Boxing Day is here and it is time for our Boxing Day tradition, making predictions for the upcoming Formula One season. After a competitive yet controversial 2021 season, 2022 was a stark contrast. The title didn't go to the wire, nor did race control play a hand in its fate. What will 2023 look like?
No two seasons look the same and we are bound to see some differences. What exactly? Here are 12 things to keep an eye on in the new season.
1. Three teams will have multiple winners
Year one of the new regulations saw Red Bull dominate, 17 victories, 15 at the hand of Max Verstappen alone. It was an utter demolition of the field and the championship was firmly in the hands of the men form Milton Keynes.
However, Ferrari did win four races, Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, Jr. each scored a victory, and Ferrari probably should have a few more races. Mercedes did get a victory with George Russell at Interlagos, and Mercedes have a few good chances with Lewis Hamilton at Silverstone, Zandvoort and Austin. We may have been one Yuki Tsunoda safety car at Zandvoort away from Hamilton having gotten a victory and the 2022 season producing six winners and three teams having multiple winners.
Red Bull will be fine even after the cost cap penalties take away some wind tunnel time. Though Ferrari ended the season on a ten-race winless streak, I think it will be able to harness some of what it did right this year and get Leclerc and Sainz back on top next year. Mercedes is coy about its 2023 chances, but the team made great strides after starting behind the eight ball and produced a race winner. I think the Big Three have all of its drivers win at least once in 2023.
2. Red Bull will not win majority of the races where a Ferrari driver starts on pole position
Red Bull won 17 races, but Ferrari won 12 pole positions. The only problem is Ferrari's conversion rate was disappointing with the Scuderia only converting 25% of those pole positions into victories and two of those were from Ferrari's first two pole positions of the season, which came within the first three races of the season.
Red Bull won the other nine times a Ferrari led the grid. There were a few gifts. Leclerc lost a turbo while leading in Spain, Ferrari botched the strategy while it had both cars out front at Monaco, Leclerc spun off from first in France, somehow Sainz had nothing for Verstappen in Belgium despite the Dutchman starting 14th, the team gave away Italy and Ferrari was smoked in Singapore.
This prediction goes two ways. Either Ferrari converts more pole positions into victories or Ferrari wins fewer pole positions and Red Bull doesn't win those or some other team wins those races where Ferrari qualifies first.
3. Mercedes will have at least eight podium finishes in the first 11 races of the season
It didn't start well for Mercedes, but the 2022 season ended on a good note. Mercedes had 17 total podium finishes, ten of which came in the second half of the season, the final 11 races of the season. Mercedes' three races where both cars finished on the rostrum came in the second half of the season.
Mercedes is already saying 2023 isn't going to be a bang out of the box, but should it carry over the momentum, Mercedes will be competitive. We also need to remember Red Bull will have some less time to develop the car. Mercedes may not make the strides it wants, but it might not be as far behind as it was at the start of 2022.
Also, eight podium finishes is only one more podium finish than it had in the first 11 races this year. Those seven podium finishes in the first 11 races of 2022 were all third-place finishes. Could Mercedes have eight third-place finishes in the first 11 races of 2023? Yeah. That is doable.
4. Oscar Piastri will score at least 30% of McLaren's point total
One Australian out, another Australian in for the 2023 season. Piastri joins McLaren to replace the departing Daniel Ricciardo after Piastri was an Alpine reserve in 2022. The 2021 Formula Two champion sat on the sideline for the entire 2022 season.
A year out of a race car isn't a good thing, especially in contemporary Formula One where testing is virtually non-existent. However, Piastri could be entering a situation where it will be harder to fail than succeed.
McLaren's two seasons with Ricciardo will not be remembered fondly. There will always be the victory at the 2021 Italian Grand Prix, but it was a disaster compared to where expectations were entering that season. Ricciardo was let go with a year remaining on his contract. Even worse, Ricciardo was thoroughly thrashed in 2022 with Lando Norris scoring 122 points to Ricciardo's 37 points. Ricciardo was responsible for 23.27% of McLaren's total this past season.
I feel like Piastri will accidentally do better than that. He would have to actively try to do worse than Ricciardo's output. Either that or Norris would need to achieve a Verstappen-esque performance. But to raise the bar, I think Piastri gets 30% of McLaren's point total. That would have been at least 48 points in 2022, an average of 2.1818 points per race. That should happen.
5. Alpine will have at least one classified car in the 17th race of the season
In three of the last four seasons, Alpine has had neither car classified in the 17th race of the season.
In 2019, when the team was still Renault, both cars were disqualified from the Japanese Grand Prix for using illegal driver aids. The two cars were seventh and ninth in the 17th race of the 2020 season, the finale from Abu Dhabi. In 2021, both cars fell out of the race within ten laps of each other at Austin, and in 2022, both cars lost an engine within six laps of each other in Singapore.
This prediction is just playing the numbers. What are the odds Alpine does not have a classified car in the 17th race of the season in four of five seasons? The car doesn't even have to finish, it just has to complete 90% of the race distance. I am not talking about anything spectacular happening.
Japan will again be the 17th race in 2023. With a scheduled distance of 53 laps, only one Alpine needs to complete 48 laps for this prediction to be correct.
6. Logan Sargeant will score less than 47% of Alexander Albon's point total
An American driver is back in a full-time Formula One seat. The only problem it is with the team that finished tenth in the constructors' championship.
Sargeant had an adequate Formula Two season in 2022, winning a few races and having a few good days at the front of the field. But he didn't really blow the competition away and he hasn't really shown that breathtaking ability to make you think Williams has a diamond in the rough. I think there is a chance Sargeant's results will not be that dissimilar than Nicholas Latifi's output with the team.
