Hello there, it’s been a while. I have not posted actively about Formula Ones for a while and I’m not saying this is a return of the F1 blogs. Just to quickly address: no, I didn’t stop watching Formula Ones in 2023 – but after I stopped writing my race reports, I felt relieved to just sit back and be a fan without a need to turn every race and turn in the sport into a blog.
However, this year I got F1TV and decided I wanted to get back into watching full races again and now I’ll give you some first impressions based on the first two rounds: the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grand Prixs.
One thing that should have not come as any surprise to anyone is that Max Verstappen seems to be cruising easily towards his fourth championship. No one, not even his team-mate, is anywhere close to challenging him.
Despite this, Red Bull as an organisation has been in the midst of a shit storm for the first two race weekends due to allegations flinged at Christian Horner. This, I think, is a source of concern for the team. It will probably not affect their success on track immediately, but it’s looking increasingly dreadful that the internal power struggle at the team seems to be tearing things apart.
The start of the season has also been very good for McLaren, who I would argue probably have the best team, car and driver combination in the whole sport right now. Piastri and Norris have been putting their best foot forward. Norris was even close to scoring a podium in the Saudi round, which was amazing considering it looked like he might have jumped the start.
However, the season has started with mixed results from Ferrari and Mercedes, though to be fair, they’re still in the championship top-5. With Charles Leclerc struggling with breaks, Carlos Sainz stepped up to give a dynamite performance in Bahrain to take a podium – which will be important as Sainz is now fighting for his place in the sport (given he is being replaced for 2025). Unfortunately, Sainz was sidelined by appendicitis in Saudi Arabia, but Ferrari’s replacement driver Oliver Bearman debuted with an impressive 8th place finish (after starting from outside the top-10). In this race, it was Leclerc who took the third place podium.
Mercedes on the other hand have a been a bit muted and have not been able to give the McLarens a run for their money. I’m seriously a little concerned as I’ve now watched Hamilton chase down McLarens for two weekends in a row without him being able to catch them.
In all, at the top: I think the fight between McLaren and Mercedes is really the only thing worth watching right now. I kinda wish Russell and Hamilton really had the pace to challenge other teams.
Conversely at the back, we have a number of teams with a LOT of problems. Haas at least were able to salvage the Saudi race pace with Kevin Magnussen holding off almost half of the pack to give Nico Hülkenberg a real chance for points and after Magnussen acrued 20 seconds worth of penalties. Haas are showing they actually know how to do team work unlike RB (former AlphaTauri/Toro Rosso) whose team-order shenanigans were embarrassing to watch in the Bahrain round.
Still – Williams, RB, Alpine and Sauber really don’t have a lot to smile about at the moment. The cars are slow and the drivers’ performances have been exceedingly underwhelming. Alpine at least showed a slight improvement from the first race even if the constructor is still at the bottom of the score-board (in the 0 points club) as of this writing. Still, it’s a bit demeaning for the two French race winners to be stuck in the back.
This is also going to be a pivotal year for Logan Sargeant who, in all honesty, has yet to have demonstrated why he belongs in Formula One. He might have a single point to his name from last year – but it doesn’t change the fact that his team-mate carried Williams the whole season. To be fair to Logan, Williams do seem to have a genuinely terrible car this year.
However, I feel absolutely the most bad for Sauber. Not Bottas specifically, his qualifyings have been quite bad so he’s been starting on a back foot. In fact, I’ve been positively surprised by Guanyu Zhou’s performances given that I have not really seen him as adding any substance to the team, but he fought admirably to finish 11th in the season debuting race. If there’d been even one disqualification or retirement, Sauber would have a point. However, for the second weekend in a row, Sauber botched a pitstop with their cars. Bottas’s incident was pretty bad, leaving him stranded in no man’s land for the rest of the race, but the Saudi incident with Zhou was inexcusable as the Chinese driver was again showing his best stuff.
The reason this matters is that Zhou and Bottas (like Sainz and Sargeant) are fighting for their futures in the sport as it’s been heavily rumoured that neither are planned to be retained by Audi once the car manufacturer becomes Sauber’s power unit facilitators. Zhou’s been showing actual fight, which is commendable and could get him a drive at another team. Bottas sadly is a veteran with not a lot of options unless Hamilton’s move causes a massive domino effect of drivers switching teams next year. Yes, he’s a proven talent, but Valtteri has no amazing highlights from the past two seasons apart from managing to stay in the drivers’ top-10 during his first Sauber/Alfa Romeo season.
Over all, the first two races weren’t super exciting, but I did enjoy watching the action at the back during the first round and Haas’s team work in the second. The safety car caused by Lance Stroll’s accident also luckily gave the teams some alternate strategy options which was also a nice breath of fresh air.
The real reason to watch this year is not the championship fight but rather the race to see who will take Hamilton’s seat in 2025 when he moves to Ferrari. My money is actually on Sainz right now, based on his first race, but we are still very early in the running so let’s not be hasty. Anyway, I’m also looking forward to seeing how the minor teams will now dig themselves from the hole they’re in after the first two races. Sauber and Haas at least are showing promise, and maybe Alpine too despite their staff woes. I’m not too confident on RB and Williams.
Anyway, keep it clean!!
Hande's Blog 