2023 Discussion Thread

[noiceinmydrink]

Haven't seen one opened yet so here goes; The Twenty Twenty Three Year of the Max Probably Definitely Maybe thread.

To kick off; Franz Tost has confirmed that Alpha Tauri is categorically not for sale. For now, anyway. The inital rumour I believe was they had to move their ops to England or sell up.

Would be a real shame for the team to go to anyone other than Minardi himself frankly, bearing in mind that the team isn't Minardi but same factory and I'm sure some of the same people. Close enough.

[kronatherm]

I think this season is going to like the last one, with RBR just dominating and a clear 1-2 dynamic. Maybe the punishment for their overspending will catch up with them by the halfway point, when they can't develop as much, but right now it looks like RBR have cheated and gotten away with it quite frankly

[dr-baker]

Would be a real shame for the team to go to anyone other than Minardi himself frankly, bearing in mind that the team isn't Minardi but same factory and I'm sure some of the same people. Close enough.

Or possibly Paul Stoddart?

[noiceinmydrink]

Or possibly Paul Stoddart?

Ah yes, how could I forget our blessed E U R O P E A N Minardi!

[Paul Hayes]

An ominous-looking start to the season for everyone who isn't Red Bull, but at least Alonso provided some great entertainment. It's amazing to me to think that when he made his F1 debut I was a 17-year-old sixth former, and now he's making the podium when I'm a 39-year-old middle-aged man!

[RAK]

I'd call that a race defined more by its failures than by its successes; while Alonso did a fantastic job pulling himself to P3, Sargeant had a solid debut and Albon, Gasly and Stroll scored reasonably given their relative circumstances, I was more taken by both McLarens with severe reliability problems, Leclerc suffering from what almost seems like Ferrari's customary foul-up of the race and Ocon's abysmal, penalty-prone drive.

[Rob Dylan]

What surprised me most was just how ambivalent the whole pub atmosphere was when Leclerc's engine died. Nobody jumped up and shouted, everyone just shrugged and accepted that this always happens.

[Spectoremg]

I've decided I won't be watching the Saudi GP. The fee should be wedged into the severed hands this disgusting regime considers to be justice.

[noiceinmydrink]

Dear God, this drivel itself ought to be an early contender for Reject of the Year. Is this some kind of joke?

"Oh no! We're not first! Taste my champagne tears!"

Utter rubbish.

[mario]

Dear God, this drivel itself ought to be an early contender for Reject of the Year. Is this some kind of joke?

"Oh no! We're not first! Taste my champagne tears!"

Utter rubbish.

Is it any worse than the repeated promises by Ferrari to move forward after a period of restructuring and consolidation?

[noiceinmydrink]

Is it any worse than the repeated promises by Ferrari to move forward after a period of restructuring and consolidation?

I'd say it is worse because the "next year" Ferrari thing at least gets a chuckle from me and I'm not picturing a mass of violins when their PR statements are being penned. Mercedes and Toto just go so over the top with anger and sorrow when things don't work out for them, and this was just after one race.

Of course a team will put out a "we're dissappointed" statement to the press when they're going through a rough period or have a bad race. But when a corporation tries to have feelings, I get a feeling too; it's called being physically ill.

[Wallio]

Eh, the Merc "letter" was pretty cringeworthy, but they had to say SOMETHING. Last year they seemed......content? With where they were. This at least is a response to Sir Lewis throwing them under the bus.

[Rob Dylan]

Eh, the Merc "letter" was pretty cringeworthy, but they had to say SOMETHING. Last year they seemed......content? With where they were. This at least is a response to Sir Lewis throwing them under the bus.

I still think the most bizarre behaviour from the team, or at least the behaviour I condone the least was when they prostrated themselves in gushing apologies to Lewis when they gave him the first subpar strategy of his seven years with the team, meaning he could only finish a poor, measly fifth. All of this was done for bloody days after the event and totally overshadowed the fact that, you know, his teammate Bottas won the race...

[Freeze-O-Kimi]

Eh, the Merc "letter" was pretty cringeworthy, but they had to say SOMETHING. Last year they seemed......content? With where they were. This at least is a response to Sir Lewis throwing them under the bus.

I still think the most bizarre behaviour from the team, or at least the behaviour I condone the least was when they prostrated themselves in gushing apologies to Lewis when they gave him the first subpar strategy of his seven years with the team, meaning he could only finish a poor, measly fifth. All of this was done for bloody days after the event and totally overshadowed the fact that, you know, his teammate Bottas won the race...

