bummer alright but it’s understandable.

Leclerc on 6 points after 3 races. Pain.

Max certainly is in a <ahem> 'Nice' position.

Can someone tot this up for me,between 23 races, fastest lap points and Sprint points is 1000+ points in the constructors championship possible?

Even on a weekend where RB couldn’t exploit the real advantages of its car, it won.

Ferrari are quickly becoming the team equivalent of Monaco. Just there and involved because of the history.

While they've always been there or thereabouts, it's an oversimplification to say they've just always had a much bigger budget than the rest of the grid.

You get different figures from different sources, but for the last decade they've generally had a very similar budget to Mercedes (some years one has the biggest budget, some years the other) - prior to that in the 2000s they sometimes had a smaller budget than Toyota, McLaren, and even Honda and BMW in some cases. Figures from the earlier eras are much harder to come by but I'd be surprised if the likes of McLaren and Williams didn't have budgets just as big in their respective dominant heydays when they enjoyed vast amounts of tobacco money.

Basically Ferrari have always just had a broadly similar budget to most other works or manufacturer teams on the grid in any given season, with Renault probably being the biggest outlier that has consistently spent less than other manufacturers over the years.

For example, here are reported budgets from 2006, Michael Schumacher's last year at the team when he narrowly lost out to Alonso in the Renault for the championship thanks to an engine failure at Suzuka:

• McLaren: $400m
• Toyota: $393m
• Honda: $382m
• BMW: $378m
• Ferrari: $329m
• Renault: $300m
• Red Bull: $201m
• Williams: $134m
• Super Aguri: $95m
• Midland: $75m
• Toro Rosso: $66m

I don't think the title can be taken from Hamilton 15 years later. Could be wrong but I reckon Massa is pursuing this with a view to eventually sue someone for financial compensation.

It's pretty unseemly. Massa needs to move on. He must be hard up for money if he would go down this route.

But we don't even know if it's true or not so I'll reserve any Massa bashing for if it actually happens. Could be a totally made up story plug some of the 4 week gap.

To be fair, he has a 100 percent valid point when learning of the new evidence from Bernie that they knew at the time of the cheating and knowingly acted in a manner that defied the rules in order to protect the sport. This action in the end awarding the championship to the wrong man.

He would appear to have no chance of getting the championship standings changed but I think he would have a solid case against FOM and the FIA for 100s of millions in compensation if it's still possible to take such a case, this far removed.

Bernie wouldn't mind costing the current business owners a few hundred million either I'd imagine.

Yeah if you actually read the details of the new information that has come to light you can see why he'd be mad not to be looking at legal avenues. The FIA knew about the cheating and if they'd acted on it in the way they should have then he would have been the undisputed rightful champion, but they chose to cover it up instead. Massa and Ferrari had no opportunity to appeal at the time because they weren't even aware of it.

There's not a hope of it being overturned of course but he'd certainly be well within his rights to seek compensation for loss of earnings having been knowingly robbed of a championship that could have completely changed his career trajectory.