F1, GP Jeddah: the report cards of the best
Milton Theaters. Paraphrasing Mariano Giusti of “Boris”, it seems to me that among Red Bull and the others the only one that is making an effort to prevent the championship from closing in July is Red Bull. Which at least gives us some spice with the breakage of an axle shaft in qualifying and the healthy theater between Max and Checo, while others have gone from “We have to understand” to the “Nous devons understand”, you know what stuff. We suspend disbelief and pretend the championship is open, at least for a few races. Even the nose ring has a limit.
K-Mag overtaking. Oh, there should have been Alonso but the FIA really wanted to take this podium away from him. Then the Magnussen prize, who in the last lap fearlessly fired into Tsunoda, another one that I recommend and who in fact took the overtaking with calmness and a sense of sport, which earned Haas the first point.
Oscar Piastri. Well done the kangaroo, first Q3 at the second weekend in Formula 1, on a McLaren which was tragicomic in Bahrain and was no less in Jeddah. With Norris it’s not easy to shine, Piastri knows it and does it. For now, that’s fine.
F1, GP Jeddah: the report cards of the worst
Jeddah. Feel free to copy-paste from last year and for every other Saudi Arabian podium (few, if Ferrari continues like this). Except that it looks like the rainbow track from Mario Kart: dark, narrow, without a minimum of atmosphere. Which curve should be iconic in the future? None, also because there are no curves. The only element that makes it special is the combination of low wall and speed. But it’s all artifact: they built a snake with barriers to avoid the trouble of building escape routes, despite having the pneumatic vacuum around it (a “citizen” that is only used for F1, nice stuff). It’s a very dangerous circuit, just one carelessness and you crash into the wall at 250 km/h: if it hadn’t had the Arab money, it would never have been taken into consideration by the FIA. It is to be rejoiced that no serious accidents have yet occurred this year. It doesn’t seem like a great satisfaction to me, however.
FIA. New year, old nonsense. More than half of the GP passes between Alonso’s stop and the penalty: an understandable silence from the race direction, given the pennica that not even the Saturday afternoon schedule of Rete4 guarantees you. They startled awake to a Mercedes radio team. They do something and they let improvisation work, their best weapon. Double about-face piked within a few hours: penalty no, then yes, then no again. So much mess for nothing, in full FIA style.
Ferrari. Two out of two, like Red Bull’s shotguns. And you want to comment. Jeddah was supposed to be a land of rescue, instead it was the confirmation that there is no lead that holds. Right now SF-23 can only win by a bad luck, because there are now three cars ahead of her. In short, reduced to being the 2021 Alpine or the 2020 AlphaTauri. In relation to expectations, the worst surprise of 2023, because at least Mercedes had the courage to backtrack and admit the design errors. The one who’s acting as a lightning rod, Fred Vasseur, is the lesser culprit. Indeed, for me he has absolutely none to blame: he arrived with the car already made, what can change in two months? He works calmly, there are others – perhaps in Maranello for several years and with always losing projects compared to those of Red Bull – who should ask themselves two questions about their own work.
What are yours? And above all, why?
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