The key themes to watch in the second half of the 2023 F1 season

Red Bull has achieved historic levels of dominance in Formula 1 during the opening half of the 2023 season. That it broke McLaren's 35-year-old record to secure 13 consecutive wins is a sign of just how all-conquering it has been.

But, aside from seeing whether the squad can end the year unbeaten, there is plenty else to keep an eye on during the second half of the campaign.

From the intriguing silly-season situation - including the ongoing saga of Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes contract negotiations - to a new venue and a Saturday grand prix in Las Vegas, there's still lots to watch out for. And that's before we even mention the outcome of the FIA's 2022 cost cap analysis...

Red Bull’s clean sweep

Will Verstappen and Red Bull's stranglehold finally be broken?

Photo by: Erik Junius

The 2023 Formula 1 title battles in both championships have long been over. Barring total and unforeseen disaster, Max Verstappen will take his third successive crown in the coming months. His latest coronation could come as early as Singapore in three races’ time. Red Bull will also surely wrap up the constructors’ title. The team holds a 256-point lead over Mercedes – 174 more than it enjoyed over Ferrari at this 12-race stage a year ago.

Although a gripping title fight is always preferable, there’s something to be admired in watching excellence, and the Red Bull RB19 is surely destined to go down as one of F1’s great cars.

Its gap to the field was revealed as so big in the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix that George Russell quipped: “They should win every single race.” And, after Aston Martin blew its chance to get Fernando Alonso ahead of Verstappen in Monaco, there is every chance Russell could be proved right. In doing so, Red Bull would topple Mercedes’ most wins in a season (19 from 2016), plus McLaren’s highest winning percentage from 1988 (93.8%, 15 of 16 wins that year).

The team is refusing to get carried away, but that unique piece of F1 history is within its grasp, and Red Bull’s rivals need it to err to have a victory sniff. “How long can we keep this going?” team boss Christian Horner said after Verstappen’s Hungary win. “Who knows? We’re just taking it one event at a time…”

Perez, Ricciardo and Tsunoda battle for their futures

The situation at AlphaTauri will be intriguing to watch over the rest of the season

Photo by: Erik Junius

Although Red Bull’s march towards the championship is stifling interest levels even among hardcore fans, the team still provides plenty of subplots worth watching.

In 2023, one storyline impacts the careers of three F1 racers. Sergio Perez, Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda are the focus, with Verstappen tied to Red Bull’s top team until the end of 2028.

Perez has been so far off Verstappen’s level this term that Red Bull fears it could lose the constructors’ crown if another team can produce a better car in 2024. That, and the regretting of its decision to hire Nyck de Vries at AlphaTauri, led to Ricciardo’s recall, and the next 10 races are the first real stage of his audition to replace Perez for 2025. But should Ricciardo ace it and Perez’s slide continue, it would be no surprise to hear calls for that decision to come a year ahead of time.

PLUS: The times that show how good Ricciardo's F1 return really was

Balanced against that is Red Bull’s desire to promote the rebranded AlphaTauri squad, with Ricciardo’s obvious marketing clout. And Perez could indeed turn things around. If Ricciardo is kept at the sister team for 2024, he may have a new team-mate, with Tsunoda yet to earn another extension and Liam Lawson excelling in the Super Formula title fight.

Helmut Marko may be 80, but there’s a sense in the paddock that he’s got more than one big call left in him, even with Red Bull under new overall management following Dietrich Mateschitz’s death last year.

Results of the 2022 cost cap revealed

Red Bull was found to have breached the cost cap in 2021 - did any team fail to comply in 2022?

Photo by: Getty Images / Red Bull Content Pool

When the 2022 title fight fizzled out following the summer break, F1 was still transfixed by news leaking of potential breaches to the 2021 cost cap. Red Bull was later found to have committed a serious breach, while there were procedural breaches from Aston Martin and Williams.

In the coming months, the FIA’s Cost Cap Administration division will release its findings related to the 2022 cap. This time around, the investigations are understood to have been beefed up, with more detailed examination and staff interviews required, plus the closing of a loophole where teams could possibly game the system using special projects divisions via Technical Directive 45.

In the races that preceded the summer break, reports emerged that several teams are suspected of being in potential trouble in regard to last year’s cost cap. But the FIA firmly rebuffed these, saying via a spokesperson that “we’d like to reiterate the ongoing process preceding financial regulation certification for the teams – none of which have been informed of their certification certificates”.

Essentially, the auditing is still ongoing, although it is expected to be completed in the coming weeks. Then a period of review will follow. The FIA has been at pains to stress that the cost cap rules don’t demand a set annual announcement deadline to not “prejudice the robustness and the effectiveness of the review”.

But, when the results are soon revealed, especially when they’re released to the teams, expect news to flow quickly. Particularly if there have been any further breaches.

