In the round-up: Christian Horner expects the grid to converge in 2024
In brief
Horner sure “field will converge” in 2024
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says he fully expects that the grid will become more competitive than 2023, where they won all but one grand prix over the season.
“I think with stable regulations, we know that the field will converge,” he said. “We’ve seen that at different points during the course of the past year.
“We have to improve, we have to keep evolving. And I think all aspects of RB19 are being looked at to evolve into RB20 and hopefully make it even stronger because I’m sure that’s what our competitors will be looking to do.”
Hulkenberg wants “proper” low downforce spec
Haas driver Nico Hulkenberg says he wants his team to produce a bespoke car specification for low downforce circuits like Spa-Francorchamps and Monza.“That’s a subject also for next year – do we invest more into a proper low downforce package,” he said.
“Because we have quite a few events now where we need a low downforce package. It’s probably like four or five events we’re that applies. So it’s quite a significant portion of the season.”
Mansell switches to ART
Christian Mansell will compete for a second season in Formula 3 in 2024 after moving from Campos to ART.Mansell was 12th in the standings during his rookie campaign in the championship and raced with ART in the recent Macau Grand Prix.
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Links
Motor racing links of interest:
The 'overwhelming confidence' linking Senna, Schumacher & Alonso (Motor Sport)
Pat Symonds: ''With Ayrton, it was the first time I’d met a driver that didn’t need to use his entire brain to drive the car and had plenty of capacity left to think about what was going on. This was enormously valuable in an era before data recording.''
Angela MacDonald on HMRC's transformation journey (Civil Service World)
'And importantly, we pursue those who do cause harm; this year saw the conclusion of our lengthy investigation into Bernie Ecclestone – who finally pleaded guilty to fraud and paid back £652m, which included a 200% penalty for failing to comply – a real success.'
Postcard from Modena: in search of Enzo Ferrari (FT)
'A new movie is set to draw visitors to the legendary sportscar maker's home city.'
Almost a month after GP, Strip workers still facing F1-related commute problems (Fox-5)
'Strip workers tell FOX5 the traffic caused by F1 deconstruction has been worse than the backups caused by putting up the infrastructure leading up to the race.'
Romain Andriolo Joins G4 Racing for the 2024 FRECA Season (FREC)
'G4 Racing is excited to announce that Romain Andriolo will join the team for the Formula Regional European Championship 2024 season. Romain, a promising talent from the French F4 Championship, is set to bring his skill and determination to one of the most competitive single-seater championships in the world.'
'David Crespo, who is studying for an Msc in Motorsport Engineering, collected the ‘Autosport Williams Engineer of the Future Award’ at a ceremony held on 3 December at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London.Following his win, David will now have the opportunity to attend a Formula 1 test day with the Williams Racing trackside engineering team.'
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Social media
Notable posts from X (formerly Twitter), TikTok and more:
look who stopped by the factory for a winter seat fit 👀 pic.twitter.com/Fj4gGY7sNj
— Scuderia AlphaTauri (@AlphaTauriF1) December 15, 2023
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- Find more official F1 accounts to follow in the F1 Twitter Directory
Comment of the day
With AlphaTauri changing its name to ‘RB’ – for now – Hotbottoms is beginning to get confused…
Do you think RB will have the same line-up in 2024 as they had in 2023, or will RB at some point promote one of their RB drivers to RB? And if one of the drivers from RB will be promoted to RB, will the dropped driver from RB move to RB or will they promote some other driver to RB?
HotBottoms
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Johnny86, Ovviamente, Matthew Nowell, Kiefer Hopkins, R.J. O’Connell and Godwin Joseph!
S
16th December 2023, 6:16
Of course the F1 field won’t converge. They never have and they never will.
The closest they ever get is the year prior to a major technical regs change when the big teams stop developing the existing cars early.
