Formula 1 testing is full of smokescreens, unknowns, hearsay, and false leads, so it can be hard to come to any real conclusions.
But we’ll still try.
Here are some things to remember from the third day of F1 racing, which ended Saturday in the desert of Bahrain:
The winners are likely to win.
No one is surprised that the driver and team who won the Formula 1 Driver’s and Constructor’s Championships in a landslide last year are the favourites to win this year.
The Red Bull RB19, which couldn’t be seen until Thursday’s first test day, is mostly a change from last year’s fast RB18. Headline times can be deceiving, but Max Verstappen was the fastest on the first day of testing, and he was even faster on the second day. On the second morning of the second day, Sergio Perez was already able to run a good race simulation.
The Verstappen camp had a happy vibe that had never been seen before during preseason.
“Everything we did with the car worked well,” Verstappen said. “We learned a lot that will help us next weekend and in other races as well. I’m very happy with how the testing went. Every time I got in the car, I felt at ease and could start driving right away. We’ll see how fast we are next week, but I’m feeling good about it. Overall, it’s better than what happened last year.”
Sergio Perez had the fastest time of the test during the one-lap runs on Saturday evening. He was three-tenths faster than the rest on a tyre compound that was one step harder. However, as usual, fuel levels and engine modes were not known.
Charles Leclerc, who is Verstappen’s closest (but still far away) rival in 2022, said that Red Bull was “very strong” before the first race of the new season.
Mercedes’ George Russell said, “They look very strong and stable.” “The car looks great, and it’s clear that Max is doing a great job.”
Isn’t Ferrari cool?
In recent years, it has been hard to get a good early read on the Italian brand.
That’s because it looked good in testing last year, Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz won the first race of the season with a stunning 1-2 finish, and almost everyone thought, “Yes, Ferrari will challenge Red Bull this year!”
Then, its hopes of winning the championship fell apart for a number of reasons, including strategic mistakes, driver mistakes, reliability problems, and slow growth during the season.
So, it’s hard to make a guess about Ferrari’s future at this point. After all, we won’t know if the car is more reliable until the end of the season. Fred Vasseur, the new team leader, has already made changes. Ravin Jain took over as head of strategy from Inaki Rueda, which was a tacit admission that last year’s structure wasn’t good enough. We won’t know for sure if the new set-up is better until the races are over.
Ferrari’s problem in 2022 was not its raw speed, which can be improved, but how it ran and managed the race. Leclerc did, however, talk about some of the different ways the SF23 was made.
Leclerc said, “The first day was all about doing big scans and trying to figure out how well the data match the ones we had at the factory before that test.” “They seemed to go well together, which was good news.”
Ferrari has given up some of its aerodynamic prowess to reduce drag, and it is still trying to find the right trade-off.
He said, “I can say that we are still working a lot on trying to find the best way to set up the car.” “So I hope that there is still some room for improvement and that we haven’t found the perfect balance yet.”
No Alarm Bells, But Mercedes Is Still Behind
Mercedes has taken a step in the right direction, but it still doesn’t think it’s ready to compete for the win.
The W14 is still struggling for mid-corner balance but the team feels it is an easier proposition to remedy than the troublesome W13. But after a good first day, it had trouble on the second day when the weather changed, which led to a long investigation that went into the night. Friday was slightly better, but Mercedes still looks to be third-best of Formula 1’s big three teams, behind Red Bull and Ferrari.
“We definitely believe eventually we will have a car capable of giving that fight,” said driver George Russell, who had the team’s only victory last season. “Whether we’re going to have that next weekend in Bahrain, I think may be a bit of a stretch. There’s no reason why we can’t get there by the end of the year, and Mercedes has always been strong and quick to improve. So definitely, the belief is there.”
At least Mercedes didn’t have the constant porpoising that plagued the early stages of the W13’s development, but the car is still not quite there.
Lewis Hamilton said, “It’s nice to drive without the car bouncing around in the corners.” “But there are still some underlying things that we are working through. \s“ We still can’t beat the Red Bulls or maybe even the Ferraris, but it’s getting better. There are some things that have changed, and some things have been better so far. Who knows where we’ll be a week from now? We just have to stay positive, make what we want happen, and keep pushing, because that’s what we live for.”
