Welcome Drivers!

F1 testing is officially wrapped up and we are ready for the start of the season next week! Overall this year’s testing was one of the more smoother in recent memory with most teams dealing with minor issues and were able to get a good understanding of their cars.

We will quickly cover the results of the final day of testing and will be giving our thoughts on what we have seen from the teams throughout the past 3 days. Next week we will finally get to see who was holding back and who was overhyped.

There were a couple of red flags stopping the morning session. The first was caused by the Red Bull of Sergio Perez. There are no actual problems with the car but a bit of aero testing equipment fell of the car during the back straight and debris littered the track.

The second red flag was caused by Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas who had to stop on the runoff of turn 8. It was later confirmed that Bottas had suffered a gearbox failure which is not ideal for a Alfa Romeo squad that suffered with reliability issues all of last season.

Those were the only significant incidents on track. Some teams had minor issues that limited their track time but overall it was another polished day of F1 testing for the teams.

Once again, testing results should be taken with a grain of salt. Lap times are meaningless as teams are working on a variety of testing and data gathering. We will not see how things truly shake out until the Free Practices, Quali, and obviously the Bahrain GP.

Key Takeaways - Testing Final Day

Red Bull Top the Charts

If there was one thing that we feel most comfortable about coming away from testing, it’s that Red Bull will be very strong this season again. The Milton Keynes outfit was able to finish P1 or P2 every single day of testing and was near the top on the number of laps run by all the teams. They were only bested by an outstanding late day lap by Zhou Guanyu from Alfa Romeo.

Max Verstappen topped the charts on the first day and Sergio Perez closed out the final day with the best lap time of any driver. Lap times in testing don’t mean as much but to be consistently topping the charts every day does say something. Red Bull, no matter what setup they are running, are consistently quick.

This bodes well for the team that is looking to put on a double title defense in 2023. Are they becoming the new Mercedes? Where their drivers are only competing with themselves? We don think so but there is a strong possibility that Red Bull is running away from the pack.

Mercedes is Unpredictable

Mercedes news has been flip flopping from extremely promising to very disappointing. It is hard to get a read on just how competitive they will be. Red Bull team boss Christian Horner made a comment basically saying he thinks they may be holding stuff back during testing.

We would not be surprised if this was the case for Mercedes. Purposefully playing coy and then coming out for the first race and being very competitive once again. There has just been a lot of mixed news coming out of the garage saying they aren’t happy with the W14 but then Toto comes out saying they have made great progress.

We are confident that Mercedes will be in the hunt for wins this season. They have gotten over their bouncing issues and should be able to extract more out of the car. How often they can win will be depended on Red Bull and Ferrari’s progress. Unfortunately for Mercedes, their rivals have shown to be incredibly strong during testing.

Tight Midfield Fight

The main topic coming out of the midfield was the vast improvement in the Aston Martin. Fernando Alonso was consistently setting quick lap times and they appear to have jumped a couple of teams in the midfield. The real question is are these lap times legit? With only Alonso taking the bulk of the laps its hard to gauge where Aston stands. But if the times do hold up, expect to see them at the top of the midfield and potentially in the hunt for a win.

Out of all of the teams at testing, McLaren possibly had the most disappointing 3 days. They were plagued by issues with their “wheel brows” and overall just seemed to be a little off the pace from teams like Alpine and Aston Martin. At the end of testing it was reported Lando punched a wall in frustration as he left the garage. We think this report was exaggerated but it does show that there is some frustration flowing over for Lando and McLaren are clearly not happy with where they are at with the car.

The two other midfield contenders are Alpine and Alfa Romeo. Alfa have looked decent particularly in the last two days with Zhou topping the charts in day two and Bottas finishing in the top 3 on the final day. The only concern here is that we have seen some reliability issues in testing for Alfa. After a year of inconsistent reliability this is the last thing they would want to see on the final day.

Alpine had a very quiet 3 days of testing. They did nothing to separate themselves and they did not encounter that many issues during testing. There were some reports that the car is pretty stiff as the drivers were locking up into some turns but other than that it was crickets out of the garage. It is tough to tell where they will stack up against what seems to be a very competitive midfield this season.

Where They Stand - 2023 F1 Testing Final Day

As stated in the intro, lap times are not a significant indicator of performance during the season. However, we are going to run through the top drivers on the final day of testing.

Sergio Perez set the fastest time of any driver with a 1:30.305 lap. Lewis Hamilton followed Perez in P2 by +0.359. It was a solid showing for the 7-time champion while his teammate George Russell was able to slot in at P8. The surprise in the top 3 was Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas who set his time late in the day. Alfa now has two drivers in the top 3 the past two days.

Right behind Bottas were the pair of Ferrari drivers who have been consistently in the top 10 all three days. It is a safe assumption to say they will likely be Red Bull’s primary rival once again in 2023.

Yuki Tsunoda came in at P6 for AlphaTauri with Kevin Magnussen of Haas right behind him. Both of their teams will be trying to pull themselves from the back half of the grid and become competitive in the midfield.

The Aston Martin driver pair of Alonso and Drugovich round out the top 10 of the final day of testing. Aston Martin has been showing signs of new life during testing and it will be interesting to see if it plays out during the first race weekend.

Final Thoughts - 2023 F1 Testing

With testing wrapped up we have a somewhat better idea of where the teams stand. Our thoughts are that it will be Red Bull vs Ferrari competing for the win at the Bahrain GP. Both teams had very solid testing days and showed signs of being the fasted and most consistent teams. Hopefully they can give us some very entertaining overtake action like last year

Mercedes may be able to slip in a podium but we feel they are still back from the top teams. We would not be shocked in Hamilton was in the mix for a win as the team has improved their setup significantly.

The midfield will be wild this year with Aston Martin vying to make the jump from P7 last year to best of the rest this year. McLaren seems to be slipping a bit and Alpine has pace but it did not really show their potential in testing. Alfa have shown glimpses of pace but it was always late in the day so it could just be a product of timing.

The back of the grid appears to have some movement too with Williams showing some good improvement in their car and AlphaTauri somewhat disappointing in testing. There are also rumors that Red Bull in considering selling their sister team. Helmut Marco is quoted saying that AlphaTauri’s P9 result last season was unacceptable and the synergy between the teams is off.

We have a full post coming tomorrow going over our new power rankings after testing and our thoughts on where teams will end up for the Bahrain GP.

Upcoming Posts and Reader Feedback

We will be back tomorrow with an updated power ranking based on the things we saw during testing. Looks like the midfield will be shaken up.

If you like the post please subscribe to the newsletter. We publish multiple articles a week and will be doing in-depth breakdowns as the season moves along.

We are also posting content on Twitter (@TheApexF1news) and Instagram (@theapexf1news) if you are interested in following there as well. You can also follow the links in the footer to get to these pages.

Feel free to leave any comments or recommendations on topics you would like to be covered. Thanks for reading, we really appreciate the support!