A Briefish 2023 Miami Grand Prix Preview
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The 2023 Miami Grand Prix
This weekend the most expensive traveling circus in the world will be heading down to the sunny shores of Miami Florida for the second running of the Miami Grand Prix. This is a great weekend to be an American Formula One fan, especially coming right after one of the toughest races for Americans to enjoy, Baku. You will be blessed this weekend with the opportunity to sleep in and still enjoy some great racing in the afternoons.
I for one am pumped!
The Miami track is a temporary track and is located in the shadow of the Miami Dolphins Hard Rock Café Stadium. Featuring 19 unique corners, three DRS zones, and a full length of 3.4 miles long.
The track layout is the same as the 2022 Miami GP in terms of turns and length. The only changes that are being implemented are the changes to the DRS zones.
For those that don’t know, DRS stands for Drag Reduction System, each of the cars has a rear wing flap that can be opened in certain zones of the track for a nice speed boost as long as they are within one second of the car ahead of them.
For this weekend's race, the DRS zones in Sector 2 and Sector 3 have both been shortened significantly. The reaction to this news has been rather negative, as last years race had limited overtaking leading it to be classified as "boring". A change such as this will only make overtaking more of a task and could very well lead to another "boring" race day.
Regardless, Miami is a really fun weekend for all involved and if you haven’t taken the opportunity to watch some coverage live this season this is a great weekend to pop in and check it out.
If you are interested in finding out your local times for the events this weekend head to this great site: F1 Calendar 2023 - Formula One Race Times and Dates
Baku Review
I will be the first to admit that I did not rise at 5 am MST over the past weekend to watch the race, so, I won't comment much about the race itself, more the reactions to the race.
Firstly, let us talk about the Sprint Race format we discussed last week and how it played out over the weekend.
Eh, it went alright. I think that changing the sprint race to not determine the grid positions on Sunday took a lot of interest out of the race. In previous iterations of sprint race weekends, it really mattered how the drivers did in the sprint race as it had huge implications for the driver's ceiling during the actual race. Crash out on the first lap of the old sprint race format and you found yourself starting in the back of the grid on Sunday, a dire position for any championship hopeful.
With the recent changes the sprint race meant very little in Baku, and I believe that sentiment was felt throughout the paddock and by F1 fans themselves.
The majority of F1 fans and F1 insiders would agree that the solution presented in Baku is not the correct one, and some re-working is still needed to make the sprint races relevant, exciting, and necessary in F1.
The race itself saw the master of the street circuits Sergio “Checo” Perez bring home the win for the Red Bull Formula One Team, with Max Verstappen close in toe behind him. In third place, we saw the red Ferrari of Charles Leclerc, who managed to put his flying red horse in pole position following Friday's qualifying session.
All in all, from what I have heard it wasn’t the greatest weekend in terms of excitement. I think I made a good choice in sleeping in on Sunday.
The Top Dogs
Breaking away from our usual style of covering every team, this week we will cover only the three teams. Red Bull, Ferrari, and Mercedes
1st Place. Red Bull
Red Bull has shown an impressive level of dominance throughout the season, and it shows no signs of stopping.
Articles and analysis this week have pointed at the fact that the Red Bull car isn’t well suited for street circuits such as Baku and Australia, and yet the team has managed to pull off victories at both despite this. With Miami coming up this weekend some are considering the possibility that the Red Bull car may be even more dominant at a Miami track their car is more suited for. It will be interesting (and terrifying) to watch this weekend to see if Red Bull can show off an entirely different level of dominance.
The most important news out of the Red Bull camp came on Monday when the team announced its extension with legendary chief technical officer Adrian Newey. He is an incredibly important part of the team’s success and it is well-known that they are quite pleased to have locked him down again. He is quite often accredited with much of the team’s technical success and innovation. So clearly, he is quite the important person to have around in the paddock.
With Newey locked in for the foreseeable future and an incredibly dominant start to the season, it’s not hard to see how Red Bull can be the dominant team for years to come. They have a far superior grasp of the new technical regulations when compared with the rest of the teams and they continue to seperate themselves week in and week out.
One more interesting storyline to pay attention to within Red Bull is Sergio Perez. I mean the guy is killing it this season and winning a ton of races. He could legitimately have a chance at a world drivers’ championship here. Does Checo have it in him to be a selfish driver and to gun for the championship in a team that clearly favors Max over him?
I sure hope so because there is nothing better than a spicy inter-team rivalry.
4th Place Ferrari
I promise that I will not begin my Ferrari analysis this week by telling you that they are headscratchingly bad this season. I will instead let you know that the Scuderia had a rather good weekend in Baku with Charles managing to bring home some much-needed points for the team.
Charles impressed over the weekend with his qualifying pace, taking P1 during Friday's qualifying putting him at the front of the grid for Sunday's race. Unfortunately, the Ferrari just did not have the race pace to defend against the two flying Red Bulls as the race continued.
The issue of race pace is a massive one for Ferrari. They quite simply do not have the maintained speed that Red Bull seems to find week in and week out.
It was quite clear early on during the 2022 season that Ferrari had made good decisions with their technical direction, but it just seems to have fallen off much faster than Red Bull. The Ferrari car quite clearly has the pace it simply does not yet have the longevity of speed needed to truly compete this season.
With rumors abuzz that Charles has met with Mercedes, the Ferrari team must light a fire under themselves if they hope to maintain one of the absolute best drivers on the grid.
I don’t believe Ferrari needs to deliver Charles a championship this year, but they certainly need to start providing him with championship-capable cars sooner rather than later.
3rd Place Mercedes
Mercedes reacted to the week 1 results in Bahrain quite poorly. Both of their drivers openly displayed severe disappointment at the results and even went as far to say that they had little chance against Red Bull for the forseeable future.
Since then, Mercedes has slowly begun to sing a very different tune. A tune of mythical future upgrades that the entire team seems incredibly excited about.
These upgrades are expected to arrive in time for the race in Imola and from what both Hamilton and Russel have said it sounds as if they believe it may be the ticket they need to begin competing with the Red Bulls seriously this season.
It's been fascinating to see how quickly Mercedes has moved to address their performance problem. Immediately making behind-the-scenes changes and quickly shifting their focus in a new direction with new upgrade packages starting almost immediately. They have shown, at least from an optics point of view, that they are clearly still one of the best-run Formula One teams on the paddock.
I would love to see some pressure placed on Red Bull sooner rather than latter and at this point I believe Mercedes to be the most likely candidate to do so.
Race Predictions
I hope no one is keeping a tally of my predictions, they've been awful!
Miami is still a very new track and many of the complaints lodged against the track last year will be reduced or fixed for this weekend's race. With such a new track and such a wild environment, this will be a difficult one to predict.
All in all, this is one of the most glorious weekends for American F1 fans. The times are fantastic, and you can really enjoy the sport without needing to wake up back-breakingly early on a Sunday. I am excited to have the opportunity to watch all parts of the weekend from qualifying to the race. If you are a reader who has not yet taken a plunge into the deep end of Formula One, this will be a great weekend to start.
Race Predictions
- Sergio Perez (Red Bull)
- Max Verstappen (Red Bull)
- George Russel (Mercedes)
Pulling for Sergio here all the way. His performances in the early part of the season have been fantastic. A win in Miami would really set the table for a close battle between him and teammate Max Verstappen, something I think every F1 fan should be pulling for. Inter-team battles provide the best drama available. Just check out Nico Roseburg and Lewis Hamilton’s rivalry.