2023 Qatar Grand Prix Heroes and Zeroes

[Alianora La Canta]

(I guess)

Heroes:

Logan Sargeant's pitwall: For recognising the signs of severe dehydration and persuading Logan to retire safely. I've had severe dehydration and do not fault Logan one bit for trying to continue when he obviously couldn't - one of the nasty things about severe dehydration is that it provides false confidence in one's own abilities (it's part of the reason people do ridiculous things while drunk).

Charles Leclerc: By running soft tyres for 26 laps in the Sprint Race, he provided the most compelling evidence for the tyre situation on Saturday, meaning tough but necessary decisions regarding stint policies could be issued. He was also one of the ones who spoke out most eloquently about why the FIA needs to avoid a repeat. (Probably also some performance-related stuff, but it kind of feels irrelevant here). Granted that taking it as an invite to go home might have been less problematic in the end, but with the insistence on continuing, at least with that information we didn't have mass tyre failures to add to the race's woes (unlike 2021).

Everyone who had to work outdoors in those conditions today: Many drivers reported serious problems with the conditions and should be respected for speaking about them. Let their struggles speak for the marshals, scrutineers, press pen journalists and team race staff, who did not get such a platform but faced many of the same problems.

Villains:

Niels Wittich: For not red-flagging the race when it became obvious that racing on Sunday was making the drivers ill (he should have noticed this when Logan and Williams had their conversation on laps 39 and 40, even if he missed all previous signs). He was indoors, in an air-conditioned turret, and therefore cannot blame dehydration for this extremely serious mistake. To my mind, this race should not have ended and, depending on evidence, should not have started. That it finished means that the entire race result is now under threat due to having been held against regulations (albeit, like Abu Dhabi 2021, potentially resolvable simply by agreeing to take the result from a point beyond which the requirement for invalidation is indisputable, in this case lap 40).

Note: I am willing to allow that running in previous sessions might have been compatible with starting the race, given the difference between foresight and hindsight, but it definitely wasn't compatible with ending it as scheduled, so taking results on lap 40 would have been more reasonable. This is also why I am only citing Niels as a villain; a pre-race cancellation involves many more people, but an in-race cancellation only requires the Race Director's approval.

The part of the FIA that banned squirting/throwing water on drivers: The regulations clearly state that water can be carried in the car, in an approved container. The reasons for not allowing a non-approved container make sense: the FIA don't want any of it going into running parts of the car. However, a team whose cockpit allows water into the running parts of the car is already running a non-compliant car and can be disqualified at leisure. Throwing/squirting water onto the driver should therefore be legal. (Changing water bottles is not legal either, unless doing so requires tools and is done under FIA supervision - which tends not to be available in the race without a few minutes' notice to summon said supervision and provide a briefing on the intended procedure. Again, I can see why - refilling with energy drink, for example, is absolutely forbidden even if that was the original content of the bottle - but the consequent refusal of drivers to allow themselves to effectively DNF to meet their bodily requirements simply emphasises the error in banning throwing/squirting water).

The part of the FIA that organises Pirelli's mandate: This is where silly mandates for blancmange tyres gets one - especially if one also insists on not providing a neutral representative car and adequate testing opportunity on new situations. With enough planning and funding, the three-stop mess could have been prevented.

[Willy]

Heroes
All who managed to finish this race in conditions that were not conducive to running a race.

I applaud Mclaren for an great result and Oscar for showing us this weekend that he is a future champion.

George managed a good result after the 1st corner fiasco with Hamilton almost pooched his race.

Williams and Logan Sargent.  Stopping when it became extremely apparent that he was overheated and dehydrated. When he finally got out of the car and was perched on the edge of the halo you could see sweat dripping from his race suit so he has no liquid in his system and had lost it all.  I hope he is okay with no ill effects.

Zeroes

Stewards.  As always these guys seem to not be able to actually see what is going on and deal with it in a timely manner. Case in point, what Ali said about the heat and the fact the race should have been stopped. Or maybe not even started.

Stewards. They were hell bent on dealing with track limit infractions to the complete disregard of anything else.

FIA. Who schedules races? And do they actually look at local weather conditions at each time of the year. Is is really an good time to run a race in Qatar at this time in the year. Would March not be better.  Or late November?  Nobody really give a crap which race runs when (except for a few historical races always run at the same time each year) so mixing up when each race runs depending on proper weather conditions might be worth a look.....don"t ya think???

Lewis. His formation lap radio chatter complaining about tire choice was very telling and then the bull-in-a-china-shop charge into the 1st corner where he had no chance to get to the front and total disregard for anyone in his way.  1st rule of team racing, don't take out your teammate!!

Perez. Oh Checo. You have become your own worst enemy and seem to be doing almost everything you can so next season you are watching F1 from your Living Room at home.





 

[Jericoke]

Heroes
Max/Newey continue arguably the best partnership in F1 history.

