2023 Miami Grand Prix

[Purple88]

The 2023 Miami Grand Prix went off yesterday without a hitch.  If you happened to watch any of the pre-race coverage,

it had alot of great info and shots around the really cool track.  And the way they introduced the drivers was really cool.  Definitely, non-European!  The track in Miami was really well thought out.  It is a street course purposefully designed right near the Miami Dolphins stadium, which makes alot of sense to me.  All the infrastructure, parking lots, storage area, fan entertainment areas are already there at a time the Dolphins don't need them.  It would be really cool to go to this race and I hope to some time in the future.

Now for the race; it was ho-hum at the top, as Red Bull just simply doesn't have any competition right now.  The only drama for the win was if Max Verstappen, the points leader and reigning world champion, would pass his team mate to get the win.  At the qualifying round on Saturday, Ferrari's Charles LeClerc wrecked and caused a red flag and they canceled the remainder of the qualifying session.  This meant people were out of line to what they would have been had the session been completed as planned.  So Verstappen was relegated back in 9th place to start.  He quickly passed the 7 cars in front of him with only his teammate left by lap 15 of 57.  He managed his tire degradation really well, which means he extended the life of those initial set of tires all the way to lap 46; so when he came out of the pit on lap 46 (only 11 laps to go) he was in great shape as his teammate pitted on lap 21 and was on tires with 25 laps on them by that point.  Verstappen then pretty easily passed his teammate just 2 laps later and that was all she wrote.

But the better racing IMO was just down the grid a little from here.   Tier 1 below this, while not as sexy as racing for the win,

Fernando Alonso - Aston Martin

George Russell - Mercedes and

Carlos Sainz - Ferrari

were all racing for 3rd place and each had a chance, but really Fernando Alonzo, the 41 year old 2-time champion is racing as well as he ever has and controlled his race to overtake Russell and Sainz to earn the last podium (1st, 2nd and 3rd place drivers) spot and drink the champagne at the end of the race!

Tier 2 - 

Lewis Hamilton - Mercedes

Charles LeClerc - Ferrari

Pierre Gasly - Alpine

Esteban Ocon - Alpine

This tier raced each other hard with Hamilton out-classing the rest of these guys to lead this tier, but he has to be upset with being nearly 20 seconds (an eternity in F1) behind his teammate Russell.  This tier and the 8 drivers in it were the only ones (out of 19 total other drivers) to be inside 1 minute of Max Verstappens winning time.  That is crazy since he started the race 9th.

Also Rans - 

For the final 10 spots on the grid, it's kinda like the old west, where you can get shot (wreck) at anytime and shoot somebody (crash someone else) at any time.  But this race was about keeping that tire degradation down so you saw less aggressive driving.  But still a lot of fun to keep up with them too, but you have to want to do it.  Understood.  Logan Sargeant, a Williams driver, is the lone American driver and first one in some time.  It showed as he came in dead last and 1 lap behind.  Gonna be awhile before an American Driver is in contention for F1 I believe.  

Next Race is May 21 in Italy at Imola.  Should be an interesting race (below the first 2 cars! - Just being honest!)

[theguru]

Great stuff @Purple88! The only real question this week was Max and he delivered like always outpacing everyone even though he was on hard tires and they were all on mediums. 

And I don't know what is more surprising this year, how good Fernando Alonso has been for Aston Martin or how weak the Mercedes Benz cars have been. 

[theguru]

Also, I too think it would be a great race to attend. 

[theguru]

On 5/8/2023 at 11:17 AM, Purple88 said:

Now for the race; it was ho-hum at the top, as Red Bull just simply doesn't have any competition right now.  The only drama for the win was if Max Verstappen, the points leader and reigning world champion, would pass his team mate to get the win.  At the qualifying round on Saturday, Ferrari's Charles LeClerc wrecked and caused a red flag and they canceled the remainder of the qualifying session.  This meant people were out of line to what they would have been had the session been completed as planned.  So Verstappen was relegated back in 9th place to start.  He quickly passed the 7 cars in front of him with only his teammate left by lap 15 of 57.  He managed his tire degradation really well, which means he extended the life of those initial set of tires all the way to lap 46; so when he came out of the pit on lap 46 (only 11 laps to go) he was in great shape as his teammate pitted on lap 21 and was on tires with 25 laps on them by that point.  Verstappen then pretty easily passed his teammate just 2 laps later and that was all she wrote.

From Autosport on Facebook:

With his #MiamiGP victory, Max Verstappen became the first driver since 1984 to win an F1 race from 9th on the grid! 🤯

Niki Lauda was the last driver to win from 9th, at the French GP 39 years ago.

[Purple88]

22 hours ago, theguru said:

Also, I too think it would be a great race to attend. 

 

22 hours ago, theguru said:

Great stuff @Purple88! The only real question this week was Max and he delivered like always outpacing everyone even though he was on hard tires and they were all on mediums. 

And I don't know what is more surprising this year, how good Fernando Alonso has been for Aston Martin or how weak the Mercedes Benz cars have been. 