Jere (@jerejj)
16th December 2023, 6:19
I only hope for now.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
16th December 2023, 10:18
I think that’s too optimistic, every single person who follows f1 a bit that I know IRL thinks red bull was too far ahead to get any decent competition in 2024, and I can’t blame them for thinking that.
MichaelN
16th December 2023, 13:42
Might turn out to be true, but (and it’s a bit of a hopeful but) there are some things about 2023 that need a bit more context. Ferrari dumped their team principal late 2022, arguably the worst in decades, but the 2023 car is still very much his project. Mercedes late 2022 surge led them to double down on their concept for the 2023 concept, but they changed that view early in 2023. So both of these major teams were running 2023 with comprised cars, leading them to fall back into reach of smaller teams like McLaren and Aston Martin.
I expect (and hope) that in 2023, those two teams will make the biggest step. A bit like Ferrari did from 2014 to 2015. They had a wrong concept at the start of a new regulation cycle, and once they realised this and made the necessary adjustments, they got back to winning races the next year.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
16th December 2023, 17:22
Yes, that’s true, had they made the step aston made during the winter or mclaren during the season, red bull would’ve had competition, hope they prove me wrong.
SjaakFoo (@sjaakfoo)
16th December 2023, 18:55
I’d hope so, but the fact that either team went into 2023 with the same promise of “surely they can’t mess up like they did last year” and subsequently did exactly that makes me less hopeful. So far, the Ferrari under Vasseur suffers some of the same issues the Binotto and prior teambosses’ Ferrari suffered from. Strategy still seems poor. Drivers still seem to question the team strategy (often succesfully, for some odd reason) from the car almost every race or two. So, lets hope this new chassis is going to be the major change, but I’m not hopeful there.
Mercedes will remain to be seen, they’ve lost almost all of their senior personnel outside of Allison and Wolff and their replacements have been less than impressive. They still seem to make bad strategic calls, their pit stops are still amongst the worst of the top teams, and we’ll have to wait and see if they can finally build another good car. At least their problems seem less inherently structural to the team as Ferrari’s seem to be, so let’s hope they get it right. Even then, they’d still have to content with Russell and Hamilton’s inevitable implosion somewhere down the line, wouldn’t be surprised if that’s due next season.
Maybe McLaren has a shot at stepping up though, good driver pairing, good senior staff, good atmosphere. I’d hedge my bets there over Mercedes and Ferrari stepping up, honestly. Aston Martin is still very much a team under development. They’ll be good enough, just like this season, but they need time to learn how to be a big team first.
Jb
17th December 2023, 23:56
McLaren a smaller team?
Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
16th December 2023, 10:48
Best CotD for years.
Makes more sense than half the others we have had ;)
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
16th December 2023, 11:07
I’m fairly sure that the teams 2nd thru to 5 will converge but I seriously doubt any of them will get to RBR’s level next year as the gap is just too large. Bear in mind they were hardly pushed most of the season so we really don’t know just how fast that car was.
Hopefully someone might jag a win or two but you can be sure that RBR will be aiming to go one better next year and win every race and I expect that they’ll go close.
A M (@amam)
16th December 2023, 11:28
I don’t think the teams will converge. Max finishing 18s ahead in Abu Dhabi show how far ahead RB still are…and while other teams were still bringing updates for 2023, RB had already started working on their 2024 car way earlier than anyone else. The gap is too large for anyone to catch up. I expect Max to be winning most races in 2024 at a canter.
tielemst
16th December 2023, 12:03
Translates to: “everything is fine the way it is. Don’t change any rules over the summer”
Ferdinand
20th December 2023, 12:13
That is exactly what is being said here.
Tristan
16th December 2023, 13:07
For how many years did Mercedes sing this tune before somebody caught up?
I hope against hope that he’s right…
Jonathan Parkin
16th December 2023, 13:35
As a comedy legend once said; “Well we have our hopes!”
