F1 returns from the mid-season break for this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix, and there’s plenty other than the title to still look forward to between now and November.
Formula 1 is back from its mid-season break for this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix, and all eyes are on Max Verstappen and his imminent crowning as a three-time world champion.
The Dutchman will be on as good as a victory lap at his home track, where the fans pile into the tiny historic circuit to celebrate their most famous motor-racing compatriot. Though they’ll all be out to see a home win, they know the bigger prize is as good as in the bag for their man.
But the season is so much more than Verstappen’s cruise to a third straight championship, and in the final 10 races of the season there are plenty of fascinating storylines still to play out.
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CAN ANYONE STOP VERSTAPPEN’S HISTORIC CHARGE?
The Dutch Grand Prix is less a race and more a rave, with Verstappen the headline act. The Zandvoort race exists precisely because Verstappen became an almost overnight sensation from the moment he moved up to Red Bull Racing and won his first race, and organisers and F1 itself are cashing in.
But the orange army partying in the grandstands — who this year have been banned from lighting flares; we’ll see if that works — are there to see only one thing: Verstappen win, and win comprehensively.
In the two seasons of the race’s revival fans have been treated to nothing but home success.
Verstappen won the 2021 race at a canter, but though he won last year too, he was more significantly challenged by Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton.
The Briton took a one-stop strategy from fourth on the grid, banking on passing being so difficult around the narrow and twisty Zandvoort circuit that track position would be decisive.
It looked like a good bet, especially with George Russell acting as a blocker, but a virtual safety car — triggered somewhat controversially by AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda — facilitated a cheap stop for Verstappen to gift him an easy swing at victory.
It could be a salient lesson for this year’s race, when there’s history on the line despite the title being as good as won.
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Up for grabs isn’t just the record for consecutive victories for a driver but also the seemingly unattainable benchmark of a total season clean sweep.
Verstappen and Red Bull Racing don’t have a clean pole record this season. Ferrari in particular has been a constant threat, while Hamilton also has a pole to his name from the similarly twisty Hungaroring.
In a season that’s fast becoming a story of what, rather than who, can beat Verstappen, the ultimate irony might be that his own home circuit could be the best place for a rival to trip him up.
It’s the sort of scenario in which Red Bull Racing would dearly love to know its second driver, Sergio Pérez, is up to the task of playing rear gunner. Him stepping up could make the difference.
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HOW GOOD CAN MCLAREN GET?
When Formula 1 adjourned for the mid-season break it had just expanded the frontrunning group of teams to five, with McLaren having forced its way into podium contention with its revitalising series of upgrades brought to the final four rounds before the suspension.
Lando Norris has a pair of rostrums to show for it, and teammate Oscar Piastri would arguably have the same were it not for circumstance.
But years of underperformance have — fairly — left the team cautious of getting ahead of itself, and though the car has proved effective at four very different circuits, there are still challenges the team will need to prove it’s capable of overcoming.
Zandvoort on paper is one of them, with the team worried about the MCL60’s slow-corner performance.
But that proved relatively little impediment to Norris’s podium run in Budapest, and Zandvoort is a marginally faster circuit. Last year’s pole lap was set at an average of 218 kilometres per hour, some 13 kilometres per hour faster than the Hungaroring.
Hungary also has many more corners taken at a maximum speed below 120 kilometres per hour.
Counterintuitive though it may seem, Monza the following week might be more troublesome, with the car still lacking a low-downforce aero package and most of the Italian circuit’s corners being slow chicanes.
The Singapore street circuit is obviously a potential hazard too.
But the rest of the calendar bar Las Vegas should be safer territory, with plenty of medium and high-speed turns for the car to stretch its legs.
Now consider that McLaren has been scoring more than 24 points per weekend on average over the last three rounds since both cars started receiving these upgrades.
That puts the team on a trajectory to pass both Ferrari and Aston Martin for third in the constructors championship.
It would be a remarkable turnaround from fielding the slowest car of all in Bahrain at the start of the season and would signal the team could be finally set for a genuine revival.
Now it just has to execute.
WHO WILL SET UP FOR A STRONG 2024?
But there’s no getting around the fact the frontrunners, all with the goal of winning the title, are already deeply involved in their 2024 plans.
All will be devoting considerable resource to designing next year’s machines in the hope that an early start will be enough to take a big chunk out of Red Bull Racing’s advantage.
But that doesn’t mean 2023 is a total dead rubber.
With largely stable regulations, lessons learnt on the track this season can still be applicable to next year’s car. At a minimum teams should be able to figure out what not to do to in the battle against the reigning constructors champion.
There are different scales of urgency to the teams’ respective missions, though.
McLaren is making such a big step forward that this season looks like it’s suddenly all upside.
Aston Martin is in a similar boat — so long as it can figure out why its gone from the grid’s second-best car to a lacklustre fifth fastest in the month or so before the break.
Midfield teams sometimes have a habit of falling into this trap when they find themselves in rarer air. A change in design philosophy brings big gains, but time is needed to develop the sort of deep understanding that translates to ongoing performance improvement.
This isn’t to say Aston Martin might be found out as a pretender by the end of the year. Rather, it’s a matter of finding out how realistic it is to think of the team as a potential regular winner in the near term.
Meanwhile, for Mercedes and Ferrari the situation is more dire.
Both expected title challenges this year. Mercedes has been more open about its shortcomings, admitting that it was too conservative with its 2023 designs. But there are only so many times you can ask for forgiveness before it just seems like you’ve lost it.
Ferrari, meanwhile, is less willing to admit that it’s in a rebuilding phase, in part because it has a genuinely competitive qualifying car. But of course no-one’s fooled by the team’s race pace.
Both will need to show big steps forward in understanding and outright competitiveness by the end of the season to give themselves a lunching pad into next year, if not just to convince their fans to keep believing. Otherwise it’ll be difficult to imagine anything other than another Red Bull Racing walk in 2024.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT IN DRIVER MARKET SILLY SEASON?
Though we’re between contract cycles for most of the sport’s heavy hitters, the 2024 driver market still has plenty to be played out.
Lewis Hamilton is the biggest fish still unsigned despite having suggested months ago that a deal was close. While no-one expects anything other than a renewal, the length of his deal and what it might say about his future will influence other movements immediately. Mercedes is still a highly sought-after destination, and Hamilton’s contract is a key cog in the broader market.
Haas has held on to Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hülkenberg, taking itself out of play, but that still leaves one seat apiece at Williams and Haas — Logan Sargeant and Zhou Guanyu respectively — and both seats at AlphaTauri unsigned.
Zhou is likely to get the nod for a third year, while a little more consistency will surely seal the deal for Sargeant.
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But all eyes will be on Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda at AlphaTauri. Despite being last in the constructors standings, the team’s direct connection to Red Bull Racing makes it a major player in the silly season.
If Ricciardo can prove he’s still his old swashbuckling self, another year at AlphaTauri looks like the most likely outcome, which would effectively be an audition for Sergio Pérez’s seat in 2025.
Tsunoda of course wants the same, but his career won’t be harmed if he can stick with the Aussie, with other seats potentially open to him in 2025.
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There’s also the prospect of early moves for the 2025 market, with Carlos Sainz the focus of much speculation given his links to Sauber head Andrea Seidl from his time at McLaren. It’s been suggested the Spaniard might be a target for the future Audi works team.
But both Sainz and Ferrari have intimated they’d like to renew ties, and both have said they’d like to clear up their futures by the end of the year — suddenly the clock is ticking.
Finally, no team has yet fielded any junior drivers in free practice despite each being required to devote two FP1 sessions to inexperienced racers. Only two teams have announced plans to field anyone other than their full-timers this season: Ferrari with Robert Shwartzman this weekend and in Abu Dhabi, and Mercedes with Frederik Vesti in Mexico City.
McLaren, Williams and AlphaTauri have all technically fulfilled one of their two junior practice sessions with Piastri, Sargeant and Nyck de Vries in FP1 in Bahrain at the start of the year.
HOW WILL THE NEW TRACKS FARE?
The final 10 races of the season feature effectively two new circuits. One is the returning Qatar Grand Prix, which has been raced only once under the previous set of regulations. The other is the much-hyped Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Qatar comes first as round 17 of the season. The Lusail track proved a popular layout with drivers, though the race itself was fairly straightforward and largely forgotten in the haze of what became a disorderly ending to that year’s championship.
But the challenge this year will be returning to a little-used circuit with brand-new cars under all-new rules and diving straight into a sprint race. Teams will get just one hour of practice to figure themselves out before committing their set-up for qualifying.
It’s also likely to be the title-deciding weekend short of any result shocks between now and then.
But four rounds after that comes perhaps the most hyped race in the history of Formula 1, with the sport shutting down the Las Vegas strip for a late-night race through the world’s most famous casino haven.
The track, let’s be honest, looks a bit ordinary, but the curveball of extremely low temperatures — probably around 10°C at 10pm and midnight local time when qualifying and the race take place respectively — on a completely green public road will certainly make things interesting.
And, if nothing else, you can bet the visual spectacle will be extreme. Formula 1 is sparing no expense on making the event a success, and it has all the tools at its disposal against a stunning visual backdrop to do it.
The racing may end up being secondary, but you’re sure to remember what you saw.
THE DUTCH GRAND PRIX — HOW CAN I WATCH IT?
The Dutch Grand Prix is live and ad-break free in racing on Kayo and Fox Sports.
First practice gets underway on Friday at 8:30pm (AEST) ahead of second practice at midnight.
Final practice is from 7:30pm on Saturday before qualifying at 11pm.
Pre-race coverage starts at 9:30pm, with lights out for the Dutch Grand Prix at 11pm.
