F1. Belgium 2023 Review

By Chelsea Wintle, Aiden McLaughlin and Gavin Huet

Driver of the day

Gavin – Is there any point of nominating anyone but Max Verstappen? The Red Bull driver is cruising his way to being recognised not just as a once in a generation driver, but almost more importantly as a winner. He hardly puts a foot wrong and even when he does he is managing to get away with it. If he was not so in control of the championship we would be having a fantastic season with lots happening and teams fortunes fluctuating more than Spa’s weather patterns. 

 

Aiden – It must have been a strange couple of weeks for Yuki Tsunoda. He lost a team mate in Nyck de Vries, gained a replacement in Daniel Ricciardo, and then had to watch as the Australian out performed him in Hungary. To add to that, there’s been plenty of chat that Ricciardo could replace Serio Perez at Red Bull. It seems to have given Tsunoda a kick up the backside, which isn’t a bad outcome for AlphaTauri. Tsunoda had an excellent drive on Sunday. He was as high as seventh at one stage, before the car’s lack of pace saw him drop back to finish tenth. It was his first point since Azerbaijan in April and he outperformed his high-profile teammate going into the summer break.

 

Chelsea – Bold of me to pick a DNF, but I’m going with Oscar Piastri. He’s been the most exciting driver to watch over the last few races for me, as the McLaren upgrades have kicked in and Piastri refusing to play wallflower to Lando Norris. Piastri did an excellent job of holding his nerve through qualifying, and it was poor luck rather than poor management that saw him cuddled into oblivion by Carlos Sainz on lap one.

 

Moment of the weekend

Gavin – Max Verstappen being told, twice, to  use his head by his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase. There were a couple of snarky comments between the two throughout the race, and the weekend, and it looked like maybe there were a couple of cracks showing in the very dominant Red Bull team, but rest easy, this just underlines how dominant and in control they really are. Words may be exchanged but it merely displays the level of professionalism in the team. 

 

Aiden – Carlos Sainz and Oscar Piastri making contact on the first corner left a real feeling of ‘what if’ for both drivers as well as the fans. Piastri had a great weekend up until then, securing P5 on this grid and finishing P2 in Saturday’s sprint race. Sainz had qualified in P4 and went on to watch teammate Charles Leclerc take a podium place behind the two Red Bulls. You just get the feeling we were robbed of some great racing with both of these out of the race.

 

Chelsea – Max almost missing out on Q3. Max was very lucky to complete Q2 in tenth place after a strategic disagreement with his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase, and let GP know who he blamed for it (he was wrong). Max has been so dominant this season, he hasn’t been under enough pressure to let forth with one of his petulant tirades, so this was a special pre-holiday treat.

 

Hot take of the weekend

Gavin – Red Bull are in such a dominant position that their next title is just a matter of when, consequently they can now stop developing this years car and put their energies into next year. This will allow them to negate their wind tunnel development testing penalty for breaching the spending cap.

Maybe they can now spend a bit of time learning how to look after all the trophies they are collecting. 

 

Aiden – After a national anthem at Silverstone that left so many speechless and a trophy being smashed in Hungary, who could have predicted we would get both of these things at Spa. Antoine Delie turned out a performance for the ages (I love Alonso’s reaction the most)

before Red Bull took a leaf out of the Crusaders book from a few seasons ago.

 

Chelsea – This barely scrapes through as a hot take given everyone’s thinking it, but what in the blazes are Alpine thinking? The team announced two major personnel changes on Thursday, the day before the final pre-summer break race weekend. Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer and Sporting Director Alan Permane finished up on Sunday in what many would call a premature push, but it was the timing of the announcement that was most bewildering. They couldn’t wait four days and spare the team the distraction? I’ll miss seeing Otmar on the grid – I was looking forward to seeing how Alpine would round out the year under his stewardship.

 

Cold take of the weekend

Gavin – It was looking like the perfect weekend for rookie Oscar Piastri after knocking on the door over the last few weekends. From his first (sprint) podium to the qualifying he was on fire, and leaving a struggling Lando Norris in the shade. And then the race started and even before you could take a breath his race was over after an incident with Carlos Sainz who was also forced to retire a bit later due to this incident. This whole episode shows how quickly things can change in F1 especially for those still coming to grips with the racing. It’s brutal but the top drivers learn and adapt and all the signs are that Oscar is on his way to being a top driver. 

 

Aiden – Alpine seems like an absolute mess. How strange is it that on the Friday of the Grand Prix weekend before the summer break, you announce Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer and Sporting Director Alan Permane will be leaving the outfit post-race, while Chief Technical Officer Pat Fry is on his way to Williams. If they don’t have a few rabbits to pull out of the hat during the next month, then maybe it’s time to ask the last person on their pit wall to turn out the lights*

*Of course what will happen now is that Alpine will have an awesome second half of the season and exceed all expectations.

 

Chelsea – It’s summer, which means we have three weeks to gossip about driver moves. There are seven current drivers with contracts ending at the close of 2023: Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes, Zhou Guanyu at Alfa Romeo, Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda at AlphaTauri, Logan Sargeant at Williams, and Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg at Haas. Logan Sargeant is the most obvious driver at risk, having failed to score a point so far this season, and the good money is on Mick Schumacher to replace him. For 2023, though, James Vowles seems intent on having Sargeant stick around.

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