MichaelN
16th December 2023, 13:45
Nobody caught up. It was only when people were preparing to run 2021 as a repeat of 2020 (because the new regulations were postponed to 2022) that the FIA, at Pirelli’s request, suddenly mandated big changes to the floors of the car. Which turned out to really hurt Mercedes’ concept; something that neither Wolff nor the people at Mercedes realised in time.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
16th December 2023, 17:27
And even then they still had a great car, imo marginally better than red bull, it was enough to bring them down to earth, but only really 1 team could challenge them, it didn’t kill their performance like, for example, the 2005 tyre rules did with ferrari.
Tifoso1989 (@tifoso1989)
16th December 2023, 18:54
MichaelN,
There is also the qualifying mode ban in mid-2020 which was the result of Horner’s persistent complaints simply because Honda didn’t have one leveraging the powerful RB PR machine. This played a pivotal role in Red Bull Racing closing the gap with Mercedes.
The ban not only deprived Mercedes of the capability to unleash additional power during critical race weekend moments like qualifying, race starts, and aggressive driving stints but also led them to compromise on performance by reverting to a less aerodynamically aggressive setup downforce wise. In the past, they could offset the drag penalty of such a setup with the extra power derived from qualifying modes.
Additionally, there were the floor changes, which, whether intentional or not, had an adverse impact on low rake cars, and there you have it !
A M (@amam)
16th December 2023, 19:38
Ferrari caught up in 2017 and 2018.
A M (@amam)
16th December 2023, 19:43
“For how many years did Mercedes sing this tune before somebody caught up?”
There was the scrapping of the token system and a major aero regs change for 2017 which allowed Ferrari to close most of the gap in 2017 and challenge for the title. People conveniently forget that Vettel led 2017 for most of that season and challenged as late as Singapore. By 2018, many analysts rated Ferrari equal to Merc or marginally quicker.
Tristan
16th December 2023, 21:12
Still 4 years
Tifoso1989 (@tifoso1989)
17th December 2023, 14:37
@amam
As you rightly pointed out, there was a significant rule overhaul affecting both aerodynamics and power units. This allowed Ferrari and Red Bull Racing to narrow the gap with Mercedes. Despite the rule changes, Mercedes maintained their engine superiority due to an early advantage.
Now, with stable rules, frozen power units, and budget constraints in play, it seems perplexing how RBR could potentially lose their edge over rivals.
Zann (@zann)
16th December 2023, 13:07
it’s quite extreme that the race structure is still being dismantled in Las Vegas a month after the race! But i suppose that’s the weird priorities there. What do ‘strip workers’ do anyway? It’s probably not work as we know it, so perhaps it doesn’t actually matter
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
17th December 2023, 1:58
if the layout were more organic like Monaco or Singapore, they could keep a lot of it up, and not detract from the ‘scene’. I personally think the people who run the race there seriously need to consider a track layout which features the landmarks of the area, and forget the ridiculous grand stands. If they want music artists than feature part of the race next to a ‘park’ or what ever that has those facilities already.
Jim from US (@jimfromus)
16th December 2023, 14:04
People wanted PER sacked for his poor performance in the RB and he still finished 2nd.
Zann (@zann)
16th December 2023, 16:28
yes that’s what’s annoying!
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
16th December 2023, 17:33
Not sure what you’re hinting at but it’s not impressive to barely finish 2nd in that car.
RH
17th December 2023, 11:11
He finished 50 points ahead. That’s not barely.
GR (@gr)
16th December 2023, 19:55
Converge behind Red Bull is what he meant to add
Zann (@zann)
17th December 2023, 10:03
well they did start off by deciding to use their big landmark which is the Strip, and everything followed from there. And tbf it did have atmosphere didn’t it, massively in fact. It was all quite extreme, bold, wasteful and exciting. Bad and good all at once
Zann (@zann)
17th December 2023, 10:06
that’s a reply to pcxmac btw, on my phone the page is jumping around so much with the ads it got lost
Silent but Deadly
18th December 2023, 23:10
Well I never believe anything Horner says. Although I hear he speaks highly of me, and you shouldn’t believe that either.