Some Thoughts on the 2023 Bahrain GP - Wheel Sports
2023 Bahrain GP

Some Thoughts on the 2023 Bahrain GP

This post was contributed by Henk Ormel, who has been a much beloved member of our community at Wheel Sports and an incredibly insightful eye for feedback on technical matters.

Williams was in opinion the biggest surprise with Albon at P10. According to the free practices and quali results this was impossible.

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Haas was a little disappointing after Hülkenbergs quality qualifying. K-Mag was unlucky in Q1 with all 20 drivers inside 1.1 second. The racepace was just not there.

Alfa Romeo scored about the expected points. Zhou was expected to be closer to Bottas.

Alpha Tauri had no real racepace. Tsunoda got new tires under the last VSC and de Vries didn’t. This makes the difference between those two.

Alpine….. auw! The first mistake by Ocon. The following mistakes were all made by the team. To early start servicing, pitlimiter to fast, in total 20 sec. And just retired. Gasly showed what was possible after starting from P20, P9.

McLaren…… even more auw! Piastri with an engine related retirement. And Norris with a leaking pneumatic system (valvetrain operation) a horror weekend.

Mercedes more or less as expected. Their engine client is faster……quite embarrassing.

Aston Martin the speed is real! Alonso had a bad start but had a stellar recovery drive. The battles he fought were nice to watch. He overtook both Mercedeses and Sainz in the Ferrari. Stroll a good performance in a good car with the injuries he had.

Ferrari actually had the same problem as last year. Unreliability and to little natural speed. Leclerc was the unlucky one this time with an engine related DNF.

Red Bull wouw…. what a performance with a car which is not just right set-up. The battle behind P1 was interesting. The battles in the midfield were interesting.

The new regulations are doing their job. Cars are able to follow closer and there are overtakes without DRS. Also the sliding scale of aero allowance and budget cap are doing their job. Only one person in one car is exceptional.