Formula 1’s all-Americas triple-header ends this weekend with the São Paulo Grand Prix at Interlagos in Brazil, one of the sport’s most storied venues.
While both championships are long wrapped up, history is still up for grabs this weekend.
But rather than history that might be etched onto the F1 honour rolls, this is the battle to retain a place in the grand prix story.
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Sergio Pérez arrives in Brazil as a man under pressure after a disastrous result at his home grand prix.
Worse is that his foes — Daniel Ricciardo, who wants his seat, and Lewis Hamilton, who wants his position in the championship — are coming into fine form.
He has the tools to win this weekend’s race, but that’s not the point. From now until the end of the season his mission is just to keep the wolves at bay.
CAN SERGIO PÉREZ BOUNCE BACK?
Sergio Pérez needs a big result.
He knows it. It’s why he went for that ambitious but misguided lunge around the outside of Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen at his home grand prix last weekend and ended up out of the race on the first lap.
With Verstappen having won both the drivers and the constructors championship, Pérez has stood alone in F1’s sizzling spotlight.
He’s accumulated less than half of Verstappen’s points tally and picked up just one podium finish since the mid-season break. Second in the drivers championship is slipping from his grasp, and team boss Christian Horner is willing to go only as far as to say the team has the “intention” to retain him for the final year of his contract in 2024.
He’s a man under pressure.
Pérez has said this seemingly interminable form slump — replete with so many false dawns — is more about machinery than mentality.
He said ahead of the United States Grand Prix a couple of weeks ago he had long meetings with his engineers about resetting his approach to setting up his car, which he says he moved away from his driving style as it’s been developed during the year.
Ironically his performance in Mexico — right up until the first lap — was one of his most convincing of the year. He was on Verstappen’s pace throughout practice, looked competitive in the long-run simulations and qualified only 0.160 seconds behind his teammate. Then he binned it all at the first turn.
Was it just a home-race spike or something sustainable? A comprehensive result this weekend will take some of the load off him for the break before the final double-header of the season. Another poor weekend, however, and the days before Las Vegas will be dominated by questions about his future.
PIT TALK PODCAST: Daniel Ricciardo‘s breakthrough weekend for AlphaTauri couldn’t have come at a worse time for Sergio Pérez, who binned his car on the first lap of his home race. Will this be the moment that convinced Red Bull Racing to take back the Aussie, and what would that mean for Red Bull’s broader F1 program?
WILL DANIEL RICCIARDO CONTINUE TO RISE?
In conjunction with Pérez’s own form is the return of Daniel Ricciardo, who’s threatening to turn his Formula 1 comeback into a renaissance.
His result in Mexico City was excellent considering his AlphaTauri machinery. He qualified fourth — just behind Verstappen and ahead of Pérez — and finished seventh, though he could easily have been fifth had the race not been split up by a red flag at half distance.
One good race doesn’t make a comeback — let’s not forget he won in Italy in 2021 without that amounting to much else at McLaren — but it’s not just about the single result.
Both Ricciardo and the team are optimistic that they’ve unlocked genuine extra performance from the car. Both have found a way to move the upgraded machine towards Ricciardo’s driving style. The fact they’ve managed to find such a positive set-up direction in just the second weekend since the Aussie returned to the cockpit from injury is very promising.
There’ll be more to come too, with team and driver having the chance to hone the set-up they switched to only last weekend.
“I feel we have much more confidence in the car and how to set it up,” Ricciardo said. “Obviously, with me having raced two weekends in a row since I came back, I’m looking forward to dealing with the sprint format at Interlagos.
“It’s hard to know how well this track will suit our car. I guess I haven’t done enough races with it to know which types of tracks are best for us. In Mexico we did better than expected, so that gives us confidence for Brazil. I’d hope we can have another Q3, top-10 car.”
Ricciardo can’t be expected to stretch for the second row on the grid again — while AlphaTauri has improved, undoubtedly the conditions and layout in Mexico played to the car’s strengths — but regularly vying for Q3 and points appears to be the window of possibility.
It’s obviously good news for Ricciardo’s comeback, but the bigger the results he can accumulate this season, the more pressure he can apply on Pérez, whose seat is his ultimate aim.
