A small gain in performance can reap significant benefit in F1's tightly-packed midfield
DPPI
Action resumes in Azerbaijan this weekend after a four-week break between races gave Formula 1 teams a chance to catch their collective breath and work on update packages to be seen in Baku and beyond.
Over the first three events we clearly saw the grid split into three. Red Bull is at the front, and then Mercedes, Ferrari and Aston are next up and hard to separate. The pecking order changes not just between circuits, but almost between sessions.
Baku is traditionally the site of chaos and confusion, and all three chasing teams know that the street venue could present them with a welcome chance to win, should RBR fumble.
Then behind that trio is what we tend to call the “midfield”, actually six teams so closely matched that they can pretty much be fifth or 10th in the pecking order depending on circumstances, and no single team has yet emerged as the ‘tail end Charlie.’
For that group, Baku is a race that is eagerly anticipated, because mayhem ahead could mean that instead of looking at ninth they could be edging towards the podium.
So how have those six teams performed over the first three races, and what do they have in the pipeline as the development race gathers momentum?
• Significant update in Baku
• Second major package due before summer break will result in ‘B-spec’ car
• A third big update is expected before the end of the season
Norris has endured a sub-standard McLaren MCL60 for the first three races of the year
Quinn Rooney/Getty Images
It’s hard to properly judge the first three races of McLaren’s 2023 season because the team made it clear from the start that the definitive MCL60 will start to take shape only in Baku and beyond, following a change of aero concept in the wind tunnel late last year.
In fact the season got off to a bad start with no points scored in the opening two races, and both drivers pitting for new front wings early on in Jeddah.
Things got better in Australia where, helped by some attrition, Lando Norris finished sixth and rookie Oscar Piastri scored his first points in eighth. However it says a lot about the ultimate pace of the car that the only Q3 appearance thus far was for Piastri, who qualified ninth in Jeddah.
After that race the team announced a major change to the technical structure with James Key kicked out and henceforth three technical directors working in parallel, namely Peter Prodromou (aerodynamics), Davide Sanchez (car concept and performance) and Neil Houldey (engineering and design).
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The full impact of that won’t be seen for a while, and indeed Sanchez won’t even arrive until January 2024. Meanwhile the team has to find more speed from the MCL60, which in its current form is a very tricky car to drive. Much depends on the Baku package and the development steps that will follow.
“I think in terms of understanding the car, the picture is very clear,” says team principal Andrea Stella. “The picture is actually consistent with what we kind of expected right from the start, we knew that we didn’t have enough downforce on the car. And we knew that there’s more drag than ideal. And this has manifested itself in terms of lap time in the first three races.
“The improvement of car performance should start in Baku. It should affect an area of the car that I’ve been clear, I think from the presentation of the car, that we weren’t entirely happy with in terms of development. It’s just the first [iteration].
“We would expect definitely another major upgrade. It will be much more apparent, that is what somebody may call like kind of a B-spec car. And then we expect to have a further round of upgrades in the second part of the season after the shutdown.
“So we have three main steps: Baku, later on —I don’t want to commit to any date, but before shutdown — and then after shutdown. We hope that each of them will be able to provide a few tenths of a second.”
• Alpine banking on out-developing its rivals
• Successive updates planned for Baku, then Miami a week later
• More pace to come from better set-up
Alpine has not yet found 2022 levels of performance, but plans key developments
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It’s been a largely frustrating start to the 2023 season for Alpine, with mistakes and misfortunes costing valuable points.
There have been signs of strong pace, with the team emerging as potentially the fifth fastest on the grid, and occasionally doing better than that.
Esteban Ocon’s season began badly in Bahrain, where he got a penalty for lining up wrongly on the grid, followed by others for an incorrect penalty stop (the team’s fault) and pitlane speeding (his fault) before he retired. His new team-mate Pierre Gasly somehow salvaged ninth place after starting from the back of the grid.
Seventh in qualifying for Ocon in Jeddah brought some encouragement, but in the race the two drivers couldn’t better eighth and ninth.
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Australia saw an upturn when, after qualifying ninth, Gasly ran in a strong fifth for much of the race. However, the race ended in disaster when the two pink cars collided and crashed out at the final grid restart.
Team principal Otmar Szafnauer admits that like some other 2023 cars the A523 has a narrow sweet spot.
“Maybe the window to get it spot-on is small,” he says. “It takes time to learn what that window is, and what you have to do to make sure that when track conditions change from FP3 to qualifying, you adjust the car so it stays in the window.
“The window can move because of ambient and track temperature, and if the car is that sensitive to it, it takes a bit of time to understand it. We’ll get there with that. The more we run, the more we’ll understand the car and where its sweet spot is, and we’ll make sure that we can adjust to it.”
Szafnauer is adamant that there is more to come relative to rivals: “We have to out-develop them to get that performance on our car quicker than they can add performance on their cars.
“That’s going to be the key to this year. We haven’t given up, unlike some of the others who are saying they’ve given up on Red Bull. And we won’t give up on relative performance to Red Bull or the others.
“It requires a lot of work and effort from the entire team. We’ve got some updates coming in Baku, and more updates in Miami. So we look forward to those races.”
