F1 Teardown: Spanish GP 2023

Cheeky moves, spicey comments, one happy driver, and more...

Can we summarize the Spanish GP in one word? A few come to mind, including domination and boring–but cheeky is my favorite.

I’ll come back to this.

First, we have to acknowledge the brilliance that the reigning champ showed all weekend. Not only did he dominate every session on track, but with a wet track in FP3 he displayed a champion’s approach by being fast & smart in the wet, unlike his teammate who found the gravel. Verstappen drove to his 40th career win, and Red Bull’s 99th win as a team, gapping second place by 23 seconds.

His teammate, Perez, followed up a disastrous Monaco with another poor qualifying effort in the Spanish GP. Unlike Monaco, most due to the track, he was able to put on a passing clinic capturing P4 behind both Mercedes. A valiant effort, but I challenge that a different tire strategy should have been chosen. The team put Perez on the mediums to start the race, handicapping him while the majority of the field was on softs. Why not run softs—thus the fastest laps possible—the entire race then short pit at the end of the race for mediums? Getting by your competition is easier early in the race when the field is closer to each other. Based on telemetry data this would have resulted in a faster race for Perez and a shot at the podium.

Regardless it was a good points day for Red Bull allowing them to further their grasp on the constructor’s championship.

Who is close on Red Bull’s heels, well no one really, but Mercedes–thanks to a second strong consecutive race–is now firmly back to second in the points. Pick your favorite Mercedes team member—Toto, Hamilton, Russell, or the “communications director”—everyone has a renewed kick in their step and cheeky is the name of the game.

First up Hamilton, the luckiest driver on the grid for the weekend. In qualifying, Hamilton had a huge run on Russell coming down the straight and decided to try to pass on the outside, only for both cars to touch wheel to wheel almost wrecking each other.

Then in the race, Sainz failed to take the fight to Max in turn 2, by backing out of the corner, creating a concertina effect among the front runners. Norris ran square into Hamilton’s rear tire, busting off his carbon fiber front wing. Amazingly Hamiton didn’t get a tire puncture and continued, closing out the race in P2.

Did Hamilton acknowledge that he got lucky–not in the slightest–instead he back to his smiling cheeky self and diverted media questions to praise the fans. His confidence is growing along with the car’s performance.

Russell on the other hand went full cheeky mode on the weekend.

To start, on the pre-grid formation lap he put the car into the gravel; a very odd occurrence. Even stranger was his response on the grid–to paraphrase he was “trying a line out a new line turn 5”. This isn’t normal as the tires aren’t at proper temps; I was as confused as Brundle who struggled to put color around the comment.

After the first lap, the comment was put into live context, literally. Russell had a great start off the grid, gaining spots, and opted to go 3 wide into turn 1 before diverting onto the escape road to avoid a collision. The move, technically legal by regulation, help him maintain momentum and he took the same line in turn 5 that he had practiced, but this time “stuck the landing” by keeping the car off the gravel and gained more spots; moving up a total of 5 positions on lap 1 to P7.

Cheeky and brilliant all at the same time.

This is what great drivers do; they push everything right to the limit. I respect it, but think the FIA needs to examine the use of “escape roads” in competition. I wish they didn’t exist altogether. Decades ago the road that Russell took would have been gravel, dirt, or grass at best thus deterring drivers from going off the track.

Modern tracks utilize large run-off areas for the sake of safety. My point is that no driver should be allowed to go “off” in turn 1 of any race and maintain any momentum. Turn 1 in a race is the most important corner, and often most dramatic of any race. Why should any driver be allowed to use an alternate route?

Next came the cheeky comedy.

Russell relayed to his team that it was raining in turn 5 when in fact it wasn’t. He was seeing so much rain that he asked the team who else was reporting rain on the track–exactly zero. Turns out it was sweat from his forehead getting on his visor. I laughed my ass off as the pitiful excuse couldn’t be more pathetic. Sorry, George, but a driver can tell the difference between rain on the visor and sweat inside especially when you have tear-offs on the visor. I’m not buying what you’re selling.

Russell capped off the eventful start by capturing the final podium spot (P3). In his post-race interview is where he went cheeky squared by claiming the new “sidepods” are not the cause of the increased team performance.

He tried to claim there is more to the story and most of the gain is in the floor. I don’t buy it. In finance, there is a term called correlation. Mercedes brings their new ‘B-spec” car, including new sidepods, to Monaco & Barcelona and has faster cars. That is a strong correlation, as the finance bros would say.

Team boss, Toto Wolff, added more cheeky to the fire, stating they are the strongest team in the field. Strong enough to get smoked by over 20 seconds; real strong Toto.

Really the comment was a cheeky dig at Red Bull, Horner, and Perez; with dominating cars why is Perez so far off Max? He does have a point.

A former Mercedes driver, Nico Rosberg, posed the question to Red Bull team boss, Horner, after the race. Horner went full cheeky himself with this memorable quote.