However, Latifi scored 50% of Albon's point total in 2022. Latifi scored two points. Albon had four. But in reality, it wasn't even that close. Albon had nine finishes of 12th or better. Latifi had two. Based on an alternate reality where every position paid points for finishing and it was proportional to the current system, Albon would have been 15th with 183 points while Latifi would have been 20th with 95 points.
I don't see Sargeant coming that close to Albon. The Williams likely will not be spectacular, but whatever it is I expect Albon to be comfortably leading the way. It would be great for Sargeant to score any points in 2023, but I don't think he will be pushing Albon for the lead spot in this team.
7. Nico Hülkenberg's first point scoring race finish of the season will not be a seventh-place finish
Including 2022, in five of his last seven seasons, Hülkenberg's first point scoring finish of the season has been a seventh-place result. It happened in 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2020, which I should remind you was when Hülkenberg stepped in for Lance Stroll at Racing Point because Stroll had COVID and Hülkenberg was a last second substitute at the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix held at Silverstone.
It is a staggering occurrence that the guy consistently is seventh when scoring his first points of the season. I know he was driving for mid-pack teams, but shouldn’t there be more variety? It will not happen in 2023, and note how I specify race finish. If Hülkenberg's first points are seventh in the sprint race in Azerbaijan it doesn't count. It has to be a race finish. Hülkenberg is driving for Haas. Seventh is possible, but doesn't his first points end up being a ninth or a tenth? Doesn't that make more sense?
8. Nyck de Vries will clinch the intra-team, head-to-head AlphaTauri battle by the Qatar Grand Prix
This is saying de Vries will have finished ahead of Yuki Tsunoda in at least 12 of the first 18 races.
Tsunoda is an OK driver but de Vries is more than ready for Formula One. De Vries is mature beyond any rookie in recent memory. He has raced an assortment of cars in many different circumstances and generally succeeded in them. De Vries isn't an overly emotional driver and doesn't really put himself in hazardous situations.
Tsunoda on the other hand has done that regularly over two seasons in Formula One. I think de Vries will easily lead AlphaTauri this year. He will figure out how to get the most out of the car without stepping over the limit. He has raced with some notable teammates before. Tsunoda will not scare him. De Vries will add pressure and I think he will be clear by a country mile long before the season is over.
9. Lance Stroll does not cause an accident on a straightaway
Stroll took out Fernando Alonso on the straightaway between turns 11 and 12 at Austin and put Sebastian Vettel, his own Aston Martin teammate need I remind you, into the grass on the straightaway after the "Senna S" at Interlagos.
This prediction is just hoping he has any common sense in his skull to not be such a dummy in 2023. Just don't be a dummy on a straightaway, the easiest part of a racetrack. He will surely screw up a half-dozen corners, but the straightaways should be the part we don't have to worry about.
This ends up being wrong because Stroll causes an accident on a start next year, doesn't it?
10. There will be a driver who gets his first career fastest lap
In 2022, Guanyu Zhou picked up his first career fastest lap in the Japanese Grand Prix.
There will be six drivers on the 2023 grid without a career fastest lap. We know debutants Piastri and Sargeant do not have one, but neither AlphaTauri driver has one, which makes sense since Nyck de Vries has one start to his name. The other two drivers? They are a few surprises, Esteban Ocon and Alexander Albon.
You would have thought Albon would have gotten one when driving for Red Bull or even Toro Rosso, but it didn't happen. Ocon had some quick Force India entries and he already has a race victory. The Alpine is a good car, but Ocon hasn't had the fastest lap yet in 111 starts.
One of these six gets a fastest lap in 2023. If I had to put them in order of most to least likely to get it I would go Ocon, Piastri, de Vries, Tsunoda, Albon and Sargeant. It really comes down to the conditions. One rainy day and we could have a surprise.
11. A safety car period will occur during at least two sprint races
In 2021, there were three sprint races and one safety car period, which occurred at Monza.
In 2022, there were three sprint races and one safety car period, which occurred at Imola.
With the number of sprint races doubling to six in 2023, it is only natural to expect the number of safety car periods in sprint races to double as well. The sprint races will also be in Azerbaijan, Austria, Belgium, Qatar, the United States and Brazil. We know it will not occur in Italy, but with the nature of Baku, Red Bull Ring and even Spa-Francorchamps and Austin, we will see at least two safety car periods in sprint races, maybe even three. We could even see a sprint race with multiple. Wouldn't that be something?
12. Average American viewership per race decreases by at least 10%
This isn't the "Formula One is done" in the U.S. post, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It might not be equal, but after a few years of growth, we may see Formula One cool it.
In 2022, viewership increased by 28%, with an average of 1.21 million people watching each race over the ABC/ESPN family of networks. Next year begins the new three-year deal between Formula One and ESPN. The contract states that at least 16 races will air on either ABC or ESPN, but there is an inkling that a few races will be exclusively on ESPN+ only. Not many, and with 24 races schedule, two or three races might not be noticed, but those races would be lost if they are streamed only.
I also think another season of Verstappen and Red Bull dominance could get old. I don't think Logan Sargeant will bring a significant increase in viewers to the screen, especially if he is struggling to crack the top fifteen with Williams. It also doesn't help that one of the three American races will begin at 1:00 a.m. Eastern time, 10:00 p.m. Pacific. Unlike Miami, which had over two million viewer, Las Vegas will not provide that viewership boost.
A 10% decrease would not be devastating, it would only be a decrease of 121,000 viewers from the average. That would still be an average of 1,089,000 viewers. Formula One will be fine. It will still be a good year.
Two sets of predictions down, three to go, and this week will be full of predictions to close out the year. Sports cars are up next.