• Updates aimed at reinforcing its midfield position
• Cancelled Chinese GP gave team more time on upgrade package
Magnussen vs Hülkenberg
Grand Prix Photo
The Haas team has got 2023 off to a solid start, and Nico Hülkenberg has settled in well on his return and helped to raise the overall level despite his time away from a full-time drive.
The German has twice made Q3 in the first three races with his new team, and in Australia he scored his first points with a strong run to seventh place, although Haas felt he should have been a place higher and protested the results without success.
Kevin Magnussen has been less comfortable and at times has struggled to get the best out of a car that appears to have a limited sweet spot in terms of set-up, and the rear end has been an issue.
Given that a few tenths can make a big difference in terms of grid position, his struggles have been amplified somewhat.
“We are happy where we are,” says team boss Guenther Steiner. “We just need to work hard and keep on improving so we can keep this place. Nico’s doing a good job. I mean, he’s pretty happy – but we cannot be too comfortable, because it’s so close.
“[Within] a tenth of a second sometimes, we’ve got five cars. But I think it makes the Championship in the midfield – with the midfield now going from P5 to P10 – very interesting. So, it’s always tense there, with what you can do and what not, but I think we are OK.”
Regarding steps during the break he says: “The development is ongoing. It was planned already last year, what we are doing, but obviously it helps when you don’t have to bring it to China. If you had something planned for China, you have a little bit more time to make it better and get more prepared, also with data after the first races.”
• Early front wing upgrade in Jeddah brought set-up struggle
• More upgrades due “soon”
A final season for Alfa Romeo
The Alfa Romeo team has had a disappointing start to 2023, certainly compared to last year, when the Swiss team scored well early on and then faded.
Thus far the best qualifying positions were 12th for Valtteri Bottas in Bahrain and the same result for Zhou Guanyu in Jeddah. The only point scores were eighth for Bottas in the season opener, and ninth for Zhou in the high attrition Australian race.
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The C43 certainly hasn’t been a disaster, but neither is it particularly competitive, and the team clearly has a lot of work to do. Bottas in particular struggled to get the most out of the car, in both Jeddah and Australia.
The latter event saw the introduction of a new front wing and associated nose box, which was quite a significant move so early in the season.
“We thought there was still performance to extract from that area,” says head of trackside engineering Xevi Pujolar. “Obviously we are working on other areas as well. That was part of our development plan.”
It also perhaps explained why it was the team’s worst qualifying of the season, as red flags and rain meant that it was difficult to fully optimise the car around the new wing: “In a couple of tenths you can go from the front, to the back of that pack. And for sure in the next qualifying we want to be in Q3. There will be more steps soon – we will see more things coming.”
• Frequent updates planned in bit to outdevelop rivals
• Australia upgrade began process of rieviving disappointing season
AlphaTauri’s AT04 has struggled initially in qualifying and in race pace
AlphaTauri
Following a disappointing start to the 2023 season AlphaTauri team principal Franz Tost has said that he didn’t trust his engineers after the AT04 failed to live up to expectations.
It was an extraordinary comment in a world where bosses usually defend their people and repeat mantras like “we win as a team, lose as a team,” but it indicated just how frustrated Tost was after a poor first race in Bahrain.
The team brought a substantial update package to Melbourne, including a new floor and diffuser, although Yuki Tsunoda had to revert to the original spec after an off in FP1.
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Tsunoda still qualified a decent 12th and scored the team’s first point of the season with 10th place, having been as high as fifth before the red flag after the third grid restart.
“We’ve made a good step based on what we learned at the first the two races,” says technical director Jody Egginton.
“If we can keep working like that I’m confident that we’ll find more gains and get ourselves better established in the midfield, because we’re not where we want to be at the moment.
“The reality is that the first part of the season, to get into that midfield, we’ve got to try and out-develop some teams, which is why we came to Melbourne with the floor. Our strategy is just to keep putting performance on the car.
“And hopefully we’re out-developing some of our competitors in the early phase of the season, and we’re catching up. If we don’t out-develop them, we won’t catch up. So our strategy is the obvious one, to try and reduce that gap.”
• Team principal James Vowles expects ‘knife fight’ with rivals
• Performance swings expected from circuit-to-circuit
Albon was running sixth before Melbourne crash
Williams
New team boss James Vowles has provided Williams with some new momentum, and his main job now is to hire a new technical director and head of aero.
After Aston Martin the team has perhaps been the biggest surprise of 2023 so far. After Bahrain testing even Alex Albon suggested that the FW45 was the slowest car on the grid, but that hasn’t proved to be the case.
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The car has shown good straight-line speed, which bodes well for tracks like Baku, and it clearly has more potential than its predecessor. One of the key advantages the team has is that having finished last in the 2022 World Championship it has a greater aero testing allowance than any other team.
Albon scored a point with 10th in Bahrain and then qualified a remarkable eighth in Australia, only to crash out early in the race. Meanwhile rookie Logan Sargeant has done a decent job, although he’s had a few incidents already.
“Going forward, there’s going to be tracks that definitely suit us,” says Vowles. “If you look to the breadth of last year and what happened with Williams, there were tracks where definitely that car was competitive. Monza was very much one of them.
“And on the characteristics the car has got, I suspect it will be again this year. There are tracks where the car was poor, like Barcelona, and it will be again. There’s going to be ups and downs throughout the course of the season. Even with that as a baseline [the car] is still scratching and in a knife fight with two or three teams around us.”