"You're quite a critical kind of guy though, aren't you. I mean, you're tough on these guys. Now you're not in a car, you know, [now] you're happy to critize all the guys."

I was again rolling around on the floor, laughing, while the dog looked at me funny.

I’m not a Nico fan especially now that he is part of the media. His ego is too big to provide thoughtful commentary and instead chooses to be hyperbolic with surface drama. Watching Horner call him out on live TV is just what his ego needs–embarrassment.

Behind Mercedes was Sainz (P5) in the Ferrari. Look, Ferrari wasn’t expecting to be good at Barcelona; it’s not a great track for their car. The track, now minus a slow chicane due to reconfiguration, is fast & sweeping, thus doesn’t play well into the Ferrari’s strengths–straight line speed. Supersizing the disappointment was LeClerc’s car having an issue—rear end—in qualifying that didn’t allow him to get out of Q1. It just wasn’t a good weekend for the team from Maranello.

Ferrari opted to put 2 sets of the hard tire compound on LeClerc’s car instead of softs adding more fuel to the fire. The car didn’t have any front grip making for an even tougher day. He failed to get any momentum in the race and finished P11, out of the points, and almost lapped by Verstappen.

Sunday was much cooler air & track temps so I’m surprised the team didn’t run softs to the end, much like Perez could have done. They had nothing to lose despite the car porpoising on entry all weekend.

Alonso was the crowd favorite by a country mile, but even the fan’s energy couldn’t help him end his 10-year win draught in F1. He struggled most of the weekend as he damaged the floor in qualifying costing him 4 tenths of a second. He did find some pace late in the race catching his teammate Stroll, but unlike his younger self, did not attempt a pass, instead resorting to being a team player, and allowing the team to maximize points as the duo finished P6 & P7.

The Alpine duo of Ocon and Gasly finished P8 & P10 with uneventful, straightforward races for once. Actually, the entire race we witnessed zero safety cars, retirements, or wrecks—pretty impressive.

The happiest driver of the day was Zhou in P9 as he called the race his “best in F1”. This is the third time he has placed in the points and when you compare his performance to teammate Bottas, P19, I’d say he over delivered for the team.

Norris was a one-lap wonder for the McLaren team as he made Zak Brown, CEO of McLaren, very happy with a P3 in qualifying. Fun to talk about but worthless in the end as the race pace of the car is horrible resulting in P17, and was even bested by Piastri (P13).

Tsunoda incurred a 5-second penalty late in the race for not giving enough racing room to Zhou in the middle of turns 1 & 2 regulating him to P12 post-race. This cost him and the team valuable points as the incident could have gone either way. The stewards surely looked at the data and saw something TV pictures didn’t provide. His teammate, de Vries, finished P14 displaying improved performance for the second race in a row since being put on “notice” by Marko Helmut.

Williams had the weekend they expected; a poor one. Sargeant put it in the wall after getting loose on entry due to the curbing in practice that seemed to spook his confidence resulting in another last place, P20. The good thing for the American rookie is his teammate, Albon, only obtained P16. Both cars looked sluggish and a handful to drive.

Finally, Haas once again sucked which was expected. Like the Ferraris, their cars were meant for the Barcelona circuit. Magnussen was in P18, while Hülkenberg wasn’t much better in P15. Most of the excitement for Haas came as a result of comments by their team boss, Steiner, last week. He chose to criticize the FIA & stewards going as far as calling for professionals to be used like NASCAR or IndyCar instead of the “amateurs” used now. Wow, where do I start? First of all, as expected, he was called into his own FIA meeting on Saturday for the comments. Secondly calling NASCAR or IndyCar officials “professional” is going a bit far if we want to look at the history of both organizations. I’ll save this for another essay, but let’s just say the Austrian couldn’t be more wrong.

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• Red Bull team principal Christian Horner on the images of the floor:

  • “It’s very rude to look up people’s skirts really,” he joked about the images of the Red Bull underside.

  • “Pictures of floors get taken in and around the paddock. They arrive in vans, they work with the cars and the shutters are up and so on, and each team will be employing spy photographers to get pictures of the cars when they’re in parts and pieces. That’s common practice.

  • “So I wouldn’t have thought it was the first time a picture of the floor has been taken. It was probably the first time it has been suspended from a crane, but all teams are always striving for that intelligence.”

• Fernando Alonso says that Aston Martin will "crush" the competition in Canada with new updates.

  • "I think it’s just one race – and then in Canada, we crush them."

  • "In Canada, we’ll bring more things, and in Silverstone too… It will all depend on which team is bringing updates."

• Mercedes have reportedly agreed to extend George Russell's contract until 2025. Also reported is that details are being finalized for Lewis Hamilton's renewal with the Brackley-based team.

• Cool new fan zone that will be the Vegas GP; SphereVegas

  

Hope you learned something,

🏁Brent🏁

PS Lewis Hamilton with French karting prodigy Amine Pantoli. Love to see it.