The 2023 F1 grid will feature 10 teams. Out of these 10 teams, we have five that have won a title and nine teams that have a win to their names. For the first time in a while, the F1 grid will not feature a pay driver on the grid. With Nicholas Latifi departing from Williams, there is no pay driver on the grid anymore.
Overall, the grid is in great shape and so is the sport that is growing at a very impressive rate. Having said that, no team is perfect and every team has its faults. In this feature, we will take a look at all the teams on the grid and list one key weakness for each team. So without further ado, let’s get straight to it.
2023 F1 Grid: One key weakness of each team
red bull
For Red Bull, while the team does appear to cover all bases, it’s safe to say that its tendency to push the boundaries can work against it. It was this tendency that led to a cost cap breach. It is this tendency that could lead to an ultra-aggressive package that could be fragile in parts.
Having said that, all of this could be overcome, but one area where Red Bull could find itself vulnerable is its tendency to sometimes make mistakes strategically. For instance, what happened in Singapore, where Max Verstappen’s car was under-fueled, destroyed his entire weekend. In an F1 title campaign, something like this could have much bigger consequences.
Ferrari
Ferrari is one team that should have won titles in the last 15 years. Sadly, it hasn’t because while the team is a very passionate bunch, it is not a team without its shortcomings. There’s just too much pressure within the team and upper management too desperate for an F1 title that every step it takes works against it. The fact that the team principal’s position has been a revolving door should be revealing enough of the kind of mess Ferrari finds itself in more often than not.
Mercedes
For Mercedes, the biggest shortcoming was quite revealing in the second half of the 2022 season. The team is a true juggernaut, but more often than not, some of its deficiencies in the turbo-hybrid era were papered over by the superiority of the car it produced.
The strategy unit at Mercedes is not up to par with what it is supposed to be. The races in Mexico and the Netherlands, where strategy played a crucial role, were indicators enough that the team didn’t match up well against the likes of Red Bull. In a close F1 title fight, this is one area where Mercedes might itself be vulnerable to attack.
Alpine
For Alpine, the team has shown an impressive upward trajectory in 2022, however, one cannot help but feel that the drivers’ line-up is a step down from what it had last season. The Fernando Alonso – Esteban Ocon driver lineup meant that the team had a consistent points accumulator in Ocon while Alonso was able to extract extraordinary one-off results from the car.
In Pierre Gasly, the team now has two drivers that might be evenly matched. While this does mean they will push each other forward, that special one-off podium or a win might be a step too far.
McLaren
The shocker of Andreas Seidl leaving the team at the end of the 2022 F1 season is a damning indictment of the team. Can McLaren be the best midfield team next season? Yes, they can, but that is not the aim of the Woking-based squad. The team wants to win F1 titles or at the very least, reach a point where it can challenge for it.
The fact that it has not achieved that and Seidl has left for essentially a bigger project in Audi shows the kind of confidence he had in the project. The team still lacks the final step needed to fight for F1 wins/titles and that is a damning verdict for a team that dominated the sport at one point in time.
Alfa Romeo
There are many things that can be picked up with Alfa Romeo that are not up to par. The biggest issue, however, has to be the feeling that it could have scored more points in the 2022 F1 season. the driver lineup of Valterri Bottas and Guanyuzhou does not inspire much confidence. Bottas has unparalleled F1 experience but does leave something on the table in races.
Zhou, on the other hand, is just not the brightest young driver on the grid. Such is the glaring weakness on the drivers’ side that Alfa Romeo might just be the F1 team that ends up replacing both of them for the 2024 F1 season.
Aston-Martin
It’s hard to look beyond the fact that Lance Stroll’s father has bought an F1 team so that his son could be in the sport. Aston Martin has pulled in a ton of resources and gone on an extensive recruitment drive. There are personnel from Mercedes and Red Bull and they have been paid the big bucks.
Having said that, one of the two drivers is still Lance Stroll. Stroll surely belongs in F1, there’s no doubt about that. But does he belong in a team that wants to fight for the title someday? No. If Aston Martin wants to be considered a serious team with F1 title aspirations, it might need to lose the boss’s kid from its driver lineup.
haas
There are two glaring issues with the team. The first is Gene Haas’s reluctance to put his own money into the F1 project. The team is currently running primarily on whatever money poor Guenther Steiner has been able to accrue from the sponsors and it’s safe to say that it’s not much.
The second issue with the team is the inefficient operation that the team runs. Could Haas have scored more points last year? Yes, but it didn’t. Could there be a better driver line up? Yes, but it doesn’t. The team is not scoring the amount of points the car is capable of producing and that is detrimental to any team’s results.
AlphaTauri
One cannot help but feel that the choice to hire Nyck de Vries was uninspired. De Vries is a solid driver. His record outside of F1 is commendable. However, he’s closer to 30 than 20, he’s not shown the potential to be a Red Bull future driver, and all in all, he might not have the peaks that a Pierre Gasly did at AlphaTauri. The Faenza-based team lost an asset in Gasly and his replacement might leave the driver lineup depleted as compared to last season.
Williams
Well, the list is long for Williams, but if we have to pick one thing then how can one look beyond the fact that the team does not have a team principal or a technical director and we’re only 7-8 weeks away from the car launches. While it’s safe to say that Williams is in the doldrums, it’s not entirely clear how they will dig themselves out of it.
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