I thought the worst of it was at the end of Imola last year when Toto Wolff came over Hamilton’s radio to apologize for his disastrous on merit 13th place all while Russell had just taken the other car to 4th. What is it about Hamilton that people feel the need to wrap him up in cotton wool at the merest hint of adversity?

Mind you the way Red Bull have mollycoddled Verstappen like they used to with Vettel runs it pretty close.

[Ducktanian]

It makes sense with how highly these star drivers are valued. I can easily imagine Red Bull having nightmares of losing Verstappen. I do wonder how much the drivers are aware of this and how much they exploit it.
I can kinda understand Toto feeling that he needs to ensure that Hamilton doesnt ditch them like he did with McLaren.

[Row Man Gross-Gene]

I was happy to see that Hamilton continues to criticize the Saudi GP. Not much to say other than I'm glad someone's keeping visibility on this.

[mario]

Whilst some have joked about Mercedes and their behaviour, the flip side to that is that they're not engaging in a blame game - unlike Tost, who is currently in the process of throwing his entire team under the bus.

In Jeddah, he's been complaining that the engineers told him that they were making good progress, but since the car is not competitive, he repeatedly complained that "I don’t trust them any more", basically accused them of faking the data comparison between their 2022 and 2023 car to make their 2023 car look better than it is and openly questioned whether they were going in the right direction in developing the car. https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/tost- ... /10444854/

It's a really scummy move from Tost - it's one thing to say that you're uncompetitive, but when you're telling much of the team "you're a load of liars and you're crap", that must be utterly destroying morale within the team.

[RAK]

Verstappen's reliability problems in qualifying indicate that Mercedes treating them like Red Bull is unassailable is a bit of an overreaction.

[Paul Hayes]

I still find it hard not to see Verstappen coming through to win from 15th tomorrow, such is his pace advantage, as we saw on similar occasions last season.

[kronatherm]

Verstappen is 100% winning tomorrow barring mechanical problems. 1s per lap over the rest of the field and good straight line speed. Only question is whether Perez behaves himself.

[Paul Hayes]

I was very surprised and impressed that Perez managed to maintain such a gap to Verstappen and take the win. Based on everything that's happened with them as team mates so far, and their relative performances in the previous race, I expected Verstappen to cruise right past him. I'm still very doubtful Perez is capable of taking a championship fight to him across the course of the season, but at least there's some sort of fight going on at this early stage.

Which seems to be more than can be said for Ferrari at the moment - they just seemed to completely disappear.

[mario]

So, the organisers of the Las Vegas GP announced recently that they had put 1,800 general admission tickets up for sale at $500, which have now all sold out.

With that in mind, the organisers have now announced that they will be making more general admission tickets available, and that those tickets will be below $500. However, what they have also confirmed is that those additional general admission tickets will not include a view of the track - i.e. you're not buying the ticket for the race itself, but are instead buying it for what the organisers call a "one-of-a kind watch party" that gives you access to the side events that are taking place alongside the race.

Whilst the tactic around the Miami GP seemed to revolve around selling the image of the event itself, rather than the actual race, this seems to take it to the logical extreme by selling the setting of the race weekend and not the race itself. I guess that perhaps sums the commercial attitude that has entered the sport under Liberty Media these days.

[Rob Dylan]

I'm sure those tickets will give you exclusive access to the casinos, where you can lose more of your money for no reason!

[mario]

I'm sure those tickets will give you exclusive access to the casinos, where you can lose more of your money for no reason!

It seems most casinos have decided to create their own exclusive packages - it looks like they're not going after the sort of person who spends $500 on a ticket, they're going after the sort of person whom is happy to spend around $10,000 - $30,000 at the lower end, through those spending $150,000 and all the way up to $1 - 5 million.

There was talk that the casinos themselves have been buying a large number of tickets, or perhaps are cutting direct deals with Liberty Media for an allocation of tickets, which are then being repackaged by themselves into "luxury weekend events". Basically, their logic seems to be that the big money is in selling those packages themselves, with a rather hefty mark up built into the sales price.

[Row Man Gross-Gene]

I'm sure those tickets will give you exclusive access to the casinos, where you can lose more of your money for no reason!

It seems most casinos have decided to create their own exclusive packages - it looks like they're not going after the sort of person who spends $500 on a ticket, they're going after the sort of person whom is happy to spend around $10,000 - $30,000 at the lower end, through those spending $150,000 and all the way up to $1 - 5 million.