Ferrari's adjustments continue

It hasn't been a straightforward first seven months in charge of Ferrari for Vasseur

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Ferrari has now been led by Fred Vasseur for seven months, following the manufacturer’s decision to sack Mattia Binotto. And it’s simply no better now. If anything, things are worse for Ferrari. It now has 191 constructors’ points versus 314 at this stage in 2022. It started the season with yet more unreliability, and it still hasn’t solved its tyre management weakness compared to Red Bull.

It has a car that can compete for poles in Charles Leclerc’s hands, but is yet to even threaten a race win. Ferrari did appear to have made a step forward on tyre management at the Hungaroring and Spa, but Leclerc reckons “it’s a bit too early” to say whether it has finally solved its conundrum.

Other issues remain unsolved too. There have been yet more calamitous pitstops this term, while Leclerc and Carlos Sainz have made driving errors. In Leclerc’s case, this was down to overdriving in the early rounds to try to make up for the SF-23’s deficiencies.

Vasseur is working to improve Ferrari’s core structures, but his first big hire – Loic Serra, Mercedes’ performance director – can’t start work until 2025. And sporting manager Laurent Mekies and senior design engineer David Sanchez are off for AlphaTauri and McLaren respectively.

Ferrari’s record gap between drivers’ titles – 21 years between 1979 and 2000 – suddenly doesn’t seem so far away; its current run is about to hit 16 since Kimi Raikkonen’s 2007 crown.

Mercedes must deal with an unexpected weakness before 2024

Mercedes's focus has already shifted towards 2024

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

In abandoning its ‘zeropod’ design and swapping James Allison and Mike Elliott in its technical director and chief technical officer roles, Mercedes has essentially already committed its focus to 2024. And those decisions came in March and April respectively.

The W14 may now look like a black Red Bull in terms of its sidepod shape, but it retains elements of the W13’s striking concept that can’t be engineered out until the winter reset and the next campaign. Therefore, the rest of Mercedes’ 2023 season is about pinpointing changes for the W15 that will unlock lap time gains, as Aston Martin and McLaren have managed in recent months.

It also must adjust its recent set-up approach in response to its bouncing problem reappearing at Spa, but that undulating layout really meant a 2022 concern resurfaced at other teams too. But also at Spa, Russell and Hamilton twice got in each other’s way, with the second incident in sprint shootout qualifying leaving the seven-time champ feeling that he’d missed a pole shot.

Elliott explained after Spa that Mercedes is set to “review the radio communications and we will see what learnings we can extract” – it is understood that such messages left Russell in particular feeling he had less time to set a lap than he did. This, plus another mistake in getting cooling calculations wrong in Hungary, is very un-Mercedes-like. Ensuring that these errors are not repeated for the rest of 2023 is an important part of the team’s ongoing recovery.

Aston addressing its development mistake

Aston Martin has plummeted down the pecking order since challenging Red Bull early on

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

While Ferrari and Mercedes again failed to get anywhere near Red Bull following the 2022-23 winter reset, Aston Martin gained considerable praise and attention for its stunning rise from seventh in last year’s constructors’ standings to being Red Bull’s closest challenger in the early races.

It needed Leclerc’s Bahrain retirement for Alonso to get a podium in green at the first attempt, but he has since gone on to secure five more. Only Aston not fitting intermediate tyres to the Spaniard’s car at his first pitstop in the late wet-Monaco madness meant it missed a first win in its new guise.

But since the early summer, Aston’s form has slipped backwards. Initially, this was thought to be aligned with the fluctuations between the four teams in Red Bull’s wake, as Alonso secured another second in Canada. But Aston has since revealed that making one or possibly two key decisions on its development path have backfired. Reversing its mistakes will be Aston’s next chapter of 2023, alongside getting Lance Stroll to anywhere near Alonso’s level.

ANALYSIS: What's happened to Aston Martin's Red Bull-worrying form in F1?

Further down the grid, Haas has shone in qualifying – mainly with new signing Nico Hulkenberg – but has an awful in-race tyre wear problem it can’t solve. The team is evaluating finally adopting Red Bull-style sidepods in the hope that this will help the situation.

Hamilton headlines ongoing silly season

Wolff said Hamilton deal was "days" away - but that was back in June

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

Back in early June, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said he expected Hamilton’s post-2023 contract to be signed in a matter of “days, not weeks”. But over two months have since passed and still the explanation is that minor (or indeed, major) legal wranglings must first be addressed. As things drag on, it gives rise to speculation that a spectacular change could still be in the offing for Hamilton’s F1 future.

That remains extremely unlikely, with another Mercedes extension still expected to come some time soon – possibly with an update on Russell’s long-term future to boot. But there are four more drivers who face uncertain futures beyond 2023, excluding the specific challenges facing Ricciardo and Tsunoda.

