This, Far too often people cry about the season before it starts, or in the Merc days Merc would look like they were REALLY struggling and all the clickbait titles and news articles were all 'is THIS the year the era of the Merc dominance comes crashing down' and then day 1 lewis rocks up and finishes 30 seconds down the road from everyone else
They decide this now, despite it being an obvious choice for Porsche to take design control of while being engine partners. Morons
With Mateschitz gone Red Bull's days in F1 are numbered. They spent the money because Mateschitz was crazy about motor racing, not because it made good financial sense for Red Bull. AT will go first, then the juniors program will get scaled back, then the moment RB stops winning the board will be looking for a buyer in Milton Keynes.
The timing would be pretty convenient for Red Bull to exit... Sell one team to Andretti in drag Cadillac and the other to Porsche, problem solved?
Possibly even before then... all about the ROI... and if the board don't think they're getting enough R from their I, winning or not...
I'm just hoping there will be 4 teams in title contention or at least having regular chances at podiums and pole position. I'm assuming this would be Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes and Aston Martin: it's not unrealistic given what we've seen so far although we have only seen testing and practice sessions so far. In reality I'm expecting Red Bull to have the edge over them all and for the other 3 to have a close fight. Which will really just prevent any of them being able to mount a challenge to Red Bull as they'll just keep squabbling and taking points off each other, not Red Bull. Still we can hope!
I really hope someone puts up a good fight this year against Red Bull running away with it. Less Ferarri mistakes, a resurgent Merc, and a surprise Aston would make a much more exciting season.
Find it hard to believe Verstappen won't run away with it again this year but hopefully some other teams steal a few wins
yeah last year was closer than it looked on paper, its just for the first half of the season Merc couldnt get their sums right, and Ferrari had their minds set on finishing 3rd in a 2 horse race and by the time Merc had their maths figured out and were competing, Ferrari had flushed so many points down the toilet to RB that the title was all but over
Shame red bull seem that bit too far ahead, right now, but Merc a lot closer than many thought, and with such a limited amount of dev time and budget on red bull, should allow for the gap to close a little quicker.
Very nice to see that Aston has the potential to mix things up a bit this season instead of the big 3 having their towels on the top 6 spots.
Makes you wonder what Alonso knew before jumping ship to Aston. He knew they'd found some secret sauce.
Maybe the realisation that Alpine were too busy playing silly buggers to form an actual plan, or he asked Seb what he thought of I can't believe it's not Jordan.
I think it was as simple as Alpine not being willing to give Alonso a multi-year contract versus Aston who said they'd gladly give him a multi-year contract. Alonso said on Sunday that teams always big up next year's performance but it rarely matches up with what they end up producing. So big claims from Aston were not very relevant in his decision to join. Nice that it seems to have worked out so well for him. Plus funny that Alpine thought they had 2 aces in the hole with Alonso and Piastri then ended up with neither! All worked out well for Gasly.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/64965903 Ferrari have engine-related penatlies already... It's race 2.
