2023 Season Grand Prix Megathread

Awesome as you can tell by the title change it’s now a Megathread and pinned.  

Thankyou @EA_Kent   

After Bahrain GP:

- Red Bull too strong, I fear boring season to come. A pity because behind 3 teams are very close to each other with different characteristics, without RB domination would be funny;

- Mercedes wrong project again (?), Toto going to change it soon? Probably a big mistake during the winter but better turning away late than not doing it at all;

- Ferrari the worst one so far in comparison with the past season. And incredibly immediately an engine failure! If they have to depotentiate the power again they may start to think to the 2026!!! BTW it’s official: Leclerc the most unlucky guy of the modern F1 history;

- Aston Martin incredible jump ahead, so happy for Fernando but not enough to match RB, speed is missing.

Having saying that it’s only one track and a rear limited one, so things may change a lot elsewhere, hopefully in better for the show (less Ferrari, Mercedes degradation?). But RB is so far away…

Jeddah to come:

- Ferrari looks having the speed this year, may be a good track for them. If the PU doesn’t break again (clearly on Leclerc’s car)…

- Perez time to win or just make “the Bottas” till the end. For his luck he may be easy 2nd, so he may even hope in some unlikely Verstappen’s failures…

See you after next race 😉

@Nuvolarix
Don't forget RB double DNF in Bahrain last year so Ferrari's DNF may not mean as much.

(I am Charles' fan and tifosi and I would like to see him claiming the championship)

AM jumped ahead because they headhunted RB developers 😉 As Dr. Marko said, "they have very good memory" 😉

RB has a history of good chassis and aero, they always struggled with powertrain. So they could be miles ahead because of that. And Andrew Newey is a genius 😉

Re Merc: as @SteveJackson wrote, they might be struggling with the budget so they need to stick to what they have unless there is room for "resetting" all approach.

@P4st3l1ak RB did double retirement in 2022 but the performance was there. Sainz in 2023 ended the race 48 seconds behind with Verstappen having no need to push (Leclerc let’s say 35 though), almost 1 second per lap. Huge gap.

@Meza994 yeah it looks control unit issue, hopefully not engine 

I'm hoping that instead of Max wining again this year, that it's Sergio Perez's turn for a world championship. Poor guy has been working his arse off and is about time he scores big for Mexico! 

I like Checo.  Always have but he’s just not in the same class as Max.   Only way I can see checo winning is if he starts on pole every race and Max gets a 15 place penalty every race

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@Meza994 wrote:
@ScarDuck14Nah just takes more street circuits lol

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Then Checo has to move to Formula E, they only race on street tracks 😉

https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/formel-1/ueberholen-schwerer-aerorynamik-outwash-2023/

Carlos Sainz even judged after the second race of the year: "I had the feeling that there was more turbulent air on the road. It almost felt like in the old cars."

@mariohomoh  Are you suggesting we Brits are ignorant elitest snobs ? 😂

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@TotosHeadphones wrote:
@mariohomohHonestly, it wasn't meant like that, it was more me thinking about licensing issues. I wanted to recommended the BBC podcast on the 2007 Spygate incident some the ago but remembered the Beeb have strict licensing rules


Sorry, it wasn't meant to come across like that, everything seems region locked

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The power of VPN gives anyone interested a nice residency around the world.)

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@Blackbird90 wrote:

The power of VPN gives anyone interested a nice residency around the world.)

I use Tor browser 😜 A bit slower but you can pretend to be anywhere in the world

Cutting back to @TotosHeadphones podcast suggestion, a few highlights:

• Red Bull makes it so that basically the whole rear end of the car works as a drag reduction system – DRS. The rear wing flap opens, and given how much the beam wing relies on it to work the beam wing stalls. With the latter stalling, the diffuser also stalls. So the back end of the car stops generating so much downforce and consequently way less drag, hence achieving upwards of 33kph of DRS Delta.
• Red Bull got their concept so right that it keeps on packing a lot of downforce on slow and medium speed corners, but is able to cut back on the downforce generated on high speeds – 250-300kph. Since the car isn't as loaded up as the competition, they can run with softer suspension without risking porpoising, making the car way more compliant when it needs to be to keep that mechanical grip.
• Last time he checked (last season but still recent enough), Mercedes' and Red Bull's underfloor were just as different as their sidepods. All of this to show that there's no silver bullet, no "oh just fix the 'zeropods' and they'll be right back at contention". 

Now this... This I thought was just so good I could not let it slide. Even favorited the episode and all. I'll transcribe it, it happens at around the 15:59 mark. It's about vehicle dynamics and how much you should care about those transient moments, when load is shifting around. 

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It's not just the number, it's just not the headline number of downforce. It's about the transient conditions of the car. Because as I said many times, you come down the straight, the one thing you want going down the street is minimum drag. You don't need lots and lots of downforce, but you want minimum drag.

So the next thing is you either shut the DRS or it's shut anyway because you're not behind another car or it's not qualifying. So at that point in time, you'll want the car to be stable. You get on the brake pedal, you want the car to be stable. You want it to have good grip, especially good rear grip. So the minute you pat the brake pedal, the driver gets confidence, because that's when he gets his confidence to turn the steering wheel. So if he can hit the brake pedal and he's not tiptoeing because he's waiting on the rear end snapping on him, then he'll turn the steering wheel. And when he turns the steering wheel, he wants the car to turn into the corner.

But again, you want the front to turn, but you want the rear to be stable, because that means you'll just attack the corner a little bit faster next time.

When you get to that point in time, you're coming off the brake pedal. So it's about how far can you drive into the corner on the brake pedal and not have the front lock up on you and the car slide wide and such.

So you get to the middle of the corner, and then you want to try and get back onto the throttle. You don't want the car to start to understeer, and you don't want the rear to feel nervous.

So you need a car that balances itself all the way through there. And the things you've got changing all the time is the attitude of the car, the roll of the car, the yaw of the car, and the steering angle. All those things are transient. So you've got to set your targets to suit each of those transient conditions that take you through a given corner.

Now, you can model one corner. It's easy 90º, it's different if it's 180º corner. So every corner is slightly different. But you can model that one corner, and your target should be the fact that you have a consistent balance. That means the center of pressure is shifting in the right direction for every transient condition, and that's part of your targets.
The target is not just a headline number of downforce for drag. It's not just a headline number of efficiency.

And I think that's where if you take Mercedes, that's where they've gone. They've just looked at this headline number and say, oh, look at that. That's fantastic. The downforce level we've got is excellent. They themselves will say the drag of the car is a bit high, and they will say, again, the rear of the car is a bit nervous, so they're always running a little bit more rear wing, which is not a good thing because the rear wing is one of the most inefficient parts of the car.
Rear wing is probably 3.5 to 1 efficiency. The underfloor is probably 10 to 1 efficiency. So it's an underfloor you want to work consistently, but its characteristics need to be right to give the driver that confidence to arrive at the corner, brake late, turn the car aggressively and know the car is secure.

And whenever you see one of these cars take a corner well at speed, it is phenomenal speed they're going at. They're by no means slouches, they are very, very quick. And whenever you see one that's not quite balanced, you'll see it moving, you can actually physically see the rear stepping a little bit. Now the driver feels that, that's a nightmare. So you've got to make sure the targets that you're setting are for all of those conditions. And it's not to say just a headline number.

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