Maybe we'll go sometime!  I'm trying to weasel my way into some corporate tickets for the Vegas Race!  That would be WILD!

Interesting point on the hard tires.  If you looked at the Pirelli spectrum they had the middle 3 Pirelli varieties to select from.  It was a new surface in Miami this year and it just seemed the Hard tire was WAY better.  But don't think the teams knew that as they only received 2 sets of hard tires for the whole weekend, so they didn't get alot of info on them in practice as they knew they likely needed them for the race, but didn't know how strong they were.  Each team go 2 sets of hard tires, 3 sets of mediums and 8 sets of softs for the whole weekend.  Its quite a bit of strategy of how you use those tire allocations.

 

Regarding Aston Martin and Mercedes and really Ferrari too:

Aston Martin (AM) - this is a real success story in my eyes.  At first, it appeared Billionaire Laurence Stroll was just scratching a very expensive itch by buying a F1 Team to toy with.  But he has composed a series team and poached a few brilliant engineers from Red Bull and now working with top people in the front office to the guys on the pit crew.  When they swopped Vettel for Alonzo it appeared to be a 1 for 1 swope.  But Fernando Alonzo is a different cat!  He knows how to get it done and it appears AM hit the sweet spot for modifications over the off season.  Remember, they are running a Mercedes engines and beating the Silver Arrows pants off with them.  It's more about the engineering than just the engines though and that has to upset Mercedes Top Brass.  I'm a HUGE Alonzo fan!

 

Mercedes - kinda unknown territory for the Silver Arrows this year.  They have a Wonder Team assembled in George Russell, a Super Talented driver and arguably the best driver ever in 7 time World Champion Lewis Hamilton, but their car just isn't in a positive way right now.  They are trying modifications all the time.  They will make some gains and then the next minute they lose what they've gained and then some.  I know Hamiliton is frustrated.  You can hear it on his radio.  He got punked out a an all time World Championship by upstart Verstappen on a technicality that should not have happened.  But it did and IMO he still isn't over that.  Don't really blame him.  But unlike before where Valteri Bottas was his partner and more of real wing man; now George Russell is a real deal World Championship Contender and aggressive and wants to win too (not that Bottas didn't, but he alway complied with whatever Hamilton wants; Russell doesn't do that).  They have the team and good engineers and etc, but they aimed for this season and totally missed the mark.  At Mercedes, that doesn't sit well.  

 

Ferrari - the mothership for all F1 teams.  No team IMO has more history or passionate following than the red cars.  They have an awesome team with Charles LeClerc and Carlos Sainz.  And they get along and help each other; something a LOT of F1 teammates don't do.  They got all the money going into it, but IMO last season their engineers BLEW the strategy in multiple races last year.  It made the whole team jittery, unstable and ultimately caused a really good Team Boss in Mattia Binnoto to resign at the end of last season.  That was a bigger setback than it appeared from afar, as I saw a documentary 2 years back that articulated Binnoto's vision for the team and it was creative, showed alot of ingenuity and was well thought out IMO.  But he exited stage left after last season and just seems they have been trying to catch up ever since.

As you can see, I really like it and follow it.  Lot to like here IMO and more entertaining than other forms of racing, even though I'm going to the Indy 500 in a few weeks.

[theguru]

I think all three of the races in America would be nice to attend.  COTA really interests me.

Well, the hard tire on Max's car was certainly better. 🙂

Fernando Alonzo/Aston Martin is the story of the year from where I sit and that is what I tell myself when I drive my Silver Arrow. 

Verstappen is my guy but I agree about his first World Championship over Hamilton.  I also agree about the change in drivers, Hamilton went from having a wingman to a competitor. 

Ferrari is somewhat of an enigma to me, you never know what you are going to get.

As you know I like and follow it too but I learned a couple of years ago you have forgot more about F1 than I know. 🤷‍♀️

One more thing, after the Q3 Red Flag I was upset that Max didn't get to put down his money lap for position but I admit I was tickled he was going to start 9th because I thought his progress would be the feature of the race and I was not disappointed.

Also like I think you mentioned, I like all forms of racing but there is something about F1 that makes it better than all the rest to me.

[theguru]

Timing is everything Fernando just posted this on Facebook:

[Purple88]

Love all that @theguru!  

Yeah, had Max been afforded his opportunity to run his real qualifying lap; there's no doubt he would have been at worst P2, but likely 85% on Pole.  So the 9th place was really nice aspect of the race.

I do like other forms of racing but don't allocate as much time as I used to for them.  Watched a bit of the Indy Car Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Road Course on Saturday.  Was pretty entertaining.  And I'm going to the Indy 500 later this month.  Just a bucket list thing for all those who haven't done that from an atmosphere thing alone.

But F1 combines so many more things up into one ball of wax that easily outpaces other racing for me.

And the way Red Bull has pulled away has led me to follow and cheer for more than one team (as they really aren't competing against each other based solely on the pace of the cars they manage), which I haven't done often but probably been more rewarding that way.