McLaren proving that it's possible to evolve a car to become competitive with the modern rules

Russell shaking off a tough collision with Hamilton and proving he can put in the work when things aren't going his way.

Alonso continues to prove he's an elite driver, despite making mistakes

Alfa Romeo with double points!

Lusail track design.  Yes, there were problems when cars tried to race three wide, but the very fact that it's possible to race three wide means the track has generous racing lines.  If the drivers were used to racing three wide, they maybe Hamilton and Perez wouldn't have made bone headed pass attempts.  In a two wide situation their moves would just have forced someone to back off and been debated as 'aggressive racing'.

Zeroes
Driver safety.  F1 has made tremendous moves to make their cars very survivable in a fiery crash, which is fantastic.  Now it's time to make sure that the cockpit isn't going to cook the drivers alive.  Tracking a driver's temp/heartrate isn't hard, and it should be easy for a driver exceeding the safe limits to be immediately black flagged.  I don't know if dumping water on a driver during a pit stop would really accomplish anything with a modern fire suit, but other racing series, such as IndyCar have proper ventilation for the drivers.  This should be a trivial addition to F1 which keeps adding hot weather races.

Gravel traps. I understand that drivers who make a mistake need to be 'punished', but safety cars while beached cars are rescued is punishing the other racers and fans.

Driverwise, Hamilton and Perez both made bad 'three wide' moves.  I feel like the moves were definitely in the wrong, however drivers are used to going two wide,where the other car will make room.  I'd love to see more 3 wide racing where drivers have to understand the car they're passing simply cannot yield.

Perez.  Sure, he had a bad day, but so did other drivers who managed to get solid results.  I know that being Max's teammate is the least forgiving position in F1, so maybe it's time to move on to something less stressful where he can excel on his own terms.

Stroll.  Not a great weekend, but a decent recovery drive in the race.  I wonder if he's being put under pressure to produce results, and is simply not stepping up to the pressure.  He's a great racer (they all are), but he just doesn't seem to be ready to adjust to the pressure of being a top F1 driver, which is regressing his overall performance.

Bonus thought:

I like the idea of each tire having a 'lap limit'.  Right now we get teams taking a chance on the tires, or cars/drivers managing their tires better.  On one hand, that's part of the sport, handling limited resources better than everyone else.  On the other hand, if everyone has the same number of laps per tire, there will be closer  racing where the risks are better understood.  Ideally the FIA and Pirelli should know exactly how the tires will perform at a given track, but I feel like this might provide a better spectacle over race distance.

[Alianora La Canta]

FIA. Who schedules races? And do they actually look at local weather conditions at each time of the year. Is is really an good time to run a race in Qatar at this time in the year. Would March not be better.  Or late November? 

The FIA wanted December but transport to Abu Dhabi doesn't work due to logistical politics. The Qatari government isn't popular with the other Arabian peninsula Islamic nations because they have opposite opinions of Iran and Yemen to each other (Qatar's OK with both, if not exactly friendly with either, the others are either hostile or outright at war with them). As a result, one has trouble finding any direct flights between places like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. This means Qatar can't go back-to-back with anywhere else, except maybe Azerbaijan. Suffice to say June would not be an improvement.

Since Abu Dhabi spectacularly outbid Qatar, it got first preference on schedule date. Bahrain and Saudi Arabia combined also outbid Qatar and thus got first preference at the other end of the schedule. October was the least-worst next option that enabled the western-hemisphere triple-header (that may not outbid Qatar even collectively, but is psuedo-politically vital to Liberty Media) that's basically locked into November.

Now it's time to make sure that the cockpit isn't going to cook the drivers alive.  Tracking a driver's temp/heartrate isn't hard, and it should be easy for a driver exceeding the safe limits to be immediately black flagged.

It's so easy that F1 already measures temperatures using the earpieces everyone has to wear, and also in the biometric gloves that are about to be mandatory for all drivers. I think black-flagging would have made it really obvious that the race should have been stopped partway, and for this reason I think it will take more than this to force the FIA to implement the regulation.

[Willy]

so then maybe just don't hold a race there.
Simple.

[Alianora La Canta]

so then maybe just don't hold a race there.
Simple.

That would be my clear preference - the calendar's too long anyway and an unsuitable schedule is a good reason to drop a race (or at least delay until it is possible to remove the ones that don't belong there under any conditions).

[John S]

My big plus for this Qatari race is that most teams & cars pushed at the limit for the whole race. There was no fuel saving hypermiling going on, save for Max in the last 10 or 12 laps as he had race sewn up. They just went flat out on the limited stint tyre sets. 

How often have people lamented the lift & coast instructions given over radios, this time we saw 'Balls-out' runs from all concerned. Hey and we also saw a World record pitstop time from Macca.    

[cosworth151]

The tire thing gave me flashbacks of the 2005 USGP. At least they handled this one better than that.

I had to feel sorry for Nico. He realized he'd made a mistake as soon as he stopped on the grid, but there was nothing he could do at that point. Blew a chance at a points finish before he started.