Aston Martin Getting Attention
The news has been all about Aston Martin and Lance Stroll’s injury off the track, but the AMR23 looks pretty good on the track. That shouldn’t be a surprise, given how Aston Martin came back from a bad start in 2022 to finish seventh overall (tied on points for sixth) and grow strongly in that midfield pack.
The AMR23 is also the first car to benefit from Aston Martin’s hiring of well-known people like Dan Fallows and Eric Blandin, which has raised people’s expectations. Rival teams have said that Aston Martin has the potential to be at the top of the midfield pecking order, especially with Fernando Alonso at the wheel.
That would be a good jump for a team that was 118 points behind Alpine in 2022, which was in fourth place. Alpine is once again in the running to lead the midfield pack. Alonso, who switched from Alpine to Aston Martin for 2023, did an impressive race simulation in typical evening conditions, showing how good the AMR23 could be.
Fernando Alonso said, “The car felt competitive all three days, but we need to see how it compares to the others next week.” “We still have a lot of untapped potential, and I think we are in a good spot going into next week.”
Already Behind on the Stroll
Lance In recent years, Stroll has been a strong part of Formula 1’s lower midfield. However, Aston Martin wants to move up, and Stroll’s new teammate is the still-strong Fernando Alonso, so the Canadian starts the new season at least a little behind.
Stroll was the only driver who didn’t take the three-day test because he was hurt in a bicycle accident in Spain while training. It means that Stroll’s only time behind the wheel of an AMR23 was a few wet laps around Silverstone during an Aston Martin shakedown.
Stroll can learn from Alonso’s experience, and in his four years with the team, he has built relationships and learned how Aston Martin works. However, this is a big setback. The injuries will also have messed up Stroll’s training schedule and routine just as he was getting ready for the new season. It’s still not clear when he will be able to play again, if at all.
Stroll is going to Aston Martin’s simulator to figure out what’s going on, and team boss Mike Krack said that the team will wait as long as possible to make a decision.
Felipe Drugovich, who took Stroll’s place during testing, is the obvious choice if Stroll can’t race again.
How De Vries’s Life Has Made a Difference AlphaTauri
Nyck de Vries is a Formula 1 rookie who is not like most others.
At age 28, he is pretty old to be competing in his first full season. He is five years older than his teammate Yuki Tsunoda, who is starting his third year in Formula 1. De Vries has a lot of experience, having worked in sports cars, Formula E, and Formula 1 at Mercedes, McLaren, and Williams. This is a big change for a team that usually hires young players right out of the junior leagues.
When De Vries drove the car in late 2022, AlphaTauri team leader Franz Tost said, “I think our engineers got good technical feedback from his side.” “He talked a lot about how bad the car was, which was a good thing because it woke up the engineers.” I hope we can get him a car that works the way he wants it to.”
De Vries gave AlphaTauri “a long list of things to do,” which the boss liked. “It was so funny because the engineers wanted to argue that our solutions are good, but I told them to look at where we are in the constructors’ championship.
Last year, AlphaTauri was disappointed to finish ninth in the Constructors’ Championship.
Tsunoda also said that De Vries’s comments were “pretty good” and that they helped the team move forward, which was good.
AlphaTauri’s test went well, and they did the most laps (456) of any team.
Sargeant Are you ready for the real deal?
After a good preseason test, American Logan Sargeant will be as ready as he can be for his first Grand Prix.
On Thursday afternoon, Sargeant drove the Williams FW45 and did 75 laps. On Friday, he was given the whole day (Alex Albon drove all day Saturday), so he could do 154 more laps. That added up to 229 laps, which is about the same as driving in four Bahrain Grand Prix races. And he spent the whole day and a half in the car without any major breakdowns or other problems.
Sargeant was able to do shorter runs in the heat of the day, which wasn’t very accurate, and then do longer runs in the afternoon to test out different tyre compounds.
Sargeant said, “We got so much done, and it’s a credit to the team that we ran that much. We had a strict run plan, so credit to the team, we moved in the right direction, and it’s great.” “I think I could use another day! But to be honest, we were able to build and build and build until we had a car that we were really happy with. I’m excited to find out what we can do.”
Williams won’t be at the front of the pack, but the team is sure that the FW45 has fixed some of the main problems with the FW44, which was only made for 2022.
Dave Robson, the head of vehicle performance at Williams, said, “Logan did a great job and did a lot of useful work. Even though his preseason testing was very short, he was able to do a lot of useful laps.”
