Looking forward to 2023: Huge pressure on Ferrari and De Vries' debut

An important year for Mercedes

After eight years of dominating Formula 1, 2022 saw Mercedes briefly hit rock bottom. The German team finished third in the constructors' championship, won only one race, and was so close to Ferrari mainly because that racing team kept making mistakes. Mercedes wants to forget the W13 quickly and move to 2023.

Still, the pressure is on for Mercedes. Indeed, with Lewis Hamilton's contract expiring, the team finds themselves in a special situation. Whereas in previous years there was no question of retaining Lewis, his age will increasingly come into play. Moreover, in 2022, we saw that George Russell could stay pretty close in his first year and even score more points over a full year.

Whether the same will be the case when the car competes for wins remains to be seen, but Russell is clearly closer to Hamilton than Valtteri Bottas. This could create another Rosberg-Hamilton situation, which also does not help team performance. First, however, it is to see if the team can build a car that can win more races again, before it can think about the driver problem.

New team bosses in F1

December saw a veritable carousel in terms of team bosses. Mattia Binotto left Ferrari and that set off quite a movement. Frederic Vasseur starts as Ferrari's new team boss in 2023, Andreas Seidl goes to work as CEO of Sauber (where a team boss has yet to be chosen) and Andrea Stella takes over the role of team boss at McLaren. Jost Capito additionally left as team boss at Williams. His future may lie with Sauber.

A change of guard in management is rarely a short-term solution in F1. So it will be interesting to see which team has benefited or suffered most from these changes before 2023.

Huge pressure on Ferrari

That brings us directly to Ferrari, where with the departed team boss, the pressure is immediately on. Binotto himself left, according to the press release, but everyone knows that Ferrari didn't want to continue with Binotto either and that the Italian threw in the towel himself because of that lack of confidence.

When, as a management, you don't have confidence in a team boss who returns your formation to second place in the world championship, you know there is only one thing that matters: winning the world title. So the pressure is high for new team boss Vasseur, even though the car for 2023 has long since been built and the organisation is also in a structure as the previous team boss wanted. Changes in such a large organisation do not happen overnight.

The pressure on drivers will also increase. Of course, Ferrari made mistakes as a team in 2022, but Leclerc himself also dropped stitches in the battle for the world title. He was not as faultless as Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton were in their title fight in 2021, making it easier for Verstappen to walk away with the title in 2022 than it would have been a year earlier.

With Vasseur, an acquaintance of Leclerc comes to the team and possibly one that puts more confidence in the Monegasque. The question is what this will do to Carlos Sainz, who himself has ambitions to become world champion. He will not simply settle for a second role and his management certainly not. This could just create a new power struggle within Ferrari.

Gasly versus Ocon

The team duel most anticipated is that of Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon. The story about the former friends is well known. Fighting in French karting damaged their friendship and the parents of the two also could not control themselves. Everyone says peace has been made, but the fact that the parents are not allowed to be present at the same race weekends really says it all.

Gasly and certainly Ocon, besides, have a reputation in F1 for causing trouble. Ocon already had issues with teammates Sergio Perez and Fernando Alonso in addition to a quarrel with Gasly, while Max Verstappen also had an argument with the Frenchman. Gasly made no friends at Red Bull Racing by choosing his own path entirely, rather than copying Verstappen. Within the team, they were so quick off the mark that he was shown the door after six months.

Two Frenchmen looking to grab the leadership of the French team: then you need a strong team boss who can manage that. In the past, however, Otmar Szafnauer has not proved to be the team boss who knows how to manage that well. For instance, Ocon and Perez drove each other into the wall on several occasions under his leadership and the duel between Fernando Alonso and Ocon in 2022 was also derailed.

Much-discussed debutants and a comeback

There are also several new or returning drivers to watch out for in 2023. For the Dutch, Nyck de Vries is obviously the man to watch out for. At AlphaTauri, he will get a good chance to prove himself after making a unique debut for Williams at the 2022 Italian Grand Prix.

With Yuki Tsunoda, De Vries gets a fast but fickle teammate. De Vries, who excelled in all other classes mainly by being very consistent, will have to match his teammate quickly. Helmut Marko is not known for his patience, so if performance is poor, it could be over after just one year. So the pressure is on for the Dutchman.

Another newcomer is Oscar Piastri. Due to the Alpine hassle, his debut is immediately under a magnifying glass. Piastri was the one who left Alpine after they had paid training fees for him for years. Piastri is the one for whom McLaren bought out Daniel Ricciardo's contract. Everyone will now wonder if the Formula 2 and 3 champion was worth all that.

In that respect, it is also tough for Piastri with Lando Norris as a teammate. The Brit is the team's pet child and he also proved over the past two seasons that he can take the lead. Not an easy first opponent for a rookie.

Logan Sargeant also debuts in 2023, but his biggest pressure moment may already be behind him. The fact that Williams presented him as a driver for 2023 even before obtaining his super licence put quite a lot of pressure on the young American's shoulders ahead of the last race in Abu Dhabi. Sargeant handled that well. Now he gets to make his F1 debut alongside Alexander Albon.

Besides all the debutants, we also have one more comeback in the form of Nico Hulkenberg. After three seasons on the sidelines, the German will finally get a permanent seat back at Haas in 2023. Not to mention alongside his former rival Kevin Magnussen. The two are more mature than Gasly and Ocon and have much less to prove, but this too could be a fun duo to keep an eye on.

Is Ricciardo breathing down Perez's neck?

Daniel Ricciardo has had two tough years and will be happy to be out of the spotlight for a while in 2023. However, as Red Bull Racing's reserve driver, he remains involved in F1 and hopes to actually return in 2024. He always talked about a top team because he would like to win races. That is why he preferred a reserve role at Red Bull to a seat at Haas.

Christian Horner has clearly stated that Ricciardo does not have a clause in his contract for a race seat, but the pressure will increase on Sergio Perez with Ricciardo behind the scenes. In late 2022, the first cracks were already visible in the relationship between the Mexican and his team, the question is how that will develop in 2023 if Verstappen turns out to be the better of the two again. In that case, Ricciardo will be only too happy to take over the spot.