There was talk that the casinos themselves have been buying a large number of tickets, or perhaps are cutting direct deals with Liberty Media for an allocation of tickets, which are then being repackaged by themselves into "luxury weekend events". Basically, their logic seems to be that the big money is in selling those packages themselves, with a rather hefty mark up built into the sales price.

I don't really like this kind of thing going on, but if it's the price we have to pay to keep the Saudis from just outright buying the sport from Liberty, I'll put up with it. I'd rather have a few "rampant late-stage capitalism races" than the Saudi PIF in charge of the entire thing.

I realize that's pretty pessimistic, but I guess that's how I'm feeling right now. Liberty's been better than Bernie (and they're much better than the PIF would be), but they're still a corporation after all.

[mario]

I'm sure those tickets will give you exclusive access to the casinos, where you can lose more of your money for no reason!

It seems most casinos have decided to create their own exclusive packages - it looks like they're not going after the sort of person who spends $500 on a ticket, they're going after the sort of person whom is happy to spend around $10,000 - $30,000 at the lower end, through those spending $150,000 and all the way up to $1 - 5 million.

There was talk that the casinos themselves have been buying a large number of tickets, or perhaps are cutting direct deals with Liberty Media for an allocation of tickets, which are then being repackaged by themselves into "luxury weekend events". Basically, their logic seems to be that the big money is in selling those packages themselves, with a rather hefty mark up built into the sales price.

I don't really like this kind of thing going on, but if it's the price we have to pay to keep the Saudis from just outright buying the sport from Liberty, I'll put up with it. I'd rather have a few "rampant late-stage capitalism races" than the Saudi PIF in charge of the entire thing.

I realize that's pretty pessimistic, but I guess that's how I'm feeling right now. Liberty's been better than Bernie (and they're much better than the PIF would be), but they're still a corporation after all.

I do feel that Liberty Media's overall impact is rather mixed - in some areas better, but in others worse. The rush to get in on the cryptocurrency bubble in particular is looking particularly questionable, given their main sponsor has since been getting in trouble with the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK - the FCA banned two of their adverts for deliberately misleading investors about the risks around cryptocurrencies - and the same exchange is now facing questions about it's solvency.

Moving in a different direction, some here might have heard that McLaren have fired James Key from his role as technical director. They have also effectively split the role of technical director in three, with Peter Prodromou now becoming the technical director for aerodynamics, Neil Houldey being appointed to the role of technical director for engineering and design and David Sanchez - a former McLaren employee who had moved to Ferrari, and has now been tempted back - taking on the role of technical director for car concept and performance, although he is on "gardening leave" until January 2024. https://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/35 ... eaves-team

Some have commented that it feels like a return in some ways to the "matrix management" system that McLaren used in the past, although others have commented that it looks more akin to how Ferrari have structured their team (where, rather than having an overarching technical director, they've had technical directors of individual departments that report to the team principle).

Either way, there were reports prior to the season that there were major concerns about the development direction that the MCL-60 was going in, and questions over whether the planned major upgrade for Baku was going to give the team the boost in performance they wanted. Whilst Key was respected for what he managed to do at smaller teams, particularly Toro Rosso, things just don't seem to have worked out at McLaren - although splitting his role suggests there may be wider changes to come at McLaren.

[Rob Dylan]

Yeah, the replacement of his job highly implies that it is the position, not just the person, that has been seen as a mistake by those in charge. It's always a tricky balance to manage, though: having one talented person putting the right emphasis on the right resources can be brilliant, but it can also lead to development in the wrong areas with poor results. Having lots of individual power structures in each department can reap benefits by giving more representation to the lower levels on the hierarchy, but it can also descend into a shouting competition where every director thinks their department is the most important in the team. If that is the way Ferrari have been operating all these years, it may explain why the team seems to always have this sense of stagnation, poor development, and a lack of self-awareness as to what needs to change to improve their fortunes.

[RAK]

The rush to get in on the cryptocurrency bubble in particular is looking particularly questionable, given their main sponsor has since been getting in trouble with the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK - the FCA banned two of their adverts for deliberately misleading investors about the risks around cryptocurrencies - and the same exchange is now facing questions about it's solvency.

I've been a deep cryptocurrency skeptic for a long time for both technical and economic reasons (almost as long as cryptocurrencies have existed, in fact), so seeing Formula One get roped into advertising them has always been galling to me. There are various bingo cards online with lists of exchanges or overtly cryptocurrency-friendly entities and when they've closed or got into trouble; I have a feeling that several of the exchanges advertised in Formula One will see the same fate. And then, it'll likely look like Rich Energy on steroids.