Lewis still has the hunger to go wheel to wheel with Max
JONATHAN McEVOY looks forward to the 2023 F1 season
Boffins toil away in the factories, Lewis Hamilton hones his fitness on the ski slopes... All is quiet preparation now but the formula one season will burst into life again at pre-season testing in Bahrain on february 23.
What can we expect when the roar returns? Sportsmail casts an eye down the pit straight for answers...
What formula one most craves is to live up to the advertisement pinned on to a st Kilda Beach bus shelter in Melbourne last year. ‘ Every good story has a sequel,’ it read.
Accompanying the words were the faces of Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, as vanquished and victor alike were still wiping blood off themselves after the infamy of Abu Dhabi at the close of the 2021 season. A rematch was the hope on every lip.
Alas, Mercedes went down a misguided design route in 2022 when faced with the overhaul in regulations, a cul-de-sac they spent a season trying to escape, with significant but limited success. Red Bull and ferrari possessed the pace. ferrari imploded. Verstappen hit a sweet spot and he romped to his second title.
so what hope is there that the bitterest rivalry on the grid will resurface this coming season? Red Bull and Verstappen hold the advantage in light of the stable regulations. Yet, yet.
The world champions are battered twice over. first, under a handicap system intended to flatten the field. This limits wind tunnel runs and computational fluid dynamics testing, with the top team of the previous year hit hardest in an incremental scale from top to bottom.
secondly, they are hampered by a further restriction imposed for breaching the budget cap in 2021. That means, for example, they are allowed 202 wind tunnel runs per aerodynamic testing period, of which there are six a year, each lasting eight weeks. ferrari are allowed 240 and Mercedes 256.
Despite the extra development time, the modern Mercedes team face a stiff test after their long years of dominance under the previous set of regulations. one wonders how they will fare without niki Lauda, the nonexecutive chairman who died in 2019. He was a decisive voice, a clear-minded leader. He cut to the quick. His expertise would be gold dust in the current situation. There is a danger that his absence will be felt ever more keenly over time. Don’t forget that when Toto Wolff joined Mercedes in 2013 he was handed a boil-in-the-bag team. Ross Brawn had built them. Lauda was polishing them. Hamilton had signed up for them. Wolff’s task now is markedly different, but you don’t become a bad team overnight, and their partial resurgence that carried George Russell to victory in the penultimate race of last season in Brazil is testament to a durable resourcefulness. But what of Hamilton’s stomach for the fight? He turns 38 on saturday, an age at which most modern drivers are shuffled off. However, there seems no diminution of his hunger now that he has thrown off his bone-deep disappointment of losing to Verstappen in Abu Dhabi.
That trauma caused him to arrive at the gates of the 2022 season a little less well-prepared physically and mentally than usual. There were moments when Hamilton was less than at his best — a little timid throughout when wheel-to-wheel and a touch tardy at successive restarts. But with the scent of a chance in his nostrils he again showed ferocious desire and rare ability.
other than for Verstappen, two further curveballs may scupper Hamilton’s hopes of signing off with an eighth world title. They come in the shape of his own team-mate Russell and a mercurial ferrari.
Taking in sprints, Russell beat Hamilton in 15 of 25 races last year. not bad in his debut season with the silver Arrows. With a year under his belt, and Lewis heading closer to his 40s, Russell must be a regular thorn in the older man’s overalls to demonstrate his own worth. However, i expect Wolff and Co to treat Hamilton as first among equals.
ferrari? What a basket case. They have a new team principal in fred Vasseur. He is favoured by the scuderia’s no 1 Charles Leclerc, who raced for the frenchman in junior formulae.
But is Vasseur really primed for the political snake pit at Maranello? Hmm.
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