The Official F1 2023 silly season *contains speculation*

[thegreenhell]

This still being silly season, what happens if the courts decide that Alpine have a claim on Piastri afterall, and McLaren have ditched their driver without a confirmed replacement? Who then do they get to drive the second McLaren in 2023?

If Piastri does end up at McLaren as almost everyone expects, who else but Ricciardo can go to Alpine? They are a factory team with only one driver signed and no other hopefuls on their books ready to bring in. Who else is free and suitable for such a factory team?

[anonymous-user]

Pflanzgarten said:

Say max Verstappen never happened and riciardo stayed at red bull-do you think he would have been 2021 world champion?

Never in a million years, Max is prepared to drive beyond what is fair and do whatever it takes to win.

[Pflanzgarten]

matrignano said:

Who’s open at Williams, Albon or Latifif?

What about Alphatauri?

Gasly is signed for ‘23 and Tsunoda has been told he’s in too. Albon has a contract for ‘23 but Latifi doesn’t, neither does Schumacher at Haas.

[ajprice]

[C70R]

thegreenhell said:

This still being silly season, what happens if the courts decide that Alpine have a claim on Piastri afterall, and McLaren have ditched their driver without a confirmed replacement?

The teams will just throw money at it until the problem goes away.

[entropy]

Pflanzgarten said:

Say max Verstappen never happened and riciardo stayed at red bull-do you think he would have been 2021 world champion?

It's very easy for naysayers to claim he wouldn't be up to it using logic of the here and now but I honestly think it would have been another closely fought WDC battle.

Yes, DR has stalled/regressed at McLaren but whatever level one thinks of DR we've seen before that when you have a car that can win and win consistently you can be within a shout of the WDC with correct mentality and minimal errors. Fighting for WDC spur you on to driving onto another level.

We've seen this happen to drivers like Webber, Massa, Hill (1994), Brundle with his epic battle with Senna in BF3 drive at at an unprecedented level and in some cases not repeat it.

[entropy]

thegreenhell said:

He was actually ahead of Max in the WDC when his move was announced in the summer break that year. After that he had a run of retirements, mostly mechanical, and ended the season with 8 DNFs to Max's 3. If you were looking for a conspiracy you might think he wasn't given the best equipment after telling the team he was leaving.

Edit to mention that he also finished ahead of Max in 2017 and 2016 (even if you count only the races when they were in the same team). So up until the point in time he decided to leave he had always been ahead of Max.

Edited by thegreenhell on Wednesday 24th August 17:33

The other thing is during that time I don't recall any accusations of the team favouring Max in terms of car development.

[Pflanzgarten]

entropy said:

thegreenhell said:

He was actually ahead of Max in the WDC when his move was announced in the summer break that year. After that he had a run of retirements, mostly mechanical, and ended the season with 8 DNFs to Max's 3. If you were looking for a conspiracy you might think he wasn't given the best equipment after telling the team he was leaving.

Edit to mention that he also finished ahead of Max in 2017 and 2016 (even if you count only the races when they were in the same team). So up until the point in time he decided to leave he had always been ahead of Max.

Edited by thegreenhell on Wednesday 24th August 17:33

The other thing is during that time I don't recall any accusations of the team favouring Max in terms of car development.

DR's 2018 was flattered by his monaco result in my humble opinion. Yes he won it under hard circumstances but that race was Max's by a mile right up until that mistake in the swimming pool in FP3-he was on another planet to Ricciardo all week leading up to Saturday. Other than that and China, he didn't make another podium all year.

[Teddy Lop]

Sandpit Steve said:

rallycross said:

Brutal to announce it before he’s sorted out his next drive.

Nearly as brutal as him finding out about it by Piastri’s Tweeting, Brown having talked positively about the Australian only the week before.

TBF Alonso started the ball rolling; McLaren were probably happy sitting on piastri and permitting Danny the space to sort things out before announcing anything.

[ajprice]

Ricciardo's own video on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/reel/ChpTD9bI7NB/?igshid...

[llewop]

entropy said:

The other thing is during that time I don't recall any accusations of the team favouring Max in terms of car development.

pull the other one, not only was the car being configured to favour Max, the management made it clear the petulant child was the chosen one. That, I suspect, is why DR left, not wanting to be getting the left overs and being expected to stand aside. History repeated itself with another Aussie being pushed aside for Marko's chosen one.

The other thing, regarding his time at McLaren - DR may have struggled with the car, but the chap in the other car continues to pull off some amazing drives, which will have made it harder.