Lando takes sarcastic swipe at Ricciardo | 00:38
CAN MERCEDES MAKE TITLE CLAIMS ON ANNIVERSARY OF LAST WIN?
It’s been almost exactly one year since Mercedes won its last race in Formula 1 — a long, long time ago for the formerly unstoppable team.
Last year’s São Paulo Grand Prix was this year’s Singapore — the one race in which Red Bull Racing was bizarrely incapable of securing so much as a podium result.
George Russell took pole via sprint qualifying and lined up on the front row alongside Lewis Hamilton, who was punted off the road by Max Verstappen, starting third, on the first lap.
It gave Russell the clear air he needed to control he race for his maiden victory in what ended up being one-two formation ahead of the recovering Hamilton.
Red Bull Racing’s afternoon was better remembered for the flashpoint between Verstappen and Pérez, with the former refusing to let the latter pass for sixth place in his quest for second in the standings.
Mercedes’s car was genuinely competitive this time last year, even if it took some unique circumstances to deliver an emphatic result.
Again this year the W14 appears to be peaking in time for Brazil, with a recent upgrade package delivering Hamilton second on the road in Austin and Mexico City — before his disqualification from the former.
“It definitely gives us a lot of confidence,” Hamilton said. “I think hopefully these next couple of races will be close.”
But while Hamilton would dearly love to break his own victory drought — almost two years old, stretching to the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix — the prize of second in the drivers championship is more immediately achievable.
He’s only 20 points behind Pérez in the standings. While Hamilton says it wouldn’t change his life — and no-one remembers who finishes second in seasons like this — to finish ahead of one of Red Bull Racing’s formidable cars would be a feather in the cap and a morale boost for the team.
Mercedes is also holding a 22-point advantage over Ferrari for second in the constructors standings, a position worth millions of dollars.
It’s all very delicately poised on a sprint weekend at a track that almost always delivers a twist.
Hamilton bamboozled by Perez crash | 00:54
CAN ASTON MARTIN CHART ITS WAY THROUGH DIRE STRAITS?
Remember when we were talking about Aston Martin as having a certain shot at victory this season? It feels like a long, long time ago now.
The bolter of the start of the season appears to have shot its shot.
In the last fortnight Aston Martin has returned the worst results of its entire season.
Mexico was the first time all year the team failed to score a point, with Fernando Alonso retiring with damage and Lance Stroll trundling home 17th.
One week earlier Alonso had his perfect Q3 streak broken when both he and Stroll were knocked out in Q1. Stroll admirably scored points but Alonso retired with bodywork damage.
Aston Martin was always likely to see a decline in competitiveness — even Alonso has admitted as much. Though the former minnow is rapidly upscaling, it’ll take time to fire on all cylinders like a major team.
But its rapid descent is mildly alarming.
The team has brought several updates to the car in the second half of the year, including a major revision in the United States, but appeared to become only less competitive.
Starting both cars from pit lane in Austin and Stroll again from his garage in Mexico speaks to a team unable to understand where it’s gone wrong — though team principal Mike Krack had denied his squad is lost, insisting instead it’s all about gathering data.
Alonso, though, blunter.
“Honestly, we are not fighting for anything,” he said, per Autosport. “In the constructors championship we are locked in in the position we are.
“In the driver championship we will lose a couple of places.
“We will learn, even if we have to start from the pitlane, and you know that is more useful than just spending the weekend.”
The learning is crucial, because at a time both Mercedes, McLaren and Ferrari have brought upgrades that have taken their cars forward with a view to 2024, Aston Martin is languishing without a springboard into next season.
It’s not just this year at stake.
HOW CAN I WATCH IT?
The 2023 São Paulo Grand Prix is live and ad-break free on Kayo and Fox Sports.
Practice starts at 1:30am (AEDT) on Saturday, with qualifying at 5:00am.
The sprint shootout is from 1:00am on Sunday before the 100-kilometre sprint race at 5:30am.
Pre-race coverage starts at 2:30am, with lights out on the São Paulo Grand Prix at 4:00am.
