ROUND 23: Abu Dhabi 🇦🇪
FORMULA 1 ETIHAD AIRWAYS ABU DHABI GRAND PRIX 2023
Circuit stats
- First Grand Prix: 2009
- Number of laps: 58
- Circuit Length: 5.281 km
- Race Distance: 306.183 km
- Lap record: 1:26.103 Max Verstappen (2021)
- 2022 winner: Max Verstappen
Track Map
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Thanks everyone for participating or lurking in our sub this season :)
Thank YOU for all your work!
Agreed, this has been a great replacement for reddit’s formula1, without all of the “redditness” of it. Thanks for your efforts.
The season’s over, my friends. Try not to get too depressed during the winter. And let’s hope next season is more competitive than this one.
Yes, let’s hope. The only way I can take another season of utter RB domination is if they ditch Perez for someone more capable of challenging Max.
@Dmian This was still a pretty competitive season, based on what I’ve been told by longtime fans.
There was literally only one race but won by a RB. Max set a record for highest win percentage. I’d say the opposite of a competitive season.
Max casually perfectly parking his car after those donuts lol.
Unreal car control, those doughnuts were Vettelesque.
The title needs updating :) It says Sao Paolo.
Ehehe whoops, updated
Strategy for Ferarri comes from the drivers, the strategists and the team principals should take an holiday.
Tbh, that was a risky proposition from Charles. Had Russell passed him, it would’ve look really bad for him. That’s the kind of move that only comes from the driver, as the team won’t risk putting him in such a vulnerable position.
2-3 laps more that would have been a real possibility.
George not knowing Leclerc playing him dirty and thanking him for keeping it clean. Then immediately finding out from Charles that it was in fact very dirty hahahah!
Edit: It’s just meant to be funny friends. The irony of George not having heard LeClerc plotting against him and then thanking him. I’m not mad at strategy.
It was not that dirty. Charles could have blocked him in the apexes of the final 3-4 turns to ensure perez gains 5 seconds on him. What Charles did was more tactical than dirty
That’s not what George said, he said Charles could have backed him up as well as letting Perez past, which would have been dirty. He thanked Charles for not doing that.
Stop blaming Ferrari for sainz’s strategy. He was slow today and there was no way he was ending up ahead of hamilton or even in the points. They rolled the dice with best option they had
I think the problem was not strategy, it was the car. It was just slow (and no, Sainz is not that slow. Remember he’s the only non-Red Bull winner this year, and he’s been really close to Charles all year, Charles being one of the fastest drivers on the grid).
They even had to retire the car at the end, so, something was clearly not working. Maybe they expected to go faster, but realized there was something wrong, and eventually gave up with it. It was a sad end of season for Sainz, who, other than the last two races, has had a really consistent season so far.
I guess the crash fucked up something and there wasn’t enough time to find it and fix it
This is what I think too. A pity. I’m sure he wanted to help the team get second place, but it wasn’t possible. We’ll see what happens next year. Apparently they’re trying something new.
Can I blame AR for bottas’ strategy? I mean the AR didn’t have the speed for points but jfc that one stopper was rough to look at, even if the “sc strat” -brainrot was behind it
Considering tsunoda made the one stop work pretty well, I think that it was worth the risk for AR. They were going to finish well outside the points anyway and went for it.
AT is a better car and bottas is certainly not a tire whisperer (at least during his reign in AR), I really don’t see how it would’ve worked without godsent safety cars.
The problem was his qualifying yesterday. He would have been in the points if he started near to Charles. Like a lot of teams there were a lot of team mates with big qualifying gaps going on, so something odd happened on Saturday.
Max in that Red Bull is something else… if he continues like this, he could totally dominate next year. But since rules are not changing there’s a bit of hope that other teams may be closer.
My thinking is the opposite: with no major rules changes I don’t see a reason why RB should lose any of their advantage. They’ve had the luxury of being able to switch focus to next year since May already and by now we’re past the period where they were hit with the overspend development penalty.
I would love Ferrari or McLaren or Mercedes or Aston to be able to challenge next year, but I’m honestly assuming the next time we can hope to see a fight for the championship is '26.
Keep in mind that Max is so good that for a battle for first place to happen he either needs to have a teammate that is almost equal (not going to happen) or a car that is actually not equal but slightly slower than his challenger.
I can’t imagine that happening without a major rules shakeup (and even then it would require Newey to get things wrong which - let’s be honest - is also unlikely).
It’s not unrealistic to think this dynasty will last until Max decides he’s had enough of F1.
Things won’t change much because these rules are aero-dependent, and Newey has nailed aero development for F1. But it doesn’t mean other teams can make progress in aero development. They know it’s just trying things until they find something that works. Most teams have the engine part controlled by now.
The new rules for 2026 will make aero less important, and may give a better opportunity to other teams. But I’m praying that we don’t get something similar to the Mercedes dominance when hybrids arrived.
That being said, I still expect Max to be there fighting for a championship, even if the Red Bull is negatively impacted by the new rules.
They’ve had the luxury of being able to switch focus to next year since May already.
Well between the penalty and the fact that they naturally get less time because of their championship position, teams like McLaren would have had almost 50% more testing time. This and the fact that updates on this year’s car carry over to the next in my opinion nullify the advantage RB got from stopping upgrades early. What is an issue for other teams is that with the design team that RB has, I back them to make better improvements than the others even if the testing time allocated for next year by all the teams is the same
It’s the Mercedes era all over again. The dominant design formula is determined and everybody is a year behind the team the came up with the formula.
It’ll become closer and closer so Red Bull need a strong second driver so they can’t lose on strategy.
Williams finish seventh in the constructor. Let’s go.
Why was Hamilton driving into Gasly allowed, while a wheel to wheel battle resulting in touching wheels was punished with 5 seconds for Perez?
Hamilton and Gasly is pretty clear cut. Gasly locked up and Hamilton couldn’t respond in time which is why Hamilton hit Gasly, that’s a pretty clear racing incident. Norris and Perez isn’t that clear cut.
I can absolutely understanding arguing that it was just a racing incident because Perez didn’t expect Norris to turn in and Norris didn’t expect Perez to run wide. But at the same time there’s an argument to be made that Perez could’ve turned into the apex but decided to go wide (and watching it back it does seem like he doesn’t really commit to the apex which makes him go wide).
The stewards seemed to have gone for the latter explanation and given him a penalty, which seems like a consistent ruling considering Max got the same penalty for a similar situation in Las Vegas (and there Max had a bigger case for it being a racing incident).
Gasly locked up, if he hadn’t Lewis wouldn’t have hit him. As Gasly lost control of his car first it’s a racing incident. If Gasly hadn’t first locked up Lewis would be looking at a penalty.
Now that the season is over, maybe the planet can start recovering from all that gas they burned
