F1 2023 thread

What other top level sport never takes a break? Football has a two to three month off season in most countries. The NFL season is only 18 weeks long. Sports like tennis and golf is complicated but outside of a small number of events there is some freedom as to what to take part in.

If you look at the 2024 F1 calendar, January will be the only month of the entire year with no on track running. And they travel the entire globe over the course of the season too. I'm not sure there is a more intense calendar in any other sport. F1 would also have a disproportionately large number of necessary support staff who aren't on massive salaries in the way the competitors are. They could get away with no summer break when it was a 16 race season, but there is only so much the teams can push their staff.

NFL is an outlier because of how violent the sport is. The length of its season has nothing to do with giving players time off, it's about not killing them every year.

Football/soccer goes from mid-August through to mid-May with only a break for Christmas and odd weeks here and there for international breaks - in which obviously a lot of players travel long-distance. I wouldn't say players even get a 2 month break. The ones that go to WC's and continental internationals competitions get no breaks.

Tennis is essentially a year round sport along with golf, but it's an individual sport so players are free to work as they please.

NBA goes from October to June, no break bar a week for All-Star weekend.

Even the top level players in amateur GAA go from Jan/Feb right the way through to August/Sept at a minimum. Inter-county players on clubs that win county don't get a break.

They're the sports I would have had a keen interest in, can't speak about other sports and what they do. That's also when competitions are active only; with the people involved obviously training at least a month before any competition.

I can't think of any other sport that takes a full month off in the middle of the season.

I understand that these are people involved, but IMO, if you want to be involved in a top-level sport, you have to make sacrifices - as almost every other sport does. It's not for everyone, but there's plenty of people that would give their left knut to be a part of an F1 team.

Even without the break Formula 1 has a very broken season, which is frustrating, but understandable given what's required. But this season could easily have been done from March-September. Teams would get similar time off (more unless I'm mistaken), and it gives the fan the opportunity to actually to engross themselves in the sport without these breaks.

I might be in the minority here, but I'd rather a fluidity to the season. Horses for courses and all that, I just find it frustrating that since the cancellation of Imola, there's at least been a race every other weekend, and now it'll be 4 weeks until the next one.

I think the teams are now running 2 groups of staff for certain tasks to reduce workload / hours for some staff.

It depends on their roles, alot of the top engineers, team principles are at every race, They have some mechanics at every race. But its not just about them, There's the TV people, People who run the FIA bit, The VIP bits. You get to see a driver flying private but what about the 100 members of the team stuck in economy for 10 hours going straight to the track for the build-up, Then the race then tear down before flying from Baku to Canada to do it all again. It's a grueling schedule.

They all need a break and most people take August off so viewership would be down so might as well close down for a few weeks.

To be honest some of my best work has been on a sun lounger! You get to turn off which allows you to think of other things that normally your too busy to think about!

Kimi?

I presume the mid season gap will be filled with stuff like this (plus a discussing about whether Hamilton is a dickhead or a massive dickhead).

The article uses the term BOP without explaining l what the initials mean or what the impact would be. Any ideas? Balance of power maybe?

What does that actually mean in terms of the article. It doesn't explain

Sound. I suppose they could just have spec engines badges with constructor branding.

Renault have been the poorest engine throughout this formula. Honda came late and showed how development can be done if given the resources

Yeah that's the spirit.

I'd say it's hard to tell how Lewis would compete with max in the same car. We're all just assuming max is on 'another planet' from the others because they all keep saying it and we have nothing to compare him to. I'd say Hamilton would give him a serious battle if they were in the same car. Lewis has gotten the netter of Rissell as Russell has gotten more time in the car. Unless he's lost a lot of speed with age, I'd say Lewis vs Max would be a class battle and I wouldn't bet on a winner.

Yeah red bull is Max's team. He's still young so he's the present and the future now the team if they keep him happy.

Really happy for Piastri. He was brave to break from Alpine when they tried to bully him into the seat after his contract expired. Alpine were stronger than McLaren early in the season and I think some people enjoyed the schadenfreude that he chose the slower car. But McLaren's improvement has allowed Norris and Piastri to express themselves a bit more. Hope he can be a top driver.

I'm going to be honest and say I don't rate LeClerc as a top tier driver right now. He's a bit too inconsistent. And while much of that might be down to Ferrari, Charles seems to be only able to out drive the car over one qualifying lap. Drivers like Lewis, Fernando, Lando and Max tend to be able to out drive the car over a race distance.

The team is certainly doing him no favours, and Sainz is one of the most underrated drivers on the grid. Remember that he beat Norris fairly convincingly at McLaren before moving on. And for his own part Leclerc joined Ferrari and matched Vettel back at a time when Vettel had been comfortably the best performing driver on the grid for most of the prior decade.

Ferrari arguably have the strongest driver pairing on the grid right now but the team is letting them down time and again and making them look worse than they are. Sainz definitely manages the situation better though, making his own strategy calls where appropriate and making the most of a bad situation. Leclerc is definitely the type of driver that excels more when he's out front and in clean air, but with a good car and team behind him he's probably second only to Verstappen on the current grid.