F1 2023 thread

If F1 went electric there is no way F1 and FE would co-exist. They would likely merge or one would take over the other.

Unless all top tier racing goes electric, there would be no point in them having competing electric formulae.

The football a analogy is weak. Football hasn't built its reputation as the trailblazer of cutting edge real life technology. It built its popularity on other foundations which will never be available to F1 such as accessibility (jumpers for goalposts and so on).

The horse racing analogy is better. But likewise, horse husbandry, training and racing has a history thousands of years old. F1 is old at 70 years, but it's not like horse racing.

Age and cultural popularity aside, the difference between horse and car racing is much greater than the difference between F1 with ICE power and F1 with electric power.

F1 has a choice. Keep with its modus operandi of being the cutting edge of future technology, or abandon that tradition in favour of sticking with old ICE technology. I don't know what they'll do innthe medium to long term. F1 might not even exist in the long term.

The problem is when you have a driver of the caliber of Verstappen or Alonso, nobody is going to match up to them in the other seat. Remember that Max was often a minute or more ahead of Gasly and Albon by the end of every race, both of whom have proven to be very fine drivers at other teams - for example a simple mathematical qualifying gap comparison of Russell vs Latifi then Latifi vs Albon in consecutive Williams seasons suggests that Albon is a quicker driver than Russell unless Latifi somehow dramatically lost performance from one year to the next. Meanwhile Perez has had an extremely solid career prior to joining Red Bull, often dragging less competitive cars to podiums and even a victory. He's just not in the same league as his current teammate but nobody is.

Meanwhile for his part, back in the day Alonso completely destroyed fellow world champion Kimi Raikkonen in the same car, as he did to almost-world-champion Felipe Massa before that. I don't think Fernando is quite the same driver he was back then as age catches up on everyone and he was outscored by Ocon over their time together at Alpine, the first teammate to ever do that in his career albeit aided by a lot of luck and reliability. But he's clearly got a new impetus and motivation with a more competitive car and he's looked like he's been performing close to his best again.

It's easy to look at other teams and say they have more evenly matched drivers, but that's easier to achieve without that kind of once in a generation talent in one of the seats that RB and AM currently enjoy.

Is DeVries in risk of getting the chop? I know the Alpha Tauri package ain't up to much, but he's really languishing at the back, would they not prefer Liam Lawson getting mileage considering Nyck isn't a red bull academy driver?

Alonso has scored more points this season, than his previous 7 seasons in F1 combined. That actually makes me happy.

Hell yeah. Some of those barren seasons were his own doing but great to see him have the opportunity and prove he’s still got it near the front. Just need a win now.

Could alpha Tauri get Ricciardo for the rest of the season as part of the wider Red Bull family...

A couple of weeks ago Marko hinted that this would be the case if DeV didn't raise his game.

That is highly unlikely. The only way I see Perez leaving red bull mid season is if he stops scoring any points. As long as he helps with the constructors and doesn't impede Max winning the driver's championship Perez will have done his job.

The only other way I see it happening is if Max's form dips, then there would be more pressure on Perez to help guarantee the constructors championship.

But as things are going Perez is doing enough to keep his seat for the rest of the year. Next year is a different story though.

All 20 drivers get into Q1, it's Q3 he's struggling with. And it's 4 out of 8 as he qualified on the front row alongside LeClerc in the Baku Sprint.

Perez is doing just like Ferrari did last season. He gave everybody false hope at the start of the season with some nice wins, but since then he has been awful. He just needs to get back to being somewhere in the middle to keep his seat. There is no competition in the constructors, Aston Martin only have one good driver, and Mercedes are not going to beat Red Bull either.

Red Bull have won 18 out of the last 19 races. This kind of domination isn't good for the sport, especially if they want to grow the casual American fan base. The novelty of Miami and Vegas could wear off pretty quickly.

Also, Red Bull aren't that far ahead. We're not talking Ferrari 2004 or Merc 2014 levels of dominance. They have a slightly quicker car than the rest, plus a particularly effective DRS, plus the best driver on the grid.

I have no idea why people find it valid to roll out the "dominance is not good for the sport" line.

Either they are completely new to the sport or have been saying it every year when their chosen team is not winning. Im relatively knew and even i know there has always been one team well out in front of the rest, and here we are in a new era focused on aero with another team doing really well.

I don't the RB19 is that far a head of the rest, it's more Verstappen and the car being in perfect harmony well except for the downshifts he's always giving out about