Zhou Guanyu is still yet to be handed another contract extension at Alfa Romeo, while Logan Sargeant needs the same thing at Williams. Then there’s the Haas duo, with Kevin Magnussen coming to the end of his contract and Hulkenberg only formally confirmed for 2023. Given the calm environment at Haas with two seasoned pros, plus Hulkenberg likely possessing a 1+1 deal to cover 2024, it would be no shock to see them continuing together.

Well-backed 2022 Formula 2 champion Felipe Drugovich (who has been linked with a move to Formula E for next year) is also thought to be in the mix of what sources suggest could be a certain amount of upheaval for the other teams at the back of the grid with potential 2024 slots.

Alpine's search for its new team boss

Szafnauer is one of many to depart Alpine's management team

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Alpine was a team in turmoil as it headed into the summer break. In Hungary it endured its disastrous third double DNF of the season, its drivers unfortunate victims of Zhou’s bowling escapade, while CEO Laurent Rossi was shuffled off to look after unspecified ‘special projects’ at Renault. Then team principal Otmar Szafnauer and sporting director Alan Permane were also axed.

ANALYSIS: Is Alpine's plan to fast-track F1 success a pipe dream?

Although there was a substantial difference in their length of service at Enstone – Szafnauer just 18 months into his position as team boss, with Permane considered a lifer after 34 years – they were apparently united in believing that it would take a long time to get the team winning regularly again in F1. The inertia needed to correct a team’s course has often been massive in the modern era. It’s even harder in the cost-cap age, as Mercedes and Ferrari are discovering.

But Renault’s upper management and others at Alpine – apparently including newly installed VP of Alpine Motorsport and now acting team principal Bruno Famin – feel it can be done much faster. That goes against the grain of the paddock, which suggests further problems to come if Alpine continues to miss its targets.

It could install Famin as Enstone’s permanent team boss, or bring in someone new. Mattia Binotto has been mentioned, but why would he want to return to such a board-level-meddlesome arrangement that he was just forced out of at Ferrari? Nothing, it seems, is a quick fix for Alpine at present.

Efforts to enact engine equalisation

Alpine's motor allegedly has a major deficit to its rivals

Photo by: Matt Kew

One thing that could boost Alpine – although perhaps not immediately – is the move to equalise engines that is currently under way. This could end up closing an apparent 30bhp deficit that its Renault engine is facing to Honda, Mercedes and Ferrari.

At the recent F1 Commission meeting at Spa, it was decided that since the FIA has concluded there is indeed a “notable performance gap between competitors”, the Power Unit Advisory Committee (comprising staff from the FIA, FOM and the engine builders) will now look at ways to address the imbalance. It will bring proposals back to an unspecified future F1 Commission Meeting.

The current thinking is that, because engine development is frozen bar in very limited circumstances, including reliability, those more powerful power units will have to be brought down. If this doesn’t happen, the Renault/Alpine’s disadvantage is locked in until the simplified engine requirements arrive for 2026. The disparagement of the development of those was also a big topic in a similar area as the first half of 2023 ended, and this is surely set to continue, particularly if manufacturers feel their development is not going well.

But the engine equalisation move is a much easier fix and even has Red Bull’s early backing. It has the current class-leading engine with Honda, but recognises it also called for such a move when it ran Renault power early in the turbo-hybrid era – and the freeze was brought in to help Red Bull after Honda initially pulled out of F1 in 2021.

Las Vegas makes long-awaited return - at night

F1 has bold plans for its return to Las Vegas

Photo by: Las Vegas GP

The season run-in is set to look rather different in 2023, as two events return to the calendar.
First up, the Qatar GP will take place before F1’s only (thanks to the Imola cancellation) triple-header of the season. The Losail circuit layout is unchanged to the one that has hosted MotoGP races for 19 years and stepped in as a pandemic replacement round back in 2021, although it has been resurfaced ahead of the October race. The first year of a 10-year agreement for Qatar F1 races will debut the newly constructed pits and paddock, as well as new access tunnels and car parks.

But by far the more exciting prospect is F1’s return to Las Vegas after an absence of 41 years. The penultimate round of 2023 will take place on the city’s famous Strip and is a Saturday night race at 10pm local time.

It’s F1 commercial rights holder Liberty Media’s biggest project to date – essentially its first in-house GP (the race’s CEO, Renee Wilm, is Liberty’s chief legal and administrative officer). Liberty has spent approximately $500million on land and construction work near Vegas’s famous Bellagio fountains, and it will receive no hosting fee for its own event.

This is a massive statement of intent, not seen since F1 became a global superpower sport. This is no race around Caesars Palace’s car park – although the 3.8-mile layout does lack technical challenge – and may set new standards other events will have to emulate. That’s if F1 gets the outcome it so badly wants.

New Las Vegas F1 venue will be very different to Caesar's Palace 41 years ago

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool