23 races, the longest season in history
This edition will be the longest season in the history of Formula 1, with a record number of twenty-three events on the calendar. Initially, the championship was even to have 24e round, but the Chinese Grand Prix was canceled for the fourth consecutive year.
The calendar had been greatly disrupted in 2020 by the Covid-19 pandemic, allowing the holding of only seventeen events out of the twenty-two scheduled. In 2022, the GP of Sochi (Russia), scheduled for September 25, had been canceled due to the invasion of Ukraine by Kremlin troops eight months earlier.
13 Grands Prix outside Europe
If the Old Continent still concentrates most of the events, this 2023 season will be marked in particular by the return of F1 to Las Vegas (Nevada), forty years after its last appearances in 1981 and 1982. The race will take place on November 19 on an urban circuit and will pass in particular on the famous Strip of “Sin City”. Absent from the program in 2022, the Qatar Grand Prix is also on the program this season, on October 8. On the other hand, no GP of France this year.
10 teams… the same as since 2021
We take the same and start again. The ten teams at the start of the 2023 season are the same as those who played the two previous seasons. Note that four of them retain an identical driver duo: Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes and Alfa Romeo.
Expected to stand up to the Austrian Red Bull team, reigning world champion, Ferrari and Mercedes hope to shine well during this championship.
The Scuderia will be keen to confirm the end of the reliability and strategy problems that plagued it last year. As for the German team, eight-time world champion between 2014 and 2021, it will above all strive to turn the page on a 2022 vintage becalmed by performance concerns linked to new regulations.
20 drivers and 15 nationalities on the starting grid
The reigning double world champion, the Dutchman Max Verstappen (Red Bull), will find several candidates on his way to compete for the coronation. Without a win in 2022 – a first in fifteen years of career – Briton Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) will be keen to turn the page on the worst season in its history.
Also watch out for Monegasque Charles Leclerc (Ferrari), who won nine of the twenty-two poles last season, against seven for Verstappen; or even “Mr. Consistency” (“Mr. Regularity” in French), the Briton George Russell (Mercedes), who managed to climb into the top 5 in nineteen of the twenty-two races.
It should also be noted that three drivers will make their debut on the grid: the American Logan Sargeant with Williams, the Australian Oscar Piastri with McLaren and the Dutchman Nyck de Vries with Alpha Tauri (despite a disputed Grand Prix as a substitute in 2022).
3 active world champions
Max Verstappen. Judge ” More relaxed “ et « plus mature » that in his debut, in 2015, by the executives of his Red Bull team, the reigning double world champion learned, over the seasons, to tame his fiery temper. For Helmut Marko, special adviser to the Austrian team, “He is the kind of generational talent that you only see once a decade, this perfect combination of speed, performance and self-confidence is unique”. The 25-year-old Dutch driver is a favorite in his own succession.
Lewis Hamilton. Since his debut on the circuit in 2007, the Briton has broken records: seven world crowns – as many as Michael Schumacher –; 191 podiums, against 155 for the German legend; 103 pole positions, again ahead of the “Red Baron”; 265 consecutive Grand Prix; fifteen seasons in a row with one victory or more, like “Schumi”… After a disastrous 2022 financial year, which saw him fall to 6e place in the driver’s standings, Lewis Hamilton will, at 38, try to write a little more of his mark in the history of F1.
Fernando Alonso. In 2003, the Spaniard caused a sensation: he became the youngest winner in the history of F1 by winning the Hungarian Grand Prix (a record beaten by Sebastian Vettel in 2008, then by Max Verstappen in 2016). Two years later, driving his Renault, he won the title of world champion, and did it again the following season. The “Asturian Bull” had decided to end his career at the end of the 2018 season… but he will finally make his big comeback on the grid in 2021. At 41, he is playing his 19e season on the Formula 1 circuits.