[andburg]

Thing is where does DR go, perhaps he’s not the big signing but given he’s getting paid by McLaren anyway he could well drive 2022 for free.

That’s a lot of money a team operating under the budget cap could invest in development of the car

[Muzzer79]

matrignano said:

Where can Ricciardo go though?

Who else is out of a contract at the end of this year?

He’ll go to Alpine or he’ll leave F1, probably for NASCAR or Indycar.

[Muzzer79]

thegreenhell said:

This still being silly season, what happens if the courts decide that Alpine have a claim on Piastri afterall, and McLaren have ditched their driver without a confirmed replacement? Who then do they get to drive the second McLaren in 2023?

Piastri

They’ll buy their way out of the problem.

Failing that, they have choices of Pato O’Ward, Alex Palou (maybe) Colton Herta or someone else.

[andburg]

jsf said:

andburg said:

Thing is where does DR go, perhaps he’s not the big signing but given he’s getting paid by McLaren anyway he could well drive 2022 for free.

That’s a lot of money a team operating under the budget cap could invest in development of the car

Driver salaries are not part of the budget cap. Neither are team principle salaries. Funny that.

True but if you can’t afford to run at the cap you can’t afford an expensive driver either! Some teams are running below the cap so spending less on a driver could well allow them to run closer to it

[C Lee Farquar]

jsf said:

andburg said:

Thing is where does DR go, perhaps he’s not the big signing but given he’s getting paid by McLaren anyway he could well drive 2022 for free.

That’s a lot of money a team operating under the budget cap could invest in development of the car

Driver salaries are not part of the budget cap. Neither are team principle salaries. Funny that.

I read his point as being that a salary saving could then be invested in development if you're under the budget cap?

[andburg]

C Lee Farquar said:

jsf said:

andburg said:

Thing is where does DR go, perhaps he’s not the big signing but given he’s getting paid by McLaren anyway he could well drive 2022 for free.

That’s a lot of money a team operating under the budget cap could invest in development of the car

Driver salaries are not part of the budget cap. Neither are team principle salaries. Funny that.

I read his point as being that a salary saving could then be invested in development if you're under the budget cap?

Another reason he could well be at alpine who have said they are running under the cap.

Without paying fernando they can free up budget and run at the cap.

It’s as high up the grid as he hope to get

[rallycross]

andburg said:

Thing is where does DR go, perhaps he’s not the big signing but given he’s getting paid by McLaren anyway he could well drive 2022 for free.

That’s a lot of money a team operating under the budget cap could invest in development of the car

Going many steps back what the hell were McLaren paying him that sort or salary anyway ? They have no money and he’s never come close to winning a championship .... a crazy deal

[samoht]

rallycross said:

Going many steps back what the hell were McLaren paying him that sort or salary anyway ? They have no money and he’s never come close to winning a championship .... a crazy deal

That's hindsight bias I think.

Wind the clock back to the start of the 2020 season when the deal was done. McLaren were just slogging out of years of backmarkery. They'd just finished in the top half of the table for the first time in five years. Their only experienced driver, the guy who had scored 96 of their 145 championship points in that 2019 season, lets them know he's off to Italy.

They need a talented and experienced driver to pair with rookie Lando. Max, Lewis and Charles are already taken. They'd already done Alonso, twice. Who do you get - Vettel, or the guy who made Vettel look slow when they were in identical machinery? The guy who'd only lost out to Max as a team-mate, and then only narrowly?


https://the-race.com/formula-1/mark-hughes-on-ricc...

Under the circumstances, McLaren needed a good experienced race-winning driver, and they didn't have a lot of options, so they had to pay top money for Ricciardo.

At the time, no-one was predicting he'd be shown up by Lando - most people anticipated the reverse would occur, if anything.

Sometimes in life you make a decision, and it's the best decision you could have made with the information you had at the time, but it still doesn't work out. st happens.
When that does happen, it's no use beating yourself up about it, just accept the situation, deal with it, and move on. Which is exactly what McLaren have done.

[C70R]

llewop said:

History repeated itself with another Aussie being pushed aside for Marko's chosen one.

Which, on the face of it based on their performances this season, is looking like a fantastic decision.

F1 is a very expensive, results-based sport. Hard to make an argument for the team focusing on Danny when rookie Max ran him close and then scored more wins than him in his second season.

I really like Danny, and hope he goes on to enjoy other great Motorsport experiences. But when you're being out-scored 4:1 by your teammate (and behind Magnusson and Bottas in the WDC), you shouldn't expect the team to give you a pat on the back.