After a two-month break, Formula 1 is back! With 23 races, starting in Bahrain and finishing in Abu Dhabi, the event will reach 21 different countries, with 10 teams and 20 drivers – with new names on the track, but, unfortunately, without a few iconic ones. It’s the longest calendar yet and it has some new technical regulations that promise a more competitive championship. It’s lights out and away we go to another F1 season!
The Red Bull dominance
Last year’s season could be named after Red Bull. Max Verstappen won 15 races and became world champion for the second time in a row, so once again they are the team to chase and beat. In Bahrein, on March 5th, they already proved they came to win. The season kicked off with two podiums for Red Bull – Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez, in this order – and third place for Aston Martin with Fernando Alonso.
The new car, RB19, started on a high. In the first day of pre-season testing, Max Verstappen was on the track in the morning and in the afternoon and finished the day with 157 laps completed. In these tests the quickest car doesn’t matter – that much -, the most important thing is to complete laps to collect data about the car and the engine, and find out how reliable it will be. But, on the third and last day of testing, Sergio Perez also achieved, for the team, the best time overall.
A fresh start for Ferrari
After a season full of strategic errors, Ferrari has announced Fred Vassuer as the new Team Principal, replacing Mattia Binnoto. After finishing in second in both championships, with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz as the drivers, Ferrari is once again the closest team to beat the Red Bull sequence of wins. The car SF-23 is expected to have less drag and have a more reliable and enduring engine.
The new guys in class
While we say goodbye to Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo, some new names will be part of the grid this year: Oscar Piastri, Nyck De Vries, Logan Sargeant, and Nico Hulkenberg – who came back to Haas.
Nyck De Vries was a reserve driver for Mercedes last year and debuted on Monza for Williams. Now, he will race alongside Yuki Tsunoda for AlphaTauri. F1 now has an American driver, the first since 2015, the Floridian Logan Sargeant was hired by Williams, replacing Nicolas Latifi.
But the most expected by the fans is Oscar Piastri. The new McLaren driver was first announced by Alpine in August as a replacement for Fernando Alonso. The aussie quickly tweeted denying the agreement. A little after, it was announced he would be replacing Daniel Ricciardo, not the Spanish champion.
A parallel championship
Every year the midfield teams battle to be the best over the rest. Alpine, Mc Laren, Alfa Romeo, Aston Martin ended last year in 4th to 7th respectively and they all want to be closer to the top three. For Alpine, with its full french line up, and Alfa Romeo, the only team racing with the same drivers, the engineers and team principals are looking forward to the season and feel hopeful with the data they collected.
Aston Martin is the one to look out for! Fernando Alonso and the Brazilian Felipe Drugovich, who is the reserve driver for Aston Martin and had to step during testing due to Lance Stroll’s wrist injury, achieved great times and number of laps. They seemed pretty excited with the car performance and, if reliable, it can definitely battle with Ferrari and Mercedes – something that was already proved during the first race in Bahrain, when they got a podium.
McLaren on the other hand… Talking about Lando Norris, journalist Will Buxton stated “he actually punched the makeshift wall, that little bit of frustration, you can tell it’s not quite right”, and it is a great sum up of how pre-season tests felt for the British team. The car MCL60 lost a lot of track time on Saturday – 37 laps for Norris, and 44 for Oscar Piastri -, because of minor errors.
Can it be the Mercedes’ revenge era?
After a tough season, Mercedes went back to black for W14. Although the car looks beautiful for the fans and the “lack” of painting made it weigh less, George Russel had to stop middle track after a hydraulic failure during tests.
Toto Wolff, Mercedes’s Team principal said that “the porpoising is essentially gone” in this new design. It marked a step forward for the British since it was W13’s biggest problem. The Mercedes of the Lewis Hamilton old era is trying to make its way back to the top once again, but the car doesn’t seem quite there yet.
It’s Vegas, Baby!
This year, F1 also has a rookie race. For the first time, the sport is going to Las Vegas in a totally new track. The street grand prix will happen on November 16th-18th, being the third in the USA. The track has 6.2 km of length and breaking points at speeds up to 340 km/h.
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The article above was edited by Amanda Moraes.
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